Roberto Hortal — Product Leadership in the AI Era

Hi, I’m Roberto Hortal
People-first. AI-powered. Building teams that punch above their weight.

For over 20 years I've turned bold ideas into products millions of people use — at Nokia, easyJet, Co-op, EDF, and now Wall Street English. I write about making AI adoption actually stick, leading product and technology teams, and the unglamorous work of turning strategy into shipped results. Subscribe below and get every new post the moment it goes live.

Roberto Hortal. CPTO, Wall Street English

Making Products That People Love at:

Meet Roberto Hortal: a tireless innovator with over 20 years’ Product and Innovation experience at senior level across a range of sectors including Education, Green Tech, Energy, Retail, Travel, Insurance and Telecommunications.

I am Chief Product and Technology Officer at Wall Street English. Throughout my career, I have led Product, Technology and Innovation at several global B2C and B2B organisations.

I am passionate about transforming organisations, adopting the tools and practices of the Internet era to respond to the evolving needs of customers and colleagues.

Codify to Translate

A recent piece on org design argues that the bottleneck in how companies build things was never speed. It was translation cost. A product manager …

Continue Reading about Codify to Translate →

The Forward Deployed CPTO

Marketing at Wall Street English wanted to buy licenses for a platform that prints QR codes with trackable short links, for outdoor advertising and …

Continue Reading about The Forward Deployed CPTO →

The Enactment Gap

Leadership teams run prioritisation exercises regularly during a quarter. RICE scores, updated inputs, a fresh workshop each time. The output barely …

Continue Reading about The Enactment Gap →

Cognitive Coverage: The Real Job After AI Writes the Code

Satya Nadella admitted something uncomfortable on a podcast in June: he's a token-maxer too. Reaching for the most powerful model available, for tasks …

Continue Reading about Cognitive Coverage: The Real Job After AI Writes the Code →

Prompt Debt Is the New Technical Debt

A system I worked with once had a system prompt that repeated the same instruction four separate times, in four different sections, with escalating …

Continue Reading about Prompt Debt Is the New Technical Debt →

The Four Archetypes of the AI-Split Workforce

Most AI adoption programmes are built for a population of two: people who are on board, and people who need convincing. Noam Segal and Lenny …

Continue Reading about The Four Archetypes of the AI-Split Workforce →