Jtbd Stories — How We’re Getting Faster at It

What job did you hire your coffee for this morning? Not “caffeine.” Something more specific: to make the commute bearable, to feel like a functioning adult before 9am, to give you a reason to sit still for five minutes. That’s Jobs to Be Done thinking, and it’s a lot sharper than most product discovery.

Jason’s teaming up with Devin Smith, our resident JTBD expert, for a session built around real stories: the McDonald’s milkshake that was secretly hired as a mess-free commute companion, and how Intercom split one product into four to serve four different jobs and grew 500% in 18 months.

We’ll unpack:
✅ What switch interviews reveal that regular customer interviews miss
✅ The four forces of progress (Push, Pull, Anxiety, Habit) and how they explain why people actually switch products
✅ Where AI genuinely helps with JTBD work (prep, first-draft job maps, spotting patterns in transcripts) and where it can’t replace a real conversation with a real buyer

This is a community conversation, not a presentation. Come ready to participate, and leave with one concrete thing to try this week: a short switch-style conversation with two people about a problem you’re actually working on.

Product Coffee is a global community of product folks who love bringing great ideas to market. This is where we do it over coffee, not slides.