Why 'Taste' Matters More Than Process in Enterprise PM

In enterprise B2B, we're trained to worship frameworks: RICE, JTBD, OKRs. But after shipping multiple 0→1 products at Keka and Multiplier, I've learned that frameworks only get you 60% of the way there. The remaining 40%—the difference between good and great—comes from taste.

Taste isn't about aesthetics. It's pattern recognition across domains. When building our BGV module, the breakthrough wasn't following a framework—it was recognizing that our integration problem mirrored how Stripe handles payment gateways. That cross-domain insight cut our integration time by 67%.

The 60/40 Split

In enterprise B2B, we worship frameworks: RICE, JTBD, OKRs—I've used them all. They're useful. But after shipping 0→1 products at Keka and Multiplier, I've realized: frameworks only get you 60% of the way.

The remaining 40%—the difference between a product that works and one people love—comes from taste.

> Taste isn't aesthetics. It's pattern recognition refined across domains.

When AI makes building easy—and it does now—knowing what NOT to build becomes the job. Any PM can ship features. Fewer can look at a roadmap and say "this doesn't matter" with conviction.

What Developing Taste Looks Like

Cross-domain curiosity pays off. The Stripe insight didn't come from studying HR tech. It came from curiosity about fintech. I spent time with products I'd never build—Linear's keyboard shortcuts informed how we thought about power-user workflows in Keka. Apple's progressive disclosure shaped our complex form designs.

See the system, not just the requests. During our offboarding revamp, every stakeholder wanted their checklist item prioritized. Frameworks said "prioritize by impact." But when I mapped the actual dependency graph, I discovered that IT access revocation was blocking 70% of downstream tasks. No framework would have surfaced that.

Trust your gut—eventually. RICE scoring told us to build vendor management before custom workflows. But after talking to 50+ customers, I had a gut feeling: workflows would be a force multiplier for everything else. We shipped workflows first. Revenue 3x'd in six months.

I still don't know if I would've had the confidence to make that call two years earlier.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Taste takes time. You need to ship, fail, study things outside your domain, and build an internal model of what "good" actually looks like. There's no shortcut.

In a world where everyone has access to the same frameworks and AI tools, taste might be the only sustainable advantage left.