How to Build Confidence in a New Direction with Ciara Peter
In this episode of Launch With Confidence, Chris sits down with Ciara Peter, SVP of Product at Robin. With leadership experience at Robin, Medallia, Gainsight, and Box, Ciara has spent her career helping SaaS companies navigate market shifts, competitive pressure, and evolving customer expectations.
At Robin, she guided the team through one of the most turbulent eras in workplace software—navigating Covid, the rise of hybrid work, and competition from giants like Microsoft and Zoom. In this conversation, Ciara shares how to rebuild confidence when your product story changes, how to reframe competitors, and why “extreme transparency” is a product leader’s superpower.
If you’re a product manager or product leader facing change, this episode is packed with lessons on leadership, strategy, and staying close to your customers.
In this episode:
(00:00) – Intro: Ciara Peter’s background and Robin’s journey
(01:08) – Helping teams rebuild confidence in a new direction
(01:55) – The explosion of competition during hybrid work
(02:45) – Why Robin shifted from point solutions to a platform
(04:08) – Practicing “extreme transparency” in product leadership
(05:53) – Watching 40 sales calls to uncover patterns
(07:26) – Avoiding the feature factory trap
(09:12) – Balancing multi-year vision with short-term realities
(10:29) – Bridging gaps between old use cases and new direction
(11:56) – Using NPS, analytics, and competitor tracking
(14:17) – Customer advisory boards and in-person empathy
(16:46) – How competitors reveal themselves in new markets
(18:46) – The rise of “vibe coding” and what it means
(20:15) – Guiding sales teams through noisy competition
(22:05) – New personas and motions in platform sales
(24:01) – Making strategy stick inside and outside the org
(26:03) – Testing if the product story really resonates
(28:08) – Why product is a team sport with sales, support, and marketing
(29:12) – Rapid fire: resets, role models, and resources
(32:33) – A product Ciara can’t live without (and why)
(33:22) – Funniest travel mishaps and lessons learned
(35:25) – How Ciara wants her team to feel after a big launch
(36:17) – Closing thoughts and wrap-up
About Our Guest
Ciara Peter [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciarapeter/] is a SaaS Product executive with nearly 20 years of experience leading high performing organizations from Series A to $5B+ in annual revenue. Ciara currently oversees Product and Design at Robin, a leader in workplace management, and has also led world class organizations at Medallia, Gainsight, Box, Betterworks, and Salesforce. Ciara’s experience empowers her to uniquely address the needs of enterprises at scale, while incorporating product led growth, AI, and product design fundamentals to increase adoption and expansion across end users.
