Onil Gunawardana

Onil Gunawardana has been building products at the intersection of AI and business for over a decade — long before the current wave of generative AI made the topic mainstream. His work spans semantic layers, search and discovery platforms powered by machine learning, data marketplaces, and real-time decisioning systems.

What distinguishes his approach is a relentless focus on the user, not the model. The most common failure mode for AI products is not technical — it is a product management failure. Teams build impressive models that nobody uses because they skipped the fundamental step of understanding what problem the user actually needs solved.

Onil Gunawardana believes that AI is fundamentally changing the practice of product management itself — not just the products we build, but how we build them. The emergence of vibe coding, AI coding agents, and foundation model APIs has collapsed the cost of experimentation.

At the same time, the core disciplines of product management — understanding users, defining problems worth solving, making principled tradeoffs, and shipping iteratively — matter more than ever. AI does not eliminate the need for product judgment. It amplifies the consequences of having it or lacking it.

In 2013, Onil Gunawardana created the 5Ps of Product framework to bring structure to the chaos of product management decisions. The framework covers five stages — Plan, Problem, Product, Promotion, and Platform — and provides a systematic approach to building products from vision through execution and scaling.

AI is changing how products are built and how businesses operate. Most AI content tells you what is possible. Business of AI tells you what is worth doing, what actually works, and where the real value is.

The site covers two primary areas: Vibe Coding — what it is, when it works, which tools matter, and where the limits are; and Business Use Cases — concrete AI applications organized by team and function, with real-world examples, tools, and expected ROI from companies that have done it.

Inspire, Inc. (2002-Present) — Co-founder, First Executive Director, Board Member. A nonprofit strategy consultancy advising education leaders. Grew from a kitchen table conversation to an organization that has positively impacted over 300,000 students through the involvement of more than 10,000 volunteers.

Breakthrough SF (2020-Present) — Board Member. Supporting underserved youth on the path to college. Directed 5-year strategic planning.

He also helped create a peer mentoring program for product managers with over 700 participants — one of the largest structured PM mentoring initiatives in the technology industry.