Perplexity Product Sense: Choose a User Segment and Pitch the Next Feature to Build

You are interviewing for a product manager role at Perplexity, the AI answer engine. Pitch one feature Perplexity does not offer today and argue why it deserves to be built next. ```hint Find where the answer is not the end Think about moments when a user gets a good Perplexity answer but the job is still unfinished. Pick one user group for whom that happens often, and design for that moment. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Which goal matters most right now: growing new users, converting free users to the paid Pro plan, or getting existing users to return more often? - Should the feature target everyday consumers, or professionals and teams who use Perplexity for work research? - Are there limits on inference cost or answer latency that the feature has to stay within? - Which existing capabilities, such as follow-up questions in a thread, should I treat as the baseline the feature builds on? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A goal for Perplexity tied to its position against traditional search engines and general AI assistants. - A chosen user segment and its concrete pain points with an answer engine today. - Several candidate features compared on explicit criteria, with one chosen and justified. - Enough detail on the chosen feature to show how it uses Perplexity's retrieval and cited answers. - Success metrics with guardrails, and risks such as inference cost, answer accuracy and user trust. ### Follow-up Questions - The feature lifts retention among the people who use it, but inference cost per active user rises sharply. Is it worth it, and what would you change? - How would you keep the feature from presenting a confident but wrong answer, especially when sources disagree? - Would you put the feature behind the Pro plan or give it to free users, and why?