Marily Nika, Ph.D

-AI Builder certifying AI Product Managers via my AI Product Bootcamp trainings (public/private cohorts)
-FREE AI Tools for PMs email course: www.aiproduct.com
-Follow me for educational content on AI products

Based in Silicon Valley, Dr. Marily Nika is an award-winning AI Product Management leader, builder, and one of the world's best AI educators, with 12+ years of experience in big tech (Google & Meta) & PhD in CS. Marily has created the best AI Product Course on Maven and the #1 AI Product Bootcamp (https://maven.com/marily-nika/ai-pm-bootcamp). She writes at http://marily.substack.com.

Courses: https://maven.com/marily-nika/ai-pm-bootcamp
Twitter: www.twitter.com/marilynika 
YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/marilynikapm
Enquiries / Private Trainings: hello@aiproduct.com

Founder

I launched the first cohort-based AI Product Bootcamp (including Maven's best AI Product Course), with over 800+ students to date. Check out my courses here: https://maven.com/marily-nika.

2025 was a very full year for me.

✨ I built a side business to 7-figure revenue with a small, amazing team. I shipped courses and worked closely with PMs, founders, and operators trying to make sense of AI without getting lost in hype. And all of that happened while I was expecting my third child, figuring out what “balance” actually means when life doesn’t pause. 

✨ That part changed how I thought about work more than I expected. What became very clear this year is that impact didn’t come from doing everything. It came from doing the right things — and doing them in a way that compounds.

✨ A big part of that was teaching and becoming a published author. Teaching AI Product Sense and real product judgment — how to think about AI behavior, tradeoffs, and quality bars — in a way people could actually apply. Not theory. Not hype. Real work.

✨ In several programs, I matched engineers with students so they didn’t just learn, but left with a real product in production — and in many cases, the foundation of their own business. That part mattered to me.

That experience shaped my direction for 2026.
2025 showed me what works.
2026 is about doing more of it — with intention, and with others.

I’m offering a collection of courses, but the bigger mission is empowerment: helping people build something real, teach what they know, and create leverage on their own terms.

If this resonates, come join our journey. As a student, as a collaborator, or as someone that wants to create their own course with us.

Stop asking AI to do your job. Ask it to make you better at it.

We’ve become so addicted to speed that we’re letting AI give us the first draft of our PRDs, roadmaps, and strategies. But when the AI provides the "First Touch," the result is almost always generic...  (or it looks generic in the example of prototyping tool outputs, that classic white UI).

It’s the "average" of the internet.
I don't want my AI to be a ghostwriter. I want it to be a coach. I’m shifting my workflow to demand friction. I want my tools to push back before they pitch in.

The "friction-first" Workflow:
1. The Assumption Audit: Instead of "Write a PRD for X," try: "Here is my hypothesis for Feature X. Before you suggest a solution, find three logical fallacies or biases in my thinking."

2. The "Secret Sauce" Gatekeeper: Instead of "Draft a go-to-market strategy," try: "I’m going to provide my notes from 10 customer interviews. Don't write the strategy until you've extracted the top 3 emotional pain points that I might have missed."

3. The Prioritization Sparring Partner: Instead of "Generate a roadmap," try: "Here is my proposed roadmap. Don’t agree with me. Ask me three hard questions about why I’m prioritizing 'Ability to Pay' over 'User Growth' in Q3."

Your value as a PM isn't your ability to format a document. It’s your judgment.
If you use AI to bypass the thinking process, you’re automating away your own value. But if you use AI to stress-test your thinking, you become 10x more effective.

Move from: 
"Prompt → Result" to 
"Insight → Friction → Refinement."

The "First Touch" should always be yours. AI is just there to make sure that touch is brilliant.

AI Product Lead 
🏆 Woman of the year in tech'18, WISE Influence Award 2015 
🎤 3 x TEDx
👩💻 Advocate for Women in Tech 



People ask me all the time why Silicon Valley is special. It’s not the companies, or the innovation culture, it’s the people and I was reminded of that recently when I spent time with Shreyas Doshi.

We’re both immigrants, both in product. Both obsessed with helping PMs upskill. And kind of unexpectedly we both ended up creating the 2 most popular courses on Maven in our own way. 

If you enjoy being challenged in that way, Shreyas has started a newsletter that is thoughtful, sharp, and deeply reflective on product and leadership:

👉 https://lnkd.in/g_9CuHBp

Silicon Valley works best when people like him are active in our community. I am grateful to be inspired by peers like this. 

Who are you inspired by?

Woke up to see Business Insider write about my “be a crab” metaphor 🦀🦀 

I'm so glad this point resonated as 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻 𝗔𝗜 𝗣𝗠 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻.  Don't talk about “transitioning into AI” as if everything they’ve done so far no longer counts. That’s not how this works.

Becoming an AI PM doesn’t mean forgetting your past. It means bringing your niche with you — and leveraging it on AI products.

Some concrete examples.
✨ If you previously worked in hearing aids / medical devices:
 You don’t suddenly become a generic AI PM.
 You become the PM who knows how AI fits into regulated hardware, edge constraints, latency, trust, and real human stakes. Now you’re building AI-powered hearing features, personalization, tuning, or diagnostics — grounded in a domain most people don’t understand.

✨ If you previously worked in sports:
 You bring your understanding of fandom, moments, rituals, and engagement — and apply AI to recommendations, highlights, community experiences, or personalization for sports fans.

✨ If you worked in payments, growth, onboarding, trust, creator tools, education — same story.

Your edge doesn’t disappear. AI just becomes a new lever. What doesn’t work is this mentality:

-“I’m pivoting into AI and want to learn everything.”

What does work is interviewing like this:
“This is the kind of PM I already am. Here’s the problem space I know deeply. And here’s how AI changes what’s possible in that space.”

A simple way to approach this, step by step:
✨ 1. Name your niche clearly
 Domain, user, or craft. One sentence.

✨ 2. Ask: where does AI actually show up here?
 Not everywhere. One or two surfaces.

✨ 3. Build something small in that context
 A prototype, a flow, a demo — tied to a problem you already understand.

✨ 4. Tell the story from your past → to now
 Not “I switched careers.”
 But “I extended my toolkit.”

So don't feel like you're starting over, you're compounding. AI doesn’t erase who you are. It makes what you already know more powerful — if you let it.

What’s in my AI PM toolbox!

I demo 6 AI PM tools in real time with Aakash Gupta.

Youtube: https://lnkd.in/eWukygbk
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eyt7agKj
Apple: https://lnkd.in/eVZf64gB

<><><><><><><><><><>
Last hours to learn from me & launch your real product in jan: https://bit.ly/40MEiVY

On vibe coding, builders, and where this is actually heading. Here are my random thoughts after watching the “AI builders / vibe coding” wave all year...

✨ Building is becoming more fun than consuming — and that’s a real shift.
✨ A lot of “coding time” is actually planning, debating, and correcting AI.
✨ Clear instructions and context design are doing more work than syntax.
✨ Talking to an AI through a terminal isn’t hard... it's actually the mental model that is the barrier, not the interface and because of that, beginner-friendly wrappers will matter less over time.
✨ Most current agent UIs are over-engineered for how people actually think.
✨ The future interface is probably: talk → let the agent work → check in occasionally.

What I DON'T think is happening:
– Everyone becoming an engineer
 – Tools replacing judgment
 – Speed replacing taste

The people who are winning aren’t the fastest typers or the most automated. They’re the ones who know when to slow the system down.

We’re still early. And early stages always look messier than they end up being.

That moment when I’m giving a training to 300 people… and they stop me because they’re way too into my infographic résumé.

If you want to try it yourself, here’s how:
✨ Export your resume or LinkedIn profile as a PDF
✨ Go to notebooklm.google.com
✨ Upload the PDF
✨ Click Generate Infographic and prompt it with: “Generate my career journey in a fun, playful theme.”

voilà!

Stop asking if your idea is doable. Ask if it’s buildable.

I was on a call and someone asked:
“Is this buildable?”
Not doable.
Buildable.

A year ago, that question would’ve sounded odd. Today, it’s the right one as almost everything is doable now. You can build a prototype. You can get something working fast. You can demo it and deploy it.

So the real question isn’t can this be done? It’s: will anyone actually build it?

A buildable idea is one where:
 – the first version exists outside a deck
 – progress doesn’t depend on permission or extra resources
 – it grows through use, not alignment meetings
 – you have all you need to get going

So how do you actually start building?
You just go for it. Type your idea somewhere. Anywhere. Google AI Studio. Lovable. A blank prompt. No-code tools. All of it, until you get that first “oh wow” moment.

That moment when you realize you don’t need permission, a perfect plan, or “real” engineering skills, you just need to start typing. Can you believe most people still haven’t felt that moment yet?

Once you do, building stops being abstract. It becomes interactive and just 5 minutes are enough.

If you’re evaluating ideas right now, try this lens:
-not is it feasible?
-but is it buildable?

Feels like a small word change but it’s not.

If you want my new guide on building no-code mini apps in your DMs, comment Build 👇

Start your week with this perspective: If you’re unsure where AI actually helps, here’s a simple heuristic: Start with the thing you don’t like doing.
Not the impressive part of your job. 

Here’s a surprisingly reliable metric (try it this week!):
task repetition × frequency × annoyance

So if a task repeats at least 2–3 times a week and takes 10+ minutes each time
and you actively dislike doing it, then that’s a prime AI candidate.

Not the creative part. The annoying, repetitive, mentally draining part. Writing the same updates... Summarizing meetings and organizing thoughts.

Drafting the first ugly version of something and then attach AI to that.
That’s where the leverage is because you’ll actually use it repeatedly.

Most failed AI workflows start with “what’s possible?”
The useful ones start with “what do I dread doing every week?”

Rule of thumb: If you wouldn’t pay someone to do the task for you every week, don’t automate it.

Stop asking AI to do your job. Ask it to make you better at it: [Part 2]

Following yesterday's post, I created a "Friction-First" Prompt Pack.

Comment 'prompt' and I'll get you my prompt list, or find it on my newsletter, thanks!

Show me any product — and I’ll show you how it uses AI.
It reminds me of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you know the scene.

“Give me any word… I show you how it’s Greek"... That’s kind of where we are with products right now.

Search? AI.
Recommendations? AI.
Onboarding? AI
Support? AI
Pricing experiments? AI
Internal tools? Definitely AI
Sometimes it’s obvious.... other times subtle, or it’s just quietly doing the work in the background.

Watch my discussion on this with Aakash Gupta: https://lnkd.in/eWukygbk

Available Everywhere:
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eyt7agKj
Apple: https://lnkd.in/eVZf64gB

Not every day you’re live with 1.7k people for your Agentic AI bootcamp. Still a little surreal.

If there’s one thing to focus on in 2026: LinkedIn still matters.

These posts came from real moments — building, hiring, teaching, sharing honestly. With no growth hacks, just consistency and signal.

Very grateful for this platform and the community here. It’s one of the few platform with real reach.

Tool Tourism: Trying everything isn’t building

Lately I keep hearing people talk about tool tourism and honestly, I get it. There are more tools than ever. New ones drop weekly. Everyone’s sharing stacks, demos, screenshots. It’s tempting to try everything and call that progress.

But my take on this is that tool tourism isn’t bad. What is bad is unstructured tool tourism. If you want to cruise, cruise with intent.

Here’s a way I’ve seen it actually work:

When you’re exploring  
✨ Give yourself 30–90 minutes max per tool
✨ Go in with one concrete idea (not “let’s see what this does”)
 ✨ Don’t customize, don’t optimize, don’t refactor
 ✨ Ask one question only: did this get me closer to something real? If the answer is no, move on guilt-free. If the answer is yes, stop touring.

When you’re building (this is where people hesitate and where momentum is lost). Pick one tool and push it until:
 – it breaks
 – it annoys you
 – or you hit a real limitation

That friction is the signal and that’s where understanding shows up. Switching tools too early keeps you in demo mode. Staying long enough puts you in builder mode.

A simple rule that helps:
✨ If you’ve opened three tools for the same idea, you’re probably avoiding building. The real shift right now isn’t that tools are better, it’s that the cost of starting is basically zero.

✨You don’t need permission.
 ✨You don’t need resources.
 ✨You don’t need a perfect stack.
 ✨You just need that first moment where something exists outside your head.

Once people feel that “oh… I can actually make this” moment, everything changes. Most people still haven’t felt it because they keep on touring.

Make sure you know when the cruise ends and the building starts.

Switching tools too early keeps you in demo mode.
Staying long enough puts you in builder mode.
If you want a practical way to feel the difference, try my 7-Day Builder Challenge 🧱 :

Rules:
✨ Pick one idea
✨ Pick one tool (Google AI Studio, v0, lovable, any)
✨ No switching tools for 7 days
Ugly > perfect

Day 1 — Pick the smallest version
✨  Write down the tiny version of the idea.
✨  Not the full product. The version that proves it should exist.
If it feels too small, it’s probably right.

Day 2 — Make it exist
✨  Build something end-to-end.
 ✨ Fake data is fine. Hard-coded logic is fine.
✨ The only goal: it runs.

Day 3 — Use it yourself
✨  Don’t test it. Use it.
✨  Let it slow you down. Let it annoy you.
✨ Write down what feels off.

Day 4 — Break it on purpose
✨  Change inputs. Try weird cases. Do things “wrong.”
✨ This is where you learn what actually matters.

Day 5 — Fix one thing that matters
✨  Not everything.
 ✨ One fix that meaningfully improves the experience.
✨ Resist the urge to refactor.

Day 6 — Show it to one human
✨  Not for praise.
✨  For confusion.
✨ Watch where they hesitate. Don’t explain.

Day 7 — Decide
✨  Answer one question honestly:
👉 Is this worth another week of my life?
If yes, keep going.
If no, kill it.

Most people never get past Day 2 because they switch tools. Staying is the whole point.

If you try this, I’d love to hear what Day 4 or Day 7 felt like.
Builders are made in that stretch!

If you're in, comment here and I'll invite you to my private WhatsApp community dedicated channel so that we can compare notes!

I found something I posted 12 years ago before submitting my PhD.

That was the era where writing meant to me:

Think → write → reread → hate it → rewrite
(and every loop took hours)

But nowadays LLMs removed the blank page and here is what writing today changed to for me:

Think → prompt → get a draft → react → edit → tighten → done
(and the loop takes minutes)

But I still remember that feeling back then after submitting the PhD, an extreme sense of accomplishment & relief.

This was one of the toughest things I’ve ever done, but also one of my proudest moments.

Which makes me wonder:

If I had LLMs back then… would it change that feeling? Does it change it for you? 

Weekend thought of the day.

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