Paul Adams

Evaluate AI integration by mapping the core product premise and customer problems against current AI capabilities.

"I'd start with the thing your product does. "What's the core premise behind it? Why do people use it? What problem does it solve for them?" That kind of thing. So, go back to basics. And then ask, "Ca..."

AI strategy involves deciding whether the technology will fundamentally replace a workflow or act as a 'copilot' to assist users.

"You're going to need to map what your product does against what AI can do... for some of it'll be replacement. AI would replace, it'll just do it. And, in other places, it'll be augmentation. It'll au..."

Avoid siloing AI into a separate team; instead, integrate AI knowledge across the entire product organization.

"Don't bolt it on. I think some people are still in that camp... Don't be like, "Oh, we'll have a bunch of AI people..." And we do have some specialists. But generally speaking, we're trying to have ev..."

LLMs are shifting from simple text generation to complex reasoning, coding, and multi-modal visual analysis.

"It can reason. There's actually a debate about whether is this reasoning or deduction. But, it can work things out... you can see it doing things, like writing code... it can parse imagery, and it can..."

Over-rehearsing a script word-for-word can lead to catastrophic failure if you lose your place; using informal talking points is often more resilient.

"I just froze. I couldn't remember what I was supposed to say. It was the first ever time in my life I'd rehearsed the talk word for word. Usually, I have talking points, and things get mixed around, a..."

Pricing complexity is a compounding mistake; simplicity is more important than perfectly capturing every unit of subjective value.

"We had a principle called align price to value... Value is subjective... The biggest mistake was a lot of mistakes compounded... we've ended up with too many pricing models... My advice is keep it sim..."

Reference checks are more effective when they ask for specific, future-dated performance feedback rather than general praise.

"Here's an amazing question I got given recently... for referral calls... "What feedback will I be giving this person in their first performance review?" It's an amazing question, because the person ca..."

The 'kindest' path in management is often the most difficult one, such as letting someone go when there isn't a fit.

"I'd never fired anyone before I joined Intercom... and realized it always works out for both sides. And the nicest thing to do is to do the harder thing. It's actually the nicer thing to do. People ar..."

Product-Market Fit is incomplete without 'Story Fit'—the ability to explain the product's value simply and effectively.

"The way I describe product market fit is, you've got to build the right product for the right market... And so, the story is really important, as important. And actually, sometimes you'll see not grea..."

A balanced roadmap must trade off between unique differentiators that attract customers and 'table stakes' features that allow them to switch.

"Difference versus table stakes, very simple... differentiation. So what's different and better? But critically, what's different and better in ways that customers care about?... on the other side, the..."

Jobs to be Done (JTBD) is most effective when used as a simple tool to maintain focus on the core customer problem rather than an academic exercise.

"For us with Jobs to be Done, it was a really good way of us centering on the customer problem, focusing on not getting distracted, basing it in good solid research informed insight, that told us the t..."

Mapping exercises during interviews can reveal deep-seated behavioral patterns that tactical usability studies might miss.

"What I used to do with people was map out their social network, all the people in it, their family, their friends, how they communicate. We'd map on all the channels, we'd talk about what worked well,..."

Prioritize shipping speed and frequency to accelerate the learning loop and allow for rapid course correction.

"We have a principle called Ship to Learn. And, we've actually changed it since... Ship fast, ship early, ship often is what it says now... If you ship early, and fast, and learn fast, you can change f..."