Stop Managing the Roadmap. Start Building what Matters.

AI gives you speed. Customer discovery gives you truth. Use both—or fall behind.

Product isn’t a support function. It’s not about running standups, updating Jira, or cheerleading engineers from the sidelines.

I’ve done that. It’s safe. It’s comfortable. But it doesn’t move the needle.

The shift came when I stopped managing the process—and started owning the product.

As Marty Cagan said:

“The job is not about being a facilitator or cheerleader… It’s to work alongside design and engineering every day to solve problems for our customers in ways our customers love, yet work for the business.”

That starts with customer discovery.

Not surveys. Not guesses. Actual conversations.

You need to hear the friction in their voice. See the workarounds they’re hacking together. Sit in the pain long enough to feel what matters. Then you translate that into products that feel obvious in hindsight.

A product manager who’s not in discovery every week, maybe every day, isn’t doing product. They’re doing project coordination.

Every insight compounds. Every conversation sharpens judgment and reveals signals. And when you pair that with the speed of AI tooling—prototypes in minutes, in front of customers fast—you unlock something powerful:

You stop building what you think and hope will work. You start shipping what already does.

I’ve seen teams transform simply by getting closer to their customers. Less guessing. More conviction. Faster cycles. Better product.

If you’re not in the problem with the customer, you won’t be in the solution with the team.

This is the next phase of product. It belongs to the creators.

Not the spectators.