#4: The Discovery Loop 🔄

Hey there, ladies and gentlemen!

Hope your week’s been more “I got this” than “what is even happening?”

Last week, I missed writing because well, life’s been a bit of a blur.
New city, new job, and a lot of packing and moving.
But I’ve finally settled into a space I can call home (for now), and we’re back 🤘.

Welcome to the fourth edition of Product in Progress, and this one’s about that slightly messy phase between “Okay, we know the goal” and “but what do we actually build?”

🔍 Zooming In on the Right Problems

Once I had a clearer sense of the bigger picture — business goals, success metrics, and what was expected of me, a new challenge showed up: creating my own roadmap.

The team was deep in foundational work, all the quiet-but-critical stuff that keeps things running smoothly.

It gave me some room to explore. I had already parked some ideas after speaking with different stakeholders, but I didn’t want to stop just there. I wanted to come up with even more solutions and build a good 3-4 months long pipeline of product interventions that could drive impact.

But, here’s the thing, if you don’t bring problems to the table, you’ll end up chasing random solutions.

So while the team focused on execution, I went back to something that’s served me well — a focused, problem-first discovery loop.

🔁 The Discovery Loop

It’s the same loop I’ve relied on at Paytm and Angel One — a simple, structured way to surface real problems and turn them into product ideas that actually drive impact. Here it goes:

1. Data Analysis: Follow the funnel, not your feelings

Start by visualising the entire funnel:

• Spot drop-offs: Where do users leave? Is it expected? If not, dig into why

• Suspiciously high rejection zones: Are users getting disqualified due to harsh eligibility rules or unclear criteria?

• Friction points: Is that step even necessary? Is the UX broken?

• Time spent & load times: Where are users stuck? Is it confusion or slowness?

• Own the journey: You should be able to narrate your user journey like a story, where users start, what they expect, and where they get stuck

📌 Goal: Find out where things feel harder than they need to be for your users.

2. User Research: Find your tribe and listen

This part’s not scalable, but it’s gold. Now that I’ve seen the data, I try to understand the why by speaking to a few users, if possible, every week:

• “Show me how you use the product.”

• “What’s the most frustrating part?”

• “What do you wish this tool could do?”

The tricky part is that not everyone wants to talk. And if they do, they might tell you what they think you want to hear. But if you keep showing up, you’ll find your tribe — the folks who want to help. Build a tiny community or WhatsApp group where feedback flows regularly.

📌 Goal: Layer human emotion and real-world usage onto the raw data.

3. Competitive Benchmarking: Borrow like an artist, not a copycat

There’s no prize for reinventing the wheel, especially when someone else has already built it, tested it, and made it roll smoothly.

When doing competitive benchmarking, look for:

• What are others doing better?

• What problems are they solving — and do we have the same ones?

• What can we take inspiration from — and improve in our own way?

You’re not copying features. You’re borrowing insights and running them through your company’s DNA.

📌 Goal: Add an outside-in lens that sparks fresh solutions to the same old problems.

🔁 Then loop back

Now that you’ve:

• Spotted a problem through data

• Understood it through user voice

• Reframed it through competitive insight

Almost always, you’ll walk away with a handful of smart, high-impact product ideas.
Add them to your discovery backlog, validate, experiment, measure and then, start the loop again.

Till next week...

This phase has been all about digging, listening, and connecting the dots. But ideas mean nothing if they just sit in a doc.

Next week, I’ll talk about what comes after — pitching those ideas, getting feedback, and figuring out how to take them forward

See you on the other side.

— Nihit

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