# Taste vs. Discovery: Product Strategy in AI Era

**Podcast:** All Things Product with Teresa and Petra
**Published:** 2026-05-05

## Transcript

Hi, folks.
This is All Things Product with Petra Wille.
And Teresa, of course.
And we're so happy you're here.
Teresa, I just read the other day that you and I and basically everybody should practice having taste a bit more because that is the one thing that still matters in times of AI.
We're both laughing already.
I can see your face.
So what's your thought on that?
Yeah.
Okay.
I have a lot of thoughts.
I'm going to start with my first gut reaction is this feels like founder mode.
It feels like tech bros saying I have some intuitive trait that you don't have.
And so I get to make all the decisions.
It's like my bristle response because the way most people talk about this is like when they're making the argument, AI is going to do all the work.
And so all that's left is to have taste.
And they frame it as like, what's going to matter is what your judgment around what to build.
Okay, well, if we're getting into judgment around what to build, now we're in the discovery realm.
And why are we just talking about taste and not talking about what our customers need and understanding our customers and a match between our solutions and what customers need?
So that's one of my gripes.
But another one of my gripes is like, Nobody can define taste.
It's like product sense.
It's like this inherent trait.
And like, I remember somebody on Lenny's podcast was asked, how do you develop taste?
And he said, exposure hours to great products.
And so here's my other problem with this.
I can start to play with what could taste mean?
Does taste mean design aesthetic?
In which case we have a whole field of hundreds of years of design aesthetic that you don't build by just going to a museum and looking at art.
You learn it by learning the principles of design, right?
So that's like, there's that wrapped up in there.
But then there's this like judgment piece of like, how do we make good decisions?
And this gets into like critical thinking and like taking in data and understanding your customer, but not when, when taste comes up in this context.
I don't hear any of those things come up.
I don't hear people talking about learning design and design aesthetics.
I don't hear people talking about talking to your customers and being data driven.
I don't hear people talking about critical thinking and building your critical thinking skills.
What I hear people talk about is people have, some people have taste and we should let those people make the decisions.
Yeah, they inherited that skill from God, Teresa.
So that's basically what happened.
And yeah, the poor ones that don't have it, but they have the exact same observation than you are actually having.
And product sense is a good other example for it.
Yeah.
I am a strong believer that you develop product sense and taste over time.
It's never finished.
It always changes.
And it's an experience based thing.
And therefore, everybody can build it over time, I would argue.
But is it a good thing to develop to survive in times of AI?
I don't know.
It's not something that I will invest a lot of time into.
To some extent, I get where they're coming from because I oftentimes look at stuff that AI created and then you're like, ooh.
This has this particular AI style and every human can do this, right?
Every human has this kind of eek when they look at AI, a lot of AI generated content, at least.
If it's the occasional thing that is sneaked into your Instagram feed, then maybe you don't even realize it's AI.
But if you see a lot of these AI generated.
content and you get the idea it has a similar aesthetic um and then your taste could kind of help you to identify stuff that is not the same aesthetic right um but again that's experience based it's basically it's something you have been trained on something you have been learning about a longer period of time and is that something that i think ai would not be able to learn at some point?
I don't know, Teresa.
Okay, so lots of reactions to this.
So like, if I think about taste from the design aesthetic standpoint.
Yeah.
One, I do think AI is going to learn design aesthetics.
Me too.
Also, the people arguing that taste is the differentiating skill are the same people laying off their designers, the people trained in design aesthetics.
So I don't know what that's about.
Uh, I do agree with you that like, I think the reason why this concept is spreading is it resonates on a very like visceral level.
I can look at a product and decide is this.
And I know immediately.
Yeah.
But, but it doesn't mean I know how to create that delight.
Right.
No.
And I think, I think that delight is a function of multiple things.
And when we just call it taste, we're doing a disservice to those multiple things.
So like, When you use a product and it's delightful, what's happening?
Maybe it's visually appealing.
So that's that design aesthetic piece.
Maybe it meets your needs exactly.
So that's sort of that function.
It's flawless.
Maybe it's flawless.
Yeah.
It fits your, like it's viable.
It really like, it's not astronomically expensive or maybe it's luxury and it's supposed to be astronomically expensive, but like there's a match there.
And so it turns out, what am I just describing there?
All the same risks we've been talking about with discovery, right?
Like it's, this is not new.
It's, we've had this all the time.
It's just now we're getting big name people in tech putting a new label on it.
claiming this is the most important thing and then using it as an excuse to say, no, we're not doing it that way.
That doesn't have enough taste.
Yeah.
Like it's, I don't, I don't like it.
It feels very, I'm better than you.
Yeah, it does.
It's a bit of history repeating.
I mean, it's just this month's flavor of founder mode.
Yeah.
Right.
And this month's flavor of product sense to some extent.
And I don't think that like AI, I think AI is going to get good at this.
I actually think AI is going to get good at all of this.
And like I've even said in the past, I think as delivery gets free, discovery becomes more important.
And I do think that's true.
But I also think AI is going to eat up discovery.
And so what's left?
Tech bros are going to say taste, but I don't know.
I think AI is going to eat that too.
Yeah, I'm not sure.
I'm still making the case for real innovation.
Yeah.
And it's hard for me to put it into words, but if you've done product for long enough, then you had this moments with your team where you stepped out of your box with the team.
And then from wherever the spark came, somebody had an idea where everybody was like, oh, you're onto something.
This is actually, we never thought about it that way.
And then you go into discovery mode again and you see how users reacted and it really works.
And I don't know how to call that moment.
And innovation is maybe the word that comes closest to what I mean.
But I'm not sure if, because we humans were not able to iterate our way to this epiphany moment or whatever you call it.
They just happen, these moments.
and how AI will create these truly new ideas.
But let's see, that's the thing that I'm still kind of, let's see how that works.
You're making me think of like, if I had to pick the one skill that I would invest in, if AI is going to eat the world, it would be learning how to collaborate with AI, right?
Like I'm not totally convinced that humans are not going to be in the picture.
Or living in the woods.
Yeah, or we might go live in the woods, which I'd be perfectly happy with.
But, like, I know I also, I know I just said AI was going to eat all those things, but I also don't think it's going to do it in a way that, like, humans aren't involved.
Yeah.
Or if it does, like, again, we did a whole episode about we can't predict the future.
Let's just say it does.
Let's play with that scenario.
AI eats all of our jobs.
What's left?
Maybe art?
Maybe we all go be artists?
We just create things for self-expression?
I don't think so, because before that, we would need to think about money redistribution.
This is why I think this scenario is not very viable.
It's a big topic to unpack now.
We're getting off topic.
We're getting off topic.
Capitalism, you know.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, let's rein it back in.
I doubt there's ever been a moment in time or in the past or there will ever be a moment in time in the future where there's one distinguishing trait that people should focus on.
That's my other challenge with this argument.
All you need is taste.
Yeah.
Okay.
I don't know what that word means.
One, I know I can taste an apple.
I know what it means in that sense.
But is it a good apple, Teresa?
Is it a tasteful apple?
That's the question.
Yes.
And it turns out this is actually this brings up one of my other challenges with this word taste in particular.
And I actually think it applies to product sense, too.
It's really easy to conflate taste with preference.
And I'm afraid what a lot of these people are saying is my preference is better than your preference.
So we're going to go with my decision.
And I think this is where discovery is the critical counterbalance.
It's not about your taste.
It's about your customer's taste.
What do your customers find tasteful?
Unless you're building a product just for you, then by all means, your taste is what matters most.
And sometimes tech bros do, Teresa.
Sometimes tech bros do.
Which is why their startups don't work.
Right.
But like you can love a design and think it's really tasteful.
But if it turns your customers off, it doesn't matter.
Yeah, true.
And so like that's the other piece is like.
To me, it's all a symptom.
It all reeks of this like great man theory.
Like you're the hero in your story and you make all the decisions and you're the great man.
And it's always a man that will do all these, that will change the world.
Yeah.
It's everybody's still trying to be Steve Jobs, which by the way, Steve Jobs was not a great man.
So he also doesn't fit the great man theory.
This becomes a more feministic episode by the minute.
I mean, he did great things.
Yeah, he did.
Indeed, he did.
We're using all his products all the time.
Yeah, so taste.
I'm not convinced.
Yeah, we leave it at that, Teresa.
I'm not convinced about it either.
So people, please, if you're listening, do not drop the ball on learning all the basic discovery skills.
Do not drop the ball on learning human-to-human interaction skills.
Taste, not the next big thing.
I mean, if you think of taste as like developing design aesthetic and developing judgment and developing your discovery skills, then taste is the next big thing.
But if you think of taste as this, like you're imbued with this inherent trait that makes you better than other people, because I don't think you're going to build very good products.
Agreed.
Thank you, Teresa.
Thanks, Petra.