Hubert Palan is the Founder and CEO of Productboard, a product management platform designed to assist teams bring products to market more efficiently by prioritizing user needs and aligning teams around a shared roadmap. Greater than 5,400 firms, including Zoom, UiPath, JCDecaux, and Microsoft, use the platform to collect customer insights and inform development decisions.
What inspired you to begin Productboard, and the way did your experience at GoodData influence its creation?
Productboard was inspired by my work as a product manager and product leader. The thought got here during a flight after I was attempting to manage product roadmaps across various presentations and spec sheets while on less-than-optimal airplane Wi-Fi — making it obvious how inefficient it’s to try to coordinate strategic product decisions with out a single, consistently-updated source of truth.
When creating Productboard, our goal was to construct one platform that covers your entire product management process, solving much more PM pain points along the way in which. Productboard has now grown right into a platform that puts customer centricity at the middle of recent product management, using AI technology to champion the voice of the shopper, elevating the role of the PM.
And it’s worked. Today Productboard has 6000+ customers including amazing firms like Salesforce, Autodesk, and Zoom.
What challenges did you face throughout the early days of Productboard, and the way did you overcome them?
Within the early days of Productboard, I learned concerning the challenges of onboarding recent staff at a startup. Productboard was moving in a short time and I had a bent to expect recent hires to catch onto what we were doing almost immediately and clarify, strategic decisions straight away. Since then, I’ve learned that there’s more value in taking your time with onboarding. By specializing in effective knowledge sharing and training, you’ll be able to foster teams which can be just as informed and enthusiastic about the work as you might be. The ROI on a radical onboarding period is substantial.
What’s the “Product Excellence Framework,” and the way did you develop it as a foundational concept for Productboard?
The Product Excellence Framework is our structured approach to product management, emphasizing customer-centricity, placing big bets, and constructing amazing teams. It’s our product philosophy at Productboard, ensuring that we’re at all times focused on delivering value to our customers. We developed this framework after recognizing common challenges faced by product teams, similar to the necessity to consolidate feedback, prioritize effectively, and align everyone around a transparent roadmap. It is a core a part of our mission to assist product managers navigate the complexities of constructing modern products, especially within the age of AI.
Productboard uses AI to research customer feedback at scale. What motivated you to include AI into your platform, and the way has it transformed product management?
Something that became clear to our team early on was a pressing have to help product teams make sense of the large amounts of customer feedback they receive. AI was the natural solution to research this data at scale, discover key insights, and help prioritize what to construct next. This has transformed product management by allowing teams to make quicker, more informed decisions with greater confidence. It has also elevated the PM to a position of leadership wherein they may give more strategic feedback that aligns with an organization’s business goals. Overall, AI in PM is about staying ahead of the curve and ensuring our customers can construct products that sustain with emerging trends and truly resonate with their users.
Are you able to share specific examples of how AI has improved decision-making for Productboard’s customers?
Imagine a product manager wants to grasp the overall sentiment on a brand new feature. As a substitute of sifting through mountains of information across Salesforce, social media, the Apple Store, and who knows what else, they will just use Productboard. Productboard Pulse’s AI-powered conversational interface immediately answers questions like, “What are customers saying concerning the last update?” or “Is pricing a serious concern for users on this sector?” This access allows PMs to quickly discover pain points and opportunities, resulting in simpler product development.
Beyond Pulse, we even have an AI-powered analytics dashboard that routinely surfaces key themes and trends from customer feedback. This helps product managers prioritize features with the largest potential impact, making it a game-changer for data-driven decision-making. We’re seeing customers use these insights to speed up time-to-market, improve product satisfaction, and ultimately, construct higher products that folks love.
How do you address concerns around data security and privacy when using AI to process customer insights?
We take privacy very seriously. At Productboard we use a multi-layered approach to data security and privacy, incorporating industry-standard practices and robust measures to guard sensitive information. Our commitment to security is clear in our SOC 2 Type II compliance certification and our adherence to strict data protection regulations like GDPR and CCPA.
We employ data encryption, and our platform is built on secure infrastructure. We also implement application-level security measures, including user authentication, authorization, and access controls, to forestall unauthorized access to customer data. Our customers have granular control over their data, allowing them to find out what information is collected and the way it’s used. For AI specifically, we employ anonymous data to research customer feedback, protecting individual identities while extracting beneficial insights.
What trends do you foresee in the usage of AI for product management, and the way is Productboard preparing to steer on this space?
AI will likely be essential for product managers to navigate the complexities of the trendy product landscape. Using AI in PM just isn’t nearly automating tasks; it’s about empowering PMs to be more strategic and customer-centric, thus elevating the impact they will have inside their respective firms.
At Productboard, we’re committed to leading the way in which in AI-powered product management. We’re repeatedly enhancing our AI capabilities and delivering modern solutions that empower our customers. Last yr, we announced several iterations of our AI applications and there’s more where that got here from in 2025.
Our goal is to make AI accessible and helpful for all product teams, no matter their size or technical expertise. We consider that by embracing AI, PMs can unlock recent levels of productivity, creativity, and customer-centricity and turn into more integral inside their organizations.
How has your leadership style evolved as Productboard has grown from a small team to a global organization with over 6,000 customers?
Early on, I adopted a really hands-on leadership style — wearing multiple hats, and figuring things out as we went along. As we expanded, I needed to learn to delegate more effectively, trust my team, and empower them to take ownership.
Nevertheless, even with the importance of letting go, I also learned the importance of staying connected and maintaining a founder’s mindset. I’m always questioning, analyzing, and in search of ways to enhance. Effective leadership is about balancing strategic vision with a deep understanding of the day-to-day realities of our customers and our team.
What advice would you give to aspiring product managers who wish to leverage AI of their roles?
I’d encourage aspiring product magnets to learn tips on how to leverage AI effectively by following these three best practices:
- Develop Customer-Centricity: All the time connect AI-driven insights back to the human needs and pain points they represent.
- Seek Mentorship and Collaboration: Connect with experienced product managers who’re already leveraging AI of their roles. Learn from their successes and challenges, and ask for guidance on tips on how to navigate the evolving landscape.
- Embrace Continuous Learning: AI is a dynamic field, so stay curious and continue to learn. Explore online courses, attend workshops, and skim concerning the industry to deepen your understanding of AI concepts and applications in product management.
What’s your long-term vision for Productboard, particularly in leveraging AI to boost customer-centric product development?
My goal for productboard now is identical because it was day one – to unravel PM pain points and empower PMs to make the most effective products possible.
We’re committed to consistently evaluating and updating our AI offerings to make sure we’re helping PMs be more collaborative, effective, creative and strategic. As their pain points change, so will our technology. In actual fact, we use Productboard’s technology ourselves to be sure we’re being truly customer-centric and delivering the updates and features that our customers actually need. So it’s hard to say today what we’ll do in the long run, because at Productboard, it’s all about what our customers need immediately. But I can promise that we’ll proceed to evolve and leverage AI to offer for our customers and empower PMs to be exceptional members of their organization.
