Building the right thing is hard. Building the wrong thing is easy and costly. In this episode, Jason Sparks, Principal Product Manager at ReUp Education, dives deep into the discipline of continuous validation inside enterprise environments. From managing stakeholder pressure to proactively engaging customers in discovery, Jason shares battle-tested approaches for avoiding the classic trap of solution-first thinking.
Chapters
- 0:00 – The risk of unvalidated assumptions
- 1:02 – Meet Jason Sparks and his mission at ReUp
- 3:02 – From college dropout to product leader
- 5:19 – Product-market fit inside the enterprise
- 6:03 – Why most ideas don’t need building
- 8:10 – Misalignment: wrong product, wrong market
- 10:05 – Executive interference and assumption management
- 12:33 – Validation is not a one-off
- 14:44 – Continuous discovery in practice
- 15:38 – How to validate enterprise product ideas
- 17:02 – Story decks, user interviews and field testing
- 19:11 – Grading feedback and customer fit
- 21:11 – The danger of over-friendly users
- 23:08 – The power of early champions
- 25:21 – Preparing for and running discovery sessions
- 27:35 – Value testing and competitor awareness
- 29:08 – When to walk away from the wrong customer
- 31:17 – What happens after the meetings
- 33:30 – The role of AI in user research
- 35:46 – What Jason would do differently today
What you'll learn from Jason
— Validation should be continuous: One round of user feedback isn’t enough. Real product-market fit evolves through repeated conversations and iteration.
— Assumptions must be challenged: Build a culture where being proven wrong is celebrated, not feared.
— Don’t let leadership derail discovery: Product managers must set boundaries and bring clarity on the problem space before execution begins.
— Grading users is as critical as grading feedback: Identify the right customers to listen to—being nice isn’t the same as being the right fit.
— Use discovery decks to guide conversations: Jason uses bold assumptions, interactive sessions, and immediate iteration to refine ideas quickly.
— Tech accelerates, but doesn’t replace, human insight: AI tools for sentiment and semantic analysis are powerful but should supplement—not substitute—real human interaction.
Featured Links
Episode transcript
0:00 — Jason Sparks
The risk of unvalidated assumptions
What is really missing is validating that assumption and taking the risk of being proven wrong before you build
0:06 — Lily Smith
anything. Finding product market fit is tricky enough when you're in a startup, but what about when you're inside a big
0:12 — Lily Smith
enterprise? They come up with an idea and a solution and then they build that solution and then they ship it and then they see
0:18 — Lily Smith
like, oh crap, that failed. You don't want to waste millions of dollars and hundreds of hours of time for something
0:25 — Lily Smith
that may not even work. Hey, it's the product experience and I'm Lily Smith. And I'm Randy Silver. This week's guest
0:31 — Lily Smith
is Jason Sparks, principal product manager at Reup Education. Jason's helping millions of adult
0:37 — Lily Smith
learners get back to college, and he's got strong views on how to validate ideas. We talked about what happens when
0:43 — Lily Smith
leadership falls in love with the wrong idea, why validation should never be a one-time exercise, and how being proven
0:49 — Lily Smith
wrong might just be the best outcome of all. We should be out there learning, working with our teams to get out there
0:56 — Lily Smith
and really build strong relationships. Jason, thank you so much for joining us
1:02 — Jason Sparks
Meet Jason Sparks and his mission at ReUp
tonight. How are you doing? I am fantastic, Randy. It's so great to be here. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today.
1:08 — Randy Silver
Well, thanks for joining us. And we had a chance to chat a couple weeks back about tonight's topic about uh product
1:14 — Randy Silver
market fit and how to find it in enterprise. But before we dig into that
1:19 — Randy Silver
too much, can we just do a quick introduction? What are you up to these days, Jason? And how did you get into
1:25 — Jason Sparks
product in the first place? Oh boy. Um, well, so right now I'm the
1:30 — Jason Sparks
principal product manager for a company called Reup Education. And REUP is an industry leader that supports adult
1:36 — Jason Sparks
learners who've stopped out of college, those who have some college but no degree or credential, and helps them
1:42 — Jason Sparks
return to college to complete their degree. RIUP pairs datadriven insights with personal coaching to help re-engage
1:49 — Jason Sparks
these learners at at scale. So think thousands of learners across multiple multiple institutions uh within the
1:56 — Jason Sparks
higher ed space in the United States. Um we combine technology and human support
2:01 — Jason Sparks
to remove the barriers that adult learners face and help them re-engage with college. Um myself, I'm actually
2:08 — Jason Sparks
also a college dropout. And so the mission that REIUP serves is really near and dear to my heart. There are over 40
2:16 — Jason Sparks
million Americans who have some college but no degree. And when I became
2:21 — Jason Sparks
disillusioned at a younger age and I stopped out of college, I and let life interfere and engage in a bunch of
2:28 — Jason Sparks
hurdles and other challenging opportunities in life. Um, I stopped out of college for two years and um went
2:36 — Jason Sparks
back, worked, and then ultimately decided to go back to college. And then in a blink of an eye, not only did I
2:41 — Jason Sparks
have an associates degree, but my bachelor's degree, and then two years later, I have my masters. And so, um,
2:47 — Jason Sparks
the work I do at REUP to help re-engage stopout learners is really important to me. And, uh, right now, I'm focusing on
2:54 — Jason Sparks
data visualization and helping our higher ed partners understand the value of the work that we're doing. But that's
3:02 — Jason Sparks
From college dropout to product leader
now man. Uh when I think about my career, I I often think about the what
3:07 — Jason Sparks
my memoir would be titled and I think it's the many lies of Jason Sparks. Um I've done so many I've worn so many hats
3:14 — Jason Sparks
over the years. I started my career as a farm tech uh here in Texas and um
3:20 — Jason Sparks
eventually started teaching at a community college uh in the farm tech space and became a department chair and
3:26 — Jason Sparks
from there my higher ed career bloomed and grew. So I after becoming a division
3:33 — Jason Sparks
chair, I found myself teaching as a lecturer and undergraduate adviser at
3:39 — Jason Sparks
George Washington University in Washington DC. Well, I actually met the
3:44 — Jason Sparks
director of support for Blackboard socially when I was living in DC. And uh after a few months of hanging out with
3:51 — Jason Sparks
him with John, he mentioned that they were actually hiring for a product manager for their uh institutional
3:58 — Jason Sparks
assessment and accreditation tool called Blackboard outcomes. This is with Blackboard and um so I I took a risk and
4:06 — Jason Sparks
I applied and um my family has always been big in technology and so I I wanted
4:12 — Jason Sparks
to sort of marry my experience in higher ed with higher educ and education
4:18 — Jason Sparks
technology and um applied for the role at Blackboard and uh sure enough the
4:24 — Jason Sparks
rest is history. uh here I am uh almost 14 years later having held a variety of
4:30 — Jason Sparks
roles in with some of the biggest names in in education technology blackboard
4:35 — Jason Sparks
illumin uh instructure learning objects and now with reup education you know the
4:42 — Jason Sparks
the whole idea of happen stance and influence from those you meet in the world around you is how I got into
4:47 — Randy Silver
product Jason that's great um I'm going to do one piece of translation or education for people for people in the UK uh when
4:54 — Randy Silver
Jason says college. He doesn't mean what we talk about as college here as six form in the last two years of secondary
5:01 — Randy Silver
school or pre-un university. College and university are the same thing in the states. University is usually if they've
5:06 — Randy Silver
got a law school or a med school or an MBA program or something like that. It's Yeah. two two lands divided by the same
5:13 — Randy Silver
language sometimes. Yeah. Indeed. Yeah. Postsecary education, university education.
5:19 — Randy Silver
Product-market fit inside the enterprise
Okay. But let's get on to the the topic at hand. You did a talk recently about
5:24 — Randy Silver
the problems that a lot of companies have, a lot of enterprises have with finding product market fit for for new
5:30 — Randy Silver
things, for things that they're developing. And I've been on the inside of this a lot. You know, you've got a
5:36 — Randy Silver
lot of thinking inside the building. You've got a lot of numbers. You potentially even have some market research. There's something missing from
5:43 — Jason Sparks
that, isn't there? What's what's the what's the thing that's missing? What's the problem? Oh, validation of an idea. Just because
5:49 — Jason Sparks
an idea exists doesn't mean it's meant to be solved. Um there's so many products out there that have been built
5:55 — Jason Sparks
and developed that are in search of the market rather than meeting a need and and and solving a problem. So I I think
6:03 — Jason Sparks
Why most ideas don’t need building
that what is really missing is when you take an idea and you build a product
6:08 — Jason Sparks
that uh against that idea that when it hasn't been validated, you're not actually solving a pain that exists.
6:14 — Jason Sparks
You're solving for something that you think that exists. It's just an assumption. And what have you seen specifically in
6:22 — Lily Smith
your kind of experiences? Like you mentioned um people are not validating
6:27 — Lily Smith
ideas properly, but how has this played out? And obviously you don't need to call out specific organizations that
6:34 — Lily Smith
you've worked for, but just across the the many years that you've been working in um learning and development in in
6:41 — Jason Sparks
enterprises. Oh, sure. I mean like founders and product managers and and leaders often
6:47 — Jason Sparks
identify an opportunity. They've read an article. They've been talking to some colleagues. They've been they went to a
6:53 — Jason Sparks
conference and heard of an idea. They've conducted a little research. They've formed an assumption and then based upon
6:59 — Jason Sparks
that assumption they take that inside and they they come up with an idea and a solution and then they build that
7:07 — Jason Sparks
solution and then they ship it and then they see like, oh crap, that failed. Well, I think that's that's the problem
7:14 — Jason Sparks
is that it we're not being proactive when it comes to product research and building and validating assumptions to
7:21 — Jason Sparks
create products that solve problems. Um, often organizations I found will dump
7:26 — Jason Sparks
tons of money and time to uh build a solution around an idea that hasn't been
7:32 — Jason Sparks
vetted or validated against market demand. Actually talking to real users who experience a real pain. you know,
7:40 — Jason Sparks
there are products that are that are just built wrong. They're the wrong market. You know, it's it's a confusing
7:45 — Jason Sparks
experience. Um, you know, the platform is hard to use. It's not the right solution for the problem. Uh, you know,
7:52 — Jason Sparks
or there's the the right market, but it's built wrong like a product that is, you know, again, over, you know,
7:58 — Jason Sparks
difficult to use. it's the market's already saturated and um you're
8:04 — Jason Sparks
providing a less than optimal user experience for your your end users or when the product is built right but then
8:10 — Jason Sparks
Misalignment: wrong product, wrong market
it's the wrong market like it's a mismatch like there's it's a really innovative technology idea but then you
8:17 — Jason Sparks
run into like privacy concerns or hardware issues or you know like like in
8:23 — Jason Sparks
wearable tech for example like it's not fashionable enough and so you see low adoption because there's not enough
8:28 — Jason Sparks
ranges for the for the taste of of those in the market. But then when you find
8:34 — Jason Sparks
the right product, when you build the right product in the right market because you've listened to your users,
8:40 — Jason Sparks
you've listened, you've conducted industry research and you've validated it, you've had an assumption and you've
8:46 — Jason Sparks
either been proven wrong or you've been proven right by talking to people who experience this pain. That's when you
8:52 — Jason Sparks
thrive. That's where the unicorns come from. That's where you or companies that
8:57 — Jason Sparks
are proactive have done enough research to actually validate and understand the idea to find the right solution that
9:05 — Jason Sparks
meets a need and solves pain. And I think that is the one of the biggest
9:11 — Jason Sparks
opportunities uh for product companies is rather than looking at what
9:17 — Jason Sparks
assumptions you're bringing in and building to an assumption, what is really missing is validating that
9:23 — Jason Sparks
assumption and taking the risk of being proven wrong before you build anything. You don't want to waste millions of
9:29 — Jason Sparks
dollars and hundreds of hours of time for something that may not even work.
9:34 — Jason Sparks
That's too much risk, especially now. Jason, do you think you know this
9:40 — Lily Smith
problem mainly comes from, you know, from the top from leadership down?
9:45 — Lily Smith
Because I imagine if leadership feel that the team are you know wasting time
9:53 — Lily Smith
on a product which is wrong or they're not seeing evidence kind of quickly of
9:59 — Lily Smith
take up of the product or it's just you know the the building of the thing is taking a really long time or something
10:05 — Lily Smith
Executive interference and assumption management
they might be a little bit quicker to just question what's going on and and ask for more validation or is that a
10:13 — Jason Sparks
correct assumption or or I think it is a correct assumption in
10:18 — Jason Sparks
many ways because um depending upon your role within the company. Um so like I as
10:25 — Jason Sparks
a product manager working with product leadership and executive leadership um could be put in charge of an idea that
10:30 — Jason Sparks
an executive had in the the middle of the night or you know in talking with someone across the industry. So I think
10:37 — Jason Sparks
that yes it is very possible that some of these like assumptions or mismatch ideas could come from the top can also
10:44 — Jason Sparks
come from uh the side internal organizations like the additional cooks across the the organization um other
10:51 — Jason Sparks
executive leadership departmental managers and other influencers. So I found that there can be a lot of
10:57 — Jason Sparks
interference uh in idea management and assumption management from the executive
11:02 — Jason Sparks
team uh and others in the seauite and other leadership positions. So as a
11:07 — Jason Sparks
product manager, someone who's responsible for executing and ident and creating this vision, um this is where
11:13 — Jason Sparks
stakeholder management comes really into play, being able to have uh upward and
11:19 — Jason Sparks
downward uh communication and parallel communication out to the sides with your team, but also keeping the executives
11:26 — Jason Sparks
and other leadership informed, but maintaining clear boundaries about what you're building, what the expectation
11:32 — Jason Sparks
is, and the problem you're trying to solve. One of the things that I have focused on um as a product manager when
11:39 — Jason Sparks
it comes to being a better product manager is maintaining those boundaries and and really working with my
11:45 — Jason Sparks
stakeholders to stay focused on the ultimate vision. Um yes, we have
11:50 — Jason Sparks
assumptions and we're working to validate those assumptions and the pain that our users are experiencing.
11:57 — Jason Sparks
Ultimately, we have to be very clear about what we're actually going to
12:02 — Jason Sparks
solve. You can't lose sight of the ultimate goal with all the other added noise and interference of tangential
12:08 — Jason Sparks
ideas and other assumptions. You have to be focused. I think it's really interesting where you when you have that
