Microsoft CPO: If you aren’t prototyping with AI, you’re doing it wrong | Aparna Chennapragada
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What is Aparna’s “cheesy” Chrome extension and how does it illustrate AI‑first thinking?
I have a cheesy Chrome extension. Literally, whenever I open a new tab, it just says, how can you use AI to do what you're going to do right now?
How do you see the future of product development being different?
If you're not prototyping and building to see what you want to build, I think you're doing it wrong. It becomes even more important to have that editorial and taste making at the heart of it, because otherwise you just have a Frankenstein product.
There's this acronym that you taught me, NLX. What is that?
Natural language interface, NLX is the new UX. Often I hear product builders say, oh yeah, with AI, like the model eats the products.
How does Aparna define “prompt sets” as the new PRDs and why is AI prototyping essential?
That doesn't mean it's not designed. You and I are having a conversation. It's a podcast. I'll have another conversation at Microsoft and that's a meeting.
What are the three core characteristics of AI agents – autonomy, complexity, and natural interaction?
Conversations also have grammars, they have structures, they have UI elements. They're invisible. What are the new principles, new constructs in natural language as an interface?
I just saw that Cursor hit 300 million ARR in two years. Interestingly, you guys were very well positioned to do really well in this AI coding tool space. You guys said Copilot, the first tool in the world at this stuff. So ahead of everyone, what happened? I would say... Today, my guest is Aparna Shanapragada. Aparna is Chief Product Officer at Microsoft, where she oversees AI product strategy for their productivity tools and their work on agents.
Why is NLX (natural language experience) considered the new UX for AI products?
Previously, she was Chief Product Officer at Robinhood, Vice President at Google, where she worked on Google Lens, Search, Shopping, Augmented Reality, AI Assistant, and a lot more. She was also a longtime engineering leader at Akamai and on the board of eBay and Capital One. In our conversation, we chat about how working in B2B is like being Jean-Claude Van Damme doing the splits across two moving trucks, how she's operationalizing her team living in the future so that they're building towards where things are going, why people still need to learn to code, why the PM role isn't going anywhere, why NLX is the new UX, and so much more. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube.
Also, if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of a bunch of products, including Linear, Superhuman, Notion, Perplexity, and Granola. Check it out at lenny'snewsletter.com and click bundle. With that, I bring you Aparna Shanapragada. This episode is brought to you by EPO. EPO is a next-generation A-B testing and feature management platform built by alums of Airbnb and Snowflake for modern growth teams. Companies like Twitch, Miro, ClickUp, and DraftKings rely on EPO to power their experiments. Experimentation is increasingly essential for driving growth and for understanding the performance of new features. And EPO helps you increase experimentation velocity while unlocking rigorous, deep analysis in a way that no other commercial tool does.
When I was at Airbnb, one of the things that I loved most was our experimentation platform, where I could set up experiments easily, troubleshoot issues, and analyze performance all on my own. EPO does all that and more, with advanced statistical methods that can help you shave weeks off experiment time, an accessible UI for diving deeper into performance, and out-of-the-box reporting that helps you avoid annoying, prolonged analytic cycles. EPO also makes it easy for you to share experiment insights with your team, sparking new ideas for the A-B testing flywheel. EPO powers experimentation across every use case, including product, growth, machine learning, monetization, and email marketing. Check out EPO at getepo.com slash lenny and 10x your experiment velocity.
That's geteppo.com slash lenny. This episode is brought to you by Pragmatic Institute, the trusted leader in product expertise. Pragmatic Institute helps product professionals turn ideas into impact through proven courses, workshops, and certifications designed for real world success. For over 30 years, they've trained more than 250,000 product leaders at companies like Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce, equipping them with practical strategies to build and scale market winning products.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Aparna’s “cheesy” Chrome extension and how does it illustrate AI‑first thinking?
0:00–0:34
2
How does Aparna define “prompt sets” as the new PRDs and why is AI prototyping essential?
0:34–0:42
3
What are the three core characteristics of AI agents – autonomy, complexity, and natural interaction?
0:42–1:17
4
Why is NLX (natural language experience) considered the new UX for AI products?
1:17–5:32
5
How does Microsoft’s Frontier program operationalize “living one year in the future” for AI product development?
5:32–7:16
6
What are the key differences between product building at Microsoft (enterprise) versus consumer tech companies?
7:16–11:39
7
How do Satya Nadella’s and Sundar Pichai’s leadership styles influence AI strategy and product innovation?
11:39–16:56
8
What counter‑intuitive lessons does Aparna share about product building, PM roles, and scaling AI‑driven ideas?
16:56–1:01:08
Speakers
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