by Sam DuRegger
ISBN: 979-8-9995428-0-9
I Build for People is a product manifesto rooted in lived experience, offering a candid, thoughtful blueprint for building for belonging—where systems are healthy, culture is intentional, and people always come first.
Real people use the things we build, bringing their hopes, habits, hang‑ups, and history with them into every tap, swipe, or scroll. If we reduce them to "conversion events" or "churn risks," we risk creating products that are efficient but empty. Great products earn their place in people's lives by making those lives measurably better—not just faster or stickier, but genuinely better.
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My sports science background shaped how I see product. Like the human body, a great product is a complex system that requires alignment, intentional stress, and recovery. It flexes and grows stronger through feedback. It fails, adapts, and iterates. It only works when the whole system is healthy—when marketing isn't at war with product, and engineers aren't burning out to meet arbitrary deadlines.
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Working on apps like Final Surge 2.0 and Wylder taught me that the best digital products create space: space for people to show up, connect, and move forward together. Belonging doesn't always register on a metrics dashboard, but when it's missing, a product feels hollow. The goal is to invite people in and make them want to stay—not because they were tricked, but because they were truly seen.
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One breaks the system; the other builds it better. At Sonic Drive‑In, we threaded innovation into something already beloved without losing the soul of the brand. In fintech, we built an AI‑powered banking app by treating financial health like physical fitness, using behavioral science to nudge users toward better habits. Knowing when to disrupt and when to innovate is where great products live.
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Clear goals shape the team. At Sonic, a digital‑first ordering experience required more builders and fewer project managers. Outsourcing can help with scale or speed, but outsourcing innovation is risky—it diffuses accountability and diffuses vision. The way work is defined shapes culture, so product leads must set vision, resist hero culture, and shepherd teams through ambiguity with tools like product briefs, personas, and constraint framing.
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Heroes limit potential. Teams win together when ego takes a back seat. Retrospectives let teams leave ego at the door and learn from mistakes without blame. Hero culture rewards knowledge hoarding and burnout; team culture rewards trust, shared ownership, and continuous learning. Every commit, conversation, and launch is a vote for trust—or its erosion—so build like trust is your most important asset.
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Digital isn't a hood ornament; it's connective tissue. Marketing and growth are the muscles that generate momentum. Operations and technology are the bones that provide structure and durability. Product management acts as the tendons and ligaments, sensing imbalance and aligning the system toward strength and stability. Treating digital as connective tissue means caring about alignment and listening to early signs of strain before they become breaks.
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Project management isn't the enemy, but in ambiguous, complex work, progress matters more than following a rigid plan. Agile's mantra—people and interactions over processes and tools—reminds us that outcomes beat paperwork. Product management empowers teams to deliver the right thing, to the right people, at the right time. It values learning, iteration, and flexibility over strict adherence to a predefined process.
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Curiosity is a muscle and connoisseurship is a practice. Drawing on influences as diverse as Yvon Chouinard and David Ogilvy, product teams need to ask hard questions, share what inspires them, and cultivate taste. Wild ideas rooted in values can reshape industries, and disciplined craft can turn research into meaning. Inspiration fuels storytelling as much as problem‑solving; a product without it lacks soul.
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People first, always—but don't ignore the data. Metrics can illuminate or mislead. Cost of acquisition is meaningless without retention; page views are empty without time on page and bounce rate; downloads mean little without active usage. The right metrics are paired with context and used transparently. Data should spark questions and guide decisions, but it should never replace gut, instinct, or human insight. Build for people and the metrics will follow.
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