VTEX Live · 2025-10-07 · 24 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
57 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Alexandre Gusmão brings a unique perspective shaped by experience at Amazon Retail and leadership roles in fintech across Latin America. His philosophy centers on distinguishing table stakes (core commerce capabilities like catalog management, pricing, and checkout) from true differentiators - areas where customers should build or customize. At VTEX, Gusmão tackles the complexity of managing product roadmaps across 43 countries, eight verticals, and industries ranging from fashion to grocery. He identifies industry leaders and innovators as beacons for understanding where the market is heading, then looks for commonalities in their needs to build solutions that scale horizontally. His approach combines customer obsession with data-driven prioritization: calculating GMV lift or time savings from potential features to disambiguate stakeholder debates. Gusmão emphasizes that effective product leaders must have deep commerce expertise, practice dogfooding their own platform, facilitate direct customer-PM relationships through programs like VTEX's Flagship and Sponsorship initiatives, and constantly articulate the vision behind requests to avoid becoming backlog managers. This is essential for B2B SaaS leaders managing competing demands from customers, competitors, salespeople, engineering, and founders.
Focus SaaS purchases on table stakes - foundational capabilities like catalog management, pricing, promotions, and payment systems that all retailers need. Reserve building and customization for true differentiators specific to your business, like unique post-purchase experiences or customer service innovations.
Identify and deeply engage with industry leaders and innovators in each vertical, understand their needs and where their industry is heading, then look for commonalities across these leaders. Features that solve problems for multiple industries simultaneously should be prioritized highest.
Product managers should have deep industry expertise, personally use their own product, maintain direct customer relationships, and constantly articulate the vision behind every feature request rather than simply taking orders from stakeholders.
Product leaders must consume inputs from all stakeholders and combine them with their own vision developed through years of industry experience. They then sell this unified vision and use data - like projected GMV impact or time savings - to ground debates in facts rather than opinions.
The founder suggested cutting PMs who don't have deep expertise and don't understand the full user journey, as they become expensive managers who neither understand the customer nor drive real product value.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode delivers moderate insight density with several substantive ideas about product prioritization, stakeholder management, and the distinction between table stakes vs. differentiators. However, these ideas are presented mostly at a conceptual level with limited concrete examples or novel frameworks. The advice on hiring strong PMs, dog-fooding, and connecting customers to product teams is sound but not particularly non-obvious to experienced operators.
whatever is table stakes in your business. Perhaps it's much better to look for a SaaS company that can provide that for you and hopefully a SaaS company that is flexible enough that you can build the aspects which are differentiator for you
these brands and retailers that we see that they are innovators in their respective industry, innovators and leaders in their respective industries or regions... if we talk to these industry leaders, then we believe that if we truly understand their needs and we've solved their needs, we'll solve the needs of probably everybody else
The thinking relies heavily on well-established product management frameworks (table stakes vs. differentiators, customer obsession, dog-fooding, data-driven prioritization) without introducing genuinely fresh or contrarian perspectives. The guest does not challenge conventional wisdom or offer first-principles thinking that would distinguish this from standard PM playbooks circulating widely.
understanding what's a uh differentiator in your business and what is table stakes in your business
eating your own food, so own product. So to feel the pain, what our customers might feel when they could be using their product
Alexandre Gusmão is a legitimate practitioner with credible operating experience: built a fintech from zero to $1B AUM in Brazil, worked in analytics at Amazon's retail division for three years, and now leads the entire product organization at VTEX (a publicly-traded commerce platform operating in 43 countries). He has hands-on operational credibility at scale, though the breadth of his VTEX experience (five years, initially in order management/logistics before becoming Chief Product Officer) is substantive.
I learned by doing, researched a ton. Learned all about design, design thinking, managing engineering. So I did that for about four or five years. We grew the company from basically zero to five billion reais, $1 billion in assets under management
I was hired into Amazon, Amazon Retail. I worked in their core analytics organization basically which powers all the personalization across all the experiences globally, worldwide for Amazon stores. So then I was there for about three years
The transcript lacks concrete examples, named customer cases, or quantified outcomes. While Gusmão mentions VTEX serves 2,000+ clients across 43 countries in multiple verticals, he provides no specific case studies, metrics, timelines, or dollar figures demonstrating the frameworks he describes. The discussion remains abstract and prescriptive rather than grounded in evidence.
We operate in 43 countries. We have more than 2,000 clients around the world. And um, we have seven, eight, nine verticals. We have B2B, B2C. We have fashion, we have grocery
we have the flagship program and sponsorship program which we connect customers directly with the product team
The host (Speaker C) asks relevant questions and does attempt some follow-up, notably on stakeholder management and PM quality. However, questions are often diffuse and multi-part, limiting depth. The host does not meaningfully challenge or push back on Gusmão's claims, press for specific examples when vagueness emerges, or pursue surprising angles. The conversation feels more like a structured interview than probing dialogue.
CTO CFOs on the C level of uh any retail and brand need to start on their to operate... where they really need to create value for the specific customer and their specific target audience that they are pursuing
you have product manager that are not deeply... knowledgeable... on their expertise and they don't understand the whole journey... of the real user, you end up having very expensive managers that don't get the client and don't get your product
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
A VTEX Live podcast featuring Alexandre Gusmão, Senior Director of Product Management at VTEX, who has built his career across multiple countries, industries, and roles, from co-founding a digital investment startup in Brazil, to leading personalization at Amazon Retail, and now shaping global product strategy at VTEX. Access this and more episodes of VTEX Live on Apple Podcasts or Spotify . What does it take to lead product across 40+ countries and multiple industries? And how do you decide what to build versus what to buy in a world of SaaS platforms and unique customer needs? In this episode, Alexandre joins host Santiago Naranjo, Chief Revenue Officer at VTEX, to unpack how product leaders can balance SaaS foundations with true differentiation, why prioritization is both an art and a science, and how to manage the competing voices of customers, competitors, founders, sales, and finance. He explains how VTEX learns from industry leaders to identify common needs, keeps the platform extensible for niche requirements, and uses value sizing (conversion lift, GMV impact, time saved) to guide decisions with data rather than opinion.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: These brands and retailers that we see that innovators in their respective industry and those are some customers that I personally get really involved with to understand where they see their industry going and what are the aspects of their business which if we fix with our software can really drive growth for them or value for them. Right. Because they're on the cusp of the innovation.
Speaker B: Welcome to Bitex Live, the podcast where digital transformation gets a reality check. I am Santiago Naranjo from Bittex and this is where we break the rules. We write the playbook and uh, hear from leaders who are actually getting results. Let's get into it.
Speaker C: So welcome to VTechs.
Speaker A: A pleasure and a, uh, great honor to be here in your podcast. Very happy.
Speaker C: So let's start with some basic questions. Tell me a little bit about your background. Who are you, how you arrived to the role. I understand, I remember that we talk about aws. I think you work there. Tell me a little bit about your background. Where did you study, where did you live? And who is Alexander Guzman?
Speaker A: I have a very eclectic background, I would say. So I was born in New York.
Speaker B: You're a New Yorker?
Speaker A: Uh, yes.
Speaker C: Oh my God. Now everything is start to appear.
Speaker A: Then I lived in Mexico City for about four years when I was.
Speaker C: How you learn? Espanol.
Speaker A: Nice.
Speaker C: How long did you live?
Speaker A: Four years, from three to seven. So young. Then moved to Brazil. Grew up in Brazil. My parents are Brazilian. American, Mexican. So then, um, studied university in Brazil. Yes. Right after university I started in banking. But after uh, like one year and a half or so, I saw that I needed to do something more entrepreneurial. That's what was my calling, I would say. And I joined two folks who left a large bank in Brazil to fund to start a investment distribution, uh, company. So distributing investment funds, stocks, fixed income to mass affluent people. So the big value proposition was mass affluent people. People that have like $100,000 about that they don't have superb treatment or they don't have superb customer experience that like the private banking has. But how can we use technology.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: To bring the same experience that the private banking receives to folks that have 100 $200,000. That was a value proposition. That's where I jumped and learned everything that I know about product. Yeah, I learned by doing, researched a ton. Learned all about design, design thinking, managing engineering. So I did that for about four or five years. We grew the company from basically zero to five billion reais, $1 billion in assets under management. So investors and about 15,000 investors that were investing with us that we were advising through our robo advisory company. But after a couple of years I saw that I was looking to the United States and I was like, there's so much innovation happening in the United States and if I really want to be a uh, superb product manager, which I found like, oh, what I'm doing here is entrepreneur, but I'm doing product management. But I really like to do the software development, like figuring out what's the best possible product that I can build for a customer base. So that's where I said I think I need to be in the United States to learn and then come back maybe after a couple of years back to Brazil or back to Latin America and bring all the knowledge back to Latam and to start building. So what I did is I did a master's degree in the United States as a way to get into big tech. So I did an MBA at University uh, of Northwestern, Kellogg and then I also did a master's in design innovation in the uh, engineering school at Northwestern as well. And then from there I was hired into Amazon, Amazon Retail. I worked in their core analytics organization basically which powers all the personalization across all the experiences globally, worldwide for Amazon stores. So then I was there for about three years or so which was an amazing learning experience. And then somehow I found Vitex. Vitex found myself.
Speaker C: How was that?
Speaker A: Was love at first sight I would say because for me I really like the model, the platform model of Vitex where we're not building for one particular company or industry, we're building for the world, essentially for all industries all at once. So I really enjoyed this model. The fact that we have an ecosystem as well. So it's the collaboration aspect of building something bigger than yourself I thought was very inspiring. The fact that the company was when I joined was before ipo. I felt that I had acquired sufficient knowledge and skill set up until that point in my career that I think I can help this company in this next wave of growth. Right. That we're now in. Right. So then a lot of things made sense like timing, career wise for me. Really love the industry, really love the business model. So talked with Geraldo, the CEO was very inspired. I've been here for five years, initially joined leading order management, logistics, analytics and over time have been growing. And now I'm leading the entire product team at Vetex.
Speaker C: What an honor to have you here. It is a very inspiring history, uh, from New York, Mexico, United States, Sao Paulo. I think that is something that we have all big texter we are like a multicultural team that really believe that we can maximize our capacity, understanding different cultures and growing together.
Speaker A: Exactly.
Speaker C: As a uh, product leader. Let's start to share some. Let me pick your brain on some product ideas. Let us start with again SaaS or on premise SaaS. SaaS or build your own SaaS innovation or SaaS innovation. Innovation. So finally how you combine innovation and SaaS inside a retail or inside a big bank, how the CTOs, the CEOs should define where to buy based on brief like SaaS companies like Bitex and uh, what they should build so they can have some innovation. Can you give us some advices on what will be the recipe to make the decision on that?
Speaker A: Yes. So I would say that to make an informed decision you really need to understand what's a uh differentiator in your business and what is table stakes in your business. Right. And whatever is table stakes in your business. Perhaps it's much better to look for a SaaS company that can provide that for you and hopefully a SaaS company that is flexible enough that you can build the aspects which are differentiator for you. Exactly. So at uh Vetex we believe that a lot of the core foundation that we're building here are stable stakes for every company in the world to operate e commerce. So having a very well managed catalog with pricing, with promotions connected to checkout with um, a flexible payment connector system. So there's all these aspects which we consider which are table stakes which a company like Vetex can provide. But then the experience management perhaps could be something that is more of a unique differentiator. So maybe that's something that you should look for a company that can help you differentiate on experience or perhaps your differentiator could be on uh post service sales and then maybe so you need to understand exactly what will differentiate and that can maybe help you pick and choose what you should find out of the box and what you maybe should build or even choose best of breed.
Speaker C: That is the art. Yes. CTO CFOs on the C level of uh any retail and brand need to start on their to operate. They cannot spend months and a lot of money in project that maybe they can buy for a subscription SaaS based software and where they really need to create value for the specific customer and their specific target audience that they are pursuing.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: My next question will be Usman, how do you see a uh, future or a uh, ambition. Uh uh, a product Roma when you need to define a uh lot of GEOs that bite operate. We operate in 43 countries. We have more than 2,000 clients around the world. And um, we have seven, eight, nine verticals. We have B2B, B2C. We have fashion, we have grocery. We have, we spoke about Manchester City. How you prioritize.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: What you are going to build, how you make this decision, this, those trade off as a product leader of a global organization should not be easy.
Speaker A: Can you share a little? Definitely not easy. But at Vetex, we're very privileged to have amazing brands around the world from multiple industries that trust us, where we can develop very strong relationships with and that helps us truly understand what are their customer needs. And one of the things that we look for is these brands and retailers that we see that they are innovators in their respective industry, innovators and leaders in their respective industries or regions. And, and those are some customers that I personally get really involved with to understand where do they see their industry going and what are the aspects of their business which if we fix with our software, can really drive growth for them or value for them. Right. So that's where I start. And obviously we have thousands of customers. It's not possible to talk to thousands. But if we talk to these industry leaders, then we believe that if we truly understand their needs and we've solved their needs, we'll solve the needs of probably everybody else. Right. Because they're on the cusp of the innovation, of driving the innovation. So I really focus on understanding their needs. So that's the first layer, understanding the needs of the, uh, industry leaders across industries and regions. Then the second part is I try to see commonalities between their needs. So perhaps personalization is something that is common across most of our, uh, players. So then, okay, this obviously is an important need that we need to solve and we need to solve it well, like everybody has a problem or has a problem with how to improve merchandising management in the most efficient way possible. So that's the problem that we see that every industry has. So let's go and solve it and solving it in a way that can solve for multiple industries at the same time. So that's the part where we start to see a lot of the commonalities between all of them and solve for those needs. And then for the needs that we do not solve, that perhaps is just important for one particular industry. We make our system flexible enough and extensible so that particular industry can go and solve it and extend it for themselves. That's more or less how we prioritize the other aspect, I think, which is interesting to share is we also try to be data driven in our prioritization as well. Understanding how much value will all of these needs that we're understanding how much are they worth for the business that for our customers. So if we implement an improvement with AI merchandising, how much lift and conversion or how much time cost savings and time spent managing merchandising can we save. And based off of these analysis that we do internally, it helps us also prioritize do we begin and where do we end. Like what's the order of prioritization which we should be tackling. So basically tackling what drives the most value.
Speaker C: First it is not easy to define always. You have competitors, then you have market needs. Then you have your own clients like asking you have like three strong like stakeholders, your current clients asking something new or fix something that happened in any so far. Then you have the biggest or the leader of the industry.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: Pushing for a specific innovation that maybe the 90% of the client don't use it yet.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: Then you have competitors of your software.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: Doing different type of things that could be the new shiny things.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: Then you have the salespeople.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: Pushing on uh, saying that we should go for X Y. Then of course I assume in any company you have the founder pushing in another direction. And it's not talking only about Bittex, you're talking about all software. And then also you have your CFO controlling the budget money.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: This is what I call an art, uh from Europe.
Speaker A: It's an art because to build a
Speaker C: product after you define occurs to me that is difficult, but is not difficult compared to the art to manage the stakeholders.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: Around the vision of the product.
Speaker A: What I would say about that, that's why it's so important for product managers in our industry to be very deep experts in commerce. Because then of course it's really important to be customer obsessed and at the end try to understand where the value is. But at the same time what is your vision for that future? And you only will have vision if you have operated E commerce or uh, you have very deep knowledge, personal knowledge of operating E Commerce and feeling the pain to develop that vision of what is possible and maybe will be possible in very soon. Because there's the other factor which is also the what's the technological knowledge that you have? Maybe the salespeople, the customers they're not aware of. So they don't even know what the possibilities. So you bring all of this, I would say all of these points that you're saying the founder, the customers, the salespeople, other internal stakeholders, the engineering team. And you, uh, understand, okay, these are all inputs to your vision. And then you have your own vision. Then you sell that vision. After you've combined all of the respective individual touch points, you sell that vision and then you influence. And at the end of the day, some people might not be so happy depending on the decision that you're making. But at the end of the day we have multiple touch points of information that you consume from multiple stakeholders and you need to digest all this information with your own product vision that you have developed for multiple years of experience operating E commerce. And then you develop another vision so your vision combined with everybody else's vision. And then hopefully you sell that vision in a way that people buy into it and then you start implementing on that vision. So that is truly an art. But one of the things that makes it. We try to make it a little bit scientific at times to facilitate the debate so it doesn't get personal because it can get subjective, which is where we try to put numbers. What is the size of this product vision in terms of GMV for customers or time saved for our customers? And then, okay, this amount. How did you get to this number? And then we start debating the premises. So that's a way to try to disambiguate and for not to just be an opinions game or just a visions game and to be a little bit more scientific. So we try to do it. But there is some art involved in this prioritization and a lot of stakeholder management.
Speaker C: Agree, agree. I have, uh, a couple of questions to start to close the first one. Sometimes I saw a podcast of the founder of Airbnb.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: In a way. Let me summarize. Trash talking about the pml. Not trash talking, but saying that he said that he is going to cut some PMs M. And A lot of people start to clap.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: I assume what I heard understood on that podcast is when you have product manager that are not deeply.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: Knowledgeable.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: On their expertise and they don't understand the whole journey.
Speaker A: Exactly.
Speaker C: Of the real user, you end up having very expensive managers that don't get the client and don't get your product.
Speaker A: Exactly.
Speaker C: And that can happen in big corporations.
Speaker A: Exactly.
Speaker C: How you can get out of a guarantee that we are not as a, uh, product leaders. That how you measure that the product managers or other advice for other companies. You need to talk about how you don't follow in that trap or having just managers they follow with orders yes. And the one that are doing the design or doing the development can get lost or outside of division. It is a risk and don't get me wrong, it's not a reason, it's a risk of management in all layers.
Speaker A: Totally, totally. So what you're mentioning is it's quite easy to fall into the trap of being what some folks call like a glorified backlog manager. So it's uh, for PMs to fall into that trap. Trap, right. Because we have really strong opinionated stakeholders, we're in the enterprise market, so a lot of smart people with a really strong opinion. So it's very easy to just fall into the chapel, I'm just uh, like. And start managing the backlog.
Speaker B: So.
Speaker C: And you know what is worst?
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: Normally these PMs sometimes are very close to the solution in yard or salespeople that are enterprise trained, professionally certified to convince people on their vision. So you have a PM and is engaged with uh, people that is just trained to convince in their own personal bid as to how they sell, how they grow, even unfair to a PM to allow them to connect because the other person is so trained to convince.
Speaker A: Totally. So going back to your question, so how do we help product managers or how do I help our product team not to be glorified backlog managers essentially. So I would say it starts with hiring, right, hiring the right folks which either already have personal experience with the industry that we're in. Wicked smart, really, really, really smart. Having engineering knowledge, hopefully of building, of how to build product and deeply, deeply curious to learn more and more and to learn about customers. So I think that's the first foundation hiring and then internally creating a way, which is another term which is used in the industry, which is dog fooding. So eating your own food, so own product. So to feel the pain, what our customers might feel when they could be using their product or to learn like how are customers learning using our product? And then if we personally use the own product that we build, obviously we're going to be build better products. So that's the other part. The third one is facilitate relationships between the customer and the product management team. So at Vetex we have the flagship program and sponsorship program which we connect customers directly with the product team. And that is really great because it's a really good opportunity for our product managers to deeply understand the needs of our customers and what their struggles are and what their business challenges are. So all of this creates repertoire and experience and knowledge for the product managers to be at the table as Someone that is solving problems, generating value and influencing others. And not just taking orders, but truly, uh, adding value, but at the same time being able to bring in ideas as well and to facilitate the creation of ideas. All the ideas should not be coming from product managers alone. They should be coming from growth, from customers, from the engineering team. So being that great facilitator, but also being able to bring your own ideas, I think that's essential. But you need to have all these other things, which I mentioned. Um, and that's something that we try to do at Vitex very much. And also the other thing that I do quite a bit is also trying to always articulate what is the vision behind every request. So sometimes you're always receiving requests, oh, I need this. And then it's like, why do we need this? What's the future that is informing this feature in particular? So sometimes this is the easiest part where it's like, if you don't articulate the vision behind the request, it's easy to fall into the trap. Okay, I'm just going to take the order and I'm going to pass it on to engineering. But if you start articulating the vision constantly, then it becomes, like, engaging and maybe you can solve it in a better way. Oh, if that's the future, I think it's better to solve this feature this way. Or maybe it should be this other feature.
Speaker C: Thank you so much. Thank you.
Speaker B: This episode of BitX Live was brought to you by Bitex, the digital commerce
Speaker C: platform for bold leaders.
Speaker B: Head to bitex.com to see how we help businesses scale fast, flex smart. Unleash, uh, the AI power future of commerce. If you like it, what you hear, follow the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Because in this space, speed isn't, um, a luxury, it is your edge.
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