Problem
Pier's employer product was live, but pilot-partner responses had stalled. We still needed to learn whether a new employer could create and share an opportunity with confidence.
Product management proof
Changing The Test Path When Pilot Signal Stalled
When pilot-partner responses stalled, I asked a trusted friend and a strategic advisor to test the employer setup and share flow. Their feedback changed our roadmap, engineering work, and product positioning.
What I owned
I designed the tester sequence, defined what we needed to learn, ran the backup test, summarized the feedback, and used it to revise the roadmap, engineering work, and positioning.
Result
The test showed that a fast creation flow was not enough. Registration, listing presentation, dashboard context, and next actions still reduced employer confidence.
Partner details and private feedback have been generalized to preserve confidentiality.
What I noticed
Pier’s product helped employers create an opportunity, invite candidates into an AI-assisted interview, and review structured evidence. It had reached pilot partners, but their response stalled. Delivery was real progress; waiting was not a product-learning strategy.
We needed outside feedback without asking investor contacts to try an early flow. I chose a staged test: a trusted friend and a strategic advisor first, with investor contacts held back.
At a glance
- Product area: employer registration, opportunity creation, share flow, dashboard context, and candidate-facing job listing
- Users: a trusted friend and a strategic advisor; the pilot partners remained a separate path
- Collaborators: the technical cofounder owned core-product engineering; another cofounder supported a trusted introduction; I owned the test decision, outreach, synthesis, and product handoff
- Constraint: pilot-partner response had stalled, and rough-product testing carried relationship risk
- Decision: test the employer setup and share path with a trusted friend and a strategic advisor instead of waiting or asking investors to test it
- Artifacts: sent test paths, returned feedback, structured insight notes, documented product problems, and roadmap and positioning updates
- Observable result: customer feedback changed Pier’s roadmap, engineering work, and product positioning
What I owned
I set the tester order, wrote and sent the outreach, defined the learning question, captured the returned feedback, and translated the findings into a coherent product problem for the technical cofounder.
The first returned report showed an important tension: the core creation flow could feel fast and useful, while the listing, dashboard state, and next action still made the result difficult to send confidently to candidates.
The separate feedback raised adjacent problems in registration and activation, including moments where the employer could not tell whether an action had worked or what to do next. Together, the signals showed that a fast setup flow was not enough if employers could not tell what had happened or what candidates would see next.
The product decision
The first returned signal changed how I framed the problem. Creating the opportunity was fast. The blocker was that an employer still could not confidently send it to candidates: the listing, dashboard state, and next action did not make the experience clear enough to share.
I documented that problem for the technical cofounder to evaluate against the core-product roadmap. I used the broader feedback to change our roadmap and product positioning rather than treating it as an isolated usability note.
Result
The test changed what we planned and how we described the product. The feedback became a documented engineering question and added registration, activation, and unclear next states to the product picture. The pilot partners remained a separate path.
What I learned
I learned to change the test path when a pilot stalls. We protected investor relationships by asking a trusted friend and a strategic advisor for feedback, then made their feedback concrete enough to change the roadmap.