A deep dive into the state of product in 2026 — Emily Tate (VP Product)
Recorded live at #mtpcon London, Lily sits down with Emily Tate — former MD of Mind the Product for a broad debrief on the day's themes. They cover why product and design may matter more in an AI world than ever before, how heritage organisations can navigate transformation without the luxury of greenfield conditions, and what it actually takes to get internal stakeholders on side. Emily also makes a case for why SaaS isn't dead, why positioning fundamentals haven't changed despite the AI frenzy, and why remote work is draining the fun out of product teams.Chapters
0:00 — Intro
1:00 — The state of AI in product: still an inflection point
3:18 — AI is a technology, not a moat
4:57 — Keeping the humanity in product work
6:13 — Advice for PMs new to the industry
8:38 — Why conferences need both practical and inspirational talks
10:24 — How to start speaking: find your local ProductTank
13:46 — You don't need a novel idea to give a great talk
16:01 — Charity Ibhadon's talk: product is hard, but it should be fun
16:19 — Remote work and the slow erosion of joy at work
19:15 — Innovating inside heritage organisations
21:39 — Stop trying to educate stakeholders about product
24:06 — April Dunford on positioning: what AI changes, and what it doesn't
27:00 — The SaaS-pocalypse myth
28:47 — Predictions: 12–18 more months of heavy AI talk
30:59 — Filtering signal from noise: where Emily reads
31:40 — Eric Ries' Incorruptible and building companies that resist corruption
Key takeaways
— If your only moat is AI, you don't have a moat. AI is a capability, not a product. The question is how you're using it to serve customers better than you could before — not whether you're using it at all.
— Building is no longer the bottleneck — deciding what to build is. That shift makes strong product and design thinking more important, not less.
— Stop trying to teach stakeholders about product. Drop the methodology, use their language, show them something tangible, and bring them along in ways that make sense to them — not to you.
— SaaS has a defensible edge. Products built on experience across hundreds of customers carry knowledge that a single company building its own solution can't replicate. That's a positioning story worth telling.
— Positioning fundamentals haven't changed. Sprinkling AI on your messaging doesn't sharpen it. — — Outside of tech, leading with AI can actively damage trust.
— You don't need a novel idea to give a great talk. Your version of a familiar concept might be the one that finally makes it click for someone. Start at a local ProductTank.
Don't try to be someone else on stage. Find your style by doing it. Authenticity beats borrowed charisma.
Remote work is eroding team joy in ways we're not measuring. The informal moments that build relationships and make work fun don't happen on Slack or in back-to-back video calls — and the resulting friction is real.
Featured links
— Incorruptible by Eric Ries — https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/460881/incorruptible-by-ries-eric/9780241692028
— The Decision Stack by Martin Eriksson — thedecisionstack.com
— Christian Idiodi — Silicon Valley Product Group
— April Dunford — aprildunford.com
— Find your local ProductTank — producttank.com
— Mind the Product — mindtheproduct.com Receive SMS online on sms24.me
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