Elena Calvillo is an independent product builder based in Mexico City. After more than a decade in enterprise product management, she went independent in January 2026 and now builds her own products full time, including DraftKit, an async writing workspace for Substack creators. She writes Prompt-Led Product on Substack, where she teaches product managers how to build with AI instead of just talking about it.

This is the Thriving in Engineering Podcast, where we talk to engineers and technical leaders about what AI is actually changing in day-to-day work, past the headlines and the hype.

In this conversation, we discuss:

1. Why she stopped waiting for permission to build and went independent with no team and no engineers
2. How the AI Advent Challenge grew into a community of almost 900 people with 200 learning daily
3. Why she scrapped the calendar-first version of DraftKit after listening to what writers actually wanted
4. How she built an MCP protocol that lets paid subscribers search her entire prompt library from Claude
5. Why she treats user feedback as neutral information instead of praise or criticism

Elena's details:
Prompt-Led Product: https://promptledproduct.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elena-product-manager/
DraftKit: https://draftkit.app
AI Advent Challenge: https://aiadventchallenge.com