Product at Heart 2025: Key Learnings and Takeaways

Conference
Written By Melissa Suzuno

Our voices may be fried from all the talking and our feet feeling a little weary from all the walking, but our hearts and minds are full from all the connections, conversations, and ideas that were sparked at the latest edition of Product at Heart.

For the third year in a row, we were thrilled to return to our home in Kampanagel on June 27, 2025. Over 750 curious product people from across the world gathered to join keynote presentations, themed sessions, and roundtable discussions—not to mention all those magical meetings and conversations that spontaneously happened among attendees.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be releasing videos and detailed blog recaps of the sessions, but for now, here are a few highlights and takeaways.

 

1. Challenge yourself to curate courageously

 
 

The theme for this year’s event was curation. Product at Heart co-organizers Petra Wille and Arne Kittler kicked off the conference by taking a closer look at the concept of curation. “We think it starts with how we choose. What we create. What we leave out,” said Petra. “Curation is one of our most powerful tools of resistance. Every product decision is a choice about what kind of world we want to help build. About what we amplify—and what we refuse to normalize. Curation at its core is a deliberate act of care, in a time when indifference is easy and noise is everywhere.”

Arne then invited us to frame the day with this question: How does what I’m hearing today help me curate better futures?

Remember: You can apply this mindset to your product work and beyond. Ask yourself what you’ll share, implement, and bring back to your company. And—just as importantly—what will you choose to leave behind?

This year’s conference programming included morning and afternoon keynotes on the main stage, which brought everyone together in the same room. We also split up for two sets of dual track themed sessions, where attendees were encouraged to choose the most relevant theme for them right now—never an easy decision! The 2025 themed sessions were curated around the following topics:

  • True Change: Case Studies in Product Transformation

  • AI in Practice: Insights for the Road Ahead

  • Vision to Value: Strategy in Action

  • Metrics to Meaning: Data-Driven Product Decisions

2. Remember teams don’t need less leadership; they need better leadership

 
 

Empowered product teams are the building blocks of the product model. But you can’t achieve empowered teams with the same old approach to leadership.

In the opening keynote of the day, Marty Cagan explained that many people mistakenly believe that empowered teams require less management, but the truth is that they require better management.

Marty cautioned against traditional or “professional” managers who lack domain expertise. He described the rise of founder mode (largely popularized by Paul Graham’s writing on this topic). There’s something special about founders, Marty said, highlighting their passion and connection to the mission of their company.

But even if you’re not a founder yourself, you can embrace founder-style leadership in a few ways:

  • Assign problems to solve instead of solutions to build and discuss your desired outcomes rather than focusing on features.

  • Cultivate the ability to coach your teams—be microinterested rather than being a micromanager.

  • Develop your product sense through activities like spending time with customers, engineers, and the actual product founder.

And if you’d like to dive deeper into this topic—or any of the others we’ve mentioned here—stay tuned for detailed blog posts on all keynotes and themed sessions, plus video recordings of all the talks, which we’ll be publishing on the Product at Heart blog in the coming weeks. But wait, there’s more! The new edition of Marty’s book, Inspired, will be coming out in 2026 and promises to include updated case studies and stories of how empowered teams are creating intelligent products customers love.

3. Experiment with hiring an AI agent

 
 

What does it mean to have an AI agent as a colleague? And how can you “hire” one yourself?

In his keynote, Henrik Kniberg shared examples of AI agents developed with abundly.ai and practical ideas for how they might be put to use.

If you haven’t yet experimented with agents yourself, Henrik offered a few pointers to keep in mind:

  • Think of hiring an agent like hiring an intern. Talk to it the same way you would talk to a human intern and give it rules and guidance. Pro tip: You can even ask AI to write a prompt for your agent. AI is often much better at this task than humans are!

  • If you’re feeling stuck about what you can ask your agent to do, consider tasks that take up a lot of time but also tend to be mostly predictable. For example, Henrik suggested the task of processing invoices and flagging irregularities. 

  • Don’t overwhelm your agent with too many tasks. It’s much more effective to create a few different agents who specialize in a single area rather than expecting one agent to handle everything. 

  • It is worth considering the risks involved. You may want to plot out a simple canvas to consider the job scope vs. the tool and data access that’s required to accomplish it. And it might be a good idea to start out with some of those safe but limited tasks rather than those that are higher risk/higher reward.

And if you’re ready to hire your own agent, Henrik shared an agent design canvas that will help you think through some of key elements such as triggers, knowledge & context, outputs/actions, and what could possibly go wrong.

 
 

4. Embrace the mistakes and the mess (and then move on!)

There’s no such thing as a perfect product team—just some that are further along in their transformation journey than others. In the “True Change: Case Studies in Product Transformation” themed sessions, we heard from real-life product practitioners who shared some of their mistakes, missteps, and of course, a few of their wins and results.

  • Gabrielle Bufrem and Anuar Chapur offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse of luxury hotel chain The Palace Company’s transformation journey, including how they built stakeholder trust, shifted from delivery teams to empowered teams, overcame resistance, rebuilt leadership, and applied product-led principles inside a non-tech organization.

  • What do you do when your product is a transformation and your customers are not exactly lining up to “buy” it? Kirstine Ploug Sørensen shared her experience using Martin Eriksson’s Decision Stack framework as a strategic tool to align vision, foundational principles, and roadmaps toward a customer centric product-led organization at Ørsted.

  • Ronnie Varghese described his journey to change Almosafer from a feature factory into a learning organization, explored how he reimagined his role from Head of Product to Head of Learning, and highlighted some of the curriculum (that is books, ideas, and people) that helped him achieve this.

By the way, if you’re hoping to dive more deeply into these sessions and topics, we’ll be publishing more detailed recaps and adding the session recordings to our video archives in the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

5. Take a deeper dive into the potential of AI 

If you ever wished you had a roadmap to help you dive into the possibilities and practical use cases of AI in your everyday work, well, that’s what the themed sessions on “AI in Practice: Insights for the Road Ahead” were all about!

  • Dominik Faber described his journey of designing and deploying products powered by agentic AI as well as key lessons he learned about the technical challenges, cross-functional team alignment, and AI-first strategies that drive innovation.

  • Zamina Ahmad encouraged us to look at AI as more than a tool and to consider how we can use it to transform processes, workflows, and entire job roles. She also put this in the context of current trends like vibe coding and cases like Klarna (where customer support roles were brought back after a widely publicized decision to go all-in on automation), helping us understand the current landscape and get a glimpse of what’s coming next.

  • Jonathan Evens discussed the idea of transformative features like Google Search’s AI overviews or AI Mode and explored how product managers can draw valuable and transferable learnings from products operating at this scale.

6. Stay on top of your strategy

One of the challenges of working in product is balancing your longer-term strategy with all those  urgent needs that seem to pop up constantly. In the “Vision to Value: Strategy in Action” themed sessions, the speakers shared their tips for finding the sweet spot between thinking and acting.

  • Yi-Wei Ang explored the idea of strategic tempo—knowing when to speed up to focus on quick wins and fast experiments and when to slow down to unlock deeper value creation. He explained that this is a critical leadership skill in product management and offered a framework for tempo-setting that builds trust, aligns cross-functional teams, and empowers product leaders to make deliberate decisions that balance urgency with long-term impact.

  • Stephanie Leue uncovered the uncomfortable truths we rarely discuss: the struggle of shaping strategy while still onboarding, the illusion of plug-and-play frameworks, the challenge of balancing immediate fires with long-term direction, and the uncomfortable truth that strategy is never truly “done.”

  • Andrew Skotzko cautioned us about the “control trap” or the urge to over-plan (which gives us a false sense of control). He then offered his tips for shifting your thinking from “control” to strategy and your role from analyst to strategist, sharing a model that can help you place bets that will chart your course forward.

7. Don’t be afraid of data

What role should data have on your work as a product person? If you’re looking for ways to do more and make a bigger impact with data, make sure to take a closer look at the “Metrics to Meaning: Data-Driven Product Decisions” themed sessions.

  • Marc Roulet explained how the road to failure is often paved with the wrong metrics, diving into the structural weaknesses many product organizations share, including a lack of standardization, unclear definitions, dashboard sprawl, and KPI overload. Then he introduced the “KPI Ladder,” showing how alignment at all levels can empower product teams to move faster, smarter, and with more confidence.

  • Julia Bastian offered a call to action for B2B product teams, including practical techniques for gathering, sharing, and acting on qualitative data.

  • Andrey Vinitsky described the “last mile” problem where people aren’t able to bridge the gap between what the numbers are saying and what action to take, reminding us of the importance of storytelling and offering practical tips to make people care more about data.

8. Prepare yourself—and your org—for the next phase of product-led growth

 
 

“Having a great product is not enough. Distribution is where it’s at,” said Elena Verna in her afternoon keynote, summing up the traditional thinking on growth. But what do we do when we can no longer rely on traditional models of distribution and everyone is able to use tools like Lovable that allow them to essentially compete against their own customers?

Elena described the dual nature of the technological and distribution shifts that are currently shaking up the world and shared a few strategies that can help you prepare yourself and your company to succeed in this new era. And, of course, she kept us entertained with several carefully curated memes!

9. Refine your curatorial mind

Building on the theme of curation that Petra and Arne introduced in their opening remarks, entrepreneur, author, and House of Beautiful Business organizer Tim Leberecht argued that curation can help us recognize what truly matters when everything's too much and algorithms dictate not only our aesthetic but also our moral choices.

Highlighting five personas of the curator—the cleaner, the bouncer, the renegade, the fan, and the algorithm, Tim provided actionable recommendations for creating more meaningful customer and employee experiences. He urged us to sharpen our power of curation, to care about the world and others in it, and to use curation as a filter that helps us differentiate between a productive life and one that’s meaningful and worth living.

10. Remember: Focusing on what YOU can do is much more important than what others have done

 
 

Closing out the day, Afonso Malo Franco rallied us against the Instagramification of our industry. He highlighted the dangers of comparing ourselves to “the best companies” and “the right way of doing things.” This is especially problematic when it prevents us from taking any action at all because we fear we’ll never measure up.

He shared some fascinating highlights from his interviews with dozens of CPOs, including the fact that a CPO’s assessment of their own team’s dysfunction seems to have little to do with their market valuation.

He reminded us that small, deliberate actions matter so much more than chasing someone else’s highlight reel and shared a few anecdotes to help us consider how we could transform our own mindsets. It was the perfect note to close out 2025 Product at Heart, offering us some optimism and actionable ideas for how to be the change we wish to see in our teams, our companies, and our world.

Bonus: Attendees and speakers share their stories and highlights

One of the things that makes Product at Heart so special is the enthusiasm and excitement of everyone who’s involved. We love getting a glimpse into what the speakers and attendees experienced, so here’s a little highlight reel of their thoughts and takeaways.

  • “This is such a well designed and well run conference, for both attendees and speakers. I saw so many friends from all over the world, and made many new ones. A sincere thanks and congrats to everyone involved in producing this experience, and to all who made it special by participating.” – Marty Cagan

  • “The event was truly outstanding! It'll take a few days to process all the inspiration, catch up with the new friends I made at the conference, and reconnect with those I couldn't talk to while they were in town.” – Tobias Freudenreich

  • “It’s been decided. Product at Heart conference is one of the best ones in the EU for product peeps. Solid line up, engaged audience, and great space for making connections.” Elena Verna

  • “Speaking in front of a few hundred people about the topic I’m most passionate about (spoiler: it’s Product Management)? Total thrill!

The best part: getting the chance to join the best product conference I personally ever experienced, curated and organized by two amazing humans Arne Kittler and Petra Wille and their Team ❣️

Still haven’t been? No more excuses! Product at Heart returns June 2026 in Hamburg – and trust me, you don’t want to miss it!” – Stephanie Leue

I talked about moving from lagging metrics to leading decisions and how B2B product teams can use qualitative data to actually get into the lead.

Loved being up there and sharing my learnings, but I’m also very happy to now just relax and enjoy the next talks especially looking forward to Afonso Malo Franco keynote.” – Julia Bastian

  • “I came to Hamburg for the Live German Hip Hop, but I found the Product at Heart community.

It felt profoundly humbling, humane and especially intimate. I got to know other product leaders like Afonso Malo Franco, Henrik Kniberg, Julia Bastian, Zamina Ahmad and many others in cozy Hamburg. For the sense of community alone, it was worth speaking at Product at Heart.

Thank you to Arne Kittler, Petra Wille, Mirja Bester and the entire Product at Heart team for organizing a unique, intimate and Hamburg-rooted event.

I will definitely come back.” – Jonathan Evens

  • “Just wrapped up an incredible two days at Product at Heart in Hamburg with the team – huge thanks to the organisers Petra Wille Arne Kittler for creating such a thoughtful, energising event. It was one of the most insight-dense and human product gatherings I’ve attended in a while.” – Andrew Quan

  • “Great vibes at Product at Heart conference in Hamburg today… Thanks again to the community for the connections, inspiration, and deep reflections. Until next time, Hamburg!“ – Sören Weber

  • “Just returned from Product at Heart in Hamburg – and I dedicated my day to the AI & Data Track.

I came in curious, I left inspired.

What stood out most was how grounded, honest and practical many of the talks were – no fluff, just real insights for those building the next generation of products.” – Volkan Bulut

  • “On my way back from Product at Heart for the second year in a row - and once again, it didn't disappoint. The amazing organizers made it very difficult to choose between all the awesome tracks…but never difficult to choose the conference itself!

Grateful for all the inspiration, reminders, and new learnings. Looking forward to next year!” – Ivelina Todorova

  • “This year at Product at Heart my focus was set to “Case Studies in Product Transformation” and “Data-Driven Product Decisions” Tracks.

Great presentations from Kirstine Ploug Sørensen, Henrik Kniberg, Marty Cagan, Andrey Vinitsky, Marc Roulet, Gabrielle Bufrem (and other awesome speakers) resulted in many pages of notes, new ideas and insights.” – Adam Banasiewicz

- workshopping with Marty: A truly insightful session on transforming organisations & moving to the product operating model - so many valuable takeaways that I’m eager to put into practice 🚀

- connecting with the product coaches community, seeing what "good" truly looks like was both inspiring and humbling, Marcus, Elias, Ronnie 🙌

- meeting incredible new people - Zamina, Andrew, Ilya, Imran, Juan, Michael, thank you for the wonderful conversations!

A huge thank you to Petra and Arne for putting together another fantastic event ♥” – Rishigesh Murugesh

  • “What an event! My mind is buzzing from Product at Heart 2025 in Hamburg! Two full days of product conversations, big ideas and electrifying talks. I see it as a privilege.

Awesome and humbling to see so many Product minds getting together and exchanging stories, struggles, and strategies that make this craft so endlessly fascinating.” – Radu Gavrila

  • “All the talks today were outstanding. But this one [Gabrielle Bufrem and Anuar Chapur’s case study]  moved me deeply.

It's always easy to share a success story — it's not that easy to admit all the failures along the way.

But what only a few will truly understand are the insecurities on that path: the pain, the emotions, the self-doubt caused by the nay-sayers — and the weight of the responsibility on top of it all.” – Sascha Egger

  • “One key takeaway that really resonated with me is: Without data, you only have an opinion. This reminder emphasizes how crucial it is to base our decisions on solid data rather than just assumptions. Communicating real data insights is key.

Looking forward to continuing this Journey. 🚀” – Juliane Fritz

  • “Even though I don’t come from a traditional product management background, I’ve already taken away valuable insights—and once again, I’m reminded that it’s all about people when it comes to turning visions into successful realities.

It’s fantastic to have such a remarkable conference here in Hamburg.” – Sascha Jacobi

Can’t wait to meet old friends and connect with new ones!

Would love to dive into topics like contextual product leadership , marketplace dynamics and AI strategy and I’m always down for some really hands on product therapy😉 ping me here and we’ll chat in the breaks.

Can’t wait to experience what you have been cooking up this year Petra Wille and Arne Kittler 🤩” – Emmi Meurling

A few final thoughts to share

We’d also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all the sponsors who made this event possible: Pendo, airfocus by Lucid, Fork, Strong Product People, and Hey Clarity.

Of course, this post only scratches the surface of all the inspiring content from Product at Heart 2025. If you’d like to dig into any of these topics in more detail (and we highly encourage you to do so!), we’ll be sharing more in-depth recaps of each session along with video recordings on our blog and in the video archive in the coming months. Watch this space or follow us on social media for more updates!

And one last thing before you go—we’re thrilled to announce we’ll be doing it all again, back in Hamburg from June 24–26, 2026. We’ll be sharing more updates once tickets go on sale.

Melissa Suzuno
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