About Me

Andy Woods

I'm Director of Product Management at Cockroach Labs, where I've been scaling CockroachDB from pre-revenue to $100M+ ARR and category leadership. I lead cross-functional teams of 50+ people driving our Application and Database Ecosystem, including our evolution into the AI-powered application stack. I own CockroachDB's integration with the broader application ecosystem, including observability, disaster recovery, change data capture (CDC), streaming, and migration workflows across hybrid and cloud environments. I also lead our pricing and packaging strategy, aligning product value with business outcomes through a data-driven, iterative approach to product-market-price fit.

I started this site to share insights at the intersection of AI, distributed systems, and product development. I explore how AI is transforming infrastructure and how we can build better products with these technologies.

I'm running a production AI system leveraging multiple models (i.e., Opus 4.1, Sonnet 4.5, GPT-5) and Claude Code that analyzes 5,000+ monthly signals for product intelligence. I lead the company's first AI product initiative, evaluating partnerships with model providers and AI infrastructure companies to deliver a roadmap for LLM-powered database features. I make complex technology accessible to developers across both distributed systems and generative AI.

Background

I have 10+ years of hands-on product development and a Kellogg MBA (analytics, finance, marketing) and consulting-grade rigor. I specialize in turning ambiguity into scalable, margin-enhancing products that users love and businesses trust.

Subject Matter Expertise

  • Enterprise B2B user journeys across SaaS, open-core, and enterprise licensing models
  • Go-to-Market (GTM): product-led growth (PLG/PLS), sales-assisted motions, and field sales enablement
  • Distributed infrastructure and databases, including CSP integrations (AWS, GCP, Azure)
  • AI/ML infrastructure: LLMs, RAG architectures, vector databases, and production deployment

Technical & Strategic Skills

  • People leadership: hiring, coaching, and performance management across functions
  • Product strategy: investment planning, ROI analysis, budgeting, and analytics
  • End-to-end product development: from discovery and design to docs and delivery
  • Analytics & Financial Modeling: SQL/Looker fluency, revenue forecasting, NRR/NDR, gross margin optimization, LTV:CAC, Rule of 40
  • Pricing & monetization: strategy informed by data science, customer research, and business modeling
  • Technical: Python, SQL, LLMs (GPT-5, Claude, Vertex AI), RAG, Vector Databases, Prompt Engineering

Let's Connect

Always up to explore the intersection of AI and infrastructure, or debate the perfect burger. Reach out on X or LinkedIn.

I advise early-stage companies on AI product strategy, 0-1 and 1-10 product development, and B2B infrastructure. I speak at conferences about building AI-native products, distributed systems, and modern product management.

About This Site

This website was built using Claude Code and Astro. The entire development process, from architecture decisions to implementation, was completed in under 4 hours using AI-native development practices.

Blog post hero images are AI-generated using Stable Diffusion to create custom artwork that complements each article's theme.