AI Won't Know Your Product Exists If It Can't See It | Katana COO

Riikka Söderlund is the chief operating officer at Katana Cloud Inventory and the first COO on Between Two COOs to come from marketing rather than sales. Katana is a Finland-based inventory and manufacturing platform serving merchants in over 70 countries, with more than $3 billion in gross merchandise value flowing through it. Riikka spent two decades in marketing before moving into operations, and she argues that the marketing-to-COO path is underused because narrative-building is what actually moves teams, customers, and boards. She also explains what AI search is doing to product discovery, why an out-of-stock item does not get surfaced at all, and why Katana opened its API to any AI a customer wants to point at their own inventory data. Chapters: 00:00 Cold open 01:04 Introducing Riikka Söderlund and Katana 02:12 From Helsinki PR to Vogue and Oprah 03:55 Why old-era marketing skills became rare 06:05 What COOs should learn from marketers 07:24 Storytelling, listening, and internal communication 10:37 Founder gravitas versus learned operator skill 11:53 Training to be a COO before the title 14:15 Running Katana day to day 15:22 Goal setting and the six-week sprint 19:16 Physical goods, SAP, and the market gap 25:01 The golden era of creativity and branding 30:35 Product metadata is the new SEO 33:44 AI search and the internet economy 36:33 Opening the API while SAP closed theirs 38:06 Training for product management 42:02 The brand that didn't know it was losing money 43:43 Harry Potter and the invisible inventory Mentioned in this episode: Katana Cloud Inventory: https://katanamrp.com Cannes Lions: https://www.canneslions.com Lovable: https://lovable.dev Gong: https://www.gong.io Listen on your favorite podcast app: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4OQY2oi... Newsletter: https://betweentwocoos.com About Riikka Söderlund: Riikka Söderlund is the chief operating officer at Katana Cloud Inventory, where she runs the commercial side of the business. She spent two decades in marketing, starting in Helsinki ad agencies, then a decade in consumer marketing, before joining Katana as VP of marketing and later CMO. She studied communications and credits narrative-building as the skill that carried over from marketing to operations. About Between Two COOs: Between Two COOs is the execution intelligence podcast for operating leaders. Host Michael Koenig sits down with COOs, presidents, and founders to talk about what it actually takes to run a company. From early-stage scaling to $50B operations. New episodes weekly. Connect: Riikka Söderlund:   / riikkasoderlund   Michael Koenig:   / michael-koenig514   Helm: https://helmapp.ai #BetweenTwoCOOs #COO #Katana #AISearch