Taste - All Things Product with Teresa & Petra

Is "taste" the must-have skill of the AI era — or just the latest tech buzzword? In this episode, Petra Wille and Teresa Torres unpack the growing hype around taste as a differentiating human trait in a world where AI is eating through design, delivery, and discovery. Teresa pushes back hard: taste is rarely defined, can't be easily taught, and risks becoming a cover story for "my preference trumps yours." Petra adds nuance, acknowledging the real pattern-recognition that comes from years of product experience — while questioning whether it's actually worth investing in. Together they trace the idea back to its roots: product sense, founder mode, and the enduring myth of the lone visionary. What they land on instead? Discovery skills, customer understanding, and learning to collaborate with AI — because taste without evidence is just opinion.

Show Notes
✅ What Is "Taste" — and Why Is Everyone Suddenly Talking About It?
✅ The Problem with Defining Taste
✅ Taste vs. Preference
✅ Will AI Eat Taste Too?

So What Should You Actually Invest In?
✅ Discovery skills — understanding customers, matching solutions to real needs
✅ Human-to-human interaction skills
✅ Learning to collaborate with AI effectively
✅ Critical thinking and judgment grounded in evidence

Key Quotes
"It's just this month's flavor of founder mode." — Teresa Torres
"It's not about your taste. It's about your customer's taste." — Teresa Torres
"I am a strong believer that you develop product sense and taste over time. It's never finished." — Petra Wille

Resources & Links:
Follow Teresa Torres: https://ProductTalk.org 
Follow Petra Wille: https://Petra-Wille.com

Mentioned in this episode: 
Founder mode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder_mode
Marty Cagan: Founder-Style Leadership: https://vimeo.com/1101762800?fl=pl&fe=sh
Vercel/v0 CEO Guillermo Rauch on building taste: from Lenny Rachitsky’s Linkedin post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lennyrachitsky_vercelv0-ceo-guillermo-rauch-on-building-activity-7317645135666638848-x1Zr
Continuous discovery (Read Teresa’s Everyone Can Do Continuous Discovery—Even You! Here’s How: https://www.producttalk.org/getting-started-with-discovery/
The "great man" theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
Steve Jobs and the myth of the lone product visionary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs

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