Ray Kanani (00:00)
is all AI driven right now in terms of Like when I think about using AI, like I have to use it and they force you to use it

David (00:12)
Hey, welcome to prompt and circumstance. Today I'm joined by Ray and Adam, and we're going to be going to be talking about AI from the perspective of two very seasoned product people.

so for people who don't know who you are, let's get introduced. We'll start with Adam.

Adam Kropf (00:40)
Yeah, my name is Adam Kropf I've been in product seven, eight years now. I love working with growing product managers, helping people break into product, mentor through the Toronto Product Management Association, and working with startup founders. So seeing how the world of AI is evolving, how we shape our products and shape our world is close to my heart.

David (01:02)
Thanks for that

Ray Kanani (01:05)
Yeah, so Ray Kanani here. ⁓ I've been building and working within product teams for, I think, over 15 years. ⁓ My background is in design and entrepreneurship. And I've always been curious about how those things kind of play into product management. I think my perspective on product management

is a little bit different than maybe traditional. I think product, product management, something that if you really care deeply about something anyone can do, ⁓ but you got to care. and I think designers are exceptional product managers

David (01:47)
Yeah, awesome. Thanks for that. today talking about AI and, you know, it's a bit of a means to an end, right? It's a tool in our toolkit. So, you know, just curious, you know,

What are your thoughts around that?

Ray Kanani (02:04)
Yeah, I mean, I can jump in. think at like the highest level of what we're seeing is intelligence going to zero in terms of if I'm thinking about like where the puck's going, it's going close to zero. Like, I don't know what the cents are gonna be, but at like a directional level.

David (02:21)
This is how...

Ray Kanani (02:29)
intelligence is going close to zero and then just like, if that's true, what does that mean? Because I think that like, changes a lot of how we see the world, how we see each other, what we value.

David (02:47)
It really changes the dynamics of society as a whole, right? And mean, that's always had ⁓ a cost to it that simply couldn't be reduced in the same way as today.

Ray Kanani (02:48)
Let's go.

our education system our the way, like what we dedicate our lives to. I think people think like, ⁓ AI, like, think there's some people in the world who are like, AI is like gonna change everything. It's huge. Like the hype is real, blah, blah, right? ⁓ And I'm kinda on that bandwagon. Like, I'm not like hype, hype, hype. Like I'm also like, hey guys, like, can we really think about like what this, I fully agree

believe we're on this path, but like, can we think about what this means at that level? And then there's some people who are just like, it's a fad. Like, it's like, ⁓ why? Yeah, so it can like, write me a nice email, it can like, you know, create some image that I clearly know is AI, like, but the trajectory of it, I think is the more interesting thing to observe.

Adam Kropf (03:56)
Yeah, think it's. Yeah, like I think you're right that the trajectory is is really sharp. I also think that it's I feel like we're starting to see some plateaus and use cases, right? So there's been a number of attempts to over leverage on AI and then companies are pulling back from that as well. So you'll see like like some of the famous ones that got some pretty big backlash because like Duolingo, we said, hey, we're going to replace this entire class of their team with ⁓

David (03:56)
No, no.

Ray Kanani (03:56)
and it's

wild.

Adam Kropf (04:26)
with AI agents or just LLMs really. And Klarna, yeah, that's the one I was trying to pull the name, but yeah, they pulled back. And then you even look at like Salesforce who's saying, we're going to have, know, AI is going to sell all the products in the future. And then we're hiring 2000 SDRs right now. So it's kind of like what you say and what you do isn't always consistent. And I think that the cost of

David (04:29)
hmm. Klarna is another one. Yeah.

Ray Kanani (04:40)
Thank

Adam Kropf (04:55)
intelligence is going down, but I think the value of expertise is actually going to go up significantly because you're going to be removing some of the ceremonies or like some of the deliverables that maybe were required to pass information from human to human. But if you can, you know, add that context to something that's more readily accessible, then you're going spend less time in meeting sharing context. ⁓

and spending more time, hopefully for product people out in the field, actually gaining that context because your LLM is going to be, or any AI tool is only going to be as good as the context you can feed it. And I think that's where product people are going to spend more time is developing their own context and then being able to really discern is the right answer versus like what is believable answer, which is what you typically get from an LLM.

not always the right answer, but it's usually believable. And the expertise is how you apply it.

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David (06:20)
Yeah, yeah, that makes lot of sense. Now, you know, with ⁓ expertise being more valuable and intelligence perhaps being more accessible, I'm curious how the both of you are using or deliberately not using some of these AI tools, ⁓ perhaps every day or perhaps in certain workflows.

Ray Kanani (06:41)
Yeah, so like for me, ⁓ something that's been helpful is like, what am I missing? So like, I'll just like jump on like, this is my perspective. I feel strongly about this. But like, idea, belief, dot dot dot, like, tell me what I'm missing. And then it will come back with a bunch of things. And like, some of it might be like, ⁓ that's something I should look into. And then I'll spend some time looking into that. So super helpful there. I think even like ideas like

So if we're brainstorming a headline for a social media post or promo and stuff like that, I'll just generate 100, 500 diverse ideas. 99 % of them are just going to be like, what? But sometimes there's like, ⁓

David (07:19)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. ⁓

Ray Kanani (07:36)
That's a seed of something interesting that we wouldn't have thought of. Let's spend a bit of time going down that path and integrating there.

David (07:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

that's a really good example there as a thought partner almost, right? And then as, like you said, taking advantage of the cheap intelligence to generate all those different possibilities. Sometimes I feel really bad. Maybe I anthropomorphize AI too much where it's like, it generated these five and I'm like, no, 10 more. No, 10 more. I feel like...

Ray Kanani (07:50)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

I just go,

honestly, I'm just like a hundred, like 200. Like I think it's funny cause sometimes we get into this thing of like, is the human being behind us? It's like, no, like you say like a 10,000 and be like, cool, like sure. ⁓ So I think there's like, you know, we getting out of that mindset of, it's doing a lot of work. like, yeah, I mean, computational maybe, but like, do we, do we load up a website that's like big and we're like, ⁓ shit. Like that was.

David (08:15)
100.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Ray Kanani (08:40)
It was a lot of work for that website.

David (08:42)
Yeah, I feel bad for that server. Yeah.

Ray Kanani (08:45)
I think one, one other thing I just want to touch on with AI that maybe people might not realize is the usage for me. It as like someone who has an online shop ⁓ selling like e-commerce. A lot of my focus is on marketing and kind of cost of acquisition and stuff like that. like every platform, Google, Meta, Pinterest

is all AI driven right now in terms of marketing. like gone are the days of like audience, like what's your audience? What's your keywords? What's your... like done. Like when I think about using AI, like I have to use it and they force you to use it

David (09:31)
Hmm.

Ray Kanani (09:32)
to get customers, right? So I find that super interesting that like

like overnight like just yeah

David (09:42)
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Didn't know that.

Adam Kropf (09:43)
Yeah, they're talking a lot about,

⁓ like how you chain AI tools together, right? To get an even better outcome. So you talk about like sparring partner, but there's also, ⁓ I've had a lot of success using like chatGPT projects to really have like all the context around a specific problem space. You can include transcripts, meetings, ⁓ and then even better if you, what I found to be really successful, if there's like a really hairy problem is you just go for a walk and I just put chatGPT into voice mode.

and I just prompted to kind of like really tease out thoughts and you can just have a stream of consciousness just dumping context or sharing ideas and then I actually make chatGPT pretty argumentative a lot of the time to really push push my perspectives and what I've been finding is within projects it'll it's doing a much better job of recalling previous conversations and then being like well you also told me this does this also apply to this scenario

David (10:41)
you

Adam Kropf (10:42)
And I think it's a really good ⁓ way of challenging yourself. And I've always used the terminology or the mental model of like, this is an intern. ⁓ But objectively, I think it's like stepping up from intern at this point, now that it's able to carry better context and learn from previous conversations and outcomes.

David (11:02)
It's an intern with 20 PhDs. Yeah. Yeah. The, the advanced voice mode for, for GPT, it certainly is, ⁓ quite a novel experience for those who haven't used it before. ⁓ so I do recommend giving that a go. ⁓ if, if, you haven't tried it yet, it's, ⁓ it feels, ⁓ and again, maybe I'm, I'm, I'm anthropomorphizing too much

Adam Kropf (11:05)
Yeah, basically.

David (11:28)
It feels like an oddly human way of interacting with an otherwise mechanical system. ⁓ And what I've heard is that some people get attached to the voice in particular. So if you say, look, Claude, you you could also talk to Claude and it has these other better things or whatever. The person might actually feel like, well, this is like a new person. Like I don't know you.

Ray Kanani (11:52)
Yeah,

yeah, yeah. I mean, that's why Scarlett Johansson got so pissed off. It's like the voice is such a big part of that. ⁓ One thing with just on that note that I used it for with our little one, because I want to ⁓ we got some French books from library. I don't speak French, but I wanted like I was help reading them like, am I pronouncing this correctly?

What does this mean to in English? I'd love to be able to tell her that. So it just had the Gemini on the camera mode and told it, I'm reading this book. Help me, if I pronounce it incorrectly, jump in and then tell us what it means in English, stuff like that. And it great. I totally understand why people jump to the whole pin, AI pin thing, because it's literally, you want AI to just have

David (12:46)
Mm-hmm.

Ray Kanani (12:50)
all the context of what you're saying. I totally understand why, because I'm just holding the phone like, yeah.

David (12:57)
Yeah, no, ⁓ it's very true that the idea certainly is solid to have some kind of AI I wonder whether it is currently too early. We've seen lots of examples where it's a great product, but it's just not the right time for it. ⁓ So maybe the tech just isn't there yet for it to be fast enough for it to be able to recognize enough stuff.

⁓ maybe, the hardware isn't there yet for it to be light enough because that was a problem with one of the pins, by the way, is that it was just too heavy. So if you're wearing a t-shirt, like, like I think all of us are right now, it would just drag it down. It would just like yank your shirt down and it would look funny. ⁓ which is why on all of the demo videos, they were wearing heavy sweaters just to hide that fact.

Ray Kanani (13:34)
Right.

I don't know, we're getting into product here, which is interesting, but I think wait till people start hacking things together with what they have before you start building the thing. If you start seeing people tape their phones to their chest and they're willing to do that because the value is so high, then yeah, go for it. And I think that's what we're gonna start seeing. We're gonna start seeing people taking like,

David (14:05)
Yeah.

Ray Kanani (14:14)
existing hardware and creating 3D printed containers for it to do certain things. I don't know what they are. And then we'll start to see, that's the way. Yeah.

David (14:27)
Yeah, that's a really good

point, Ray.

Adam Kropf (14:29)
I think the real ⁓ thing is that it's not always clear exactly what problem it should be solving at any given time. And I think that like interacting with it won't feel natural until it can start to learn your patterns, right? So anticipating, ⁓ when this person's on a walk in a new city, they want to learn about local landmarks, right? That was one of the demo videos. ⁓

versus like if you're walking in the city you live in, then it probably, you don't want it to be talking about that. You want it to be reminding you about your next meeting or asking you questions about stuff or following up on stuff that you've set reminders for. And I think it's just such a massive amount of possible problems to be solved at any time without any specific direction that it just doesn't, yeah, you'll need to like train it on yourself before it's really gonna be a

helpful assistant. And again, that's, you know, same with human assistants, as them learning your habits and needs and then anticipating them in the future.

Ray Kanani (15:31)
Right.

Yeah. Yeah. I think like a human assistant is going to sit down with you and have some questions and then learn through observation. ⁓ he likes, he likes coffee that way, or like he likes this or this. And then I think we should get to a place where it just happens. Like I don't ask for it. like, you know, like you said, walking down the street and it's like,

You know, Adam's interested in that type of architecture. Does he know this? Let me let him know, right? Like without you being like, hey, tell me more about that building. Like it's yeah.

David (16:07)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Kropf (16:07)
Yeah, so

the onboarding or like, you know, orientation of your new AI assistant needs to maybe more so mirror the way you would with a human assistant as well. Like Apple's been trying to guess what you want on your phone for a long time, right? So things like, ⁓ on Tuesdays you're normally driving to this destination. Do you want this, ⁓ Apple maps recommendation and things like that. And they have the compute and they have way more information than the pin will.

⁓ So it just feels like they're falling behind given the massive hardware advantage they have. And if they could chain together things like their Apple Watch for, you know, motion and the AirPods for, you know, voice in the ear and dictation, but they just haven't.

Ray Kanani (16:55)
I think they will.

David (16:55)
Mm-hmm.

Ray Kanani (16:56)
I think it's gonna happen. And they'll be late, but they'll be ⁓ better. Like I think a standard classic Apple. Like we're late, but we're better. Like the Apple watch is like, we're late, but we're better.

David (17:01)
Yeah, that's a very Apple strategy.

Adam Kropf (17:03)
Thank you.

David (17:07)
Yeah. ⁓

Also liquid glass. ⁓ So, you know, we're moving on to the topic of sort of like more product management skills and, you know, talking about problems to solve and demand validation, those kinds of things. So, you know, looking now at this new era where AI is very prominent, not only in the software that we work on, but also the

the tooling that we have. ⁓ I'm curious what you think are the kind of competencies or skills that would be very important for product people to double down on in this new era.

Adam Kropf (17:50)
I can start off with that one. think the one we've already talked about is like context, right? It's spending more time in the field, getting first person knowledge. There'll be tooling to support maybe missing some meetings where you can just dump in transcripts and adds it to the context window. But being able to run good discovery and ask good questions. Maybe there's a future where, you know, there's overlays to your discovery sessions informed by former context, right?

help guide conversations or give you like what Ray was talking about, maybe not 500 questions, but maybe it gives you five, right? So as you're talking, it's regenerating a list of possible different paths, but really it's about running good discovery and then discerning and then storytelling. I think is gonna become even more important because I think there's going to be almost a higher cost of time.

for people as we go forward, right? So the patterns of, you know, automation, reducing head count, I think this is definitely a follow that path. So being more influential with the time you do have with people is going to be even more important as we go forward.

David (19:05)
Makes sense. Yeah. It definitely is one of the soft skills that AI hasn't ⁓ quite addressed yet. The discovery aspect of it. What's your take on it, Ray?

Ray Kanani (19:09)
Okay.

Ilan (19:21)
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Ray Kanani (19:50)
Yeah, I think, I think like I go to my first curiosity is like, what is a product person? Right? Like, like, what, like, let's, let's get definition on that. Right? Like, because I think it is, is it just someone who works in product? Because I think like that's gone. Like to be like, Oh, I work in Product. I'm a product person. like, what's that mean? Like you have a title that says product in it. Um, I think.

David (20:09)
Mm-hmm.

Ray Kanani (20:19)
I would say, I would say like, spend, spend some time and really understand who you are. Like how many of us have had that opportunity to just like, who, like, what do I care about? Like, I, I've interviewed people, I'm like, or just tons of people like what space you in? I'm in this space. I'm like, why? like, it was the job. And I get it. Like that, that's like,

David (20:26)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ray Kanani (20:47)
you know, where we're where we've been at, we take the job. Like, do you care about that space? Yeah, as much as it's the job, right? Like, would you do it if you weren't getting paid? No, absolutely not. So like, so like, what would you do if you weren't getting paid for it? Like, what would you wake up and be like, I gotta do this, I gotta, I gotta work on this problem. This problem is really important to me.

David (20:59)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Ray Kanani (21:12)
⁓ it's a problem that I know others have, or I have, or like, just think what would be better if we solve for this. And it's not a question of like, how big is the market? ⁓ it's am I going to get investment? Let go of all those things because they don't do not matter in the future because if, because AI will figure that stuff out, ⁓ and you can't compete. So like.

And I'm thinking future proof. I'm not thinking tomorrow, like tomorrow, hey, you want to go do something that has a big market that you can raise a bunch of money for sure, go ahead. But I'm thinking five, 10, 15 years from now, what's the thing that's going to be future proof? It's your passions, what you care about. AI can't take that. AI doesn't care.

David (22:06)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ray Kanani (22:07)
I care

about everything. I mean, that's so like, how are going to compete? You're to care about something that is core to you and your lived experience and who you are and who you love and care about. And you're going to use AI to help you solve that problem. But to Adam's point, like you're going to be the subject matter expert because there's no one else who cares more deeply and doing something about it than you. And if there are, then you're going to work with those people and you're have a great time working together.

David (22:35)
I love that.

Ray Kanani (22:36)
But

you gotta, you gotta like just take some time and think about like, am I? And like, what do I care about?

David (22:44)
Yeah, that's true where, AI tools, the possibilities are even more grand, right? If it's something like, oh, I want to be able to do something, but I don't know how to create the initial prototype, let's say, to maybe validate that. Now that is possible. Or I don't know where to look.

to find this information. Now you can have a tool to help you out with that.

Ray Kanani (23:12)
Yeah,

yeah, no, totally. think like, I think one of the limiting factors for lot of people when they have have had things that they want to work on is, I got to convince an engineer that this is an important problem, or to like quit Google or whatever it's because it's to come work and build it for for us. Like, no, don't have to worry about that. Like maybe a certain level, but like to initial get off the ground, get traction for prove it out like

David (23:24)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, yeah. we ought to make sure that what it is that we do is what we want to do. You know, it does bring joy to us, like real joy, as opposed to like, I have the joy of a paycheck necessarily, right?

Ray Kanani (23:53)
Someone, I was talking

to someone the other day and he's like, oh, someone should build like a drone thing, like something to like, if you're being attacked by a drone, like it will stop you from being attacked by a drone. I'm like, oh, is that something you really care about? It's like, no, I just think it's a really big market. I'm like, oh, that's nice. Like, cool. Like I'm so like, Yeah, let other people do.

David (24:16)
Mm-hmm

Ray Kanani (24:21)
That other people who care deeply about these things do those things.

Adam Kropf (24:24)
one of the common startup founder advice for a long time was like, solve a problem that you care about, right? I think that's really what you're saying, right? Especially from like the early stage perspective. And I think there's also a balance between it's a paycheck and you can also care about it over time, right? So something I've found is like really thinking about the people behind the products, right? What are my end users?

What's their daily life? Can I make their daily life? Because maybe they go to work and they don't love what they do, but can I like delight them just a little bit more? Can I make their daily life a little bit more enjoyable? And then can I do that at scale? Right? Can I increase the reach and impact of the products that I work on to reach even more people and delight even more people? So that's where I've been able to find a lot of passion is just by, again, meeting people and spending time with them and seeing.

And especially I love bringing new people into the products I work on because they're like, man, this was so much harder before. And like, this is a step change for me. And I'm like, that feels, that feels good.

David (25:34)
Yeah, yeah. So when we're thinking about the future and where we're going with all of this and ⁓ product management and AI, curious what the two of you are working on these days that you want to let everybody know about. ⁓ And yeah, where can people find you?

Ray Kanani (25:59)
Yeah, sure. can jump in. like we're so as I mentioned, we have we sell online where we make jigsaw puzzles, ⁓ which I think is super interesting because someone because my background is working with technology companies and very tech centered products and chatting with someone and they were like, so where's the technology? It's like, like, are you going to do like AR jigsaw puzzle and stuff like that? And I'm just like, I actually think like

David (26:25)
Hmm.

Ray Kanani (26:29)
people really want to have experiences that don't involve any technology. Like I think as we have AI and technology, just like. And if we, and our fridges and our cars and our like clothes, right? Like we're going to have a premium on just like no tech experience. I think though the technology is like how you buy it, how we make it, how we connect with artists.

⁓ like technology all the way through up into your puzzle experience. And then it's just like, get the technology out of way and just allow you to have a great experience. my partner's really into puzzles. That's how it kind of came about. And we just wanted to build a puzzle company that reflected things that we care deeply about. ⁓ And so I started getting into it and like, I

So if I'm watching Netflix or something, I'm on my phone. Like, honestly, YouTube, I'm on my phone. I'm watching TV, I'm on my phone. But when you're doing a puzzle, hours will pass, and I'll be like, wow, I didn't touch my phone once, and it feels really great. And so I think that's what we're selling, is a really great analog experience that holds you up.

David (27:33)
Mm.

Ray Kanani (27:53)
away from all the tech and allows you just to enjoy the art and enjoy each other's company. So we're doing that. It's called Good Fortune Puzzle Co. You can Google it. It's on Instagram. And we have an online store and we're releasing a new collection soon, a new line of products that we're excited about. So yeah.

David (27:59)
And.

Yeah, and I've seen the art looks phenomenal. I just love every single piece. It's great. Yeah.

Ray Kanani (28:20)
yeah, I'm sorry.

just like this, this kind of speaks to the brand that we're building. But so this is a tote bag that we released with one artist. And we care deeply about the count. Like, how do we counterweight some of the energy that we're seeing in the world? You know, there's a lot there's a lot of this, there's people who have kind of an outsize weighted voice that we

David (28:28)
Hahaha

Ray Kanani (28:47)
are not a fan of that we would love to create products and a brand that kind of creates space for a different perspective.

David (28:56)
Awesome. Thanks for sharing that Ray. Adam, what's going on with you and where can people find you?

Adam Kropf (29:01)
Yeah, probably the best place to find me is just on good old LinkedIn, And terms of what I'm working on, yeah, I love working with small businesses and startup founders and something like that. and similar to what Ray was talking about, really enjoying the offline experience, I find that I spend a lot of my non-working hours in analog experiences. So DIY projects.

I've done some theater recently. I'll be helping out with that more and even escape rooms and something like that. So really just being intentional about the time and being better at separating when am I in a digital world or when I'm in the physical world and trying not to be in the digital world when I'm with my, you know, people that I care about. So ⁓ those are kind of things that are top of mind for me.

David (29:51)
Great. Well, thank you both for coming on today. It was a real pleasure. I enjoyed our time together.

Adam Kropf (29:59)
Thanks for having me.

David (30:00)
All right, see everybody next time.