How to Get Your Team to Start Prototyping with AI | Jeremy Epling (CPO Vanta)
The exact template that Jeremy built to make prototyping easier, career advice for surviving big tech layoffs, and how to run evaluations for AI agents
Dear subscribers,
Today, I want to share a new episode with Jeremy Epling.
Jeremy is the CPO of Vanta and former VP of Product at Github. He showed me the exact template that got his entire PM team to start prototyping, his favorite AI workflows for PM work, and why now might be the best time to be an IC PM. We also did a deep dive on how Vanta ran AI evaluations for their new AI agent.
Watch now on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
Jeremy and I talked about:
(00:00) Why prototypes beat PRDs
(01:43) The exact template that got his entire PM team prototyping
(05:14) From prototype to product: live demo of Vanta’s AI agent
(08:56) How to run prototype-first product reviews
(12:47) Top AI workflows that save Jeremy hours each week
(19:08) Is now the best time to be an IC PM?
(25:03) Advice for big tech PMs facing industry changes
(30:35) Separating the hype from craft for AI products
(36:16) Deep dive on AI evaluations for AI agents
Top 10 takeaways I learned from this episode
Use templates to get your entire team prototyping. Jeremy created a template of Vanta’s core UX that every PMs could fork from. "I sent this out to the team with a Loom explaining how to fork it and it really got the team experimenting."
Product reviews should focus on the customer experience. I tell my PMs: "I probably have a lot more context than you think, let's just get into the experience and prototype quickly. I want to get a sense of how the customer will feel."
AI is amazing for performance reviews. Jeremy created a GPT that synthesizes all 360 feedback for his 12 reports. From Jeremy: "I can even go and ask it: