Is the Product Manager Role About to Be Reinvented?
— Nikshep Mehra, Paylocity

Nikshep Mehra’s route into product management was not planned — it was earned. After beginning his career at Computer Sciences Corporation (now DXC Technology), he joined a zero-employee Delhi startup as its first engineer. Over nearly a decade, he built the core product three times across three different technology stacks, watched the company grow to 350 people, and left only when it was acquired by Mercer in late 2018.

A second startup followed, also ending in acquisition. Now a Director of Product Management at Paylocity — a publicly listed payroll and HR platform — Nikshep oversees an accounts payable automation suite and a platform-layer money movement product, giving him a rare dual view of both vertical and horizontal product challenges. His philosophy is grounded in first-principle thinking, radical transparency, and the belief that the product manager’s role is about to become indistinguishable from that of a business owner.

How did a decade as an engineer prepare you for product leadership?

Nikshep reflects on the unlikely path that turned a confused software engineer into a product leader — by way of a garage startup and a decade-long journey to acquisition.

“I was getting bored and confused about my next career step. Then I got a cold call from two people building a startup in a suburb of Delhi — literally from a garage. I thought: what’s the worst that could happen? The founders were busy selling the product or raising funds, which meant the engineers were the ones actually talking to customers first-hand. I ended up with a very high level of empathy for their problems. That taught me more about customer pain than any formal training ever could.

The key advantage of starting as an engineer is that you can speak the language of your engineering team. You understand the challenges they struggle to articulate — concerns about scalability or performance that junior engineers have but are afraid to raise. But it was also a bane. When you think like an engineer as a PM, you can end up cutting corners rather than solving the problem in the most ideal way for the end customer. That mindset shift was something I had to learn deliberately, by watching how my peers approached the same problems.”

What separates products that genuinely solve problems from those that just add complexity?

In an era when anyone can ship a product, Nikshep argues that the real differentiator is not the feature set — it is the discipline to stay close to the problem.

“Customers always come to you with solutions, never with problems. Your job as a PM is to understand the problem at a deeper level — why is this so important to this person? At the end of the day, everything leads to a business issue they are facing. The only difference is that they present you with a very simplistic ask, not the journey behind that ask.

Every organisation runs differently. That is where complexity creeps in — not because the goal is different, but because the way to achieve it is nuanced. The goal for the product and engineering team is to create an experience that is configurable but still simple. How do you ensure there is flexibility without sacrificing simplicity? That is the art of it.”

Is the SaaS apocalypse real, or is AI being misread as an existential threat?

Nikshep sees widespread AI adoption but believes enterprise SaaS will survive — not because it is immune, but because workflow entrenchment is far stickier than the hype suggests.

“Everybody is embracing AI and trying to utilise it. But the problem I see is not whether people value the technology — they clearly do. The problem is cost efficiency and deploying it in the right areas. When it comes to replacing enterprise SaaS, a lot of workflows are already deeply defined. It is hard for organisations to move away from one workflow tool to another. The risk appetite just is not there for a hard lift. You cannot recreate a Salesforce out of the blue using AI.”

There is still a segment of customers who will say: This is too much for me to manage. It is much more efficient to let the software do what it is supposed to do and focus on running my business. There are also real concerns about bugs and workflow disruption when you build something from scratch. Both worlds will continue to exist.”

How will the product manager’s role evolve as AI accelerates software development?

As feature differentiation erodes and build cycles compress, Nikshep believes the PM role is heading toward something that looks less like product management and more like running a business.

“Software building is becoming extremely fast, which means features will no longer be a defensible differentiator. Organisations will have to think much more strategically about how they create moats. The pressure on PMs is already increasing — how do you discover faster, prioritise faster, document faster? And slowly, I believe the PM role will become a genuine business function.

Right now, PMs are not attached to a profit and loss. But as their ability to delegate engineering work to AI increases, they will naturally expand into the other parts of the problem: customer acquisition, onboarding, and competitive positioning. PMs have always been called the ‘mini-CEO’ of the product — I think that is about to become literally true.”

What is the most important leadership trait you rely on — and what do you look for in the PMs you mentor?

For Nikshep, good leadership and good product management share the same foundation: total transparency, combined with the discipline to act once a decision is made.

“Transparency is super important to me as a leader. I give my direct reports a detailed level of visibility into what is happening in the organisation, because a lot of decisions come in flux and can make people question the direction. I also seek that same transparency upward. If I am not satisfied with an answer, I will keep asking. There are times I do not agree with where the organisation is going, but at least I am at peace internally knowing I disagreed. Disagree and commit is one of the biggest values I push to my team.

First-principle thinking and customer empathy are still the fundamentals. But what needs to evolve is the speed at which you generate and refresh those insights. Because the world is changing so fast, the feedback loop from customer conversation to pattern recognition is too slow. In the past, I might talk to thirty customers before I spot a pattern. Today, you need to do that in a fraction of the time — using AI, tools like Gong, and internal data. The ability to accelerate discovery without losing the depth of insight is where the next generation of PMs will differentiate themselves.”

What is the single most important question technology and product leaders should be asking themselves right now?

Nikshep closes with the survival question he believes every product and technology leader must sit with — not once, but continuously.

“Why would someone buy me over anything else in the world — and that includes AI? Why would I survive against what is already in the marketplace, and why would I still be relevant in five, six, ten years? If you cannot answer that question, you need to figure out a path. Look at how Salesforce responded — they said: you don’t even need to come into Salesforce anymore, just use our infrastructure via MCP.

They saw the threat and evolved aggressively. Every business owner needs to be in that survival mode right now. The question is not just how do I survive, but how do I position myself to thrive once things stabilise.”

Join the Conversation: The Ortus Club’s Executive Network

As Nikshep’s perspective makes clear, the reinvention of the product manager’s role is not a distant forecast — it is already underway. The leaders navigating it best are not those with the longest roadmaps, but those who ask the hardest questions about why their product deserves to exist, who is willing to pay for it, and how long they can stay ahead of a market that is moving faster than ever before.

At The Ortus Club, we host curated executive roundtables that bring together senior product, technology, and business leaders facing exactly these challenges. If you are rethinking your roadmap, your team structure, or your competitive moat in an AI-accelerated world, the most valuable thing you can do is talk to the peers who are working through the same questions in real time.

FAQs

Q: What is first-principle thinking in product management?

A: It is the discipline of always asking ‘why’ — drilling below the solution a customer presents to uncover the underlying business problem. Rather than building what is asked for, a first-principle thinker rebuilds the problem from the ground up to find the most effective solution.

Q: Will AI replace enterprise SaaS platforms?

A: Unlikely in the near term for large enterprises. Deep workflow entrenchment, risk aversion, and the operational cost of rebuilding from scratch mean most large organisations will continue using established platforms. The real disruption is happening at the SMB level, where AI is making homegrown tooling viable for the first time.

Q: What does it mean for a product manager to own a profit and loss?

A: For a vertical product, it means being able to directly attribute revenue generated to the product, subtract the cost of the engineering resources allocated to it, and manage that difference as a business unit. Nikshep believes this model will become more common as AI reduces the effort required to build, freeing PMs to focus on business outcomes rather than delivery mechanics.

Q: What is the difference between a vertical and a horizontal product?

A: A vertical product is customer-facing and tied to a specific use case — such as an accounts payable automation suite sold directly to finance teams. A horizontal product serves multiple internal teams as a shared platform layer — such as a money movement infrastructure used by payroll, cards, and international payments teams alike.

Q: What is ‘disagree and commit’ and why does Nikshep value it?

A: It is the practice of voicing genuine disagreement with a decision, then fully committing to its execution once it has been made. Nikshep values it because it preserves intellectual honesty without undermining team alignment. It also requires transparency to surface disagreement early rather than letting it fester silently.