Bringing structure to curiosity

In this article, Hernán shares how he fosters experimentation, balances discovery and delivery, and measures success in ways that truly reflect customer value.

Main Takeaways

• Great PMs are consistent: structure enables speed, clarity, and better decisions.
• Empower teams by lowering the cost of experimentation and questioning your own assumptions.
• Use sentiment trends alongside classic metrics to speed up learning in lower-traffic environments.
• Continuous discovery needs to be logistically and emotionally easy for teams—not just a mandate from leadership.
• Your environment shapes your performance; success is rarely a solo act.

Who are you in a nutshell? What do you do, and why do you do it?

I could go metaphysical and say that who we are is not necessarily what we are — but let’s skip that. I’m a product person who stumbled into this path after realizing I wasn’t a very good designer. I started in web design over 15 years ago, then discovered marketing, and eventually found product management, which to me is just marketing in disguise: solving customer problems while delivering value to the business.

I love building things—but more importantly, I love building things that people love. And in recent years, I’ve added a strong business lens to that mix. It’s this blend of curiosity, empathy, and pragmatism that keeps me excited about product work.

What’s your setup? What tools, frameworks, and products do you use?

I’m pretty minimal. I work on a 13-inch 2020 MacBook Pro, and when I’m in the office, I upgrade slightly with an external monitor. That’s about it.

Tool-wise, I’m heavy on Google Docs for writing and basic analysis, and I use Miro when I need to organize thoughts visually or collaborate on discovery work. We don’t follow frameworks religiously, but we’re definitely influenced by Teresa Torres and the continuous discovery mindset, especially things like assumption testing and continuous interviewing.

At rebuy, we’re flexible with our hours, so I generally work Monday to Thursday, 9 to 6, but I adapt based on life and those wonderful random sparks of inspiration.

What’s the biggest challenge for you at the moment?

I’m working on a product that people use infrequently—think second-hand phones or laptops. On top of that, the fact that it’s refurbished adds a layer of hesitation for many buyers. So growing this product isn’t straightforward.

What’s been crucial is building the right team: people who are naturally curious about our customers, who have an experimentation mindset, and who collaborate well. That foundation is helping us make real progress, even if the challenge is far from solved.

In your opinion, what defines a top 1% product management professional?

It might be unpopular, but I think environment plays a massive role in someone’s performance. You can have all the skills and mindset, but you’ll only shine in the right context, with the right people around you.

That said, if I had to name one trait, it’s consistency. The best PMs I’ve worked with don’t reinvent the wheel every time. They have systems. They’re predictable in a good way. That structure lets them move faster and deliver more value.

How do you consistently identify high-impact opportunities and validate ideas quickly?

We usually start by estimating the potential impact—rough calculations, nothing fancy. Sometimes, you realize a small amount of engagement can already move the needle. That’s worth exploring.

Then we move into lightweight validation: maybe we add tracking, maybe we run a fake door test. If the data looks promising, we build something scrappy that delivers real value to customers and gets us feedback in a live environment. The goal is always to learn fast, not build perfect.

How do you make confident decisions when data is incomplete?

In practice, every product decision is about balancing value for the customer and value for the business. That’s the north star.

Our engineers are deeply involved in the discovery process—they help frame hypotheses, join research calls, and build early concepts we can test. Sometimes we push horrible code into production, learn something important, and either kill it or refactor it properly. It only works because we’ve built trust between functions.

What does continuous discovery look like for your teams?

We’re not quite at “textbook continuous,” but we’ve made it a lot easier for teams to talk to customers.

Every PM and PD has access to tooling: in-app surveys, a database of research-friendly customers, and platforms like UserTesting. We also partnered with user research to upskill the team so they can run their own interviews and usability sessions. It’s not about perfection—it’s about making discovery a low-friction habit.

What metrics do you use beyond the usual suspects?

Most of my work is in e-commerce, so the defaults are things like add-to-cart and conversion rate. But if you only focus on those, you avoid working on things that don’t directly move them, or you run A/B tests that never reach significance.

So we started using sentiment metrics. We ask customers how valuable they find something we built and track the trend over time. It’s not about the exact number—it’s about the direction. It speeds up learning, even if we can’t always put a business number on the impact. We mix these with traditional metrics to get a fuller picture.

How do you foster a culture of experimentation?

We experiment even when we’re skeptical. Sometimes the team suggests ideas I personally don’t believe in—but I tell them, “You don’t need to agree with me. You’re allowed to try it.”

The only red line is anything that might harm the business. Otherwise, we keep the bar low for testing.

One thing I emphasize is that A/B tests are the most expensive way to experiment. We use assumption testing, break down solutions into small, testable parts, and aim to fail fast. That’s unlocked a lot more innovation because we can test more ideas with fewer resources.

Can you share a time when new information made you pivot?

The economic climate of the past few years has been characterized by uncertainty and increased costs. Many companies, including ours, had to shift their focus from growth to profitability. This meant halting some of our plans and concentrating on short-term strategies to improve monetization.Initially, these changes were met with skepticism from some team members. Our environment typically fosters bottom-up initiatives, but the need for rapid execution necessitated a top-down approach. To facilitate understanding and acceptance,

I held Q&A sessions with the team, explaining the situation transparently and providing data-driven reasoning behind the decisions. Ultimately, the team embraced the initiatives, took ownership, and successfully iterated upon them.

This experience provided a valuable lesson for the team: top-down initiatives, while sometimes met with resistance, can be effective in achieving rapid results.