Brett Sears

Who is Brett Sears?

Brett Sears is the founder and CEO of Training Layers, a company he describes on stage as "a GPS basically for software" — a product built to take users through the entire journey of learning how to use a piece of software and, in his words, how to "become stronger and better" at it. His perspective is rooted not in abstract theory but in the day-to-day reality of working directly with companies, listening to how their users actually adopt and struggle with software, and turning those observations into a structured approach to guidance and discovery.

At SaaStock Europe 2023, Sears stepped onto the stage to share what he has learned from that work in a session titled "Pitfalls and Bridges in User-Driven Discovery." He framed it as a conversation rather than a lecture, opening with the warning that the topic "on the surface might seem simple" — a deliberate signal that the discipline of letting users drive product and onboarding decisions is far harder, and far more nuanced, than founders typically assume. What looks like a straightforward act of asking users what they want quickly reveals traps, dead ends, and false signals that can mislead a team that hasn't learned to read them.

Sears speaks from the vantage point of someone who does this for a living: Training Layers earns its insight by sitting alongside companies as their users move through software, which gives him an unusually grounded view of where discovery goes wrong and where the genuine bridges to understanding lie. This page collects Brett Sears's recorded SaaStock talks, with transcripts, so founders and product teams can revisit his thinking on user-driven discovery in his own words.

About Training Layers

Training Layers is, as Brett Sears puts it on the SaaStock stage, "a GPS basically for software." The metaphor captures the company's core ambition: rather than dropping users into an unfamiliar product and hoping they find their way, Training Layers aims to navigate them — turn by turn — through the entire journey of learning how a piece of software works and how to use it well.

The category Training Layers operates in is software adoption and in-app user guidance, a space concerned with the moment a user first encounters a product and the long arc that follows as they grow more capable. Sears's framing emphasizes progression over mere activation: the goal is not just to get a user logged in, but to help them "become stronger and better" over time, mastering the software rather than abandoning it at the first point of friction.

Crucially, the company's worldview is built on direct contact with real users. Sears describes what Training Layers does as a series of conversations with companies — "because we're really going to walk through" how users move through software — and it is precisely that hands-on, observational practice that informs his talk on user-driven discovery. The themes he raises at SaaStock — the deceptive simplicity of discovery, the pitfalls that trip up well-meaning teams, and the bridges that connect a company to what its users genuinely need — flow directly from the everyday work of guiding users through software.

Key lessons from Brett Sears's talks

User-driven discovery looks simple but isn't. Sears opens his SaaStock session by acknowledging that the topic "on the surface might seem simple," and that framing is the lesson itself: the hardest discovery mistakes come from teams that treat listening to users as obvious and easy rather than as a discipline with real traps. Respect the difficulty and you start to see the failure modes others miss.

Think in journeys, not moments. Training Layers is built as "a GPS basically for software," guiding users through "the entire journey" of learning a product. Sears's work argues that adoption is a continuous path, not a single onboarding event — design for the whole route a user travels, not just the first screen they see.

Aim to make users stronger, not just active. Sears describes the goal as helping users "become stronger and better" at the software they use. That reframes the objective of product and onboarding work away from short-term activation metrics and toward genuine, growing user competence — the thing that actually keeps people in a product.

Ground discovery in real conversations with companies and users. Sears roots his approach in the actual back-and-forth of walking through how users experience software. The bridge to good discovery, in his telling, is built from direct, observed contact with users — not from assumptions made at a distance.