---
type: podcast-episode
slug: 07-arto-tolonen-productsense
number: 7
title: 'ProductSense Automates the Evidence, Not the Decision'
guestName: Arto Tolonen
guestTitle: Co-founder & CEO
guestLinkedin: 'https://www.linkedin.com/in/artotolonen/'
guestCompany: ProductSense
guestCompanyUrl: 'https://productsense.com/'
guestBio: >
  Arto Tolonen is co-founder and CEO of ProductSense, an AI-native product
  decision layer for B2B software teams. He spent 10 years in product at
  Smartly.io, ending as chief product officer while the company scaled past 100
  million in ARR. ProductSense is a team of 5, backed by a 1.5 million euro
  pre-seed led by Peak.
hosts:
  - slug: joni-juup
  - slug: tapio-haaja
summary: >-
  Arto Tolonen built ProductSense AI-native to fix product decision-making, then
  refused to let the AI make the decisions. It pulls transcripts, market signals
  and analytics into a knowledge graph where every insight is one click from the
  source, because in B2B product decisions are business decisions.
hook: >-
  Most product tools bolted AI onto what they already had. Arto Tolonen built
  ProductSense with AI as the centerpiece, then drew a hard line: the system
  gathers the evidence, the human still makes the call.
youtubeId: x6oRfx6jiWo
spotifyUrl: 'https://open.spotify.com/episode/3IPPu93KZgkzGEQf6di56L'
appleUrl: >-
  https://podcasts.apple.com/fi/podcast/building-agentic-experiences/id1886740996?i=1000786960716
duration: '43:04'
publishedAt: '2026-09-02'
updatedAt: '2026-09-02'
chapters:
  - time: '00:00'
    label: From Smartly.io to Building AI-First ProductSense
  - time: '02:51'
    label: AI-Driven Knowledge Graph and Evolving Product Management
  - time: '05:37'
    label: Empowering Product Teams with Data-Driven Decision Making
  - time: '09:45'
    label: 'Flexible Workflow, Best Practices, and Scale-Up Focus'
  - time: '12:56'
    label: 'Human Judgment, Custom Features, and Agentic Software''s Future'
  - time: '19:24'
    label: 'Traceable Insights, Prompt Impact, and Better Customer Feedback'
  - time: '25:40'
    label: 'Beyond Feature Voting: Measuring ProductSense''s Impact'
  - time: '30:41'
    label: The Enduring Role of User Interfaces in an AI-Driven World
  - time: '36:30'
    label: 'Personal AI Use, Industry Inspiration, and Key Product Reads'
---

The incumbent product tools started adding AI on top of what they already had. Arto Tolonen spent a decade in product at Smartly.io — ending as CPO while the company scaled past $100M ARR — and saw what that looked like from the inside. ProductSense is his bet that building from the ground up, with AI at the core, produces a different product entirely: a knowledge graph that ingests sales and support transcripts, customer discussions, market signals and product analytics, then structures all of it for product decision-making.

The hard line he drew is that the system gathers the evidence, the human still makes the call. In B2B, product decisions are business decisions, and he does not think you should hand those to an AI anytime soon. Every insight traces back to the raw transcript so teams can audit the insight layer — and product marketing can borrow the customer's exact words.

## What we cover

- **AI as the centerpiece, not a layer.** Building from the ground up with AI at the core is a different product entirely from bolting it onto what already exists.
- **A knowledge graph of customer reality.** ProductSense ingests sales and support transcripts, customer discussions, market signals and product analytics, then structures all of it for product decision-making.
- **Nobody commits past three weeks.** Mid-sized companies with real customer bases now tell him they will not commit to anything further out than three weeks, because agentic engineering made building that fast.
- **The two kinds of product leader.** The hands-on builders are having the time of their lives. Arto's hunch is that there will be fewer roles for the ones who went into product mainly to become managers.
- **Evidence one click from the source.** Every insight traces back to the raw transcript, so teams can audit the insight layer, and product marketing can borrow the customer's exact words.
- **When your own pitch becomes the insight.** Their first analysis surfaced their own sales pitch as customer demand, which is why every prompt is now framed for product decisions instead of sales topics.
- **Scored signals, not vote counts.** Conversations get rated on whether the problem, the trigger and the frequency were actually understood, plus a confidence score and a read on where you are blind.
- **Why he refuses voting boards.** Votes only tell you who to talk to. An open submission board just floats the thing you should not build to the top of the list.
- **The decision stays human.** In B2B, product decisions are business decisions, and Arto does not think you should hand those to an AI anytime soon.
- **Back to UIs.** MCP adoption moved fast among technical product builders, but he expects interfaces to matter again, because natural language is a poor way to configure anything.