Welcome to another episode of Supra Insider. This time, Ben and Marc sat down with Jacob Bank from Relay.app to dive into the rapidly evolving world of AI workflows, automation, and agent systems. Prior to founding Relay.app, Jacob was a Director of Product Management at Google, which he joined after Google acquired his former startup, Timeful.
Jacob shares his firsthand experience building AI-driven workflows, what he’s learned from experimenting with AI agents, and how PMs should be thinking about automation in their work. We explore the real-world challenges of implementing AI, why human-in-the-loop remains crucial, and how AI is transforming tasks like content creation, customer insights, and product management.
We also discuss the role of AI in product strategy, how to evaluate what’s possible today vs. what will be possible in the near future, and why PMs who don’t actively experiment with AI risk falling behind. If you’re trying to make sense of AI’s impact on product work, this episode is for you.
All episodes of the podcast are also available on Spotify, Apple and YouTube.
New to the pod? Subscribe below to get the next episode in your inbox 👇
To support the podcast, please check out the links below:
* Preparing for a PM interview with tech companies like Meta and Google? Check out Ben's course for Product Sense and Analytical Thinking PM interviews (selected by Lenny Rachitsky as a Top Course in Product on Maven 🔥) and the standalone AI Copilot for practice. Supra Insider listeners get 10% off the course with promo code “suprainsider”. Upcoming cohort runs March 4-16 and enrollment is now open for April.
* Supra just launched its first Product Leadership compensation & tools benchmarks report. The report covers comp trends across different seniority tiers, work settings, and reporting structures. Want to get access to the full report? Please fill out this form to get your exclusive copy.
In this episode, we covered the following topics:
* What’s the difference between AI workflows and AI agents – and does it even matter?
* The best AI use cases for PMs today, from content creation to customer insights
* How to balance efficiency with human-in-the-loop workflows and automate without losing control
* Why intuition about what’s possible with AI is the most valuable skill for PMs
* How AI changes the role of junior PMs and what skills will matter most going forward
* Why AI-driven startups are staying lean and what it means for large product teams
* The rise of AI-first companies like Cursor and Midjourney and what PMs can learn from them
* How to experiment with AI without getting overwhelmed by constant changes
* The future of AI in product work - what’s next in the next 6–12 months?
* And much more!
If you’d like to watch the video of our conversation, you can catch that on YouTube:
Links:
* Jacob Bank: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobbank/
* Relay.app: https://www.relay.app/
* Jacob Bank YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jacobbank89
* Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benerez/
* Marc: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbaselga/
If you enjoyed this conversation, please share it with a friend or colleague 👇
Also, if you’re a new subscriber, we encourage you to check out some of the recent episodes you might have missed:
And here are some less recent favorites:
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
suprainsider.substack.com
