The Punk PM #4

Hey there fellow punks!

Huge thanks to everyone who’s been reading this newsletter for the last few weeks. 

If you’ve got any thoughts about the 25 product management trends for 2025 post from last week, I’d love to hear them. 

I’m doing a lightning talk on it at the end of the month for ProductTank Newcastle, so it’d be great to know where you think I’m right or wrong before I build my deck.

Quote of the Week 🙊

Insight 🦉

Every once in a while, a new technology comes along and smashes down barriers. In the 1980s, it was the rise of samplers in music. For the first time, you didn’t need a studio or a stack of instruments to make something incredible. You just needed a decent crate of vinyl, an MPC60, and a bit of imagination.

Hip-hop producers, in particular, took this and ran with it, building entire genres by remixing and repurposing sounds. Suddenly, the creative process wasn’t about mastering every technical skill—it was about figuring out how to use emerging tools to push new boundaries.

AI is doing the same thing for product development right now. Don’t know how to code? No problem—platforms like Bolt and Replit have you covered. Need customer insights but don’t have time to sift through all your support tickets and app store reviews? Products like Kraftful can help you find the signal in the noise. Want a prototype yesterday? Whip something up with Figma and an AI image generator.

As someone who hasn’t really done any coding since I was writing HTML for my first blog back in the early 2000s, I’m blown away by how much I can build (and how quickly) with natural language tools. It’s opened the door to creating software to articulate my ideas; something I’d need to get an engineer involved with in the past.

But just like in the sampler era, there’s a trade-off: it’s easy to fall into the trap of letting the tools do all the work. AI can make it easier to bring our ideas to life, but it’s still up to us to make something original. The real magic happens when you use technology to amplify your vision, not replace it.

Action 🚀

This week, pick one creative project you’ve been putting off—maybe it’s a new product concept, a customer outreach initiative, or even a side hustle—and use an AI tool to help you jumpstart it.

The challenge: Don’t let the tools lead—ensure your vision stays front and centre.

Inspiration 💡

Here’s what’s been inspiring me this week:

Paul’s Boutique by The Beastie Boys 

The Beastie Boys’ sophomore effort is one of the standout albums of the pre-copyright crackdown hip-hop era. Fusing samples from artists as diverse as The Beatles, Sly & The Family Stone and The Crusaders, it’s a high water mark of crate-digging creativity that paved the way for the likes of DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing and A Tribe Called Quest’s magnificent The Low End Theory.

My sister-in-law bought me a beautiful triple-gatefold reissue for Christmas which I’ve been playing almost constantly since. Easily my favourite record from one of my favourite bands of all time.

A guide to AI prototyping for product managers by Colin Matthews

Colin Matthews’ guest post on Lenny’s Newsletter teaches product managers how to quickly create prototypes using various AI tools. From using chatbots for simple prototypes to handling cloud environments for more complex applications, it’s a great hands-on guide to help even the most non-technical PM get to grips with building applications.

I followed this guide and managed to build, deploy and debug a simple CRM in a gap in between meetings. The last time I built and ran anything myself that wasn’t a blog or website, it was on my ZX Spectrum. Looking forward to seeing how far I can take it if I put a bit of time in.

An Inside Look at Building an Email Client in Three Months by Rhea Purohit

Kieran Klaassen and his team built Cora, an AI email client, in just three months to help people manage their email more effectively. Cora delivers email summaries twice a day to reduce the stress of managing a busy inbox, and has already gained plenty of interest with nearly 8,000 people on the waitlist already.

This YouTube video and article follows the journey of Cora from inception to launch, and shows just how big an impact AI is having on the product development process. Lone developers with a good idea and a handful of AI tools can build market-ready products in a fraction of the time it used to take.

AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking by Michael Gerlich

This study is a very good counterpoint to the “wow, look what I can do with AI” articles I’ve shared above and digs into how tools like Claude and ChatGPT can affect critical thinking though cognitive offloading. It argues that increased reliance on Al leads to lower critical thinking abilities, and highlights the need for educational strategies to offset the impact of AI.

I’m still very much an AI optimist, but I’m very wary of letting large language models do our thinking for us. We should be using technology to give us more room for deep work, not getting rid of it altogether.

Signing Off ✍️

If this resonates with you, hit reply and let me know how you’re pushing the boundaries of product management this week. And if you think a friend or colleague would enjoy The Punk PM, feel free to share it with them!

Play it your way,

Toby