Why Executives Ignore Your Roadmap: How to Win Exec Buy-in

Hosted by Shardul Mehta and Mike Smart

Wed, Jun 24, 2026

4:00 PM UTC (1 hour)

Virtual (Zoom)

Free to join

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Business Fluency Masterclass for Product Leaders
Shardul Mehta and Mike Smart
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What you'll learn

Why Executive Buy-In Breaks Down.

Learn the most common reasons executives reject roadmap proposals and what they're looking for instead.

Connect Product Work to Business Outcomes.

See how high-impact product leaders tie roadmap investments to growth, retention, and company goals.

Make Better Trade-Off Decisions That Executives Support.

Learn why traditional prioritization breaks down and how to trade business outcomes instead.

Why this topic matters

Roadmaps don't get funded. Business outcomes do. If you're a Director, VP, or Head of Product leading PM teams in B2B SaaS, you'll learn why executive buy-in breaks down, what we've learned from CPOs and senior business executives, and how top-performing product leaders consistently earn trust, influence, and support.

You'll learn from

Shardul Mehta

Founder, Street Smart Product Manager

Recognized as a "Product Jedi," Shardul is a seasoned product executive, 4x founder, thought leader, writer, and speaker. Over a 30-year career in complex markets, he's bridged the gap between messy innovation and institutional scale. Whether launching industry-first products or managing complex portfolios at Fortune 100 enterprises, Shardul specializes in building the product strategy and the decision discipline needed to turn technology into a high-margin business. He's led teams through VC/PE growth, M&A, IPOs, digital transformations, ensuring every initiative is framed as an investible bet grounded in economic reality.

As founder of Street Smart Product Manager, he mentors the next generation of product leaders on what it actually takes to succeed in product management.

He also performs and teaches improv!

Mike Smart

Founder & Managing Principal, Egress Solutions

Mike is Founder and Managing Principal at Egress Solutions, a product management and product marketing consultancy. He brings more than 20 years of experience with lean techniques in product strategy, product adoption, product launch and customer acquisition. 

During his tenure at Egress, Mike has completed over 400 client engagements, worked with more than 1,500 product professionals and helped launch technology solutions that have generated more than $500 million in top-line impact.

Mike has provided product management, product marketing and go-to-market expertise to companies such as, Apttus, Adobe, FireEye, ForgeRock, Gigamon, HP Enterprise, Netapp, VMware, Bain Capital, K1 Investment Management and Vista Equity Partners.

Adobe
HP
Capital One
Amwell
Bain Capital
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