Why Context Beats Technology with ProductBoard CEO Hubert Palan

“Everyone has their own agenda. They’re not telling you the truth, or they’re telling the truth in a way that benefits them.”

When I heard this sentence from Hubert Palan, Productboard Founder & CEO, I became speechless, and that’s when I realized how valuable critical thinking is.

This conversation is real, human, and rare.

Hubert shared lessons that you will benefit from regardless of whether you’re a product manager, software engineer, designer, or leader. Such insights will help you grow.

Let me give you some blunt insights from our conversation.

The Three Brutal Decisions That Built ProductBoard

Hubert shared the choices that shaped ProductBoard’s journey to $1.7 billion. The first hit during the 2022 recession when they dramatically shifted from SMB to enterprise. That meant walking away from existing business.

The second was the classic enterprise pressure. Big customers bring big revenue and bigger demands. ProductBoard drew boundaries. They said no to customer-specific features that wouldn’t advance the roadmap for everyone else. Even when it meant losing those customers.

The third decision came recently. They moved resources from the traditional roadmap to AI. Existing customers complained about missing features. But Hubert knew: “If we don’t make the investment today, you’re going to be screaming at us two years from now that we’re not the leaders with AI capabilities.”

You’ve got to listen to signs and separate customer wants from needs. That’s the difference Hubert nailed. Conviction backed by understanding versus conviction backed by hope.

Stop Pretending AI Will Do Your Thinking For You

Here’s the part that will piss people off: AI isn’t going to save you from bad product thinking.

Hubert tested this with his co-founder.

They spent a whole day going through discovery to delivery using Cursor and Claude Code. The efficiency gains weren’t in coding. They were in specification. Understanding the problem. Identifying edge cases. Making sense of dependencies.

Activities that used to take weeks now take hours. But only if you know what you’re building and why.

The lines between product, design, and engineering are blurring. Hubert calls it compression. Like smartphones crushing cameras, MP3 players, and GPS into one device. Product managers are building with AI. Engineers are diving deeper into user research. The roles are merging.

But the fundamental question remains: are you building the right thing?

ProductBoard Spark, their AI agent, doesn’t just generate PRDs. It helps product managers maintain context across massive organizations. When Salesforce has 20,000 people in R&D, context sharing becomes critical. The agent knows your customers, your competitors, your market positioning, and your internal principles.

You won’t get that from ChatGPT. The context is missing. And without context, you’re just generating slop.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Success Stories

When Hubert started ProductBoard, Steve Blank gave him advice. Ask potential customers: “Do you understand jobs to be done?” If they don’t, move on. They’re not your target segment yet.

That’s focus.

Start with a small segment that has high pain and high maturity. Nail their needs. Then expand.

Most teams do the opposite. They try to serve everyone. They compromise for big customers. They chase every shiny feature request.

But here’s what Hubert said that made me pause my notes: “You can’t just read something on Reddit that someone did and assume it’s going to work for you.”

He called a friend at Uber to verify a glowing blog post about their tech stack. Turns out the solution completely failed. They had to re-architect everything. But you wouldn’t know that from the blog post.

“Everyone has their own agenda. They’re not telling you the truth, or they’re telling the truth in a way that benefits them.”

That includes Sam Altman on podcasts. That includes blog posts from successful companies. That includes the framework someone swears by on LinkedIn.

The bigger and later-stage the companies are, the better trained their executives are at telling stories that benefit their businesses. It’s all planted. Rehearsed. Strategic.

Take it with a grain of salt. Apply first principles thinking. Figure out what works for your context.

What Actually Separates Winners From Losers

The AI boom has accelerated the birth of many startups. Everyone’s building with the same technology. The differentiator isn’t technical skill anymore. It’s domain expertise.

Understanding the market. Knowing customer pain points deeply. Sharing those insights across your team. Creating forums for uncomfortable conversations that last four hours because people need time to think and align.

“The knowledge of the industry and the domain is the most important thing in your overall success,” Hubert said.

Good product managers understand the product. The best ones master the market.

That hasn’t changed. AI just made it more obvious.

So here’s the question: when was the last time you spent four hours in an uncomfortable workshop, actually understanding your market instead of asking AI to summarize it for you?

Whenever You Want to Grow Further, I Can Help You Out

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