Product Talk Okta VP of Product on Building B2B SaaS Roadmaps and Leveraging AI in Product Management
Aug 22, 2025
Ian Hassard, VP of Product Management at Okta, brings 20 years of experience from telecom and cybersecurity to the conversation. He discusses balancing customer needs with technical complexity in B2B SaaS. Ian emphasizes the importance of direct communication with customers and cross-departmental collaboration. He also dives into building adaptable roadmaps that leverage AI for efficiency. The dialogue touches on prioritizing customer requests while maintaining ethical user experiences, navigating escalations, and the nuances of decision-making in fast-paced environments.
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Make Weekly Customer Calls Mandatory
- Talk to at least one enterprise customer every week to avoid inside-out thinking and bias.
- Require product managers to hold three to four customer calls per month to build habit and insight.
Train PMs To Run Better Customer Calls
- Coach introverted PMs with question frameworks and call prep so they gain confidence in customer conversations.
- Use research and coaching to turn reluctant PMs into regular customer listeners.
Centralize Cross-Functional Customer Input
- Pull customer insights from research, support, sales, and field teams and create regular cadences to surface them.
- Aggregate feedback across channels and look for common threads before acting.