Hubert Palan is the Founder and CEO of Productboard, a product administration platform designed to assist groups convey merchandise to market extra effectively by prioritizing person wants and aligning groups round a shared roadmap. Greater than 5,400 firms, together with Zoom, UiPath, JCDecaux, and Microsoft, use the platform to assemble buyer insights and inform improvement choices.
What impressed you to begin Productboard, and the way did your expertise at GoodData affect its creation?
Productboard was impressed by my work as a product supervisor and product chief. The concept got here throughout a flight after I was making an attempt to handle product roadmaps throughout varied displays and spec sheets whereas on less-than-optimal airplane Wi-Fi — making it apparent how inefficient it’s to try to coordinate strategic product choices with out a single, consistently-updated supply of fact.
When creating Productboard, our purpose was to construct one platform that covers all the product administration course of, fixing much more PM ache factors alongside the way in which. Productboard has now grown right into a platform that places buyer centricity on the heart of contemporary product administration, utilizing AI expertise to champion the voice of the client, elevating the function of the PM.
And it’s labored. At present Productboard has 6000+ clients together with superb firms like Salesforce, Autodesk, and Zoom.
What challenges did you face through the early days of Productboard, and the way did you overcome them?
Within the early days of Productboard, I realized concerning the challenges of onboarding new employees at a startup. Productboard was transferring in a short time and I had an inclination to anticipate new hires to catch onto what we had been doing virtually instantly and clarify, strategic choices immediately. Since then, I’ve realized that there’s extra worth in taking your time with onboarding. By specializing in efficient data sharing and coaching, you may foster groups which are simply as knowledgeable and passionate concerning the work as you’re. The ROI on a radical onboarding interval is substantial.
What’s the “Product Excellence Framework,” and the way did you develop it as a foundational idea for Productboard?
The Product Excellence Framework is our structured method to product administration, emphasizing customer-centricity, inserting large bets, and constructing superb groups. It is our product philosophy at Productboard, making certain that we’re at all times targeted on delivering worth to our clients. We developed this framework after recognizing frequent challenges confronted by product groups, comparable to the necessity to consolidate suggestions, prioritize successfully, and align everybody round a transparent roadmap. It is a core a part of our mission to assist product managers navigate the complexities of constructing fashionable merchandise, particularly within the age of AI.
Productboard makes use of AI to research buyer suggestions at scale. What motivated you to include AI into your platform, and the way has it remodeled product administration?
One thing that turned clear to our workforce early on was a urgent want to assist product groups make sense of the large quantities of buyer suggestions they obtain. AI was the pure resolution to research this knowledge at scale, determine key insights, and assist prioritize what to construct subsequent. This has remodeled product administration by permitting groups to make faster, extra knowledgeable choices with larger confidence. It has additionally elevated the PM to a place of management by which they may give extra strategic suggestions that aligns with an organization’s enterprise objectives. Total, AI in PM is about staying forward of the curve and making certain our clients can construct merchandise that sustain with rising developments and really resonate with their customers.
Are you able to share particular examples of how AI has improved decision-making for Productboard’s clients?
Think about a product supervisor desires to know the overall sentiment on a brand new function. As a substitute of sifting by mountains of information throughout Salesforce, social media, the Apple Retailer, and who is aware of what else, they’ll simply use Productboard. Productboard Pulse’s AI-powered conversational interface immediately solutions questions like, “What are clients saying concerning the final replace?” or “Is pricing a serious concern for customers on this sector?” This entry permits PMs to shortly determine ache factors and alternatives, resulting in simpler product improvement.
Past Pulse, we even have an AI-powered analytics dashboard that mechanically surfaces key themes and developments from buyer suggestions. This helps product managers prioritize options with the most important potential influence, making it a game-changer for data-driven decision-making. We’re seeing clients use these insights to speed up time-to-market, enhance product satisfaction, and finally, construct higher merchandise that individuals love.
How do you deal with considerations round knowledge safety and privateness when utilizing AI to course of buyer insights?
We take privateness very severely. At Productboard we use a multi-layered method to knowledge safety and privateness, incorporating industry-standard practices and sturdy measures to guard delicate data. Our dedication to safety is obvious in our SOC 2 Kind II compliance certification and our adherence to strict knowledge safety laws like GDPR and CCPA.
We make use of knowledge encryption, and our platform is constructed on safe infrastructure. We additionally implement application-level safety measures, together with person authentication, authorization, and entry controls, to stop unauthorized entry to buyer knowledge. Our clients have granular management over their knowledge, permitting them to find out what data is collected and the way it’s used. For AI particularly, we make use of nameless knowledge to research buyer suggestions, defending particular person identities whereas extracting priceless insights.
What developments do you foresee in the usage of AI for product administration, and the way is Productboard making ready to guide on this house?
AI can be important for product managers to navigate the complexities of the fashionable product panorama. Utilizing AI in PM is not only about automating duties; it is about empowering PMs to be extra strategic and customer-centric, thus elevating the influence they’ll have inside their respective firms.
At Productboard, we’re dedicated to main the way in which in AI-powered product administration. We’re constantly enhancing our AI capabilities and delivering progressive options that empower our clients. Final yr, we introduced a number of iterations of our AI functions and there’s extra the place that got here from in 2025.
Our purpose is to make AI accessible and helpful for all product groups, no matter their dimension or technical experience. We imagine that by embracing AI, PMs can unlock new ranges of productiveness, creativity, and customer-centricity and turn into extra integral inside their organizations.
How has your management fashion developed as Productboard has grown from a small workforce to a global group with over 6,000 clients?
Early on, I adopted a really hands-on management fashion — sporting a number of hats, and figuring issues out as we went alongside. As we expanded, I needed to study to delegate extra successfully, belief my workforce, and empower them to take possession.
Nevertheless, even with the significance of letting go, I additionally realized the significance of staying linked and sustaining a founder’s mindset. I’m consistently questioning, analyzing, and looking for methods to enhance. Efficient management is about balancing strategic imaginative and prescient with a deep understanding of the day-to-day realities of our clients and our workforce.
What recommendation would you give to aspiring product managers who need to leverage AI of their roles?
I might encourage aspiring product magnets to discover ways to leverage AI successfully by following these three greatest practices:
- Develop Buyer-Centricity: All the time join AI-driven insights again to the human wants and ache factors they symbolize.
- Search Mentorship and Collaboration: Join with skilled product managers who’re already leveraging AI of their roles. Study from their successes and challenges, and ask for steerage on the best way to navigate the evolving panorama.
- Embrace Steady Studying: AI is a dynamic area, so keep curious and continue learning. Discover on-line programs, attend workshops, and browse concerning the {industry} to deepen your understanding of AI ideas and functions in product administration.
What’s your long-term imaginative and prescient for Productboard, notably in leveraging AI to reinforce customer-centric product improvement?
My purpose for productboard now is identical because it was day one – to unravel PM ache factors and empower PMs to make one of the best merchandise doable.
We’re dedicated to persistently evaluating and updating our AI choices to make sure we’re serving to PMs be extra collaborative, efficient, artistic and strategic. As their ache factors change, so will our expertise. In truth, we use Productboard’s expertise ourselves to ensure we’re being really customer-centric and delivering the updates and options that our clients actually need. So it’s onerous to say at the moment what we’ll do sooner or later, as a result of at Productboard, it’s all about what our clients want proper now. However I can promise that we’ll proceed to evolve and leverage AI to offer for our clients and empower PMs to be distinctive members of their group.
Thanks for the nice interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to Productboard.