Everything you know about product design and development is outmoded. Artificial intelligence makes it possible for any product to be built from scratch by imaginative individuals with just a little bit of technical know-how. And then anyone can duplicate, tweak, iterate, and deploy the next generation at breakneck speed.

The ramifications are manifold. Conventional product team structures now look bloated. Anyone can ship code. And if everyone can be cross-functional, do you still need a product manager at all?

The Ken convened with four trailblazers who have created their own playbooks for building products, using AI assistance to stay on the bleeding edge. The panelists were:

  • Kailash Nadh , CTO of Zerodha
  • Sidu Ponnappa, Co-founder and CEO of Realfast
  • Soumyadeep Mukherjee, Co-founder and CTO of Dashverse
  • Akash Anand, Co-founder and CEO of Clueso
A GIF of Event Attendees
A GIF of Event Attendees
A GIF of Event Attendees
A GIF of Event Attendees

The audience included a range of professionals. Many joined the panelists in Bengaluru, while others around India and abroad tuned in via livestream.

A GIF ofEvent Attendees

Setting the scene

Consider Zawinski’s Law of Software Development: “Every programme attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programmes which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.”

That was a statement from the 1990s by Jamie Werner Zawinski, more popularly known as jwz. An adaptation aptly describes the way AI is taking over:

Red Colored Quote

Every platform attempts to expand until it can create code. Those platforms which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

How processes, people, and products are changing

“What you’re fundamentally fighting is a battle against entropy”