Max Antonov - Product Management & Leadership

Max Antonov
Fractional Product Leadership Product Leadership Coaching

I'm a father of 3 from Sydney, a product and technology leader. I write about leadership, product management, technology and the messy reality of making work work.

I'm currently building and experimenting with a mildly alarming number of things. I also work as a fractional product leader, stepping in where the founder or CEO is still carrying product decisions on their own, and offer 1:1 product leadership coaching for senior PMs and emerging product leaders. I founded SoundingBoard, practical peer exchange for product people. Connect via LinkedIn, or follow me on X.

  1. 6h ago
    Product Strategy

    The Strategy Test

    A good way to find out whether a strategy is clear is when teams have to make a decision. Ask a few people in the business what matters more right now and you can get completely different answers. Tha...
  2. 5d ago
    Observations

    Sounding Board for Product Managers

    One thing I'm learning from building Sounding Board (peer exchange for product people)...what product people actually need is someone who's been through their exact problem, not another opinion. There...
    Product Management Community in Australia

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  4. 6d ago
    Observations

    The AI Double Standard

    Why is coding with AI becoming normal, while writing with AI is treated like cheating? I've gone back and forth on this. When AI first became available, I experimented with using it to write. Then I s...
    Writing content with AI
  5. Jul 24, 2026

    We have too many good ideas and can't decide what to kill

    That was how the company described the problem. A company of about 35 people brought me in as a fractional Head of Product. They had more than 50 ideas competing for a small engineering team, with no...
    People go directly to the CTO with new feature requests
  6. Jun 11, 2026
    AI & Product

    The IC Era

    Levels is running four products and ~$3M in revenue, solo. This used to be the exception. It's becoming the norm. Marc Lou ships a new product every few weeks because there's nothing between him and t...
    THE IC ERA
  7. May 15, 2026
    Strategy

    The Never List

    There are two lists. One of them gets all the attention. The wishlist is the obvious one. Every team has one and it tends to grow on its own without any editing, picking up ideas from roadmap convers...
    The Never List in product management
  8. May 14, 2026
    Observations

    Conway's Law for AI

    Cross-functional planning used to take us 2 weeks before AI. Now AI got it to 2 hours. However, the delays seem to be exactly the same length they've always been. Conway's Law. The org that moves slow...
    Conway's Law for AI
  9. May 13, 2026
    Leadership

    Shared Slipups

    A leader, especially an executive, admitting they got something wrong, out loud, in front of the team, is rarer than it should be. When a mistake happens, everyone in the room already knows that somet...
    when leaders get it wrong
  10. May 12, 2026
    Observations

    The AI slot machine

    A lot of what gets produced now is optimised to look like thinking rather than actually be it. AI-generated posts, meeting notes, research synthesis, decision logs, decks, updates, documents. It all g...
    Thinking vs. Looking Like You're Thinking
  11. May 11, 2026
    Observations

    AI Content Paranoia

    Paranoia...something I've started doing is running my own writing through AI detection tools. It's to reassure myself that it doesn't look like I used AI to write it, which is a completely different...
    AI Content Paranoia
  12. May 9, 2026
    Observations

    AI & Kessler Syndrome

    There's a theory called Kessler syndrome. The core idea is that when enough debris accumulates in orbit, it causes collisions, creating more collisions and the density builds up until getting anything...
    AI content already feels like debris
  13. May 8, 2026

    Whose Taste?

    Every time someone says that a Product Manager or a Product Designer or even a leader needs to have taste, I want to ask: "Whose taste exactly?" The founder's? The current market leader's? Steve Jobs?...
    Would you wear it to Woolworths on a Tuesday evening
  14. May 3, 2026
    Leadership

    5 Executive Skills People Underrate

    Some executives make a company easier to run. The best executives do not need the biggest vision or the answer to every question. They clarify the decisions that matter, stop unnecessary work and make...
    5 Executive Skills People Underrate
  15. May 2, 2026
    Product Management

    RICE Is Not a Brain

    When you have a decent structure and process, it does feel like you are making progress, so PMs grab (R)ICE, HEART or whatever the latest prioritisation framework is and push ahead. A lot of decision...
    The template is never the best option.
  16. May 1, 2026
    Product Management

    Engineers Who Wait for Tickets Are Already Too Late

    There are tech teams that act like their job starts when the requirements arrive. Still! This is a tech leadership gap created by a tech leader who prefers an agency model instead of a cross-functiona...
    Engineers Who Wait for Tickets Are Already Too Late
  17. Apr 30, 2026
    Culture

    Toxic Bosses

    Toxic bosses wreck their teams. You'll see it in how they protect their territory. The territory gets defended in small ways (a dismissal here, a reframe there) until people stop bringing things in. T...
    Toxic Bosses
  18. Apr 29, 2026
    Product Management

    Smaller Teams Are the Future of Product, Design and Engineering

    The most obvious upcoming change in product, design and engineering is in team structure. Teams will get smaller. One person covers what used to take three or four, and most companies are only startin...
    Smaller Teams Are the Future of Tech Teams
  19. Apr 28, 2026
    Product Management

    On Workshops

    This meme hurts because it's true. There's a thin line between guiding people and running workshops. And to be honest, most of us have already done it. A lot of the time. Workshops are awesome. We wan...
    Product Manager and workshops
  20. Apr 24, 2026
    Leadership

    Don't Take Over. Earn the Handover.

    When I read the job description, it said I'd own product strategy. The organisation chart backed that up but the founder hadn't handed it over. I noticed it in the details: decisions I thought were cl...
    Don't Take Over. Earn the Handover.
  21. Apr 21, 2026
    Culture

    "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team": Teams That Need It Most Can't Use It

    The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. One of my favourite books and from experience these problems don't look like problems when you're in them. Absence of trust looks like "we have a great culture here."...
    The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

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