Inspirational Women Leaders Of Tech: Google’s Vennela Subramanyam On The 5 Things You Need to Develop Great Products

Currently, only about 1 in 4 employees in the tech industry is a woman. So what does it take to create a successful career as a woman in Tech?

In this interview series called Lessons From Inspirational Women Leaders in Tech, we are talking to successful women leaders in the tech industry to share stories and insights about what they did to lead successful careers. We also discuss the steps needed to create a great tech product. As part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Vennela Subramanyam.

Vennela Subramanyam is a seasoned technology leader with a proven track record of spearheading high-impact products that bridge the gap between complex engineering and intuitive user experiences. Throughout her career, she has demonstrated a unique ability to scale innovative products from initial concept to market-leading positions by fostering collaborative, high-performing technical teams. As a champion for excellence in the industry, she remains dedicated to mentoring the next generation of talent and refining the frameworks necessary to build transformative tech products.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview are her own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Google.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before diving in, our readers would love to learn more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

My path into Product Management was not a straight line, but rather a realization that took root during my time at Amazon. With a background in Telecommunications Engineering, my first role was as an analyst managing high-scale manual processes. I spent my days analyzing vast datasets to map competitive pricing, a task that was as grueling as it was critical.

The turning point came when I began collaborating with a Product Manager who was tasked with automating our workflow. Watching him translate our daily frustrations and ‘manual’ pain points into a streamlined, automated tool was a revelation. I was awestruck by the ability to solve complex problems through technology, and I knew then that I didn’t just want to use the tools — I wanted to build them.

Driven by this new purpose, I made the life-changing decision to move to the United States to pursue my Master’s. This was a significant milestone, as I was the first person in my extended family of 40 to leave our hometown, let alone move across the world. After graduation, I joined the fintech startup RobustWealth ( acquired by Principal Financial Group ) as a Business Analyst. There, I essentially operated as a Product Manager, owning the development of core features like Client Onboarding and Money Movement. Seeing those features come to life and hearing the relief from advisors and clients was my true ‘aha’ moment. I realized that my superpower lies in the transition from execution to strategic vision — not just understanding the technical ‘how,’ but identifying the human ‘what’ that solves a real-world problem.”

It has been said that our mistakes can sometimes be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Early in my career, I made the mistake of assuming I was my own target user. I was working on a dashboard and was convinced that a specific ‘Quick-View’ summary widget would be a game-changer for our users. I spent weeks advocating for it, pushing the design team to make it beautiful, and rushing the engineers to get it into the next sprint. I was so sure of my ‘intuition’ that I didn’t bother to look at the historical usage data of similar features or run a simple A/B test.

When we finally launched, I stayed up late to watch the engagement metrics. The result?

Total silence. The data showed that users were clicking around my beautiful widget to get to the raw data tables they had always used. My ‘intuitive’ feature was actually just clutter in their workflow.

I realized that while a Product Manager must be a visionary to set the North Star, that vision shouldn’t be a hallucination. True vision is built on a foundation of deep user empathy and data. My mistake wasn’t having a vision; it was having a vision in a vacuum. Now, I use data to ‘stress-test’ my vision, ensuring that the future I’m building is one that users actually need and want.

What do you feel has been your ‘career-defining’ moment? We’d love to hear the lead-up, what happened, and the impact it had on your life.

While at RobustWealth, I was tasked with the product ownership of our Money Movement module. At the time, the system was a significant operational bottleneck; it supported basic, one-time transfers, but lacked the sophisticated infrastructure expected of a modern enterprise wealth management platform. We were missing critical industry parity: no support for ACATS (Automated Customer Account Transfer Service), no recurring transfer logic, and no self-service cancellation capabilities. Most critically, account liquidation was a manual, paper-heavy process — a ‘black hole’ for clients that created massive friction and operational risk.

The defining moment came when I realized that patching these features into the legacy UI was a losing game. To truly scale, we needed a total paradigm shift in our workflow architecture and UX. I took the lead in re-architecting our end-to-end money movement and liquidation experience. .

I spent weeks with engineering and design, mapping out a high-integrity user journey that balanced compliance with ease of use. I remember presenting the final strategic roadmap to our stakeholders — moving beyond just ‘clicks’ to a seamless, automated flow that gave users full agency over their liquidity through real-time status monitoring and automated recurring transactions. By digitizing the liquidation and ACAT workflows, we didn’t just remove manual error; we removed the emotional anxiety of moving wealth.

The launch of this revamped engine was a commercial turning point for the company, enabling us to move up-market and secure large-scale enterprise accounts that demanded these sophisticated capabilities.

On a personal level, this was my coming of age as a Product Leader. It taught me that great products aren’t built on the surface — they are built in the ‘unsexy plumbing.’ I learned that my core strength lies in taking high-stress, highly regulated technical complexities and distilling them into elegant, scalable user experiences. That transition from managing tasks to owning a critical business pillar is what defined my trajectory in tech.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

When I first started, I didn’t have a built-in network or a roadmap for the U.S. tech landscape. Because I was an outsider, I leaned into the only thing I could fully control, my own growth. There were many times I felt like giving up, especially when the silent phon’ period lasted longer than expected. But my drive came from a core belief that technical excellence is the best form of job security.

I spent that time obsessively learning the skills I knew I would need. I didn’t just want a job title; I wanted to be an expert. I treated my job search like a full-time engineering project — analyzing my gaps, mastering new tools, and deeply studying the mechanics of Product Management. I believed then, and I still believe now, that while a network can get you through the door, only consistent hard work and a sharp skill set keep you in the room and allow you to lead.

I eventually realized that the most valuable network you can have is a reputation for being the person who gets the hard things done. My transition to a leader wasn’t a stroke of luck; it was the result of showing up every day and doing the ‘unsexy’ work — the data cleaning, the workflow mapping, the edge-case testing.

Today, when I mentor others, I tell them that networking is important, but it is a multiplier of your skills, not a replacement for them. My hard times taught me that when everything else is uncertain, you bet on your own ability to learn and outwork the problem.

Ok, super. Thank you for all that. Let’s shift to the main focus of our interview. If someone wants to lead a great company and create great products, what is the most important quality (for example, “determination” or “eye for detail”) that person should have, and what habits or behaviors would you suggest for honing that particular quality?

I believe the most important quality for any leader is Ruthless Reductionism, which is the ability to ignore the noise of vanity metrics and feature bloat to identify the single, load-bearing truth of why a product actually creates value. While many leaders fall into the trap of additive thinking believing that more features, more data, or more complexity equate to a better product — a good product leader has the discipline to strip away the nice-to-haves until they find the core mechanism that truly solves the user’s problem. To hone this quality, you must develop the habit of Zero-Based Product Thinking, where you periodically look at your entire roadmap and ask yourself if you would still authorize each project today if it didn’t already exist, rather than continuing to invest just because you’ve already started.

You should also practice the habit of looking past the numbers to see the person behind them; instead of just celebrating a high success rate, you should spend time wondering why the remaining users felt frustrated enough to walk away. By learning the courage to simplify and focusing only on the few changes that truly improve a user’s life, you transition from being a manager who just tracks tasks to a leader who creates products with purpose and a heart.

Next, let’s talk about teams. What’s a team management strategy or framework that you’ve found to be exceptionally useful for the product development process?

The strategy I rely on most is what I call Co-Discovery, but at its heart, it’s really just about shared ownership. I have always felt that the most demotivating thing for a brilliant engineer or designer is to be treated like a ticket-taker who only gets brought in after all the big decisions have already been made. Instead, I make it a point to bring my team into the messy, early stages of a problem before a single requirement is ever written. We sit down together and look at a real human struggle — like an advisor who is genuinely stressed because a manual process is eating up their entire day and we ask, “How can we solve this together?” This approach changes the energy of the room because the team isn’t just executing a plan; they are helping a real person.

When you respect your team enough to trust them with the “Why” and not just the “How,” you build a foundation of deep mutual trust. They know their craft is valued, and I know that the final product will be better because it was built by people who actually care about the person on the other side of the screen, not just the deadline. It turns a job into a mission, and that’s where the best work happens.

When you think of the strongest team you’ve ever worked with, why do you think the team worked so well together, and can you recall an anecdote that illustrates the dynamic?

The strongest team I’ve ever worked with succeeded because we shared a level of radical trust that made ego impossible. We were a group of people who stopped worrying about who got the credit and started worrying about whether the person using our product felt safe and empowered. It worked because we had a ‘no-walls’ policy i.e. engineers cared about the design, designers cared about the logic, and I cared about the technical constraints. We weren’t just a collection of specialists; we were a single unit focused on a shared human outcome.

I remember a specific moment that perfectly illustrated this. We were in the middle of a high-pressure launch when one of our engineers challenged a core design flow, spotting a potential friction point we had all missed. In many teams, that would have led to a defensive debate or a delay. But with this team, the dynamic was different. Within ten minutes, the designer was back at their desk reworking the flow, the compliance officer was on the phone verifying the new logic, and I was ordering dinner for everyone. There was no panic, just a quiet, intense focus. We stayed late not because we were told to, but because we genuinely respected each other too much to let anyone’s hard work result in a mediocre product. That sense of ‘I have your back’ is what turns a group of talented people into a world-class team.

Let’s talk about downtime. What’s your go-to practice or ritual for preventing burnout?

For me, preventing burnout isn’t about grand vacations. It is about the small, daily discipline of intentional disconnection. My go-to ritual is a long evening walk, completely unplugged, no phone, no podcasts, and no music.

Because my career has been built on grit, constant learning, and managing high-stakes digital complexity, my brain is often always on. These walks allow me to transition from the digital world back to the physical one. It is my time to stop solving problems for a moment and just observe the world around me.

I’ve found that the best ideas often come not when I’m staring at a screen or a roadmap, but when I’ve given myself the permission to stop thinking about the how and just be. This simple practice of clearing the mental clutter is what ensures I can show up the next morning with the same drive, clarity, and empathy my team deserves.

Thank you for all of that. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience, what are your “5 Steps Needed to Create Great Tech Products”?

1. Master the Manual Before You Automate

You cannot build a great product until you have felt the pain of the problem it solves. My first step is always to get into the trenches of the current process. This goes back to my time as an analyst at Amazon. I spent hours manually mapping data before I ever thought about how to automate it. By understanding the manual struggle, you ensure that the technology you eventually build is actually solving real human frustration, not just adding a layer of digital complexity.

2. Let Data Stress-Test Your Vision

Vision is what sets the direction, but data is what keeps you on the road. I learned this the hard way when I built a “Quick-View” widget that I personally loved, only to find that my users ignored it completely. Now, I never move from concept to development without looking for evidence. As a leader, you have to be willing to let the data prove you wrong early so that you have the space to be right when it counts.

3. Build a “No-Walls” Culture

A great product is the result of a team that feels safe enough to challenge one another. In my experience, the best ideas come when the engineer challenges the design or the PM questions the technical constraints. By removing the traditional silos between departments, you create a shared sense of ownership. When the whole team feels like problem-solvers rather than ticket-takers, you build a resilient product that can handle high-stakes launches without panic.

4. Solve for the “Hardest Day,” Not the Best One

Most products are built for the happy path,”but user trust is actually won or lost in the moments of highest stress. This was my focus when we digitized the Money Movement and Liquidation engine. By solving for the unhappy path — like when a user needs to cancel a transaction or move assets quickly — we turned a source of anxiety into a source of confidence. If you build for your user’s worst day, they will stick with you for their best ones.

5. Combine Individual Grit with Collective Strategy

Success in tech requires the hard work mindset of an engineer and the strategic vision of a leader. Coming to the U.S. as the first in my family of 40 to move abroad required immense personal grit, and I bring that same persistence to product development. However, I’ve learned that while your own hard work gets you started, it is your ability to empower your team and leverage a network of experts that allows a product to truly scale. Great products are built by people who never stop learning and never stop collaborating.

Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in Tech? What specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?

I am inspired by the progress we’ve made, but I believe the status quo will truly shift when we move from mere representation to deep, strategic influence. To accelerate this change, we need to transition from passive mentorship to active sponsorship, where we intentionally pull women into the high-stakes, technical projects that define a company’s future. Coming from a background where I had to build my own roadmap, I also believe we must continue to champion a culture that values grit and technical mastery over traditional networks. By ensuring that the most capable minds regardless of their background have access to the unwritten rules of the industry, we don’t just diversify the room; we build more resilient and innovative products for everyone.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why?

I would love to share a conversation with Julie Zhuo. Her book, The Making of a Manager, was a lighthouse for me as I transitioned from being a technical analyst to a product leader. She has a unique way of articulating the ‘human’ side of product development — that intersection where team dynamics, user empathy, and strategic vision meet. I would love to discuss her perspective on maintaining a human-centric design philosophy as a company scales globally. Since I am a firm believer in ‘Co-Discovery’ and breaking down the silos between engineering and design, I would value her insights on fostering high-trust, collaborative cultures in high-pressure environments.

Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!