Breaking through the Instagramification of product. My cover of the closing keynote at Product at Heart 2025
Closing a conference is no small task. At Product at Heart 2025, Afonso Malo did it with a keynote that was both ambitious and grounded — and I had the honor of covering it.
His talk challenged us to reflect on the “Instagramification” of product work: the gap between polished success stories we see online and on stage, and the messy, political, contextual realities inside companies.
A key takeaway? Even the “best” companies don’t feel like they’re doing their best. Behind the spotlight, they deal with the same stakeholder pressures, frustrations, and compromises as the rest of us.
Chasing someone else’s blueprint often leads nowhere.
Instead, Afonso offered a refreshing approach:
Shift your lenses → move from frustration to optimism, assume good intent.
Abandon gap thinking → stop aiming for overnight revolutions, focus on small consistent improvements.
Focus on what you can control → small actions compound into lasting impact.
For me, the talk was a reminder that joy, care, and positive impact are superpowers in product leadership. But also that we can’t (and don’t have to) operate at 100% every day. Clarity, ownership, and care start with ourselves first.
👉 The full article with my reflections on the Product at Heart website.
