Riikka Söderlund, Katana COO, on Why AI Won't Know Your Product Exists

Riikka Söderlund is the chief operating officer at Katana Cloud Inventory, a Finland-based platform that helps small product businesses run inventory, manufacturing, and multi-channel sales. She and host Michael Koenig discuss how AI search is affecting product discovery, why an out-of-stock product is invisible to an AI chat, and why she thinks marketing is an underused path to the COO seat. Along the way: six-week sprints instead of quarters, why Katana opened its API while SAP closed theirs, and the brand that discovered it had been selling at a loss. Why marketing is an underrated path to the COO seat, and what narrative building does for an operator that sales training does not The six-week sprint, why four weeks is too short and eight is too long, and how she bridges the gap between a key result and an actual plan of execution Product metadata as the new SEO, and why an out-of-stock product does not get surfaced by AI search at all The Shopify earnings-call number: AI referral traffic to Shopify stores grew 13-fold quarter over quarter Why Katana opened its API to any AI the customer chooses while SAP closed theirs, and why she frames that as a values choice about who owns inventory data The brand that did not know its cost of goods sold was negative, and the one that found $40,000 of inventory it had misplaced 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 she credits narrative building as the skill that carried across from marketing into operations. Katana serves merchants in over 70 countries, with more than $3 billion in gross merchandise value flowing through the platform. Chapters 0:00 Cold open 1:04 Introducing Riikka Söderlund and Katana 2:12 From Helsinki PR to Vogue and Oprah 3:55 Why old-era marketing skills became rare 6:05 What COOs should learn from marketers 7:24 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 Shopify: https://www.shopify.com SAP: https://www.sap.com Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com Gong: https://www.gong.io Lovable: https://lovable.dev Claude Code: https://claude.com/product/claude-code Cannes Lions: https://www.canneslions.com Connect with Riikka LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/riikkasoderlund/ Katana Cloud Inventory: https://katanamrp.com Connect with Michael LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-koenig514 Building Helm: https://helmapp.ai Subscribe to Between Two COOs Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/between-two-coos-with-michael-koenig/id1596195041 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4OQY2oizo3rWUlwhmtdpSi Newsletter: https://betweentwocoos.com