Knowing What to Build Matters More Than Building It
When anyone can spin up a prototype, deciding what deserves to be built matters most.
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career · The taste to know what to build is what matters now.Building software has become cheap. With current AI models, almost any feature can be stood up from scratch, across every medium.
That makes judgment about what to build matter more than building itself. The valuable skill is taste, meaning deciding which work is worth doing, how to explain it so it achieves its goal, and whether it should live as writing, pictures, video, or working software.
Cheap building is seductive. It is hard to resist moving immediately to a prototype, a quick working mock-up, and to set aside product requirements documents (PRDs), the short written plans that describe what to build and why, in favor of showing rather than telling.
The caution is to resist that reflex. When implementation is abundant and engineers can also turn out piles of writing, choosing a fitting shape for the argument matters more, not less. A prototype suits some points, a document suits others, and the fit deserves thought.
Part of that thought is curation. Before building begins, there is a curation step that needs to happen, sorting what is worth making and how best to present it.
Questions people ask
What does "taste" mean here?
It means judgment about what is worth making and how to present it. In product work, that includes choosing the problem, framing the solution, and picking whether to explain it in words, pictures, or working software. It is less about artistic style than about knowing what will matter to users.
What is a prototype?
A prototype is a quick, rough version of a product built to test or demonstrate an idea. It may look and click like the real thing but lack full function, reliability, or polish. Teams use prototypes to get feedback before committing to full development.