How to validate your product features - Jason Sparks
Building the right thing is hard. Building the wrong thing is easy and costly. In this episode, Jason Sparks, Principal Product Manager at ReUp Education, dives deep into the discipline of continuous validation inside enterprise environments. From managing stakeholder pressure to proactively engaging customers in discovery, Jason shares battle-tested approaches for avoiding the classic trap of solution-first thinking.Chapters
0:00 – The risk of unvalidated assumptions
1:02 – Meet Jason Sparks and his mission at ReUp
3:02 – From college dropout to product leader
5:19 – Product-market fit inside the enterprise
6:03 – Why most ideas don’t need building
8:10 – Misalignment: wrong product, wrong market
10:05 – Executive interference and assumption management
12:33 – Validation is not a one-off
14:44 – Continuous discovery in practice
15:38 – How to validate enterprise product ideas
17:02 – Story decks, user interviews and field testing
19:11 – Grading feedback and customer fit
21:11 – The danger of over-friendly users
23:08 – The power of early champions
25:21 – Preparing for and running discovery sessions
27:35 – Value testing and competitor awareness
29:08 – When to walk away from the wrong customer
31:17 – What happens after the meetings
33:30 – The role of AI in user research
35:46 – What Jason would do differently today
What you'll learn from Jason
— Validation should be continuous: One round of user feedback isn’t enough. Real product-market fit evolves through repeated conversations and iteration.
— Assumptions must be challenged: Build a culture where being proven wrong is celebrated, not feared.
— Don’t let leadership derail discovery: Product managers must set boundaries and bring clarity on the problem space before execution begins.
— Grading users is as critical as grading feedback: Identify the right customers to listen to—being nice isn’t the same as being the right fit.
— Use discovery decks to guide conversations: Jason uses bold assumptions, interactive sessions, and immediate iteration to refine ideas quickly.
— Tech accelerates, but doesn’t replace, human insight: AI tools for sentiment and semantic analysis are powerful but should supplement—not substitute—real human interaction.
Featured Links
Follow Jason on LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonphilipsparks/
Jason's website Sparksopedia | https://sparksopedia.com/
ReUp Education | https://reupeducation.com/ Receive SMS online on sms24.me
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