The Product Podcast
Hosted by Product School CEO Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia, The Product Podcast drills deep into the minds of Chief Product Officers from Cisco, Lovable, Perplexity, Shopify and many more.
We move beyond high-level theory to reveal how top executives actually lead in the age of AI. We dig deep into their real-world decision-making, strategic frameworks, and the operational playbooks used to build intelligent products.
If you are a VP, Director, or CPO looking to drive innovation at scale, this is your essential listen.
The Product Podcast
Miro CEO on Leading AI Product Expansion Without Losing Focus | Andrey Khusid | E282
In this episode, Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia interviews Andrey Khusid, Co-founder and CEO of Miro, the visual collaboration platform valued at an estimated $17 billion with over 100 million users. Andrey reveals how Miro transformed from a simple browser whiteboard into a central hub for innovation, serving 250,000 customers worldwide. He discusses the critical shift from best-of-breed tools to platform suites and how Miro is aggressively integrating AI to support agentic workflows.
What you'll learn:
- How to apply day one thinking to constantly reinvent your product strategy.
- Why speed of learning is the only true competitive moat in the AI era.
- How to navigate the tension between market consolidation and AI experimentation.
- The role of acquisitions in scaling a product team to 1,600 people.
Key Takeaways:
- Reinvention is Mandatory: Why you must risk short-term revenue to secure long-term relevance.
- AI as a Teammate: Moving beyond features to humans and AI working together to solve problems.
- Fast Fashion Software: How to build a Lovemark brand to survive rapid commoditization.
Credits:
Host: Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia
Guest: Andrey Khusid
Social Links:
Andrey Khusid | Miro 00:00:00
It’s not just humans who have to create the next big thing. It’s humans and AI working together. Reinvention is critical, and my general approach is “day one thinking.” We see AI experimentation where a lot of initiatives get budget simply because they are AI, even if the market dynamic is weird. I anticipate that in a couple of years, we will see more consolidation. The number one competitive moat that every company has is the speed of learning and how truly agile you are. AI is non-deterministic, and you can’t just throw AI on users. You have to go and solve the problem.
Introduction
Carlos González | Product School 00:00:48
Hey, this is Carlos’s AI voice, CEO at Product School and your host on The Product Podcast. This episode was recorded live at ProductCon San Francisco, the AI conference for product leaders. Today’s guest is Andrey Khusid, co-founder and CEO of Miro, the leading online visual collaboration platform that’s revolutionizing how teams around the world brainstorm, plan, and execute together.
Carlos González | Product School 00:01:12
With over 100 million users and an estimated valuation of $17 billion, Miro is a cornerstone in product teams' toolkits, empowering organizations of all sizes to accelerate time to market. In today’s episode, Andrey shares insights on Miro’s evolution from a simple online whiteboard to a full-fledged visual collaboration platform and how AI is shaping its future. We discuss the strategy behind Miro’s success, the role of AI in streamlining workflows, and the importance of building products that anticipate where the market is going. Let’s dive in.
Main Conversation
Carlos González | Product School 00:01:52
Andrey, you are back. We had our first fireside chat at ProductCon London back in 2018—seven years ago. Wow. We joke that you were the only one we could find on the stage back then, but definitely, there are so many more candidates right now. You earned the right to be here the same way you did seven or eight years ago, but you’ve been grinding for 15 years.
Andrey Khusid | Miro 00:02:17
Yeah, almost 15. We started the company in 2011. Some people don’t even know that there was a previous name before Miro.
Carlos González | Product School 00:02:23
Correct. RealtimeBoard.
Carlos González | Product School 00:02:26
So as you think about those 15 years, what were those pivotal moments that helped you refound your own company?
From RealtimeBoard to Miro: Pivotal Moments
Andrey Khusid | Miro 00:02:36
First of all, thank you for having me again after seven years. It seems like we’re still on to something big. We’ve had to evolve and reinvent the company several times on this journey.
We started with the simple idea of bringing a whiteboard into a browser in 2011. It wasn’t really a thing yet. There were a couple of small startups trying to do it, but visual communication was mostly happening offline.
The next big shift was in 2016-2017. I realized there was a massive opportunity to bring visual collaboration to the tool stack of bigger companies. At that time, we saw the rise of Slack for messaging and Zoom for video, but there was a missing piece for visual collaboration.
Back then, the market was focused on “best-of-breed” solutions. Everyone tried to be best-in-class at their specific job. We also rode the wave of product-led growth (PLG), building viral loops that allowed us to grow organically within enterprises alongside tools like Slack and Zoom.
Last year, we introduced the Innovation Workspace, moving beyond just visual collaboration to include structured workflows—data tables, roadmaps, diagrams, and Kanban boards—so people can stay in the product. And now, we are relaunching with the AI Innovation Workspace. It’s not just humans creating the next big thing anymore; it’s humans and AI working together.
Navigating Shifting Markets
Carlos González | Product School 00:05:08
It’s always the most exciting one! As a founder, I resonate with that concept of product-market fit being a moving target, not just a one-time event. What is your framework to make sure you aren’t staying complacent and remain competitive in the next phase?
Andrey Khusid | Miro 00:05:37
I always start thinking from the market, not the product perspective. The market is shifting quite fast. You need to understand: are you playing in a “best-of-breed” or “best-of-suite” market? Currently, we are playing in a best-of-suite market regarding broad platforms.
The dynamic is weird right now. On one hand, CIOs are pushing for massive consolidation. On the other hand, there is huge experimentation with AI, where tools get budget simply because they drive significant business impact.
You need to understand the market you are playing in, how long the dynamics will last, and where you have permission to win. You can’t just build stuff without understanding your strengths and the expectations of the rest of the chessboard.
Reinvention and "Day One" Thinking
Carlos González | Product School 00:07:30
How do you differentiate when it’s time to really push the team to reinvent themselves—pressing the "code red" alert—versus making sure you’re still playing within the same framework but making progress?
Andrey Khusid | Miro 00:07:50
Reinvention is critical. My general approach is “day one thinking.” If I were starting this company today, what would the product look like? How would we position it? What market would we play in?
I ask myself that question every day. Depending on the answer, we decide if it requires a small evolution or a critical rebuild. You cannot predict the future for a long time, but you can operate on first principles regarding AI and agentic workflows to understand if you are up for the next wave or if you are becoming irrelevant.
Driving Transformation While Winning
Carlos González | Product School 00:08:55
It is hard to make big changes when you are winning. If you have the right to win and are seeing growth, the team might not feel the same pain or opportunity that you do. How do you rally the troops and prevent them from getting too comfortable?
Andrey Khusid | Miro 00:09:31
In any transformation, you have to accept a reality: roughly 25% of people will stay behind, 50% will support it but watch how it develops, and 25% will push back.
You need to find the people who believe in the vision as much as you do. When startups are built, 99 out of 100 investors won't believe in the vision. The founders who survive are the ones with conviction. It’s all about communicating the "why" and identifying the people who are as excited about the opportunity as you are. The rest will follow over time.
The Hard Decisions of Transformation
Carlos González | Product School 00:10:42
What are the hard decisions you’ve had to make to orchestrate execution and change? Assuming 25% of people push back and you might even have to say no to paying customers.
Andrey Khusid | Miro 00:11:23
The number one choice is to accept that the next few years will be messy. You have to accept that revenue growth might slow down and some customers may churn. That is a hard trade-off.
When I face this, I go back to the early days when the team was just 10 people. I focus on ruthless prioritization and customer empathy. I spend a ton of time on calls, demoing prototypes, looking at data, and separating signal from noise.
over the last six to eight months, I’ve spent most of my time in customer meetings validating our direction. You need that firsthand insight when you bet the whole company on the next horizon.
The CEO as Chief Product Evangelist
Carlos González | Product School 00:13:52
You have 1,600 people and 250,000 customers now. There is naturally more politics and noise. How do you protect your time to go back to the kitchen, build, and talk to customers?
Andrey Khusid | Miro 00:14:15
I’m not doing it alone. I have a great team in front of customers every day, and we combine our notes.
As a CEO, the most important thing is to build the right team and have deep empathy for the customer and their problems. There is nothing more important than your best team executing with you.
I also spend a lot of time exploring new trends, reading reports, and playing with other products—especially agentic AI experiments—to educate myself on user experience. This builds your taste and understanding of what is working and what isn’t.
Scaling Through Acquisitions
Carlos González | Product School 00:16:35
Your current CPTO was actually the CEO at InVision, a company you acquired. You’ve gone through six acquisitions. What is the learning there regarding founder-company fit?
Andrey Khusid | Miro 00:16:53
We’ve done six acquisitions in the last four years, mostly acqui-hires where we bring in amazing teams to rebuild their products on the Miro platform.
Our CPTO, Jeff, came through the InVision acquisition. I was looking for a CPO and CTO separately, but after seeing what Jeff achieved, we decided he should take both roles. It was one of the best decisions I’ve made.
Regarding fit, the majority of our acquisitions are successful because we align on mission and energy. We’ve brought in more than 10 founders who now work in core product engineering roles. The key questions are: Are they passionate about the problem space? And do we love working together? If we message each other on a Sunday, is it a tax, or is it an energy builder? You want to build with people who share that passion.
Evolving the Category
Carlos González | Product School 00:20:08
You started as a category player, expanded into a platform player, and are now moving into multi-product. How are you thinking about funding that growth for the next phase?
Andrey Khusid | Miro 00:20:29
We started as a horizontal solution—a whiteboard in a browser. We quickly found that product, UX, and engineering teams got the most value because of agile workflows. So, we built templates for them.
During the pandemic, we were deployed across entire organizations. But by 2022, basic whiteboarding became commoditized. We had to pivot back to focusing on innovation workflows.
Our mission is to empower teams to create the next big thing. In 2023, we pivoted our product toward one big outcome: accelerating time to market. Whether it’s product teams or marketing teams launching a campaign, we help them move through discovery, definition, and delivery faster and with higher quality.
Building Moats in the Age of AI
Carlos González | Product School 00:22:46
With AI, it’s technically faster to build. We see AI prototyping and whiteboarding tools popping up like mushrooms. What is your moat and your right to win?
Andrey Khusid | Miro 00:23:21
As Sam Altman said, we are entering the “fast fashion” era of software. Startups appear every day.
I believe the moat is the brand—specifically building a "Lovemark." That is why we rebranded from RealtimeBoard to Miro in 2019.
Secondly, you must deepen the product into the customer's workflow. AI is non-deterministic; you can’t just throw it at users. You have to solve end-to-end workflows.
I don’t believe data is a moat in the traditional sense because customers hate vendor lock-in. We need to win customers by solving their problems, not by holding their data hostage.
Ultimately, the number one competitive moat every company has is the speed of learning. It’s about how truly agile you are—how fast you recognize a signal, separate it from noise, and act on it.
Staying Energized After 15 Years
Carlos González | Product School 00:26:23
It’s been 15 years of grinding. You’ve had kids, you’re still the Founder and CEO. What do you do to take care of yourself and stay energized?
Andrey Khusid | Miro 00:26:45
You need to love what you do. If you enjoy it, you aren’t burning out; you are getting energy from it. For me, building products and solving customer problems is the biggest energy boost.
When you combine that with a great support system—family, friends, and the team at Miro—you optimize your life for those amazing moments. I am a builder at heart. If you are on this journey with people you trust and have fun with, that is the most energy-boosting thing in life.
Closing
Carlos González | Product School 00:27:57
Hopefully, we can do this again in the future as we continue growing together.
Andrey Khusid | Miro 00:28:03
Let’s not wait seven years. Let’s do it in a couple of years. Thank you for having me.