Dave Hannum has spent more than 30 years building products in the fitness industry. He led product and business development at Technogym before founding Functional Solutions, one of the early platforms for connected fitness and digital coaching.

For most of his career, building software meant working within engineering constraints. Today, those constraints are changing.

Dave shares how that shift is changing the way product teams think about roadmaps, customer feedback, feature development, and where real competitive advantage comes from. The conversation also looks at what AI changes, what it doesn't, and why understanding people is becoming even more important as building software gets easier.

Dave breaks down:

→ Why faster development doesn't always lead to better products
→ The tradeoff between building for today's customers and tomorrow's customers
→ How AI is changing product teams without replacing product thinking
→ Why legacy software is becoming harder to compete with
→ Where roadmaps still matter, and where they don't
→ Why understanding people is still the biggest competitive advantage

Follow Dave:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davehannum

Follow Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker
LinkedIn Marco: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcobzg/
LinkedIn Jonas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonas-ducker-37460bb3/

Get in touch with This Feature Will Save Us Podcast
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/this-feature-will-save-us
Website: https://thisfeaturewillsaveus.com/

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0:21 – From product roadmaps to vibe coding: how AI is changing the way products get built
4:25 – If coding isn't the moat anymore, what is?
8:50 – Rebuilding Functional Solutions with modern AI tools
9:03 – Functional Solutions and the early days of connected fitness
11:31 – The SMS feature that kept members engaged beyond the gym
14:03 – Why building for your biggest customer can derail your roadmap
15:39 – Feature bloat doesn't disappear. It just happens faster.
17:46 – Product failure, iteration, and rewriting the rules of development
20:45 – Why building software is getting easier, but building a business isn't
25:30 – Generalists, specialists, and the future of product teams
30:30 – Legacy software, acquisitions, and what big companies can't move fast enough to do
40:45 – Why understanding people is still the real moat
42:41 – Rapid-fire questions