Next Gen Builders High-Growth Communities with Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia, Founder & CEO of Product School
Welcome to Season 02 of Next Gen Builders! Today, Francois sits down with fellow podcast host Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia, Founder & CEO of Product School, the global leader in Product Management training. Their conversation covers how Carlos scaled Product School from the ground up, why community building has been a key factor in his success, and what truly makes a great product leader.
Carlos founded Product School in 2014 with a vision of democratizing access to education and has since grown the community to over 2M members. He reflects upon what ingredients have led to the organization’s success alongside what he may have done differently if given the opportunity again. Ultimately though, Product School is proof that community matters regardless of the business you are in.
Additionally, Francois and Carlos talk about The Product Podcast and how impactful it has been in tandem with Product School. With over 260 interviews featuring product executives from brands such as Nike, the NBA, Duolingo, and Amplitude, Carlos has had the opportunity to truly understand the makeup of a great product leader. So right after tuning into Next Gen Builders, check out The Product Podcast!
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Guest Bio
Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia is an entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience building global companies and digital products.
He founded Product School in 2014, which is the global leader in product training with a community of over two million members. All of Product School's instructors are real-world Product Leaders working at top Silicon Valley companies including Google, Meta, Netflix, Airbnb, Uber, and Amazon. Prior to Product School, he founded Floqq, the largest online education marketplace in Spanish and Portuguese at the time. Floqq joined the 500 Startups and Startup Chile accelerator programs.
Additionally, Carlos co-authored the Amazon bestseller The Product Book, and has participated as a speaker in more than 1,000 events, conferences, and classes around the world. Outside of work, he loves skiing and playing tennis.
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Guest Quote
" Community is a term that is now being overused and sometimes misunderstood as,
‘Oh, let's just start giving something away with an expectation of getting something in return.’
And I think that kind of defeats the definition of a community. True, you as a business need to have a business model to keep the lights on and grow, but building a community to me is a strategy, it's not a tactic. To me that meant I'm going to build something for the long term. I have a mission which is helping people build better products and democratize access to education in ways that some of the people that actually benefit from the community might never be able to pay economically.
And I'm okay with that. And so it starts from that mindset, without obviously forgetting about the business model. That is how I think of community, as a strategy.” – Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia
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Time Stamps
00:00 Episode Start
01:45 What is Product School?
04:00 How Carlos was able to scale
08:05 Lessons learned along the way
10:55 Creating & measuring meaningful communities
14:30 The Product Podcast
18:00 What makes a great product leader
21:10 Transforming with AI effectively
26:20 Overcoming doubts and hesitations
29:40 Carlos' advice for others leaning into innovations
33:20 Maintaining flexibility throughout a transformation
34:50 What Product School is focused on in 2025
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Links