# This CPO regrets that product management exists | Tom Verrilli (CPO of Whatnot)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/lenny-s-podcast/this-cpo-regrets-that-product-management-exists-tom-verrilli-cpo-of-whatnot
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/lenny-s-podcast/this-cpo-regrets-that-product-management-exists-tom-verrilli-cpo-of-whatnot.md
Podcast: [Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth](https://stenobird.com/podcast/lenny-s-podcast)
Published: 2026-08-02T12:32:02+00:00
Episode link: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/this-cpo-regrets-that-product-management
Audio file: https://pscrb.fm/rss/p/api.substack.com/feed/podcast/209025231/702fecd1ae63276633753e2cc9356073.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/lenny-s-podcast/episodes/this-cpo-regrets-that-product-management-exists-tom-verrilli-cpo-of-whatnot
Duration seconds: 5098

## Resource

Tom Verrilli is the chief product officer at Whatnot, a live shopping platform that’s become the fastest-growing U.S. marketplace business in history, with over $8 billion in GMV. Before joining Whatnot, Tom was CPO at Twitch and director of product growth at Twitter (during one of the most turbulent periods in the company’s history). In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 1. Why Whatnot’s product team was founded on the premise “we regret that product management exists” 2. How AI is reshaping the PM role 3. What Tom looks for when hiring PMs 4. The shift toward senior ICs doing the work 5. How AI has transformed data science at Whatnot 6. Tom’s “play the accordion” mental model 7. Why “hire great people and get out of their way” fails 8. His biggest lessons from his time at Twitter — Brought to you by: WorkOS —Make your app enterprise-ready, with SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more Mercury —Radically different banking, now with Command — Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/this-cpo-regrets-that-product-management — Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0 — Where to find Tom Verrilli: • X: https://x.com/tdrobbo • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-robertson-042 — Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ — In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Introduction (02:40) “We regret that product management exists”: what it means and why (08:30) When specialization makes sense, and when it doesn’t (15:20) How Whatnot structures its PM org (17:28) What 31,832 PM applications revealed about the function (19:40) How…

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