Stop Filling the Leaky Bucket: Why Retention Comes Before Acquisition | Jaclyn Zhuang

Jaclyn Zhuang grew up in Singapore, spent years consulting across Southeast Asia, and came to American tech with what she calls an outsider's view. Her path runs through Deloitte, EA, Google, Twitch, Facebook, Zoom, Atlassian, and now as a former VP of Product and GM for Eightfold AI.

In this episode, we cover:

• How gaming at Electronic Arts taught her systems thinking - and why multiplayer game launches are one of the most demanding product environments you can work in
• Why she made every career move without a grand strategy, and the principle behind each one: you don't need a plan, you need a good reason
• The leaky bucket moment - leadership pushing hard on acquisition while retention was quietly broken, and why fixing the foundation first was the right call, even when it wasn't the exciting one
• Her metric for evaluating any business: seats used divided by seats sold, and what it reveals before the churn shows up
• Why structuring PM teams around features is a mistake, and what changes when you organize around personas instead
• The AI hesitation she sees outside Silicon Valley - policy vacuums, EU AI Act, workers' councils - and why the real opportunity is closing the adoption gap, not building better models
• Two things she's carried throughout her career: aim for the best given the circumstances, not perfect, and logic only moves people so far

A conversation for PMs and product leaders who want to think more clearly about where to actually focus, from retention and org design to what enterprise AI adoption really looks like on the ground.