What happens to the product development process when the lines between who builds, who designs, and who decides start to disappear?
In this special episode of Supra Insider, recorded as part of the Blurring Lines series with Aster AI, Ben Erez sits down with Rishin Banker, VP of Product at Maven, to explore how a 25-person team is rethinking product development in real time. Rishin opens with a concrete shift: Maven went from two to three concurrent projects to five to six, same headcount, smaller pods, more decision-making at the team level. The unlock wasn’t hiring. It was front-loading strategy so more people could move into the build phase at once.
They explore how Maven’s head of design shipped a full marketing page to production end-to-end, why months of foundational design system work made that possible, and where Figma still fits. Rishin also gets into the tensions he’s navigating, unexpected handoffs, competing priorities when people build in silos, and the difference between projects that can live in their own container versus ones that need specialist input from the start.
If you’re a product leader restructuring your team for the current moment, a designer or PM excited about building more but unsure how to navigate the role blurring, or curious how a lean startup is actually operationalizing these changes day to day, this episode is for you.
A special thanks Alex Pavlou and our friends at Aster AI for hosting this session!
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If you’re preparing for PM interviews at Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Stripe, DoorDash, Uber, or Figma… we think you’re going to love Insider Loops. You can read about it in Ben’s LI post, Marc’s LI post or check out the site directly below.
In this episode, we covered the following topics:
(01:05) Intro to the Blurring Lines series and what Maven’s team structure looks like today
(03:17) From 2-3 to 5-6 concurrent projects: how Maven restructured into smaller pods
(05:23) Front-loading strategy to unlock parallel building, why the bottleneck definition is shifting
(07:47) Non-EPD team members becoming builders: the marketing lead vibe-coding a landing page
(09:24) The designer who shipped end-to-end to production, and why that required foundational work first
(12:23) Why good engineering hygiene (clean APIs, design systems) matters even more in the AI era
(17:40) Where Figma still fits, and where clickable prototypes are replacing it
(21:35) How the team replaced standing meetings with live reviews and more frequent huddles
(22:53) CEO office hours replacing the weekly design review, and the Duolingo daily review comparison
(26:00) Change management: what PMs, designers, and engineers are each feeling right now
(27:50) The real tensions: unexpected handoffs and mismatched ownership between silo builders
(33:45) How to manage up and bring your CEO along in the current moment
(34:25) Friday demos: Maven’s favorite meeting of the week and why it’s almost always an AI showcase
(36:47) Closing thoughts: the silo vs. collaboration tension Rishin is still working through
And more!
Links:
Rishin Banker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rishinbanker/
Maven: https://maven.com/
Our episode with Gagan Biyani (CEO of Maven): https://suprainsider.substack.com/p/98-why-mid-career-people-are-doubling?r=486xld
Aster AI: https://www.asterhq.com/
Alex Pavlou (Co-founder, Aster AI): https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexpavlou/
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