Amit Slutzky | Trullion | “I Left Figma and Went Into the Field — It Changed Everything” - Product Builder Podcast episode with Eyal David
00:41:22

Amit Slutzky | Trullion | “I Left Figma and Went Into the Field — It Changed Everything”

Host: · Guest: Amit Slutzky

In this episode

  • In an era where building fast is easy, the edge shifts to understanding the customer — culture, nuance, and what goes unsaid — not just fast execution.
  • Trust (with customers, and especially with internal go-to-market) is what enables real discovery; without it you only hear what you want to hear.
  • One 'American' isn't the same as another: New York, San Francisco, Kansas and Tennessee open up differently — the right small talk (sports, food) builds a shared language.
  • AI shortens the path from idea to mockup to validation and lets you close loops with customers fast — but it doesn't replace deep understanding of the problem.
  • As the pace rises, the challenge is collaboration: bring engineers and designers into customer conversations early to keep alignment and empower them.

Listen to this episode

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Episode Description

Amit Slutzky, Director of Product at Trullion, on one of the most important muscles for product people: understanding what's really going on with the customer — even when they don't say it directly. During his role he relocated to the U.S. and moved from a classic product role to one very close to customers and go-to-market, which changed how he thinks about discovery, trust, culture, sales and development speed. An episode about what happens when building gets faster — but understanding the problem still demands patience, listening, a shared language and trust.

Chapters

  1. 00:02 · Meeting Amit and his product background
  2. 01:30 · What Trullion does and who it sells to
  3. 03:45 · Moving to the U.S. and the role close to customers
  4. 06:03 · Why culture and trust are critical for product people
  5. 09:29 · AI, different customers, and what really interests them
  6. 13:02 · Differences in conversations: New York, Tennessee and others
  7. 14:41 · Practicing cultural understanding day to day
  8. 17:11 · How the Sales Engineer experience changed product work
  9. 19:37 · The customer session that revealed a deep product problem
  10. 22:44 · How the right small talk opens real discovery
  11. 24:41 · How Amit and Trullion use AI in product work
  12. 27:09 · Analyzing customer and sales calls with AI
  13. 28:47 · How trust with go-to-market brings product into sales calls
  14. 30:57 · How the product role changes as validation and building speed up
  15. 32:57 · The challenge: keeping collaboration when everyone moves fast
  16. 34:22 · Connecting engineers earlier to the problem and the customer
  17. 36:37 · High delivery pace, adoption, and what to do when features don't work
  18. 40:30 · Book recommendation: The Qualified Sales Leader
Read the full transcript
Full transcript with speakers and timestamps

Selected quotes

“In the end, as product people, we need to be very connected to the market and build very broad trust with a lot of people.”
— Amit Slutzky
“Being able to build a mockup in 10 or 15 minutes and then talk about it is an ability that shortens processes very, very significantly.”
— Amit Slutzky
“Activate that muscle of gradually understanding who's standing in front of you.”
— Amit Slutzky

Questions & answers

Why do product people need to understand culture, not just users?

According to Amit, working remotely from Israel makes it easy to miss the nuances. Understanding culture — even the right small talk — builds a shared language and trust that enable deeper discovery, conveying vision and rallying stakeholders. One 'American' differs from another: people in New York, San Francisco, Kansas and Tennessee open up in completely different ways.

How do you build trust that leads to real discovery with customers?

With patience: don't open with an agenda but with a shared language (in Amit's case, football), and let the customer open up slowly. He describes a 7–8 hour session with a New York customer where a slow conversation and lunch revealed a widespread product problem hidden behind workarounds — fixing it raised adoption by tens of percent.

How does Trullion use AI inside product work?

In everything: developers work with Cursor and Claude Code; Amit uses vibe coding to build a mockup in ten minutes and talk about it, and Gemini for writing and brainstorming. He also built a stream that analyzes customer calls, pushes keywords into Notion, and surfaces pain points and roadmap gaps — to work at higher scale.

How does the product role change when building and validation get faster?

The distance from identifying a fundamental problem to execution and deployment shrinks dramatically. You can run validation in a few hours instead of weeks, come to customers with a direction and A/B/C alternatives, and close loops fast. That raises your confidence a feature will solve the problem before you've fully built it.

How do you keep alignment as the pace rises?

Bring engineers and designers in much earlier — put them directly into customer conversations so they understand the problem themselves. This keeps product from being a bottleneck, brings more solution angles, and empowers the team, who feel they designed the feature rather than just receiving a spec.

People & resources mentioned

Companies & orgs

  • Trullion
  • EY
  • Gong
  • Notion
  • Figma

Tools

  • Cursor
  • Claude Code
  • Gemini
  • Duolingo (analogy for daily practice)

Books & media

  • The Qualified Sales Leader
Product Product Management Discovery Culture Go-to-market AI Trust Sales Trullion

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