Cisco President & CPO on Rebuilding Products So Agents Can Use Them | Jeetu Patel

Agents now consume more tokens than humans do, and Jeetu Patel thinks that breaks almost every product built for people to click through. In this episode of The Product Podcast, Carlos (CEO at Product School) sits down with Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, for his fifth appearance, to unpack what it actually takes to rebuild products so agents, not just humans, can use them, and how a $63 billion company runs in founder mode.

What you’ll learn:
- Why products now have two users, humans and agents, and how to design for both
- The stats behind the shift: agents at 5x human token consumption, 60% of compute going to inference
- Why fewer than 2% use agents today, and why Jeetu predicts 30 to 40% within 12 to 15 months
- How agents disintermediate the middleman, and the new business models that creates
- Founder mode vs. functional mode, and why owner mentality wins during a platform shift
- Why a $63B company runs in “war mode,” not “peace mode,” during a refactor
- Why Cisco has “no product managers, only feature managers,” and sells the platform, not products
- How to become a multi-product company by reusing your route to market, not building new ones
- Cisco’s M&A discipline, why it kills acquired brands, and the promise it makes to founders
- The coming compute, power, and data-center supply crunch, and why it favors Cisco

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:15 Intro: Carlos welcomes Jeetu Patel, President and CPO at Cisco
03:17 Back by popular demand: a fifth appearance
03:45 Founder mode vs. functional mode, and owner mentality
05:56 Spotting which mode people operate in, and valuing owners
06:10 War mode vs. peace mode during a platform shift
06:30 The few things you drive top-down in a large company
08:30 Reusing your route to market to become multi-product
10:05 The numbers: $460B market cap, $63B revenue, guiding north of $70B
10:22 Fixing the “collection of $100M businesses” problem
10:35 M&A discipline: why Cisco dialed down acquisitions
13:25 Killing acquired brands, and the promise made to founders
14:35 A fun fact about joining Cisco, and talent in war mode
15:41 The AI shift: what it means for Cisco
16:07 The stats: sub-2% use agents now, 30-40% within 12-15 months
16:33 Agents surpass humans in token consumption (and 60% of compute to inference)
18:03 The business-model pressure coming for every company
19:25 Why big business-model shifts create massive wealth creation
24:37 When your customer isn’t human: designing products for agents
25:06 The WebEx event, and building for both humans and agents
26:50 Fighting herd mentality with counterintuitive bets
27:27 The spring in Cisco’s step, and attracting talent back
28:41 Judgment, founder mode, and staying in touch with reality
29:11 Jeetu’s rule: dinner with one person outside Cisco every week
31:42 Wrap-up

Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer, Cisco
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Host: Carlos, CEO at Product School
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About Cisco: Cisco is a global technology leader in networking, security, and infrastructure, now central to the compute, connectivity, and security demands of the AI and agent era.

About the Product Podcast: Product School’s podcast brings you candid conversations with the founders and product leaders shaping tech. Receive SMS online on sms24.me

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