All Things Product with Teresa and 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.

AI headlines are everywhere—and many claim they know exactly what’s coming next. In this episode, Teresa Torres and Petra Wille push back on that certainty. They explain why people are bad at predicting the future and why betting on a single outcome can be risky. Instead, they share a more useful approach: scenario planning. Explore multiple possible futures, extract what matters, and use it to make better decisions today. If you’re navigating AI-driven change, this episode will help you stay grounded without ignoring what’s coming.

In the AI era, new tools seem to appear every week. It’s exciting—but it can also feel overwhelming. How do you keep up without burning out? In this episode, Petra Wille and Teresa Torres talk about how they deal with FOMO when it comes to new technology—especially in the fast-moving world of AI. They share how they decide which tools are worth exploring, why they don’t try everything that trends on social media, and how focusing on real problems helps them go deeper instead of chasing every shiny new thing. Teresa explains why she starts with opportunities and friction rather than solutions, while Petra shares how she time-boxes learning and experiments with new tools during dedicated learning time. Together they explore practical ways to stay curious about new technology while staying focused on what actually matters. If you’ve ever felt like you’re falling behind because you haven’t tried the latest AI tool yet, this conversation will help you rethink how you approach learning and experimentation. In This Episode The pace of innovation—especially in AI—can make it feel like you need to try every new tool the moment it launches. Petra and Teresa discuss how they manage that pressure and stay focused on meaningful experimentation rather than constant tool-chasing. They explore why starting with a problem is more valuable than starting with a tool, how social media amplifies technology FOMO, and why going deeper with fewer tools can lead to better learning.

What happens when AI starts giving advice in your voice — advice you’d never actually give? In this episode, Petra Wille and Teresa Torres unpack the rise of AI “clones” built from podcast transcripts and public content. They explore where experimentation is exciting, where it crosses ethical lines, and what happens when mediocre AI outputs get attributed to real people. They discuss IP, open-sourced transcripts, pirated books in LLMs, inference costs, and the uncomfortable question: if anyone can prompt “act like Teresa,” how do creators make a living? This isn’t anti-AI. It’s a nuanced conversation about quality, consent, and remembering there are real humans behind the ideas.

In this episode of All Things Product, Teresa Torres and Petra Wille tackle one of the hardest decisions in product and business: when—and how—to kill your darlings. They dig into the uncomfortable middle ground between obvious failure and runaway success: products that are profitable, loved by customers, but fundamentally flatlining. Teresa shares candid stories from her own business about sunsetting products that were bringing in real revenue, including a decision that cut 40% of her income—on purpose. Together, Petra and Teresa explore why mediocre success can be more dangerous than failure, how team structure and org design make sunsetting harder, and what product leaders can do to normalize product lifecycles without traumatizing teams. If you’re leading a product portfolio, running discovery, or struggling to let go of something that’s “working… kind of,” this episode is for you.

Where exactly is the boundary between product and engineering—and what happens when it gets blurry? In this episode, Teresa Torres and Petra Wille dig into a tension many product teams quietly struggle with: product managers taking on responsibility for bugs, tech debt, and even system architecture. What starts as “being helpful” often turns into burnout for PMs and lower-quality outcomes for everyone. They unpack why this pattern shows up so often, how legacy IT mindsets and the “CEO of the product” myth contribute to the problem, and what healthy product–engineering collaboration actually looks like in modern product teams. If you’ve ever felt like the middleman for bug status, or like you’re expected to own engineering decisions you don’t have the expertise to make—this episode is for you.

Petra finally carved out time to try Claude Code—and immediately ran into the “this tool thinks everything is a code repo” reality. In this episode, Petra and Teresa unpack what it’s like to move from Claude-in-the-browser to Claude on your machine, where it can actually work with your files, folders, and workflows. They dig into practical setup choices (like using /init, Claude MD rules, and “walled garden” access), why task management becomes the surprising on-ramp for testing Claude Code, and how to use it for content retrieval across your own archives (blog posts, book drafts, transcripts, notes). Teresa also shares how she’s turning Claude Code into a repeatable publishing engine—from podcast metadata generation to fact-checking and even building a Zettelkasten-style research system for rigorous thinking. If you’re a non-engineer curious about Claude Code, or you’re trying to make it feel less like “throwing a stick into the woods,” this is a candid, tactical walkthrough of what helps, what breaks, and how to debug your way to workflows that actually stick.

Build vs. buy is one of those product decisions that never goes away — and AI is changing how teams think about it (but maybe not in the way you expect). In this episode of All Things Product, Petra Wille and Teresa Torres unpack the build vs. buy conversation through real examples, personal stories, and practical decision-making frameworks. Teresa shares why she would never build her own blogging platform — but did build her own task management system — and what that reveals about core value, data ownership, and long-term maintenance. Together, Petra and Teresa explore how AI, vibe coding, and cheaper prototyping are shifting the economics of building software, why data portability has become a first-class concern, and how product teams can de-risk build vs. buy decisions using discovery practices — not gut feel. If you’re navigating vendor lock-in, debating whether your team should “just build it,” or rethinking these decisions in an AI-first world, this episode will help you ask better questions before you commit.

We’re kicking off 2026 with a look behind the scenes at what’s changing in our work, what we’re experimenting with, and what we’re genuinely excited about this year. In this conversation, Petra and Teresa swap notes on everything from shifting business models to AI-powered teaching tools to big community events and personal projects. If you’re navigating your own mix of coaching, team development, content creation, and figuring out how AI fits into your practice, this one will resonate.

In this conversation, Teresa Torres and Petra Wille unpack a pattern they’re seeing again and again in product transformations: teams get trained in continuous discovery, but nothing sticks because leaders haven’t changed how they work. They dig into why “train your leaders first” isn’t just a catchy mantra — it’s a prerequisite for shifting from projects to true product thinking. They share concrete examples from interview training gone sideways, the hidden organizational dynamics that stall discovery habits, the role product leadership actually plays (and why most orgs underestimate it), and the empathy we all need for leaders who are learning this way of working for the first time. If your teams are struggling to adopt discovery, or if your transformation feels stuck, this episode will give you a clearer picture of where the real blockers live — and what leaders can do differently to unlock meaningful change.

In this episode of All Things Product, Teresa Torres and Petra Wille explore how product people can intentionally design their own communities of practice—and why it matters for long-term learning and growth. Teresa shares her introvert-friendly approach to continuous learning: curating a personal learning network (PLN) filled with people she wants to learn from. Petra contrasts that with her more collaborative style of learning with others through small peer groups, hackathons, and local meetups. Together, they unpack how each approach supports curiosity-driven development, how to find your “definition of good” when starting something new, and the habits that make learning a deliberate practice. Whether you’re an independent product coach or part of a product org shifting toward continuous discovery, this episode will help you rethink how you learn—and who you learn with.

Ever launch a new product feature that seemed solid—until a small, overlooked detail broke everything? In this episode, Teresa Torres and Petra Wille share their real-world experiences wrangling global invoicing and taxes while running small, international businesses. What starts as a rant about EU tax compliance turns into a sharp product lesson: how failing to map the entire path to customer value—down to the tiniest regulatory requirement—can kill your product’s usefulness. Whether you’re shipping code or selling courses, this conversation will remind you that sweating the details isn’t about perfectionism—it’s about ensuring your product actually delivers value at the moment that matters.

AI can be a powerful teammate, but only if we give it the right context. In this episode of All Things Product, Teresa Torres and Petra Wille unpack why “context is king” when it comes to using AI in product work. They share practical ways product leaders can start preparing today—from keeping decision logs to designing machine-readable context—so their teams are ready to collaborate effectively with AI tomorrow.