Max Schoenig

Max Schoening, head of product at Notion and a long-time design and product leader (previously at Google, Heroku, and GitHub), discusses how AI is reshaping product work. The conversation covers designers and PMs prototyping in code, agency as the key differentiator, malleable software, the changing economics of building, and what makes a product succeed.

01Key learnings

• Prototyping in code forces you to understand the medium, so designers and PMs gain better judgment about what the real product will be, not just shipping features.
• Agency, the willingness to treat your company and role as malleable, matters more than any single skill as AI tools make capabilities widely available.
• Start by making things; tinkering builds the belief that the world around you can be changed, which Max sees as the root of agency.
• AI makes the first 10% of a project nearly free, so explore several paths with cheap demos and prototypes rather than lengthy PRDs.
• Taste can be built by repeatedly making things, getting feedback from your in-group, and iterating, much like training a model.
• Great products usually hinge on one tiny core superpower; adding more features to a weak core rarely fixes it.
• Measuring token spend or feature counts is a vanity metric; focus on quality and whether the core experience is obviously good.
• Don't assume the best-known or first mover wins; durability and getting the core right matter more than being first.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.