Hersh Tapadia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Allstacks, an AI-powered platform helping product and engineering organizations improve how they plan, build, and deliver software. He has spent his career leading product and software teams across SaaS, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and supply chain technology.
Before founding Allstacks, Hersh helped build multiple technology ventures and led product and engineering teams that developed complex software and hardware. His experience exposed him to a persistent challenge: Product and engineering leaders often lack the shared context and reliable data needed to connect everyday development decisions to customer and business outcomes.
At Allstacks, Hersh works with product and engineering leaders as they navigate the shift toward AI-assisted development. He speaks about how AI is changing the role of the product manager, why strong product specifications are becoming increasingly important, and how organizations can use data to improve alignment, accountability, and product delivery.
Hersh earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University and a master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Duke University.
1.) What is in your pockets?
Usually nothing. I don’t like sitting down with things in my pockets. If you look around me, you’d find the usual suspects: my car keys, wallet, AirPods, and phone. That’s about it.
2.) What exciting thing has happened recently for you or your organization?
We launched Product Studio over the summer, and it is now generally available to organizations ranging from startups to large organizations. A free tier allows teams to get started, experience the value, and scale from there. Allstacks’ Product Studio, our AI product-management tool for agentic development, provides product teams with the specifications, organizational context, process, and governance needed to power AI-driven software development and produce better business outcomes.
AI can do a good job writing code, but it will execute what you tell it to do. If the specifications are not informed by the organization’s goals, customers, and technical context, you will not get the right business outcome. Our data show that strong specifications significantly reduce rework and increase the likelihood of achieving the desired result on the first attempt.
We realized that software development used to be like flying an airplane. You could steer it and adjust course along the way. With AI, software development is more like firing a rocket. You must dial in the trajectory before you launch; if you do not, you will miss. The specifications and requirements that go into software development are that trajectory.
Allstacks is a product-management workbench that helps product managers create high-quality specifications and requirements that allow AI to generate code that achieves the intended business outcome. We looked at how software development is changing with AI and recognized a new bottleneck was emerging. Engineers can now move incredibly fast with AI, but product managers often struggle to keep pace.
3.) What is your favorite coffee spot?
I have two favorites. Black & White Coffee is at the top of the list. I was in San Francisco recently and met the CTO of Replit. When I told him I was from Raleigh, one of the first things he asked was whether I knew Black & White. That’s how respected it has become. I love both the coffee and its Raleigh roots.
My other favorite is New World Café. Mike, the owner, is passionate about helping customers discover new coffee experiences. He sources great beans, pays attention to quality, and has created a place where startup conversations and relationships naturally happen.
4.) What keeps you up at night?
Every founder worries about the basics. Are we growing fast enough? Do we have enough capital? Can we retain great people
But after building an organization through COVID, market corrections, geopolitical conflicts, and countless unexpected events, I’ve learned that entrepreneurship is really about showing up every day. There is always another challenge waiting around the corner.
One analogy I like comes from my years doing autocross racing. In racing, your hands tend to follow where your eyes are looking. Some driving schools even cover the bottom half of the windshield to force drivers to look farther down the track. If you’re looking ahead, you’re steering. If you’re looking right in front of the car, you’re reacting.
That lesson applies directly to running an organization. You must keep looking ahead and steering rather than reacting to every piece of news that comes your way.
Honestly, though, the thing that keeps me up most of these days isn’t business. I have a young daughter. Like most parents, I spend more time thinking about what kind of future awaits her than I do worrying about quarterly business challenges.
5.) What is your favorite restaurant or happy hour spot?
Stanbury. Easy answer. I think it may be the best restaurant in North Carolina. I have never had a bad meal there. They are also incredibly thoughtful and always find ways to make our young daughter feel welcome.
6.) What is next for you or your organization?
We’re extremely excited about Product Studio and the opportunity ahead.
We believe it has the potential to fundamentally change how organizations use AI to build software. Every organization is trying to figure out how to get better results from AI, but success depends on communicating the right context, requirements, and business objectives. That’s where we’re focused.
As far as we can tell, we’re operating well ahead of where much of the market is heading. Our goal now is to continue improving the platform, helping more organizations adopt it, and making AI-powered software development more effective and more accessible. We’re excited to keep pushing that vision forward.
