Building Rocketships: Product Management, AI, and Innovation with Oji & Ezinne Udezue

Some of the best conversations start at a dinner table.

Last September, host Langston Clark welcomed product leaders and authors Oji and Ezinne Udezue into his San Antonio home for an intimate gathering. One of the guests that evening was Elisa Cuellar — a listener, entrepreneur, and founder of StorieCue — who walked away from that dinner inspired to stop sitting on her own big idea. That night lit a spark. This episode is the recorded continuation of that conversation.

Oji, a former Chief Product Officer at Twitter, Calendly, and Atlassian, and managing partner of the Kernel Fund, and Ezinne, who has driven enterprise transformation at T-Mobile, Discovery Communications, Procore, and WP Engine, are the co-authors of Building Rocketships: Product Management for High Growth Companies. Together, they walk us through what separates builders who scale from those who stall — and why the fundamentals of product thinking matter now more than ever.

 With Elisa serving as guest co-host, the trio explores customer listening, the Shipyard Model of innovation, AI's role in product development, and what it means to build rocket ships when the infrastructure — and the capital — looks completely different than Silicon Valley.

 Whether you're a solo founder, a product leader, or someone who knows they have a rocket ship inside of them and just hasn't launched yet — this episode is for you.

 Topics covered: product management, startup growth strategy, AI tools for founders, customer listening, Shipyard Model, Kernel Fund, innovation in Africa, venture capital in emerging markets, product-market fit, Black tech leadership, entrepreneurship.

Transcript

Building Rocketships

00:00:00 Speaker: All right. What's up, everybody? Welcome to another live recording of Entrepreneurial Appetite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting black businesses. Today we have a very special recording because we have Oji and Ezinne Udezue, the authors of Building Rocket Ships Product Management for high growth companies. Oji and Ezinne are veteran product leaders with over forty five years of combined experience. Oji is a former Chief Product Officer, investor and entrepreneur who has led product companies like Twitter, Calendly, Atlassian, and Typeform. He's also managing partner of the Kernel Fund, where he works to democratize tech entrepreneurship across Africa, India and South America. Ezinne in addition to having the most beautiful name of someone who's ever been on the podcast, literally the most beautiful name, my wife and I were like, this is a side note. My wife and I are on our baby journey. And I was like, yo, if we get a girl, yo, can we slide in there as a middle name? You know, it's like, literally one of the most beautiful names. Y'alls names. Y'all's names are gorgeous, and it just flows with Udezue and all that. Anyways, Ezinne is a former chief product officer and expert in digital transformations who has led enterprise innovations and initiatives at T-Mobile, Discovery Communications, Procore, WP engine, and more. She also served on the board of DivInc mentors at Techstars and advises the School of Engineering at UT Arlington. Together, they run Product Mind, a specialized advisory firm helping product organizations accelerate innovation. Last September, I had the opportunity to host Oji and Ezinne at my home for a very special dinner and discussion about their book, and one of the dinner guests who attended that gathering was Elisa Cuellar, who not only is an avid listener and supporter of entrepreneurial appetite, but will be serving as today's guest host. Elisa is an entrepreneur herself. She is the founder of Story Q a voice first platform that helps people turn their everyday life into a living archive for themselves, their family, and the generations to follow. Story Q is built around a simple but powerful idea. Your story deserves to be documented while you're still living. Why your story deserves to be documented while you're still living it in your own voice and your own terms. And she likes to describe, I like to describe her as a curator of ancestral knowledge. Thank you all for listening and enjoy the show. I have to add that, a very special memory of mine that I didn't get the opportunity to share with Ezinne is that when my wife and I, my wife, Brandi, and I hosted them at the house in September, my wife knew that the event was going to be successful. When Ezinne sat on the floor, I was like, this is the first time we met. And when Ezinne sat on the floor and what it did was it created the tone for the dinner discussion for everybody else to be relaxed. And so, I thank you both for joining us. I thank the three of you for joining us. And, Elisa, I thank you for stepping in as co-host, of course. Well, I'm really excited. And thank you, Langston, for the opportunity to host this conversation. And of course, I had the pleasure of meeting you back in the fall at Brandi and Langston's home. But for the listeners who may not know you, they might be learning about you for the first time. What do you hope that they understand about you beyond the resume that Langston just shared? Oji, go for it. Because I got to think about this. No, no. Ladies, ladies. Ladies first. Come on. gosh. just if I'm just being, like, laying it on the table. I think that I always say that nobody will understand me if they don't know about my faith, because I just don't make sense to them. so I think that's one of the things I think that's, pretty interesting. And I'd like the leader, I'd like people listening to know that. and I think the other piece is I feel very lucky that I've had an amazing set of sponsors, a strong community and part of a thread in my life is just this idea of helping others find their community as well as, probably my connection to whether it's Silicon Valley. Having gone to some of the best schools, I feel fortunate. And the opportunity to bring others along is something that is also part of even why we wrote the book. So I think that's an important thing to know. Awesome. that was that was amazing, isn't it? so part of, I think that technology and the things we've done in technology is just like a tip of the iceberg. all of our lives, a lot of my life is bound with community, sort of obsessed with this idea of giving back, of leaving a roadmap that makes life easier for the people who come after me, after me. it sort of slides into everything that we do, both writing the book in order to create, on ramps for people who want to do what we've done when there was no roadmap at all. it's about building colonel fund, which is investing in a continent where it was very hard to invest and people's dreams were dying without capital. it goes into some of the projects we're working on right now. We're working on many exciting projects. you know, the most exciting and most ambitious and what I'm scared about the most is probably the, Africa AI X prize, where we want to make inference cheaper so that parts of the world that can't afford to pay OpenAI and anthropic a lot of money to use artificial intelligence can do that, for dramatically cheaper. So these are all part of the motivation of community, of giving back, of handing people up. Even if we suffer, we don't want people to suffer. Yeah. As a Liberian, I'm really excited to hear that and can't wait to hear more about that project. when we met in the fall, I showed up to that conversation as a people operations leader who just wanted to hear about this thing called product. So maybe I could take something from the conversation to support my team. You know, where I work at the time, we were undergoing a skills gap analysis. And so I was like, anything I can learn from these product experts, I'll take it back. But I walked away from that conversation recognizing like, I have a rocket ship I want to build. And I just have to tell you both, thank you for the conversation and for, for writing this book. You can see I've got tabs all over it because, I mean, it unlocks something in me. And I decided to stop sitting on the thing that was living inside of me. And, you know, Langston alluded to it, but I, I built my, my app and, you know, it's going into beta soon. So I just wanted to say thank you, for that and congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. if you need any help or any, like brainstorming, you're so gracious. So we'll be, we'll be happy to do that. Thank you. I, I so appreciate it. And everything that you just shared about focusing on community is so clear because we experienced it in the fall. And, and everything that you're doing lends itself to that. so my question for you is, was there maybe a moment for you where someone else's conversation or idea fundamentally changed the way or maybe redirected how you thought about this concept of building rocket ships? Like, how did we get here? How did you go for it? so, so, you know, I think we live if you're paying attention, you're living a life of epiphanies, right? When people say things. But one particular epiphany I had was I was working for Atlassian, I think circa twenty seventeen or something like that. And one of my leaders, you know, bosses, he made an analogy. He made an analogy of. The process of innovation as a shipyard. and I think that was a very fruitful, analogy because, you know, it's it's in the book as well. We talk about the shipyard, this idea of controlled synchronized chaos. And, you know, some of that stuff evolved into our idea around product systems and the systems of innovation that I'm sure you'll talk about. So I will say that that sparked something. And I would say that was the foundation of extrapolating to different ideas that showed up in the book. of how to work together, how to work in the open, how to make work, not just be production, but also communication. these are all ideas that percolated, around my time at Atlassian and based off of that comment. So I think that that was a thing that sort of opened up a lot of like intellectual avenues and doors, that showed up in the book. Yeah. So for me, I, I, I'm I have not necessarily been a startup person. I'm what people call a scaler. I've been at bigger companies and I remember, once when I, I was at T-Mobile and one of my managers then asked me to do the business case for a big idea. And I put something together and it was pretty ambitious. And he basically said, how much is it going to take to do this? You know, he could tell that my life was stretched. I had just got married. I think I was even pregnant, to be frank. And I said, it's going to take a lot. He's like, can you do it? I was like, I can't. It's like, if you're going to do it and I know you're going to have sleepless nights, why don't we just go big? And the way he said it, I don't know what there was just something about that moment because he reminded me that you're going to have sleepless nights, probably going to be very pregnant, you know, trying to travel around the town. So why don't we just go big, right? Instead of looking for twenty five million in returns, let's go for seventy five and let's put that down. And I think that has been a core thing for me is I think even says it well, because I used to say that I have very stressful jobs. And he said, no, baby, you don't have stressful jobs. You just like to stress about your jobs, right? So I'm going to stay up. I'm going to grind through the night. I'm going to do that even if I was working towards a really tiny goal. So if I'm going to do that, I might as well just go really big, right? Make the the bang worth the buck, huh? Exactly, exactly. and I will say another, I'll give you another story. Recently I was at a women in product conference and this one just shows some vulnerability because, a woman named Claire, she does, she does the how I AI podcast as well as she's the CEO of shattered. she mentioned how at her in her podcast, the people who listen, the people who show up for her live sessions are all men. And she just felt and was calling us to order and saying, I know you're learning AI. Some of you are shy about learning AI. but can you just show up, please show up and build in the open? And I must admit that I actually walked up to her and we talked about it and I said, I'm going to do it more. And yes, we do talk about what we know and are learning and are doing with AI. But I do think that she was calling us to do something even bigger. So again, since we're going to tinker, since we're going to learn, might as well go big. So I just wanted to bring that up, bring that together about showing up, showing up fully as well. Those are the things that I, I, those are moments that I remember right now as I do work here. I love that. No, thank you for sharing. I want to go back to your t mobile days. you talked about being a part of the brand storming project that took T-Mobile from being number five to number two. And you said that's where you fell in love with customer listening. And we know that customer listening goes far beyond identifying the sharp problem. And so for founders that might be listening, what what did that experience teach you about the difference between hearing customers and truly listening to them? So I really love the way you even asked that question. You know, hearing obviously being this bodily function of the ear and listening, like if you really think about it, it's about engaging your mind and your, your body and having them show up. just for those listening, the T-Mobile experience was about me sitting in the safe queue. There are many stories there, and it basically was sitting and listening to customers who are calling to cancel subscription. And, I wasn't on a specific product team at the time. I'd been given the luxury and maybe the assignment to embed with this churn busting team. We had a lot of churn, and the goal was to just sit, listen, and hopefully, I think the leaders thought I would at least come up with something innovative, innovative, whether it's a program, an idea, a product. and what I learned in that time was that, you know, in product, we are taught customer discovery, which is a very prudent discipline where you listen for problems basically within the constraints of a product or a feature, or you have an idea. So you're listening specifically just to kind of solve a problem within some scope. but customer listening, not discovery, right? Is this idea of honestly mining for what I would call the unexpected, as a PM, at least great PMS. I always say you should be able to see around the corner, right? And I think that's on behalf of your customer. And I think that's where customer listening really begins. its uncovering those things that are in the data or just hearing them and what they're saying and not saying and anticipating their workflow, the things they do. If you do that well, right, I think you begin to uncover not just the things you build for your future, which is oftentimes where founders are focused. And that's important. You should really do customer discovery, but it allows you to begin to also implement or know where your horizon two or horizon three bets can be placed, right? Or at least in my case, it always gave me opportunities to figure out where their potential partnership opportunities. I may not build it, but by listening and seeing, wow, there is a pain here. It's important that I'm paying attention and I can either acquire or build a partnership. That's usually what listening does. So I guess to the founders, it's when was the last time you just like sat down with no agenda and listened. I think you need to do both listening with some agenda and constraints, but not just also just listening and what I call mining for the unexpected. Mining for the unexpected. That's. That's excellent. Thank you. Oh, do you have a perspective on that? I don't have a lot to add. I, you know, I think in we, we think that. Some the thing that happens the most with people who are trying to build things is that they're, they come into this with some insight. They come into this with a presupposition of the problem and the solution, right? This is supernatural. This is very natural to do. people who build are very rare. First of all, they're, I don't know, I can't estimate, but I guess they're less than two percent of us and the people who actually persevere and do something that creates something like you're doing? Or even less? And so that rare breed is not shy. They know or they think they know what they want to do. Listening is this thing where you say, I know, but I might not know. Mhm. And so you have to sit with your target customer and suspend your confidence, suspend all your experience to listen for the, the like, as I said, the unexpected that actually increases what you know about the problem and the solution. It's very hard to do. you know, I wrote a book about it and it's still hard for me to do so. it's a human thing. You know what I mean? Like being a good product manager is understanding human psychology, and it's using that to even steel yourself to do what's necessary to succeed. Wow. No. That's helpful. Thank you. So let's let's talk about the shipyard. You referenced it earlier. So the shipyard model breaks innovation into people strategy and execution systems. Right. But for maybe a solo entrepreneur, a solo founder, or even a very early stage team, you're all three of those systems happening at the same time. So what's the how do you figure out the first system you need to formalize versus what can what can stay scrappy for a little bit longer? This is a really crucial question. you know, one of the things we realized when we talked about the product system, we talked about the system of people, the system of strategy, but that's a big word. We use a simpler word direction finding. And the system of execution is that they're always working. There is nothing that you do of consequence that doesn't have those three things in operation. What is really going on is either you recognize it and internationalize it, or you don't. But they're always working. So if you're a solo founder, you're right. You are juggling all three systems someway or somehow. Well, here's how I think it breaks down. Instead of thinking about it as systems, when you're a solo founder, you should think about it as a central areas of focus, places where you don't guess. You don't muddle through, but you plan intentionally. For example, you need to know where you think value is and the sharp problems that exist, and you confirm them through the things we talked about. Target customer listening, experimentation. This is your strategy. Strategy is not big strategy. You know, companies think about, oh, intellectual property. No, your strategy is where do I find value? Where do I find product market fit? And you have to consider that every single day. And then for systems of people, you need to think about who's going on this journey with me. And do they work well together with me? Do they make me more effective? AM I drained emotionally so I don't have energy to do the work that I need to do? Well, that is your system of people. It's not HR. You know everything about HR, but it is like, who's my co-founder? Who are my advisors? Who am I waking up to solve problems with? And then the last one is you have to get quality things done at lightning speed. So you have to assemble the right tools, you know, email domain, this and that, and this and the other cloud co-work that is your system of execution. It matters tremendously. So at that level, I would say it's, You know, you know, when you wake up in the morning, you're like, I want to do one, two and three. It's not a guess. It's like you're very intentional. The three systems turn into areas of focus, places where you don't mess around with. You don't guess. And you know that if you just like keep it in mind and operationalize it, you're probably going to be good. So I think that's how it breaks down. You're right. You are the one thing. But if you just say these three things have to be right for me to succeed and double down on that, I think you'll get the product system right. And, you know, as you grow older. Mhm. One of my favorite stories is Calendly. When I got to Calendly was the smallest. You know, I've been in all kinds of companies. I've been, you know, Microsoft had one hundred thousand at peak when I was there. I was in that senior at the time, but I was a leader Twitter when I was leading the consumer product with five hundred people in my, in my team. So what changes is how much you formalize, how much process when people join you, then you have to stop them guessing. You give them a roadmap because here's how we do this stuff. Don't do it worse than this, but you can make it better and we'll change it. Yeah. So the areas of focus then become systems processes. But for you, it's just a way to focus your energies. If you if you if you get many. No, that's very helpful, isn't it? I mean, I think you addressed most most of what I would honestly say. I think that as an, as a founder, you, you probably have a small team of trusted folks. So I wouldn't say people is your area. And most times the founder and the team have clarity on their strategy. So I think that machine and being able to understand that machine of execution so that as you onboard people. They get the why. They get the strategy. I think that's really critical. And then ensuring that it's they're all working in a mutually reinforcing way. Sounds like communication. It's so cool, man. Okay. Well, you talked about the three problem in your book, right? AI is making engineering faster, but product thinking and go to market can't necessarily keep up with that. So you've said you've written more code in the past year than in the previous decade with, you know, and thinking about the speed of AI, I believe that, and now you've, you've emphasized that access to humans who will tell you the truth is still the real bottleneck. So for this audience of builders, where should they invest their time right now? Is it getting better with AI tools? Or is it getting better with customer conversations or somewhere in the middle? MM. Oh, let me, let me, let me get this. So the, the question, tool, I mean, AI or conversations. And I actually have to say the answer is yes. Right. So you get what I mean, right? You have to do both. And it's not a cop out. It really isn't. AI is here to stay. So get sharp about it. I guess that's the core thing. But underneath that three speed problem is something bigger, right? Which is this idea of infinite code, right? But under even all of that, it's this idea of infinite production of everything. it's slop, slop, slap everywhere. Even before AI became this content creator of things. There's already too much. It felt like there was everything everywhere, all at once. but there's so much vying for your attention. My attention. And you can all you can imagine that that's also the case for your customer's attention. So with that, I think two things follow. One is that humans will continue to crave to be heard, seen, and understood right. They can't take in and evaluate everything that's being thrown at them. So whatever product you're making, I'm making. It's too much being thrown at them anyway. So when they do raise their heads from the creation that they're doing themselves, because everybody's creating something. And at some point, maybe a year from now, everybody will, many people will know how to create with AI. So they too will have their heads down doing things. But when they do raise their head up, they will prize real grounded conversations that show that you understand the pain. You understand their workflow. So I think that customer conversations will become more valuable, more prized. And in that judgment, which is something we talk about for product managers, in extracting insights from those conversations will be important. But then I said two things. The second is this thing called right? Particularly in B2B, which is our domain. Humans won't be able to evaluate all the software that everybody is building. So you're seeing it now. There are these things called AI evaluators, right. Or agents, right. Whatever we end up calling them from now on. But your procurement team looks at software, but they're going to get tired of looking at software like that. So those evaluators, right, they need to be shown your compelling value, right, for your product. So even as you've listened and learned and you're, you've delivered this priced conversation with the customer and you've uncovered something really valuable that you've put into your software. You also need to figure out how do you take that learning insight and codify it with AI? Because AI will have to be the evaluator, right? So that's the thing. You're just going to have to do both. So let me make it concrete. Imagine that you are a B2B SaaS. you're building a B2B SaaS tool for a sales team, right? And the feature they keep asking for is give us an AI powered email feature. They keep asking for this in surveys, but because you're amazing and you've done the listening, you understand that it's not really what they want. That under the underneath that there is this handoff friction between maybe SDRs and the account executives. And that's really what they're looking for with regards to this email feature. So they, they had a call with, with, what they call them, a lead and they're about to hand off and they said, oh, give us an email feature that hands off, but that's literally not what they want. You uncover that, but in your software, you've built that real thing that reduces that handoff friction. But there are feature requirements and evaluator is looking for email feature, right. That's what it was trained to do. So you're going to have to figure out how then do you answer the question and still stay in the game because the evaluator is kind of looking for that, but yet shine that you are doing more than just creating that feature, but that you understand that it's really around friction. So again, I probably went way longer than you intended, but it's both. You're going to have to learn how to build an AI, be proficient, extremely proficient, but really understand how to have real conversations and translate that depth and insight into your product. But you're chuckling. This is so good. The human conversation. No. Step one. You know, it's like you, you've got to tell the AI that it doesn't want the faster horse that you're actually looking for the car, even though you've already established that the human wants the car. yeah, that's that's brilliant. I don't know how we're going to solve that, that, but it's definitely interesting to ponder on. oh. So yeah, no, I'll, I'll try to be, you know, it's not, I'm not good at this without try to be brief. Look, I think. It's so important for us to frame things well for builders. AI is a tool. It's like a superpower. But customer conversations is where value and insight lives. If you don't have value and insight, your tool is fairly useless, basically. Right? I think that's the key. You know, in many ways, the last twenty years of product building has been product people saying aiming is much more important than forward motion. That's why we talked about customer discovery. We talk about customer listening, What we're really saying is slow down. Think of opportunity cost. Focus on what's important, even if you don't have to do it at lightning speed, because eventually speed itself wears out. You know, there are people, even in the old days who used to ship, ship, ship and ship nonsense. So I think on balance, what we want to do is the fundamentals don't go away. Mhm. Insight value customers. What they want is still the primary thing. If we have that, AI helps us execute really fast. Clearly you want both. But if you don't have the other, you're sort of moving at light speed into the wrong galaxy. So that's what I would say. Thank you. No, that's really great. All right. Well let's jump into the next question here. You both have built careers inside some of the biggest tech companies in the world. And you also run Kernel Fund, right, where you're investing in startups across Africa. We just heard about the AI project you're working on. Tell us about some of the other rocket ships that you're building and what it looks like when the infrastructure and the capital looks different than, say, building in Silicon Valley. should I go first or do you want to tackle this? This is a big one. This is the one that feels like a the life's work. you know, we're internationals, born in Nigeria and grew up on the most of my young independence and adult was on the West coast. And it's a lot of things that we took for granted is not happening. We thought that we would live in a technological nirvana where the knowledge and building products and technology would spread from the West Coast into the rest of the world. It didn't. Otherwise, we wouldn't have to write the book. we wanted to go back to Africa. To Nigeria, specifically to work to help build the next wave of technology products. It didn't get to do that side of investing in that. But it turns out that macroeconomics, bad leadership, gums up the works. And so Silicon Valley has been a really good foundation, stable foundation for innovation. And this is frankly what people have to emulate. If you go from the poles of education, Stanford, Berkeley, U. C UCLA, which are the cradles of science. And then you think about government funding. A lot of my education was from government funding of an early research lab in networks. And you think of private enterprise in that place, helping people turn over brilliant new ideas all the time. Venture capital. This is the Crucible. And you see that crucible hasn't been formed everywhere. Let's not even go to Africa. We've operated in Europe, sometimes South America, sometimes India. You will see where those foundational things don't exist. Everything is harder. Building companies is harder. So I want to give a huge kudos to people in those ecosystems who build valuable things, because they're not only building valuable things, they're building infrastructure as well, which is here is picked up by governments and VCs and so on, but they're building it themselves. So, in many ways, part of our job are emerging post, you know, live mission is to give people a better environment to build. So our next rocketship might be doing that actually for, places in Africa, places in Southeast Asia, at least that's our wish, you know, if that makes sense. Definitely. Yeah. yeah. Oji headed on the the nail on the head on this one. it's different. And the stability that Silicon Valley has enjoyed is a core part of it as well as the infrastructure. and I, I think I was back in Nigeria and I was in Rwanda in October. And I think one of the things that was really clear as I spoke to founders is this idea of the tax of building in Africa, the tax of. So just imagine that you're looking at a pro forma or income statement or whatever it is, right? There's this tax of having to run power yourself, right. And paying for power. So whatever revenue you have, even if it was an identical company in Silicon Valley, providing power for yourself isn't something. Or building your own power grid isn't something you have to take into account, you know, then transportation and logistics that doesn't have rail system and different distribution networks doesn't. It's not an issue. Expansion from Seattle to, you know, New York, right? Easier because it's the same damn country. But when it's in Africa, you're talking about different countries to get to that type of distribution. So different governmental systems, different networks, etc.. So there is this tax that many countries have. Maybe if you are building for Nigeria and the population density there slightly different issue. But if many times companies are saying, wow, you should go to Kenya and South Africa and, you know, because they think it's easy, but you're talking about different governmental systems. So it's, it is harder and a lot of respect to companies that have even done well in Africa. But like Orji said, after coming back in October, we really have done some real important thinking and just figuring out, okay, how do we how do we begin to create some similar, something that mimics that ecosystem and it looks more like patient capital. Looking at the people who are actually investing slowly on the infrastructure and seeing their progress, looking at people who are doing it small, but making progress. How then do you pour and shine a light on those folks? Because it is going to take time. But as long as we're moving forward, that infrastructure and capital will be built, and we think that it's important to raise the bar in those things. And after and as we're doing that, still encourage people to build rocket ships, but continue to improve the environment and ecosystem around them. Now, that makes a lot of sense. You kind of look at the organizations that are working from an asset based perspective versus all the things that are working and. Mhm. I support a nonprofit in Liberia, and we're in the process of trying to buy land. And that process has just been really eye opening. What you think should be easy is, is not easy. So I can't imagine even trying to build a company there. But yeah, kudos to you on the work that you're doing. And it has to be life's work to commit to something that is that difficult. Okay, I have another question about two more. And then and then we'll wrap up here. So you built this book together as partners in work, but you're also partners in life. And when we met last year, you shared that your kids don't necessarily want anything to do with this kind of product work. So if building rocket ships isn't the thing that they carry forward, what is the legacy that you're hoping to leave them with? My, my mine are easy. Like I think as a parent, it's just value. There's some values that are really important to us. Mhm. I will give you maybe two or three. You know, resilience. I think that one of the things that we are G and I at least share is this idea of resilience. And I joke about it with my son right now and my, my, my son, particularly because he's going through a couple of decisions for himself. And I'm like, don't forget the beauty and power of a good pivot, right? Never feel you've been backed into a corner. You can turn right around and find another way out. I that's a story I just keep telling him. we're in this period where people are picking schools from high school, like picking the colleges they go to. Okay, pick a school if you hate it. Guess what? That's why transfers exist, right? So just reminding them that it's never the end of the story. So that's one thing. our faith is really important to us and there are going to be so many external pressures and having a way to ground yourself in spite of all the negative you hear, I think is going to be important. And then I hope and trust that they will find fulfillment and be fine. Right? In some in some other, you know, no matter what. So the idea of being able to see the unseen is important to us as well, because I think that you can get very comfortable. And I think America lends itself to this sometimes, they're just, oh, we're comfortable. We're going to move into our nice little house and we're going to do whatever and just be happy. Yeah. But even for those who are completely fulfilled, if you see the unseen, there's just something about it that makes you get up and go out and want to do stuff. And I think that having that life's work, even if you're sixty or seventy or eighty and having a purpose, I think it drives longevity. It drives a whole bunch of things. So I think those are three core values I'd love to have them have. Sweetie, is there anything you would like to add or. I'm sure you probably have some that are different. Yeah, I joke that I want to be able. Can you hear me? Mhm. I joke that I want to be able to drop my children in the middle of the Amazon and have them survive. so hardiness, right? Resilience isn't, as already mentioned, that, there's a thread of, you know, community and service that's in our family. Mhm. it's somewhere between impact and service. Like, how do you affect the lives of many people through what you create, what you make, what you leave behind, how you encourage, You know, there's a lot more, but it's really around the values of living a, an interesting life, living a life that impacts others positively. when you can, both the people who are close to you, but the people who may not be so close to you. So those are the things we leave. Look, children, I don't know. So it feels like half half the children in the world want to do what their parents want to do, and the other half are like, hell no. And I think we have the hell no kind. So it is what it is. It is what it is. But hopefully they thrive no matter what they decide to do. I'm sure they will. Y'all are awesome parents, so it'll be good. But thank you for the that for the tips. My son's five. And you know, those are things that I for sure want to instill in him to the Amazon thing. I don't know, I gotta, I gotta think about how to provide that level of typical mom, typical. Typical mom behavior. You just want to shelter those kids. Come on now, throw them out the window. Oh, God. Well, the last question I have for y'all here is, you know, if there was an additional chapter of building rocket ships, what would it be about? Is it? There you go. Oh, I gotta think about this one. I think very practically, I think we've talked about. A gentic work, right? That's changing. The landscape is changing so quickly. So it's very unclear to me what exactly we would write, but I think the core principles of building rocket ships are so important and they work. Whether or not we're working in with AI or not, agents or not. But the book is written in a way where the core principles of product management are half. And then the second piece is really around. It's for founders and product leaders who are managing teams of product builders. So if there was a third, another section, it would be when AI builds for you or when your team is AI. Yeah. As an example, and what are the things around that the human in the loop, the, all the, the things. But and I know you probably have a lot to say in this area because we've talked about it a bit, but I think one other piece that does keep me up at night and, is the unintended consequences that we've had to live through with social media and all the choices we made on addiction. So it's almost like I'd like three, three sections. So the first on core principles, the second on leading human teams, you know, the third on, you know, section, I wouldn't even call it a chapter, the section on AI as builders, as your employees. And then almost like a post-mortem or pre-mortem on AI, AI and society. Premortem. Premortem. Yeah. A pre-mortem like AI and society and all the unintended consequences and teaching people how to think, just in case. So yeah, that was long. I'm sorry. I just I was trying to form my thoughts. I feel like I feel like you have to write the book. I mean that. Just write a new book because I was recently reading some research from the Neuroleadership Institute on, you know, AI adapters versus resistors. And you have this population, I think forty six percent of AI users are basic users, and that population are the ones who are, you know, seeing memory loss and they're losing their domain expertise. And I don't think that message is being shared widely. What does it mean to be AI fluent versus being used by these tools and actually diminishing your value? So yeah, maybe you can write the book and we'll come back and talk about it. So, so first of all, do people even read anymore? I guess that's a real that's a real banger. but, but clearly, Elisa you're, you're a reader because you got all the, all, all the tabs. The tabs. Look, I, I, you got all the tabs? Look, I think that we want to be kind to ourselves, right? That, you know, in twenty twenty three, we'd already been living an LM life for like, a couple of years. Mhm. I certainly in my last gig type form was very deep in for the, for that era. And we have like a, you know, like an outro in the book where we talk about artificial intelligence, but unbeknownst to us, right? Like the changes are so massive, like AI is like electricity, like how do you describe electricity when it just came out? How do you anticipate it? And, you know, little motos and drones. It's impossible. So. We wish we could have had enough insight because, you know, we've seen the PC age, the mobile age. This is what makes us have some judgment and taste is because we can take what we've seen because, you know, these paradigm shifts have a certain rhythm to them and apply them to the AI thing. And that's what we're trying to do at at a Substack at substack dot product dot co. but I wish we had done like a pre-mortem. We had had enough insight to predict what is going to happen. like even the stuff we do the first couple of years after twenty twenty three was like, do we need product managers again? And now in twenty twenty six, people are like, of course we do, because no one can do the fundamentals and these tools don't actually replace the fundamentals, right. so I wish we had written a bigger. Thing on artificial intelligence, predicted what things that would come. We did write it still useful. But I want to be kind to ourselves. And like you said, we probably need to do a second edition, right? And remake the shipyard in the age of AI, remake the systems in the age of AI so that people can figure out how to do the same fundamental thing with new tools. So that's what I wish we could have done, but we will do. First. I love that. Well, thank you both so much. This has been a treat. It really has been. I feel like I got really lucky as a new founder to have this conversation with you. So thank you. I can't wait to connect again and just want to say thank you to Langston and entrepreneurial appetite for this episode. Take care. Thank you. Thank you. It's so fun to be here.