Product discovery at Hemnet, with Francesca Cortesi

In this episode of Datadrivet, Joni Lindgren and Jasmin Yaya talk with Francesca Cortesi, CPO at Hemnet, about how the team finds and validates new opportunities for one of Sweden’s most-used products.

Francesca leads a team of six product managers, one user researcher and one UX director. Product discovery is a subject she writes about often, on LinkedIn and on her blog, and she draws on four years at Hemnet for the conversation, including the mistakes the team learned from along the way.

Two things stand out about how Hemnet works. First, a strong A/B-testing culture paired with continuous discovery, so the team keeps a steady habit of talking to users and testing ideas rather than running discovery as a one-off. Second, a habit of looking outward: the team benchmarks against international housing portals in France, Spain and England to give their own results context.

The concrete example is a smoke test called Min bostad (My Home). It let users register their property, get a valuation and see a demand estimate, all before the full service existed. Data from international peers gave them a reference point for reading the results, so they could judge whether the interest they saw was actually promising.

The takeaway is that discovery at Hemnet runs as a continuous practice rather than a one-off phase. Test small, read the signal against an outside benchmark, and let that decide what gets built.

Listen to the full episode of Datadrivet for the full conversation with Francesca Cortesi.