Shikha Kapoor’s journey to Silicon Valley began in a small town in India, where she had only limited access to technology. She didn’t have access to the internet – or even to a computer. Now she’s a trailblazer in AI product management at Meta. Shikha credits a passion for learning, staying hungry, and maintaining a healthy curiosity as pillars in “a student mindset” that has served as her North star. Shikha currently serves as Meta’s Head of Product, Gen AI for Recommendations. Before then, she was a Product Leader AI for Consumer Productivity, at Google Assistant.

In this episode of Product Momentum, she joins hosts Sean Flaherty and Sean Murray to discuss how she became a leading light in the rapidly evolving field of AI – specifically, embracing firsthand the connection between business needs and technology solutions and using that mindset to break from convention to foster creativity and innovation.

“Early in my career, I always looked for a role that connected the dots from business problems to technology solutions,” Shikha says. “And when I came across product management, it was clear to me that PMs are at the intersection of engineering, business, and design. They get to participate from end to end in solving user needs, anticipating market trends, and building the solutions we must deploy to get there.”

Now, as Meta’s Head of Product, Gen AI for Recommendations, Shikha Kapoor applies this product management mindset to balance long-term vision with agile execution. Her team often works in six-month planning cycles to develop big-picture AI-driven tools and then works backward from that distant horizon to maintain nimble and adaptable to emerging technologies and market shifts.

Shikha highlights emerging trends in AI across various industries, such as legal and healthcare. She points out the potential for automation to drive dramatic increases in productivity and business value. As AI continues to disrupt traditional workflows, she says, product managers must remain open-minded and proactive in adapting to these changes.

Catch the entire conversation with Shikha Kapoor to gain insights into the strategies she employs to stay ahead of the AI curve, including the importance of grounding your assumptions and embracing a culture of experimentation. Shikha also shares valuable advice for new and seasoned product managers alike on how to leverage AI to enhance user experiences and drive innovation.

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Paul Gebel [00:00:19] Hey Everyone. And welcome back to Product Momentum, a community of product people and a marketplace of ideas where leaders and learners come together to shape our way ahead. My name is Paul Gebel, and together with my co-host Sean Flaherty and the rest of our amazing team, we record conversations with thought leaders in product, UX, security and beyond. That will help you shape the lives of your users through software. Check us out on all your favorite listening platforms, but for those who prefer the video experience, you can find all our latest episodes on the Product Momentum YouTube channel.

Sean Flaherty [00:00:50] Sean, how are you doing this morning?

Sean Murray [00:00:52] I’m doing awesome today. Just had that great conversation, really pumped to share it with our listeners.

Sean Flaherty [00:00:56] Yeah, Shikha Kapoor – what a rock star in our industry. Product Leader at Meta. She’s been doing AI for, before we were even really talking about building into our product. For a very long time.

Sean Murray [00:01:06] Yes, she’s living the day to day, and she knows what’s coming up next and had a lot of cool things to talk about.

Sean Flaherty [00:01:12] Yeah, I love how she shared her story with us and talked about how AI is changing the product landscape and what to look out for in the next year and just really, really great conversation.

Sean Murray [00:01:23] Yeah if anything just great journey, like unbelievable what’s possible today right?

Sean Flaherty [00:01:27] Absolutely. Well, let’s get after it.

Sean Murray [00:01:29] Yeah, let’s do it. Today, we’re joined by Shikha Kapoor, an AI product leader and innovator.  At Meta, she got to drive strategy for cutting edge AI investments, personalizing content for billions of users on Instagram and Facebook. Previously, she led teams at Google launching key products for their AI assistant. Recognized as a trailblazer in AI, Shikha has consistently developed innovative products across AI, productivity, media and e-commerce. Shikha is also a seasoned speaker that is passionate about innovation and entrepreneurship. We’re so excited to have you today. We’re really excited to talk with you just about your experience and what our listeners can learn from you today. We really wanted to start out with kind of just an idea of how does somebody get to the point from starting their career to becoming a trailblazer in AI?

Shikha Kapoor [00:02:17] Yeah, I’m first of all, super excited to be here and happy to talk a little bit about my career journey as well. So, I grew up in a very small town in India. And growing up, I had never used a computer. Forget about AI, it was clearly not a big buzzword back then, but I was passionate about learning. And I think that that whole idea of like just staying hungry, staying curious is a principle that has guided me throughout my life, and especially in a space like AI which is changing so dynamically, so rapidly. You always need to have that student mindset, what I like to call it. So, I was really curious, really hungry, and I wanted to learn as much as possible about science and maths. And I think I wanted to go to the best school possible as college to learn those things.

I lived in a very, very small town, so I didn’t have access to a lot of education resources. I also didn’t have access to internet. I used to go to this primary school and I remember my teacher talking one day I was in seventh grade saying that, Hey, there are these colleges called the Indian Institute of Technology, which have the best learning in India around engineering, math, science and technology. And then I came back home and told my parents that that is where I’m going to study. I didn’t even know where that college was or what it took to get there, but that became my dream from that day because the underlying motivation was to learn and grow. So I worked super hard, got into that college, and I ended up taking computer science without knowing what computer science was. But from there, I think my journey began. I was lucky enough to learn from some of the best and brightest minds, not just in India, but in the world. And then I started my career as a software engineer, and I worked for a couple of years as an engineer.

And then I realized that I really what I really wanted to do was to work in cutting edge technologies in Silicon Valley, number one. And number two, I really want to tie the dots from business problems to technology solutions. And while talking to people, I came across this field called Product Management where, like the PMs are at the intersection of engineering, business and design and kind of thinks end to end about user needs and where the market is going and what type of solutions do we need to deploy to get there. So that role really fascinated me and aligned with what I was trying to do and where I wanted to be. So, I came to the U.S. I did an MBA in Chicago, and after that, like I was very clear throughout that I wanted to switch to product management because that role aligned more with my interests versus engineering. So, I interned as a product manager at Google, and from there my career as product management manager in the Valley started. So over time I built products at Google and now at Meta, doing what I do right now.

Sean Flaherty [00:05:11] Even more exciting in your career, all the experience you’ve had with AI, because we know that’s way more than a buzzword anymore. It’s such an important part of our job as product leaders to be thinking about how it’s impacting the way in which we build products, the way in which we think about products, and the tools themselves, how we incorporate these technologies into the tools. I’d love to hear about your journey specifically in that space as well.

Shikha Kapoor [00:05:34] Yeah. So, I think one is like, like I said that I have a background in computer science and even as a student and later on as an engineer, AI was being like, I was working on AI just wasn’t the coolest thing to be doing around. It was a nascent field at the time. And then I think when I came to Google as a PM, I think I was really excited. And again, my because I had been an entrepreneur in the past, my passion laid in working on building 0 to 1 entrepreneurial deep tech products. At the time at Google, I think there were initiatives happening AR/VR and then AI around voice assistants, and then there were other bunch of initiatives going on as well. But I ended up working on A.I. specifically around voice assistants, because that is the area that I was most excited about, and I could see how that would transform the user experience of people, how that could kind of really bring in new use cases to the market that didn’t exist at the time. For example, like how do you coordinate across your car and your phone and your home to drive end to end user journeys? So, it was more I was driven by curiosity to kind of get that initial foot in the door. And once I got that foot in the door is when I kind of really started going deep in that space. And I worked with my teams to build a lot of cutting-edge innovations, industry first innovations, around building those AI voice assistants to the market. How should we think about their privacy? How should we think about their user experience? Which kind of just one step led to another. And I kept going deep in that space. But innately it was driven by curiosity and driven by like this passion of bringing next generation innovations to the market in a way that solve real people problems.

Sean Murray [00:07:22] I think it’s so interesting. This is like, this is your day to day. So like, can you walk us through like a day to day and of your life as a product leader working on cutting edge AI? Like how do you stay ahead in such a rapidly evolving field?

Shikha Kapoor [00:07:35] Yeah. And I think that’s part of that’s part of the thrill or excitement, is that this field is evolving so rapidly and there’s always something to catch up on. So I think my day to day varies greatly by the week as well as by quarters. Like at Meta, for example, we do what we call as we plan for like the next six months. And then we kind of drive like longer term vision and strategy for an area like AI, and we work backwards from there on. Okay, this is where we want to be by 2026 or 2027, then working backwards from there. Where do we need to be for the next six months? So, I think at those times of the year I’m involved a lot in my with my teams, on like planning for the next six months. What should we build, What milestones should we drive, how do we validate those hypotheses? And then like what success measures do we drive, right. And then there are other phases of my time, where I am focused more on super long-term vision. Like, here’s where the industry is going, here’s where the trends are going. Here’s where our differentiators lie as a company and here’s where our users, here’s where our users see gaps in the current experience based on what user research is telling us. So how do you marry what the users want and what do you have as a as a company, as a product, as your differentiating assets, based on your knowledge on where the market is going to kind of devise the next stage of your vision or the next product offering you are trying to build. So that’s more of like a long-term vision brainstorming mode that I engage with my teams.

Sean Murray [00:09:17] How does six-month planning work out on something that’s moving so fast. Like what are the biggest disruptors that you’re seeing in these six-month cycles?

Shikha Kapoor [00:09:25] Yeah. So, I think basically the idea here is to be as organized as well as nimble as possible. So, I think basically it’s really about I think in a space like this, it’s more important to start from first principles and to have clear hypotheses that we are applying to validate and not get too attached to the specific solution because the technology’s evolving so fast that the solution will be changing before you know it. So I think you need to have some solution to work with, but then you also have to be open to that. It can get disrupted very quickly. So, you have to kind of figure out what is the right invariant. That is not going to change as the underlying technology changes. For example, here’s the specific user problem we are solving and here’s how we will know. Here’s how we will measure that, that when that problem is solved, like that certain metric needs to go up. Our users need to tell us and some user research that now their experience has gotten better. Those things are independent of the underlying technology changing, right? So, you have to have an odd style like that. And then within that, then you have to have a basket of potential CPI-based solutions that can drive you to that end outcome. And you have to be very flexible about those solutions changing as the technology rolls out, as you learn more, as you deploy those solutions.

Sean Flaherty [00:10:45] What does that mean for you in your day to day? What does it mean to stay curious and to stay open minded?

Shikha Kapoor [00:10:51] That’s a good question. I think that one is really acknowledging, and I think I have to remind myself every day that what we are building and what we are seeing right now as a collective, like as a community of technologists as well as myself personally, is really just the tip of the iceberg. You know, like whatever we thought was the best groundbreaking, earth shattering next big thing 4 or 5 years ago is extremely mundane and almost definitely outdated today. Right. Or what we thought would be extremely hard to build in, like any sort of a practical or acceptable ROI-acceptable fashion a few years ago is like run of the mill today and super easy to do. So I think like constantly grounding yourself in the assumptions you are making for any assertion you are making, right?

Like for example, if I say that something will take six months to build or something has a certain level of complexity by doing something is, you know, has is hard in a certain way. There are underlying assumptions behind what I am saying and constantly being aware of them and questioning them that 2 or 3 months or six months down the line. Do those assumptions still hold true? Or have there been new innovations or has the market shifted in a way that we need to question those assumptions? That’s very, very important. I think I’m lucky enough that I work at a place like Meta where, like, I work with some of the best and brightest AI researchers in the world. So that definitely helps me stay both humble as well as curious, because I think I’m really surrounded by people who are super smart, super knowledgeable and constantly in my everyday interactions, I’m learning from them all the time. But I think like really grounding myself and my team on constantly what are our assumptions here? And do all those assumptions still hold true with everything that’s happening in the industry. Is this like key to staying curious.

Sean Murray [00:12:57] You’ve spoken about this kind of philosophy around like the importance of owning what makes you unique. How did you discover this way of thinking and working, and what are some examples that you can provide us of where this has been really important?

Shikha Kapoor [00:13:10] Yeah. So, I think I was lucky enough. So, my role model is my one of my role models is my grandmom, at the time, you know, when she was young and she was a student and she was growing up in an environment where, for example, girls were not even allowed to go to college. She came to India as a refugee, and she set up one of the earliest primary schools in my town. And then she had to go door to door to tell people to send their kids to school. And like that school became later one of the most successful schools in the city. And like over her lifetime, she graduated, she’s educated 70 to 80,000 students and changed their lives. I was around somebody who lived a very unconventional life. I’m sure when she was going through those things as a young person, I wasn’t around. But I’ve heard stories, and I can also guess that she would have had a lot of pushback when she was trying to do a lot of things that were not the norm of the society around at that time. But she went ahead and did those anyway because she believed those were the right things to do. And I think those were kind of the values that I grew up with as well. And I’ve kind of followed them through both in my personal as well as professional choices.

Like, for example, like I said, I started my career as an engineer, but then very quickly knew that my strengths lied in something a little bit broader and I didn’t really have a name to give to that, and I wasn’t really aware that project management was a thing. But I did not just give up on it. Like I wasn’t like, well, I don’t know how to change this thing. So let me just keep doing this thing that I’m not that I don’t think my biggest strengths or passions lie with. I kind of I chased down that curiosity, but I talked to people. I started figuring out what else is out there. And then slowly I kind of bumped into people who were telling me about, Hey, there’s this thing called product management. And maybe that’s more what’s more aligned with where you want to be and where you want to go. And like, I followed that path, right? So, I think it’s really about many of us have those moments when you feel that you’re trying to do something that is not the norm, that is not what everybody else around you is doing. It’s really important to not give up on your instinct and your belief and your intuition. And that doesn’t mean you will always be right, but I think you owe it to yourself to at least give it a fair like…how do I say… investigation? It doesn’t mean you go and try every single idea that you have, and you fail at all of those things. I think that also doesn’t work. But at least you entertain everything you strongly believe in and you try to do your honest homework around it and honest investigation around it and like believe in yourself. Not much to kind of chase that. And then some of those things you will end up giving up at a very early stage. Some of those things you’ll dig in a little deeper and you may fail and then you may have to pivot. It’s kind of very similar to what we do at work as well. Like I was telling you, we built all these bunch of AI solutions and things are changing so quickly. Some things fail quickly, some things we spend a lot of time on and they still fail and some things really succeed. But I think it’s important to not give up on those convictions. And that’s like the spirit of innovation.

Sean Flaherty [00:16:22] Yeah, your grandmother sounds like an incredible human being and sounds like a lot of that rubbed off on you. Yeah.

Shikha Kapoor [00:16:28] Yeah, absolutely. And I think I’m very proud that I’m her granddaughter.

Sean Flaherty [00:16:34] I heard you say something along the lines of convention doesn’t breed innovation, but it doesn’t bring creativity. If you follow the same path that everybody else followed and you do the same things everyone else is doing, that doesn’t leave a whole lot of space for creativity. And in our role in this job as a product leader, we’re responsible for producing something new and different in the world, something that did not exist yesterday. And we are constantly reinventing what it is we’re doing and trying to learn what the market needs and convention isn’t going to get us there. There are certain things that are that are learned. I think it was Einstein that said it’s creativity. It’s what we know is finite. But what’s what creativity does is it encircles the world and it’s what gives us a better possible future. And that’s our job, right, is to tap into that creativity and make a shake up the world a little bit, make a change where there wasn’t — make something better than there than there was before. For sure.

Shikha Kapoor [00:17:31] Yeah, absolutely.

Sean Flaherty [00:17:32] I also heard you say that to stay ahead, you have to plan ahead. So, I saw a poster somewhere about dreaming in years and planning and executing in weeks and planning and….planning in weeks and executing in days. But you have to, you have to look out and look out broader at the bigger picture. If you’re going to get if you’re going to head somewhere productive and valuable in the world. And there’s this balance that we need to achieve between innovation and execution that’s sometimes hard in this role. I think that’s one of the hardest things we do in this role. What are your thoughts on that?

Shikha Kapoor [00:18:03] Yeah, it’s a good question. I think that, again, like I said, that the type of spaces that I work on very, very 0 to 1, very, very fast moving. It’s more of, like I said, you have to have a long-term vision and then you have to break it down into manageable phases or steps towards the vision. Now, will you get it right, not precisely. The directions will change based on how the technology is evolving as well as what you learn as data points along the way on your earlier phases.

But I think it is still important to have that, to constantly then refresh it and then to bring everybody on the same page when you kind of refresh it, right. So, for example, let’s say you have a three year vision and then you break it down into the longer the time frame, you can be more high level, like on the third year at a high level, that’s what we are going to do. Then step back on the second year. This is what we’re going to do, then step back. Then this year, this is where you have to be far more detailed because that’s what’s guiding what your teams and your engineers are working on every single day. This like the next six months, this is what we’ll do. And based on these results of these tests, we are going to run those six months after that is what that would look like. So, it’s kind of like almost like a flow chart. So, it’s like the six months after the current six months are dependent on what you learn in the current six months, right? Like some things may pan out, some things may not pan out. The market itself may change and you may have to pivot some of the directions.

So, at any point of time, like I think we at least for the next few months, it’s very important to have a very detailed and very granular view of what your team is doing. What hypotheses is your team testing? What does success on testing those hypotheses look like? What will change in terms of user experience on any other metrics or whatever success measures you may be tracking? And what does failure mean? It doesn’t mean all those hypotheses should pan out, but if something fails, then what are you going to do? Do you shut down that part of the project? Do you pivot it to something else? So, kind of having that ongoing view and constantly tying it to that period or whatever North star that you have, hopefully that north star doesn’t change. But as you are learning these things, you are changing things around in your execution and then you’re constantly bringing your team along on how does that new view, based on what we have learned, still align towards North star?

Sean Murray [00:20:32] I want to dive a little bit more into like what’s coming, right? So with your experience in companies like Google and Meta, you’re seeing A.I. being applied in project management or product management in real time. What are some trends that we should expect to see in 2025, and how can our listeners prepare for what’s next?

Shikha Kapoor [00:20:49] I think things are changing very quickly. I’m very excited about it. Taking a step outside my day-to-day work in general broadly, I think AI is disrupting every industry and I am actually personally really excited about how much AI is disrupting some of the…how do I say it, more traditional industries. Like for example, recently I was working with a lawyer on something and they were telling me how much they are using generative AI tools in some of their day to day work and like, you know, how do they ensure that that like those tools still stay privacy compliant and things like that? It was really heartening for me to see for some of these industries around, like, for example, medicine or legal or, you know, sales or retail.

There’s a lot of things that happen right now that are that are very intensive manual work. Right? And I think that there is immense headroom there for huge disruption. And it’s been super heartening to see in broadly like us, like we are finally at a point where we can massively disrupt some of those workflows and generally help people and professionals be far more productive and far more effective than they’ve ever been. So I’m really excited about that. And I think as part of Meta, for example some open-source work we are doing is those are the type of things that I’m very excited about that will enable this broader innovation in the industry as well.

Sean Flaherty [00:22:17] Outstanding. So, from someone at the cutting edge of all this wild and amazing technology, what are you learning? What are you reading these days? If you could recommend a book to our audience, what would it be?

Shikha Kapoor [00:22:31] Well, I think in terms of work, I read a bunch of papers related to my work and like daily as I work on. I’ll share offline, I think one of the technologies my or my team works on recently published a paper as well. So, I’ll share it offline. If your readers are interested in reading that more broadly, I think I really like reading nonfiction and like going back to the curiosity thread. I like to read about a bunch of things that are totally unrelated to my work because I think overall you are one person and all of those threads kind of add up to make you who you are and make you how you think. So, I’m recently reading Outlive and I’ve heard amazing things about that book, and that book talks about what other aspects of our personal health and wellbeing that we should think about so that we don’t just have a long life, we have a long, fit life where you are not just extending your lifespan, but you are also extending your health span. And those are some of the areas I’m very interested in in general and like I’m really fascinated by. So, I’m really excited about that book that I’m reading these days.

Sean Flaherty [00:23:38] Yeah, that’s a great recommendation. I do think there’s a tremendous amount of merit in making sure you keep your brain sharp and mixing in some fun, some fiction and things like that so that you don’t not to, you know, unilaterally focused on one thing. It’s good for the brain. So, if I were to ask you to define innovation. How would you do that?

Shikha Kapoor [00:24:00] Well, I think I read an idiom many, many years ago where it was like, necessity is the mother of invention. I still kind of stand by it. I think that the right type of innovation is something that solves a real user problem.

Sean Flaherty [00:24:16] I love that. I love that. Excellent. Well, thank you so much. Shikha, this is a great interview. This is a good time.

Shikha Kapoor [00:24:24] Yeah. Thank you. Super. Like this was awesome. And thanks for taking the time to chat.

Sean Flaherty [00:24:29] Yeah, our audience is going to enjoy it. Appreciate you.

Sean Murray [00:24:32] Yeah. Thank you so much for your time today.

Shikha Kapoor [00:24:34] Thanks.

Sean Flaherty [00:24:35] All right.

Paul Gebel [00:24:38] Well, that’s it for today. In line with our goals of transparency and listening. We really want to hear from you. Sean and I are committed to reading every piece of feedback that we get. So please leave a comment or rating wherever you’re listening to this podcast. Not only does it help us continue to improve, but it also helps the show climb up the rankings so that we can help other listeners move, touch and inspire the world, just like you’re doing. Thanks, everyone. We’ll see you next episode.