The Growth Podcast

Today’s episodeThe design process you learned is already dead.Most teams still follow the same linear pipeline. Low fidelity to high fidelity to handoff. Sketch it. Spec it. Ship it over the wall. That pipeline was built around a constraint that no longer exists. High fidelity used to be expensive. It is not anymore.I brought in two people who represent both sides of the new design infrastructure.Ed Bayes is a member of the design staff at OpenAI. He leads design on Codex, which just crossed 2 million weekly users with usage surging 3X since the start of the year. He spends 70-80% of his time coding. He still calls himself a designer.Gui Seiz is the Director of Product Design for AI at Figma. He leads design on all their AI features, including the Figma MCP server and Figma Make. His designers are now shipping PRs to production.----Check out the conversation on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.Brought to you by:* Bolt: Ship AI-powered products 10x faster* Amplitude: The market-leader in product analytics* Pendo: The #1 software experience management platform* NayaOne: Airgapped cloud-agnostic sandbox* Product Faculty: Get $550 off their #1 AI PM Certification with my link----If you are trying to understand the new design workflow, this is the one episode to watch.If you want access to my AI tool stack - Dovetail, Arize, Linear, Descript, Reforge Build, DeepSky, Relay.app, Magic Patterns, Speechify, and Mobbin - grab Aakash’s bundle.I’m putting on a free webinar on Behavioral and AI PM interviews. Join me.----Key Takeaways:1. Code vs canvas is a false dichotomy - The best designers use both fluidly. Canvas for exploration, collaboration, and pixel-perfect craftsmanship. Code for interactions, responsive testing, and the last mile of polish. The question is what you are trying to learn, not which tool to commit to.2. High fidelity is no longer expensive - The entire linear design process existed because building something interactive required engineering resources. That constraint is gone. A functional wireframe takes the same time as a paper sketch.3. The Codex-Figma MCP makes handoff lossless - Import screens from a running React app into Figma with exact pixel values. Border radius, padding, shadows, all one to one. It is not a screenshot. It is a responsive, editable design artifact.4. The reverse direction works seamlessly - Make changes in Figma, paste a component link into Codex, and it updates your code automatically. No redline spec, no handoff document.5. Ed spends 70-80% of his time coding and still calls himself a designer - The medium changed but the mandate did not. Designers are still the voice of the user, still upholding craft. The tools expanded, the role stayed.6. Figma designers are shipping PRs to production - Teams that six months ago were AI curious are now banging down the door. Monetization designers who never wrote code are building technically complex prototypes.7. "Prototypes, not PRDs" is the emerging norm - PMs at OpenAI bring working prototypes to design reviews. They ship PRs to stress-test ideas before handing off to engineering.8. You do not need permission to start - Someone from OpenAI's GTM team built an iOS app with zero experience. Download Codex and build something for yourself tonight.9. Curiosity is the defining skill for this era - Not code proficiency, not design talent. The AI is an infinitely patient tutor. Ask questions. Build understanding alongside output.10. Total football is the mental model - Every player can play every position. Roles still have natural spikes. But the tool constraints that enforced rigid boundaries are dissolving.----Where to find Ed Bayes* LinkedIn* OpenAI* XWhere to find Gui Seiz* LinkedIn* Figma* XRelated contentPodcasts:* Xinran Ma - Design with AI* Carl Vellotti - Claude Code PM OS* Codex PM Guide with Carl VellottiNewsletters:* AI prototyping for PMs* The PM guide to Bolt* Codex PM guide----PS. Please subscribe on YouTube and follow on Apple & Spotify. It helps!If you want to advertise, email productgrowthppp at gmail. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.news.aakashg.com/subscribe

Today’s episodeThe way PM teams are trending, one PM is going to support 20 people.Not just engineers. Designers. Analysts. Strategy partners. GTM. Sales. Support.You cannot answer everyone’s questions about everything. You cannot be in every Slack thread. You cannot be the bottleneck for context that already exists somewhere in a Google Doc no one can find.But you can give them a high-context, well-organized repo.Hannah Stulberg is a PM at DoorDash and a former Google PM. She has spent over 1,500 hours in Claude Code.She wrote the viral Claude Code for Everything series. Her setup is not a personal productivity system. She has structured her entire team’s context into a shared repo that everyone queries.Her strategy partner - completely non-technical - puts up pull requests every day. Her engineers query metric definitions without asking the analyst. Her designers pull product context without waiting on a PM.If you are building a team that runs on AI, this is the episode to watch.----Check out the conversation on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.Brought to you by:* Bolt: Ship AI-powered products 10x faster* Jira Product Discovery: Plan with purpose, ship with confidence* Kameleoon: Leading AI experimentation platform* Amplitude: The market-leader in product analytics* Product Faculty: Get $550 off their #1 AI PM Certification with my link----If you want access to my AI tool stack - Dovetail, Arize, Linear, Descript, Reforge Build, DeepSky, Relay.app, Magic Patterns, Speechify, and Mobbin - grab Aakash’s bundle.I’m putting on a free webinar on Behavioral and AI PM interviews. Join me.----1. Build a Team OS, not a personal OS - A shared repo where every function checks in work. Engineers, designers, and analysts self-serve without asking the PM.2. Root CLAUDE.md is everything - Doc index, team roster with Slack IDs, channel map. Keep under one page or you burn context every session.3. Nested indexes save 97% of context - Every folder gets a navigation CLAUDE.md. A customer query used only 3% of the context window.4. Three token tiers - Always-loaded root (~500 tokens), folder indexes on navigation (200-500), content files on demand (1,000-10,000+).5. Split analytics by product area - Metrics, queries, schemas separated. Progressive loading prevents waste.6. Gate launches on repo updates - Feature not shipped until metrics, queries, schemas, and playbooks are checked in.7. Verified playbooks kill hallucinations - Analyst-audited methodology. Claude follows verified steps instead of inventing its own.8. Plan mode makes 10x docs - Shift+Tab twice. Five phases: load context, ask questions, build plan, push thinking, review agents.9. Split long docs across parallel agents - Each writes to a temp file. Orchestrating agent compiles. Prevents context overflow.10. The flywheel compounds daily - Automate one task, free time, improve the repo. After 1,500 hours still iterating every day.----Where to find Hannah Stulberg* LinkedIn* In the Weeds SubstackRelated contentPodcasts:* My Claude Code PM OS with Dave Killeen* Claude Code + Analytics with Frank Lee* Claude Code as PM OS with Carl VellottiNewsletters:* The ultimate guide to context engineering* Build your PM operating system* How to use Claude Code like a pro----PS. Please subscribe on YouTube and follow on Apple & Spotify. It helps!If you want to advertise, email productgrowthppp at gmail. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.news.aakashg.com/subscribe