Google AdSense creator: Why Product Managers Should Stop Obsessing Over Data

9 May 2026 · 0 min

Watch on YouTube

0:28

In this brief talk, the speaker argues that product managers should not rely on data to discover problems. Instead, they must engage directly with customers—through feedback and conversations—to uncover root causes. Data’s role is limited to testing hypotheses and confirming whether proposed solutions are effective. The speaker outlines a process: identify the problem via customer insight, formulate hypotheses, test them, and then use the resulting data to determine if the hypothesis is correct.

You cannot identify problems based on data. You have to identify problems based on customer feedback and talking to customers. Data helps you figure out whether your solutions to the problems are working. Data can never tell you the root cause. You have to talk to the customer to truly understand what the root cause is and truly understand what the problem is. And then you have a few hypotheses to solve the problem. You test these hypotheses, then you get data by testing the hypothesis, and the data tells you whether the hypothesis— whether you're on the right path or not.