Skip Product School? Why Product Drive 2025 Might Be Your Better Bet

​Thanks to AI, the need for continuous upskilling through expert-led courses, conferences, and networking has never been greater. To fill this need, many product professionals turn to Product School, and with good reason.

Product School is a global leader in product training and certifications. Their courses emphasize hands-on, project-based training (not just theory) taught by seasoned experts who’ve scaled products at Silicon Valley companies, including Google, Netflix, Airbnb, Uber, and Amazon. Their conferences also feature real-world case studies and offer opportunities to connect with these bright product management minds.

Here’s the catch: Product School programs cost anywhere from $2,999 to about $5,000 per person, a steep investment for teams with limited budgets. This begs the question:

Is it worth it? And more importantly, are there alternatives that deliver similar value without draining your wallet? This article explores both questions. (Spoiler: Userpilot’s Product Drive 2025 is one free but solid alternative.)

Overview of Product School

Product School is a training provider and community hub (with over two million product professionals) that offers courses and certifications around product management, AI-oriented certifications (e.g., AI for Product Managers, AI Prototyping), and micro-certifications and specialty modules (e.g., analytics, experimentation)

These certifications are taught via live online classes that run for 8-10 weeks with small cohorts of students working through practical case studies. As with their conferences, instructors are product leaders from global companies, bringing hands-on experience to the curriculum. Such experiences can help participants acquire the necessary skills to secure their first product management job or develop digital products more effectively.

For evaluating Product School, we checked against these criteria:

• Learning impact: The curriculum covers essential product management skills and methodology, with instructors bringing genuine industry expertise. Real-world case studies from companies like Google and Airbnb provide actionable insights that you can implement immediately.
• Network value: Events consistently attract senior product, UX, and CS professionals who lead cross-functional teams at top Silicon Valley companies.
• ROI vs. cost: This is where Product School becomes questionable. The program delivers solid content, but the price often exceeds what most teams can justify for training.

Some past participants have expressed disappointment. One Reddit user said: “Overall, I was disappointed in the lack of challenge … for the +$4,000 it cost, I was expecting a much more focused and demanding experience.”

Another thread offers an even more critical perspective: “It’s not worth it at all … Product school is overpriced, overrated, and doesn’t generally move the needle when it comes to hiring.”

Our honest assessment? Product School offers quality product training, but the cost barrier limits accessibility for many product managers and teams.

Keep the momentum going with Userpilot’s Product Drive

Userpilot’s Product Drive offers the same caliber of product training and networking as Product School, at no cost. You’ll get premium value without the premium price tag.

Product Drive is a FREE two-day online event (October 7-8, 2025) hosted by Userpilot that focuses on product management and growth as we adopt AI. It brings together industry experts from companies like Growth Unhinged, Grafana Labs, and Growthmates.

This program is unique because each talk delivers actionable insights that you can implement immediately, covering a range of topics from AI monetization strategies to comprehensive onboarding frameworks.

Elena Verna, Head of Growth at Loveable – The Next Evolution of PLG

​Elena Verna brings a wealth of experience as Head of Growth at Loveable, where she’s pioneering the next wave of product-led growth strategies. Her career spans leadership roles at high-growth companies, making her a recognized voice in the PLG community.

Traditional PLG focused on driving more signups, but Elena argues that era is over. The future lies in maximizing revenue per account rather than just acquisition volume. She’ll walk you through the evolution from product-qualified leads (PQLs) to account-level intent signals. You’ll see how cross-functional teams can build dynamic onboarding paths instead of one-size-fits-all experiences.

She’ll also share the changes in organizational design, metrics, and experimentation practices when AI enables real-time product adoption. This talk provides a practical roadmap for product managers who are ready to adopt outcome-driven monetization strategies.

Kyle Poyar, Founder at Growth Unhinged and PLG advisor – How to Monetize Your Product in the AI Era

​Kyle Poyar founded Growth Unhinged and serves as a PLG advisor at Tremont Ventures, bringing deep expertise in business model innovation and pricing strategy. He’s analyzed monetization practices across hundreds of B2B companies, making him uniquely qualified to tackle AI-era pricing challenges.

Kyle distills hard-won lessons into actionable frameworks: which value metrics actually work, how to set guardrails for usage-based and seat-plus models, and the delicate art of introducing AI add-ons without eroding trust or margins.

You’ll walk away with specific experiments to run immediately and a clear roadmap for scaling monetization over the next two quarters. For product managers struggling with AI pricing decisions, this session provides the concrete guidance your team needs.

Yazan Sehwail, CEO at Userpilot – AI for Product Growth: Userpilot’s Fall Product Release Announcement

Yazan Sehwail is the Co-Founder and CEO at Userpilot. Under his leadership, Userpilot has evolved into a comprehensive product adoption platform serving thousands of companies worldwide.

​This session marks Userpilot’s most significant product launch to date: Userpilot AI. You’ll walk away with concrete patterns to implement and a clear mental model for integrating AI into your product growth stack without losing the human touch that drives real user success.

Kate Syuma, Founder at Growthmates – 6 Steps to Holistic Onboarding

​Kate Syuma founded Growthmates and serves as a PLG advisor, specializing in user activation and retention strategies. Her methodology has helped numerous companies transform their onboarding from basic feature tours into engagement-driving experiences.

​Kate will unveil her six-step onboarding framework, including a compelling case study where an AI-assisted onboarding agent doubled activation rates.

She’ll reveal the specific patterns that build trust and momentum rather than frustration, showing you which metrics matter beyond click-through rates. You’ll discover how to design journeys that feel genuinely human rather than robotic, plus quick wins your team can deploy this quarter to improve user activation and long-term retention.

Maja Voje, Founder at Growth Lab and author of Go-To-Market Strategist – AI Agents GTM

​Maja Voje founded Growth School and authored “Go-To-Market Strategist,” establishing herself as a leading voice in GTM strategy. She has consulted on over $200M+ ARR worth of AI products, providing her with unique insights into what works and what doesn’t in AI agent launches.

​Maja will share four critical lessons:

• Why AI agents need sales-led growth earlier than SaaS ever did (big adoption equals big problems).
• How to create pricing that captures 25-50% of value versus SaaS’s typical 10-20%.
• Ecosystem marketing tactics that turn one customer into ten.
• How small cohorts of GTM teams can achieve massive results through AI-assisted workflows.

This session directly addresses the “How much should I budget for this?” conversation that stumps many product managers. You’ll leave with frameworks, pricing anchors, and GTM motions designed explicitly for AI agents, not recycled SaaS playbooks.

Andrea Saez, Head of Product Marketing at Turtl – Stop Trying to Vibe Code Your Way Into Product-Market Fit

​Andrea Saez leads product marketing at Turtl, where she’s developed a reputation for evidence-based approaches to finding product-market fit.

​The allure of vibe coding leads many teams astray from achieving proper product-market fit. Andrea advocates for a more disciplined approach: crafting concise problem statements, prioritizing evidence over anecdotes, and designing experiments that systematically reduce uncertainty rather than merely adding features.

She’ll demonstrate practical ways to combine user discovery, proper instrumentation, and lean build cycles that accelerate your path to product-market fit. For product managers tired of feature bloat and endless pivots, this session offers a structured framework to gain clarity on what customers actually need versus what teams think they want.

Jacob Boneta, Growth Manager at Grafana Labs: Stop Writing Strategy Docs, Start Shipping MVPs

​Jacob Boneta champions rapid growth experimentation over lengthy planning cycles at Grafana Labs. His approach has helped teams accelerate learning and reduce time-to-market through disciplined MVP development.

Jacob argues for treating MVPs as your new strategy docs, using them to validate hypotheses and compound learning at unprecedented speed. He’ll share a candid operator story about how an AI MVP shipped in days, surfacing critical insights long before any committee could convene. The session concludes with a practical build-first rhythm: ship, measure, learn, iterate.

For product managers overwhelmed by documentation requirements, this methodology features a path to faster decision-making and more actionable feedback from real users.

Natalia Kimlickova, Senior PMM at Userpilot – Product + Lifecycle Marketing: Building a Unified Customer Journey

​Natalia Kimlickova brings deep expertise from specializing in connecting product signals with lifecycle messaging strategies. Her work focuses on creating seamless customer experiences that drive activation, expansion, and retention through unified messaging.

Product and lifecycle marketing often operate in silos, creating disjointed user experiences that confuse rather than convert. Natalia demonstrates how to bridge this gap by connecting product signals directly to lifecycle messaging, ensuring activation, expansion, and retention efforts compound rather than compete.

She’ll reveal the specific instrumentation that matters most, the behavioral triggers that actually convert users, and a lightweight workflow that aligns product marketing, product, and growth teams.

This practical approach enables product managers and marketers to create cohesive customer journeys that feel like a single, continuous conversation, rather than fragmented touchpoints across different teams and tools.

Krzysztof Szyszkiewicz, Partner at Valueships – Mission Possible: How to Monetize AI

​Krzysztof Szyszkiewicz serves as Partner at Valueships, a consultancy specializing in pricing strategy and value-based business models. His expertise lies in helping companies navigate complex pricing decisions, particularly in areas such as emerging technologies like AI, where traditional models often fall short.

AI monetization attempts frequently trigger customer backlash, but Krzysztof offers a pragmatic alternative. He’ll demonstrate how to align cost with perceived value, cover inference expenses that can quickly scale out of control, and select value metrics that customers actually understand and accept. You’ll also learn how to introduce AI pricing changes without eroding goodwill or triggering churn.

This isn’t theoretical guidance; you’ll receive real examples, mathematical frameworks you can copy directly, and tested templates for validating your approach before full rollout. For product managers struggling with AI cost structures and customer feedback on pricing, this session provides actionable frameworks to stay ahead and create sustainable AI monetization without damaging customer relationships.

Daria Marinescu, CMO at Sferal – How We Drove Growth While Building Our Product Differentiators

​Daria Marinescu leads marketing at Sferal as CMO, where she’s navigated the challenging balance between driving immediate growth and building long-term product differentiation.

Growing while building true product differentiation requires surgical precision, and most teams either sacrifice growth for differentiation or vice versa. Daria will share how her team achieved both by strategically picking their wedge, transforming product narratives into demand generation, and sequencing experiments.

For product managers struggling to balance short-term growth pressures with long-term differentiation, this session offers a practical framework for achieving both objectives simultaneously without compromising either.

Blanca Champetier, Sr. Director of Product at Top Hat – Vibe Coding: A Game Changer for Experimentation and Finding Product Market Fit

​Blanca led the rapid prototyping methodology at Top Hat to accelerate the discovery of product-market fit. Her experience encompasses both the advantages and pitfalls of AI-assisted development, making her uniquely qualified to address this complex and controversial topic.

While vibe coding promises to let teams build at the speed of thought, it requires discipline to avoid costly missteps. Blanca will demonstrate how this approach supercharges experimentation and accelerates the path to product-market fit, while honestly addressing where it misleads teams into building the wrong things faster.

The key lies in wrapping vibe coding within a tight feedback loop: hypothesis → micro-build → user signal → iterate. She’ll share concrete examples of when to embrace rapid prototyping and when to slow down for deeper validation.

Leah Tharin, Product-Led Growth Advisor – AI and Its Impact on Product Management

​Leah Tharin helps product managers and teams understand how to adopt AI-enhanced product management. Her expertise covers both the strategic and tactical implications of AI integration in product development workflows. The core of her message is that AI won’t replace you, but PMs who master AI tools will replace those who don’t adapt.

She’ll demonstrate dynamic roadmaps that adjust based on real-time user feedback and outcome metrics that matter beyond traditional vanity numbers. She will also address where AI helps accelerate decision-making and where it can mislead teams into chasing novelty over genuine value creation. This session provides practical frameworks for keeping your team focused on meaningful outcomes while leveraging AI’s advantages responsibly.

Unlike Product School’s thousands of dollars in fees, Product Drive costs you nothing but time, and it’s totally worth it. Plus, you’ll get replay links to your selected talks.