Prioritizing Enterprise Requests and Sharing Product Ownership with Kaivalya Powale | Episode #20

Kaivalya Powale grew up in Mumbai, India, and describes his motivation for product management as using his thinking and skills to improve people's lives. At HackerRank, that goal takes a specific form: helping companies evaluate developers for their ability to write quality code rather than relying only on a university, background, or previous employer. He connects that skills-based approach to companies' diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

His enterprise product work also requires constant contact with large technology customers. Powale says he spends at least two hours almost every day speaking with them while his team receives dozens of product and enhancement requests. The challenge is not finding possible work. It is identifying which needs point toward the next meaningful investment.

What you'll learn

• How direct customer conversations and cross-functional teams reveal changes in recruiting

• Why stakeholders should help shape a product before the backlog is written

• How showing engineers post-launch impact builds credibility and motivation

• What Powale learned from sunsetting a product that lacked traction

• Why growing teams need both mission alignment and delegated ownership

Read enterprise demand through multiple signals

Powale leads product integrations that connect HackerRank with recruiting tools. Improving those connections requires more than collecting feature requests. His team has to understand why customers adopt other products and how those choices change the recruiting workflow. He points to AI-based recruiting, calendar scheduling, SMS-based recruiting, and AI video interviewing as examples of areas that can affect integration priorities.

A product manager cannot be the subject-matter expert for every adjacent market. Powale therefore relies on product marketing, customer success, and sales. These partners see different parts of the customer relationship and can help the product team understand what companies are focusing on and where they may invest next. Direct conversations with large customers add another layer of evidence. Together, those inputs help the team distinguish an isolated request from a broader shift in how recruiting works.

This approach is especially important when request volume is high. A long queue does not establish priority by itself. The product team needs context about the customer's objective, the surrounding tools, and the direction of the market before deciding where an integration can add value.

Build credibility by connecting work to impact

Powale advises PMs to involve cross-functional peers before creating the backlog or deciding what to build. Engineers and other stakeholders should be part of discussions about what is happening in the industry, how the team can add value, and what customers need from the product. Early involvement gives collaborators a role in the decision rather than presenting them with a finished answer.

With engineers and technical leads, Powale also explains why the team is building a product and what customer impact it is intended to create. He frames the reasoning in measurable terms, asking, for example, whether the work could help retain 20 percent of customers or increase engagement for 50 percent of users. These figures are decision questions in the conversation, not reported results. The point is to make the intended outcome explicit before implementation.

The explanation continues after launch. Powale follows up roughly three months later with engineers and technical leads, points them to a dashboard, and shows what the feature changed. That closes a loop that product teams often leave open. Engineers see the connection between implementation and customer value, while the PM earns credibility by returning with evidence rather than moving immediately to the next request.

Know when to stop and when to hand over control

A previous startup taught Powale that product judgment includes deciding when to stop. When the product was not being used and did not achieve the expected traction, the team ended further investment rather than continuing to spend time and money. He presents the decision as difficult but compatible with learning: the work produced lessons even though the product needed to be sunset.

That startup also taught him about team construction. After an initial burst of revenue, he hired about 15 people and looked for colleagues who shared the commitment to the mission. He does not equate commitment with staying at one company forever. His standard is whether people are motivated by the mission and can keep contributing value while they are there.

At another small company, close work with the founders showed him the value of trust and ownership. They gave him room to make decisions, which taught him when to give creative control to someone else. He now applies that lesson as his own team grows at HackerRank, giving PMs space to innovate rather than holding every decision himself.

These experiences connect the daily challenge of prioritizing enterprise requests with a broader leadership principle. Product management is not only choosing what a team should build. It also means stopping work when the evidence is weak, making the purpose of active work visible, and trusting other people to own meaningful decisions.

Listen to the full episode for Kaivalya Powale's discussion of enterprise discovery, engineering collaboration, product sunsetting, hiring, and ownership.