Strategy question
You are the first PM for Duet and have a new capability idea from research. How would you take it from concept to customer adoption: deciding whether it is worth building, selecting pilot customers, defining launch criteria, partnering with GTM on positioning, and determining whether to scale, iterate, or kill it after launch?
- Decagon
- Strategy
- Hard
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What this question tests
0-to-1 product judgment: can you take a research-driven idea through validation, piloting, launch, and a kill or scale decision with clear criteria at each gate.
How to approach it
- Start by pressure-testing whether the idea is worth building: size the problem it solves, check if it is core to Duet's job (catching and fixing agent failures) or a tangent.
- Select 2-3 pilot customers who represent the target segment and have enough conversation volume to generate a real signal quickly.
- Define launch criteria up front: a target for suggestion accuracy or adoption of proposed fixes, and a qualitative bar like customer willingness to act on the output without heavy review.
- Partner with GTM early on positioning, since a new capability needs a clear story for why it matters to CX leaders, not just engineers.
- After launch, set a scale, iterate, or kill decision point tied to the pilot metrics, and be explicit about what evidence would justify each outcome.
What a strong answer includes
- States concrete launch criteria before the pilot starts, not just a hopeful outcome tracked at the end.
- Picks pilot customers deliberately for signal quality, like conversation volume, rather than just the friendliest account.
- Gives a clear kill criterion, not just a scale criterion, showing willingness to walk away from a bad bet.
Common mistakes
- No clear bar for what counts as pilot success before starting.
- Skips the GTM partnership step, treating positioning as an afterthought.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you choose between two pilot customers with conflicting feedback.
- What evidence would make you kill this instead of iterating.
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More questions from Decagon
Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop