Software teams are shipping faster than ever, but speed hasn't solved the oldest problem in the industry: most software still isn't very good. AI coding tools have lowered the barrier to building something, yet they haven't lowered the barrier to building something worth using. As more people who aren't trained software creators start shipping products, a new question is forming across product, design, and engineering teams: if AI can build almost anything, how do you make sure it builds the right thing, and builds it well? Todd Olson is co-founder and CEO of Pendo, the product experience platform he started in 2013. Before that, he held product and engineering roles at Rally Software, Red Hat, Cisco, and Google. He's the author of The Product-Led Organization and has led Pendo through raising over $356M in venture funding while growing to 2,300+ customers. In the episode, Richie and Todd explore why bad software still gets built, how much context AI coding agents need before they can be trusted, using behavioral data and "rage prompts" to catch what's actually frustrating users, the shift toward headless and agentic software design, how product, design, and engineering roles are splitting apart, managing one-way-door risk during AI transformation, and much more. Find DataFramed on DataCamp https://www.datacamp.com/podcast and on your preferred podcast streaming platform: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dataframed/id1336150688 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/02yJXEJAJiQ0Vm2AO9Xj6X?si=d08431f59edc4ccd Links Mentioned in the Show: Jeff Bezos’s one-way door / two-way door decision framework: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2015-letter-to-shareholders HubSpot’s 2024 terms-of-service backlash Ramp: https://ramp.com Stripe: https://stripe.com Fin (Intercom’s AI agent), recently announced to be acquired by Salesforce Anthropic / Claude Code: https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code Connect with Todd: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddaolson/ AI-Native Course: Intro to AI for Work: https://www.datacamp.com/courses/introduction-to-ai-for-work Related Episode: The Data Team’s Agentic Future with Ketan Karkhanis, CEO at ThoughtSpot: https://www.datacamp.com/podcast/the-data-teams-agentic-future New to DataCamp? Learn on the go using the DataCamp mobile app - https://www.datacamp.com/mobile Empower your business with world-class data and AI skills with DataCamp for business - https://www.datacamp.com/business
Software teams are shipping faster than ever, but speed hasn't solved the oldest problem in the industry: most software still isn't very good. AI coding tools have lowered the barrier to building something, yet they haven't lowered the barrier to building something worth using. As more people who aren't trained software creators start shipping products, a new question is forming across product, design, and engineering teams: if AI can build almost anything, how do you make sure it builds the right thing, and builds it well?
Todd Olson is co-founder and CEO of Pendo, the product experience platform he started in 2013. Before that, he held product and engineering roles at Rally Software, Red Hat, Cisco, and Google. He's the author of The Product-Led Organization and has led Pendo through raising over $356M in venture funding while growing to 2,300+ customers.
In the episode, Richie and Todd explore why bad software still gets built, how much context AI coding agents need before they can be trusted, using behavioral data and "rage prompts" to catch what's actually frustrating users, the shift toward headless and agentic software design, how product, design, and engineering roles are splitting apart, managing one-way-door risk during AI transformation, and much more.
Find DataFramed on DataCamp https://www.datacamp.com/podcast and on your preferred podcast streaming platform:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dataframed/id1336150688
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/02yJXEJAJiQ0Vm2AO9Xj6X?si=d08431f59edc4ccd
Links Mentioned in the Show:
Jeff Bezos’s one-way door / two-way door decision framework: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2015-letter-to-shareholders
HubSpot’s 2024 terms-of-service backlash
Ramp: https://ramp.com
Stripe: https://stripe.com
Fin (Intercom’s AI agent), recently announced to be acquired by Salesforce
Anthropic / Claude Code: https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code
Connect with Todd: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddaolson/
AI-Native Course: Intro to AI for Work: https://www.datacamp.com/courses/introduction-to-ai-for-work
Related Episode: The Data Team’s Agentic Future with Ketan Karkhanis, CEO at ThoughtSpot: https://www.datacamp.com/podcast/the-data-teams-agentic-future
New to DataCamp?
Learn on the go using the DataCamp mobile app - https://www.datacamp.com/mobile
Empower your business with world-class data and AI skills with DataCamp for business - https://www.datacamp.com/business