I tried something a little crazy on Twitter: narrated the entire 18 days of the Mahabharat war as a mega Twitter thread. At 149 tweets (which I posted over 6 days) – this was exhilarating and tiring. Go ahead, click on the tweet below and jump in.
Do Transformers Hallucinate of Softer Skin?
Cover image generated on Dall-E with the prompt: “A robot similar to Optimus Prime standing on a barren landscape looking at his human hand, cartoon style” All new technology in its early phase is highly disruptive to the status quo. I call this the “dynamite” phase – you can use it to blow things to…
Why Manage?
The single biggest mistake every first-time manager makes in tech companies (especially product, design and engg) is in believing that they no longer have to contribute as ICs (individual contributors). It doesn’t matter where you are on the spectrum of company size – a handful of people fighting for survival and trying to launch a…
What Users Want
Kapi Pe Charcha #005 – Venture Highway “What do users care about? What do they need?” In our previous posts, we talked about speaking to users and validating our ideas (https://lnkd.in/dHdft3x7 and https://lnkd.in/dc2vVnBk). The Hierarchy of User Needs by Aarron Walter is a model that explains the needs users have when using products or services. This hierarchy…
Design Sprints – Short-Circuiting the Development Cycle
Kapi Pe Charcha #004 – Venture Highway “Do I need to set up a team, raise money and build a fully functional product to validate my ideas?” Building a product is costly. One can spend months setting up a team, raising money and creating a product that has a high chance of failure. One needs…
Speaking to Customers
Kapi Pe Charcha #003 – Venture Highway “Would I need to speak to people/ users/ customers?” In our last two posts, we have discussed ways of coming up with new ideas and then creating a shortlist out of them: 1. https://lnkd.in/gXHstMvM2. https://lnkd.in/gngtAunA A skill that will help you throughout your entrepreneurial journey is user research. It’s a…
Shortlisting Ideas
Kapi Pe Charcha #002 – Venture Highway “OK – so I have a set of ideas now. How do I check if they are any good?” In our last post, we came up with a set of methods to help us constantly come up with new ideas. We weren’t worried about originality, quality, feasibility or the…
Generating Ideas
Kapi Pe Charcha #001 – Venture Highway I am often asked: “How do I constantly come up with new ideas?” While coming up with ideas, do not worry about their originality, quality, feasibility or the opportunity size that they represent. Forget all that. Focus on idea generation. Keep reminding yourself – there are no bad…
Playbooks
A playbook has three attributes: (1) it gives you plays that can be reliably repeated, (2) these plays can be taught to others, and (3) one can look back and check whether the plays were used properly. In the context of product building, there are multiple playbooks: how to hire, how to build an organization,…
How to be an Effective Product Manager
Everything I have learnt about being an effective product manager condensed into a short video.
Product Roadmap Shapes
Product roadmaps typically need to have three important categories of initiatives: Work that helps to Keep the Lights On (KTLO) – tech debt, keeping existing features and functionalities up and running, fixing bugs, etc fall under this category. This is the bread and butter part of your roadmap. Short term investments – incremental improvements in…
Behind the Scenes – Kalaari Podcast
Late last year, I had recorded a podcast with Vani Kola of Kalaari Capital. We discussed many different topics – what make a good PM, decision-making frameworks, the Indian gaming market and much much more. The episode is now out. Enjoy!