202. Youssef Hounat, Head of Product, ComplianceWise - From Search Tool to Teammate: How Product Teams Should Really Use AI

In this episode, we’re joined by Youssef Hounat, product leader, ex-auditor, and (unexpectedly) freestyle-rap-ready builder of tools for accountants. He went from training at Ernst & Young to helping scale DataSnipper into one of the Netherlands’ unicorns, and now he’s building again as Head of Product at ComplianceWise.

We unpack what’s actually changing inside product teams: AI stops being a rewrite/search tool and becomes a teammate that takes real work off your plate. Youssef shares how the best teams reduce context switching, turn customer research into a habit, and use agentic workflows + MCPs to connect tools like email, Jira, Figma, and docs without becoming a “fleshy meat puppet” copy-pasting between 10 tabs.

Here are some of the key questions we address:

• Why do 99% of teams still use AI wrong, and what mindset shift fixes it?
  
  
• How do you turn customer research into a continuous habit using transcripts + automated pipelines?
  
  
• What’s a real example of AI helping product push back on “build this to close the deal” and finding the true request underneath?
  
  
• How do top teams use MCP + coding agents to move from idea → PRD → Jira tickets without leaving the terminal?
  
  
• What’s the difference between a prototype you build to learn vs a product you build to earn — and why vibe-coded output can’t go straight to production?
  
  
• How do you avoid reinventing the wheel and start with small weekly automations that compound?
  
  
• What’s the real risk behind shadow AI usage  and how do you get IT onside instead of blocked?
  
  

🎧 Tune in to hear Youssef’s practical playbook for building an AI-enabled product org—where humans do the high-leverage thinking, and the machines handle the busywork. Plus: a freestyle rap that might be the strongest case for accounting tech you’ve ever heard.