I was having this interesting debate with a friend recently about whether product folks need to go deep into the AI weeds. His argument was pretty straightforward: the fundamentals of product management - understanding users, driving activation, figuring out monetization, running experiments - remain the same whether you’re building web2, web3, or AI products. Why not just focus on what we’re good at?

I see it differently. I could make better product trade-offs (scope, impact, effort) because I was once a developer. I’ll admit it, I used to totally gaslight people about how long my dev work would take.

Since then I have worked in product for more than a decade.

So I’ve been on both sides.

Here’s the thing that’s been bugging me lately: I had this conversation about an interaction on our Android app with a developer. He started talking about something called RecyclerView and why what we were discussing would take ages on Android because of some reason. I was not even sure if what they were saying made sense or if they were just throwing technical jargon at me knowing I wouldn’t catch their bluff. My Android development experience was from a decade ago - back when people used Eclipse, and we only worried about Activities and Fragments. RecyclerView? No clue what that does.

Now, do I need to know everything? Nah, probably not. But I gotta know enough to, you know, smell BS when I see it. To figure things out for myself.

Whether you’re founding an AI company or working as a product person at an AI startup, you can’t skip having some baseline knowledge of the domain.

This is why if you look at my Twitter, you’ll see me sharing random AI stuff. There’s no structure, no clear project, just disconnected ideas floating around. And that’s fine. I’m in my exploration phase. I’m okay looking dumb because what matters is whether I understand things better over time or not. Do I need this as a senior product person who doesn’t do much IC work? Probably not. But learning and doing new things is what keeps life interesting.

It’s like when I didn’t know you needed to use Frames instead of Groups in Figma. Now I can create simple design systems too. It’s never too late to learn new things.