Every technology wave feels big when you’re in it. But AI is different—it’s moving faster than anything product leaders have ever seen. Blink, and you’re already behind.
In the latest episode of Next Gen Builders, host sits down with , SVP of Product at , to talk about what it’s like to lead through this storm. From her unconventional career path to scaling Kubernetes at Google to shaping the future of AI at Vercel, Aparna shares how she thinks about customer empathy, rapid innovation, and staying grounded when the ground itself is shifting.
Read on for a few highlights and listen to the full episode on , , or .
An unconventional path to product
Aparna didn’t take the conventional MBA-to-PM pipeline. She started in physics, pivoted to electrical engineering, and eventually landed at McKinsey to learn how products succeed in the market.
What followed was a journey across NetApp, Google, and Capital One—each move chosen not for titles, but for the opportunity to build, operate, and ship.
“I don’t want to run strategy. I want to build and ship product and sell it. That’s what I'm driven by: P&L ownership, user satisfaction, and getting value to customers.”
Lessons from the cloud revolution
At McKinsey, Aparna helped develop the firm’s cloud computing practice when most enterprises still swore they wouldn’t leave their data centers.
That experience taught her frameworks that still apply as AI reshapes industries:
- Understand the tech first. What’s the fundamental breakthrough? How big is the shift? What problems remain?
- Model the ecosystem. Who are the suppliers and consumers? What changes in pricing, packaging, and cost structures are needed?
- Bridge to customer goals. Once you grasp the innovation, map it to user pain points, pressures, and goals.
“It starts with understanding the technology first. That involves playing around with the technology and understanding what the fundamental breakthrough is and then asking, ‘Where is this going to go?’”
Why Vercel, why now?
Vercel was initially best known as the creator of Next.js, one of the most popular frameworks for building web applications. Today, Vercel has evolved into the Al cloud platform to build, scale, and secure intelligent applications. To paraphrase Aparna, “You imagine an application, and you just build it. The infrastructure takes care of the rest.”
Aparna recounted some of Vercel’s recent innovations:
- : An open-source toolkit for building AI apps like chatbots and multi-agent systems
- : A “vibe coding” solution with more than 3.5M users
- : A service connecting developers to 100+ models (Claude, Gemini, OpenAI, etc.) with higher rate limits and consistent SLAs
This combination—open frameworks, vibrant communities, and developer-first experiences—keeps Vercel at the center of today’s AI tornado.
Building when the ground keeps moving
Roadmaps used to be written in pen. Now, they’re drafted in pencil.
“You’re typically trying to make long-term changes, but doing so every day. So you’re doing small things in an environment that’s constantly changing.”
Aparna’s approach?
- Stay close to the frontier: Partner with startups, model providers, and the open source community.
- Keep your ears to the ground: Every week brings a new leapfrog in models, tooling, and development.
- Ship fast, but secure: Innovation must be paired with security, especially in an era of bots, agents, and automated traffic.
Aparna’s “oh sh*t” moment
Every career has inflection points. Aparna’s biggest realizations were that:
- Open source can be monetized without losing its soul.
- Developer experience is everything, and delight leads to adoption.
- Security is the new frontier when AI opens as many threats as opportunities.
“I’m in this rebirth phase of my life where all this new technology is needed to make the other new technology safe and possible. And I feel like a child again—being a part of it, studying and understanding it, and finding where it could fit with customer needs.”
Advice for builders in the AI era
Aparna closes the conversation with one poignant bit of advice for aspiring builders:
“It has never been easier to be a builder because you have the AI tech, and you know how to build in whatever language or format you may want. But follow your heart and your curiosity. Whatever speaks to you, that’s probably the right direction to pursue.”
Tune into Aparna’s story
This recap only scratches the surface. —from physics at Stanford to product leadership at Vercel, and what it means to build at the edge of possibility.
Check out Season 2 of Next Gen Builders. .