2026-06-30
Becoming an AI-Era PM 08 | AI Can't Find the Real Problem for You
This is the eighth piece in the series Becoming an AI-Era PM, and the close of the think-it-through stretch. a16z's 5 Principles for product managers nailed it: a PM's job has always been resolving ambiguity, and AI hasn't reduced that ambiguity — it just swapped the tools. AI can build anything now, but it can't find the real problem worth solving for you — where the user is actually stuck, and whether the thing is even worth doing. This piece lays out four moves you can run in the discovery phase: go watch where the user gets stuck, separate what they say they want from what they're actually stuck on, hunt for the workaround as the hardest signal of a real problem, and use a builder's mindset to probe with something that runs.
