Campfire AI Product Lead on Why Domain Expertise Is Your Biggest Product Advantage

What if your most unconventional career detour turned out to be your biggest product advantage? In this podcast hosted by iDonate VP of Product Nacho Andrade, Campfire AI Product Lead Brendan Doyle will be speaking on why domain expertise is your biggest product advantage and how his years as an auditor at KPMG and founder of a niche lease accounting software company gave him an edge most product managers don’t have. He gets into the real tension between domain expertise and creative bias, how Campfire AI is building an AI-native ERP that moves fast without breaking things in a compliance-heavy space, and why anyone sitting in a “boring” industry right now has a massive opportunity to make the jump into product.

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Show Notes

1. Brendan Doyle’s path into product was anything but traditional. He started as an auditor at KPMG, moved into a subject matter expert role at an accounting software company, founded and ran his own lease accounting software company for six years with customers on stock exchanges across four continents, and then joined Campfire AI as product lead.
2. The catalyst for his own company was a change in regulatory accounting standards that left businesses worldwide without a solution. Recognizing a moment when the market had an urgent, unmet need made getting in front of customers far easier because the conversation started with “we actually don’t have a solution” rather than a sales pitch.
3. Domain expertise in a prescriptive field like accounting gives you a built-in north star. The accounting standards tell you what the software must do, which means the “what” is often defined and the real product creativity lives in the “how” — the workflows, the UX, and the design.
4. The flip side is real: deep domain expertise can create bias around how things “should” work. Long exposure to legacy ERP workflows can make a product manager default to familiar patterns when simpler, better ones are possible. The antidote is keeping a “best idea wins” mindset going into every decision.
5. Domain expertise also helps you filter customer feedback more effectively. You can preempt what customers are going to ask for next and start building it now, rather than waiting to react. You understand which feedback is critical and which is not right for the current moment.
6. Campfire AI is an AI-native ERP targeting mid-market companies, integrating seamlessly with tools like Ramp, Brex, Stripe, HubSpot, and Salesforce. The goal is to be the financial control center that makes all of those data sources legible in one place.
7. One of the biggest product decisions for an ERP is which vertical to serve next. Accounting looks very different for a tech company versus a construction company, and those differences require entirely different logic, integrations, and expertise. Expanding verticals is not a small decision.
8. Brendan’s advice for anyone with deep expertise in a niche field who wants to move into product: just go build something. The tools available now make it possible to build and ship a real product on the side in a way that simply was not feasible ten years ago.
9. Building something that real people actually use, even for free, gives you concrete collateral when trying to break into product roles at funded companies. It demonstrates initiative, ability to ship, and genuine passion for product, not just a desire to have the job title.
10. The niche, boring, or “unsexy” industries are often the biggest opportunities. The more specialized the domain, the smaller the crowd of people who can credibly address the problems, which makes domain experts especially valuable.
11. Test-driven development is non-negotiable in fintech. End-to-end testing and a rigorous development lifecycle are the foundation for moving fast without breaking things that customers depend on for payroll, revenue recognition, and compliance.
12. LLMs have become a meaningful lever for engineering teams working in niche domains. Engineers at Campfire can now query an LLM to get up to speed on accounting concepts quickly, understand what they are building at a deeper level, and independently identify edge cases they might otherwise have missed.
13. Not all features carry the same risk, and Brendan thinks explicitly about risk-weighting releases. A net-new feature with low stakes can ship at full velocity, while a change to payroll integrations or core financial workflows warrants slowing down and being surgical.
14. Internal CPAs and accountants serve as Brendan’s primary beta testers before any feature reaches general availability. They catch obvious problems early, and because they have likely used other ERPs before, they have a strong intuition for what end customers will need.
15. Alpha and beta programs are a core part of how Campfire gets products polished before general release. Getting real hands on functionality early means the product is significantly more refined by the time it reaches the broader customer base.
16. The biggest surprise since joining Campfire was the sheer speed at which the company moves. Coming from a smaller, more focused company, the pace of feature releases and the ability to ship compliance functionality across multiple jurisdictions quickly was genuinely staggering.
17. Technically complex areas like foreign exchange and consolidated accounting are high-risk bets. Before speccing out anything in those areas, Brendan will spend days reading the relevant accounting standards to make sure he fully understands the requirements before a single line of code gets written.
18. Software will always have bugs — even Google Maps misbehaves. What matters is how quickly you can identify an issue, assess how pervasive it is to customer workflows, and respond accordingly. The goal is never zero bugs; it is minimizing the impact of the ones that get through.
19. “Taste is important” is how Brendan describes a key product skill that is hard to teach. Knowing which feedback represents a real problem to solve now versus something to park for later is what separates good product people from great ones.
20. The advice Brendan would give his earlier self is simply: you can do it, so do not be intimidated. The people at the top of any field are not as unreachable as they seem, and the best way to prove you belong in product is to stop waiting and start building.