Season 2 Episode #13: What happens when your mother’s career advice, “Have you tried computers?”, leads to a decade-long journey through foodtech and fintech? Boban Ljubinoski, Senior Product Manager at Klarna, shares how he accidentally fell into tech and what he's learned navigating one of the most rapidly changing roles in the industry.

We explore what the post-COVID AI boom did to team structures, why most companies get AI strategy completely wrong, and where shopping is headed with agentic commerce. Boban also gets into the tough calls between shipping fast and shipping right, and why the answer almost always starts with fixing what's already broken.

The "accidental" path to product excellence

How Boban's unplanned entry through customer support built a unique foundation for product empathy
Why product management is more than ticket writing: it's about strategy and quantifying impact
True excellence requires solving problems relentlessly, even outside your direct scope
Effective PMs must learn the entire business ecosystem from accounting to operations

Redefining PM skills for the “vibe-coding” era

How traditional soft skills are now supplemented by hard skills like running software locally
How post-COVID layoffs and the 2022 AI boom flattened organizations and forced PMs to be hands-on with prototypes and UI
Why AI expedites the early discovery phase through rapid vibe-coding experimentation
Modern workflows follow the 90/10 rule: AI handles baseline work, humans solve the final 10%

Corporate AI strategy and agentic commerce

Preparing for the shift to AI agents that browse and shop on behalf of users within 12-18 months
How PM design focus shifts from static pages to complex agent-API interactions
Why implementing AI in silos without a centralized strategy is the biggest corporate mistake
Why restructuring data schemas from the bottom up is non-negotiable for quality AI output

Balancing speed, quality, and human mentorship

How great PMs use data and credibility to push back against pressure to ship low-quality features
Why fixing broken existing features is almost always more valuable than building new ones
Key differences between American and European product cultures - from risk tolerance to buy-vs-build decisions
Why human mentorship remains critical for training next-generation product leaders despite AI advances

And Much More

Boban Ljubinoski

Senior Product Manager at Klarna

Boban Ljubinoski is a Senior Product Manager at Klarna with over a decade of experience spanning foodtech and fintech. Starting from an accidental entry into tech through customer support and tech support, Boban has moved through the full spectrum of product management, from internal tooling and operations to consumer-facing fintech products at companies such as Slice and Klarna. His current work centers on bridging the gap between strategy and hands-on execution, advocating for product managers to embrace modern AI-driven development tools and master the entire business ecosystem they operate in.

Josh William Burmistre-Griffiths

Digital Marketing and Paid Ad Specialist

Josh William Burmistre-Griffiths works at TestDevLab, focusing on digital marketing and paid advertising across multiple platforms. His past experience working at agencies and unicorn startups has equipped Josh with the expertise to bring valuable digital marketing insights to Tech Effect.

#32 Boban Ljubinoski (Klarna): The "Vibe-Coding" Revolution & The New Technical Skills for PMs

Agenda:

Guest speakers:

Host: