What being product-led actually means

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith speaks with Vidya Dinamani, product veteran, coach, and Co-founder of Product Rebels, about how to tell if your team is truly product-led or just paying lip service. With over a decade of experience coaching hundreds of teams, Vidya shares her insights into the critical elements of product maturity, the most overlooked barriers to effective product work, and how Product Rebels' diagnostic framework is helping companies move from chaos to clarity. 

Chapters
00:00 – The customer conversation gap
01:28 – Meet Vidya Dinamani and Product Rebels
03:35 – Why they built a diagnostic, not an assessment
04:45 – Mindsets, competencies, and the missing piece: resources
06:28 – AI readiness: the new fourth pillar
07:40 – What it really means to be product-led
09:59 – How teams are using the diagnostic
13:10 – Breaking down the four pillars
16:01 – Why access to customers remains a key obstacle
17:38 – Patterns, or lack thereof, in product maturity
20:26 – AI readiness in context
23:59 – A case study: product maturity at scale
27:52 – Final thoughts on assessment vs naming

What we learned from Vidya 

• Most product teams lack customer access: 70–80% of PMs Product Rebels encounter say they’ve never spoken to a customer.
• Being product-led requires more than intent: It demands mindset, core competencies, supportive resources—and now AI readiness.
• Diagnostic, not assessment: Their tool isn’t about performance reviews; it’s a heat map that reveals where to begin your transformation.
• AI is not a bolt-on: AI readiness is most effective when integrated into the broader product maturity conversation, not treated as a silo.
• Start with one thing: Rather than trying to become product-led across the board, identify a single focus area and build momentum from there.
• Internal PMs need customer framing too: Even teams building internal platforms need customer advocacy and insight.

Featured Links: Follow Vidya on LinkedIn | Product Rebels 

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Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A...