Your company doesn't talk to customers? Start here.

👋🏼 Hi, I’m Moiz. I'm a Fractional Head of Product who helps top climate-tech teams build product from strategy, discovery, to execution. You’re receiving this because you’re building in climate and we’ve crossed paths. Each issue distills one proven concept that I use with my clients - and gives you a way to apply it to your work.

You’re a Product Manager at a company that doesn't talk to customers.

Yet, it’s up to you to deliver a great product and win that gets you promoted (or poached). Without customer feedback the risk is a failed launch and months of wasted development.

Remember, the primary focus of Discovery is always to de-risk the product bet--with external and internal conversations. You just have to expose the Riskiest Assumption and test it.

For the sake of your company and your career, be the Trojan Horse of Discovery.

I'll show you how in 5 steps.

Here's what's inside:

• A 5 step guide to running a sprint without permission
• Exact scripts to use with your team
• Resources on how to do this yourself

5 Steps to running Discovery Solo

1. Find the Riskiest Assumption

• Lay out all the assumptions you have about the product idea
• Ask yourself: “Which assumption do I feel least confident about?” Star that as the Riskiest Assumption.
• Use my Build with Conviction Notion workbook to do this in less than 30 minutes

2. Share the Risk with your team

• Tell teammates what the risk is and ask them to judge exposure — alignment motivates people to help uncover it.
• Use a script like this: "Hey all, I want to de-risk our launch. I think that [Riskiest Assumption] could be a real risk. What do you think?"
• If they say yes, "How could we de-risk it? Can you help get 1–2 customer calls to test it?”

3. Prepare Interview Questions

• Create 3 direct, non-leading questions that prove/disprove the assumption.
  • “Tell me about the last time you experienced [problem].”
  • “How are you solving it today?”
  • "Any issues with that?"
• Make sure you get transcripts, if the call is virtual!

4. Run External and Internal Interviews

• Ideally, you get 5-7 interviews
• You can have the same conversations internally
• Run the scripts through AI to help you assess the risk

5. Communicate the Decision: Build, More Discovery, Pivot

• Build: the assumption passed. You have evidence that the product launch is de-risked, go build
• More Discovery: you believe there's still risk and need more data to launch
• Pivot: the assumption failed. Congrats, you just saved the company months of wasted development.

Conclusion

Find the riskiest belief, force the team to look at it, run five quick conversations, and then decide.

Remember your goal is to de-risk assumptions so that you launch a great product. You can run discovery internally and externally to gather evidence.

Small and fast tests beat months of wasted development and a product that doesn't hit metrics.

From Insight to Action

• Use my AI Powered Notion workbook to find your Riskiest Assumption
• Free workshop: "Your Customers are Lying to You" | Jan 16th ​
• Lean Coffee for PMs with MCJ VC | Jan 22nd​
• Free workshop: "De-Risk your Launch with the Validation Stack" | Jan 27​
• Next AI Powered Customer Discovery Cohort starts on Feb 3!