Teresa Torres (@ttorres)

Updated 2026-04-09

A product discovery coach and the author of Continuous Discovery Habits (2021). She founded Product Talk, a platform for product-manager education. Her central thesis is that discovery is not a phase in the product lifecycle, but a continuous habit: at least one customer interview per week, structured through the Opportunity Solution Tree (OST).

Core Ideas

Continuous Discovery: product teams usually talk to customers shortly before launch or after a bad quarter. Torres argues that regular, structured customer contact is the only reliable way to improve decisions rather than justify them after the fact.

The Product Trio: PM, design, and engineering as a jointly responsible team. Not “PM decides, engineering builds,” but real collaboration in discovery. That model is now under pressure because AI reshapes the engineering contribution inside the trio.

AI and the end of the old Product Trio: Torres publicly discussed with Petra Wille whether product management is “dead.” Her answer is no, but transformed. The traditional three-part division of labor is collapsing because AI takes over many of the repetitive 80 percent tasks. What remains are Product Builder profiles: people with a broad foundation and deep expertise in one discipline.

AI Evals in practice: Torres built a full eval system for her Interview Coach tool and shared the process openly. Her key lesson is straightforward: without AI Evals, you do not know whether prompt changes or model updates still produce the behavior you want. She explains in detail how Error Mode Analysis — the systematic review of real user failures — became the center of her eval design.

Why It Matters

The Product Builder model is more than a buzzword. It describes a structural shift: if a PM can prototype directly with tools like Cursor or Copilot, less early-stage engineering time is needed for certain classes of work. Design decisions that once required specialist bandwidth can be validated faster with AI tools. That changes how teams are composed and which skills still justify salary and influence.

Connections

  • Petra Wille — co-host of the Product Builders conversations; both work in product leadership coaching
  • Product Discovery — Torres’ core domain; her OST framework is one of the most widely adopted discovery tools
  • Product Builder — condenses her current position on the future of PM under AI pressure
  • Lenny Rachitsky — adjacent product thinker in the newsletter world; similar audience, different channel
  • Vibe Coding — the AI side of the Product Builder thesis; a PM who builds with AI is the practical manifestation
  • AI Evals — Torres’ concrete contribution to the question of how AI products get quality assurance
  • Error Mode Analysis — her preferred method for discovering new eval cases

Sources