CPO Rising Series: Cisco EVP & CPO on Building World-Class Products with a Founder’s Mindset

Are you ready to learn how to build products that truly count? In this episode of the CPO Rising Series hosted by Products That Count Resident CPO Renee Niemi, Cisco’s Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel will be speaking on maintaining a founder’s mindset at scale. Jeetu shares transformative insights on product leadership, AI’s impact, and creating a culture of innovation that can turn even a large enterprise into the world’s largest startup.

Join us for new conversations with leading product executives every week. Roll through the highlights of this week’s podcast below, then head on over to our Events page to see which product leaders will be joining us next week.

Show Notes:

1. Maintain a founder’s mentality, even at massive scale
2. Build products people love so much they can’t stop talking about them
3. Operate with an ecosystem mindset, not a zero-sum competitive approach
4. Strive for 10x improvement, not just incremental gains
5. Prioritize quality as “priority zero” before discussing innovation
6. Create a culture that embraces constructive conflict and truth-seeking
7. Take primary responsibility for product challenges
8. Hire for hunger, curiosity, and clarity of thinking
9. Develop a personal board of directors/mentors
10. Approach AI as a tailwind, not a threat
11. Understand that the quality of problems you choose determines success
12. Deflect credit to the ecosystem when products succeed
13. Maintain an “unrealistic dash of optimism” in challenging business environments
14. Think company first, team second, self third
15. Continuously learn and unlearn
16. Use back-channel references over provided references when hiring
17. Recognize that most people want to do a good job but lack clarity
18. Embrace AI tools to complement human skills
19. A founder’s mindset means always seeking to understand something new
20. Build products that create “intrinsic pull” in the market