Understated Hyperbole
I have long been a fan of Dharmesh Ba from the India Notes newsletter. So when he asked me to sit down for a conversation about my career, I jumped on the opportunity. What followed felt like opening a time capsule of my career – covering the heady days of game design at Zynga all…
I sat down with Aakash Gupta of the Product Growth newsletter and made a tier-list of 70+ AI tools for PMs. Check it out: 🎧 Spotify 🍎 Apple Here’s some of the key takeaways: 1. Claude Code is the clear winner for vibe coding. I regularly run it in 6 terminal windows simultaneously, each working on different parts of…
In this theatre of life – my son had perhaps only seen the magic on stage, but never the absolute chaos occurring in the wings. He had never seen me as a beginner – as someone who struggled to put one foot in front of the other.
I remember the very first time I played Super Mario Brothers on an NES console. It was 1989 and I was down with chicken pox. To stop me from scratching myself and keep me distracted, my dad rented a console and I played Mario (and Contra) non-stop over the next few days (with my mom…
I used to quiz fairly regularly both in school and college and also loved setting and hosting quizzes (the high point was co-hosting the inaugural IIT Madras Open Quiz in 2004). But then I lost touch with it for over two decades. A chance meeting at a kid’s birthday party with a parent who I…
Or Why Metaphors are Dangerous Language is imprecise. Language is especially imprecise and imperfect when it comes to describing scientific concepts. And the irony of using the tools of language to write about its own shortcomings is not lost on me. Think about the oft repeated phrase – “survival of the fittest” and how it…
I love good teachers and classrooms. Something about the act of learning – sitting in a room, completely distraction-free and being a complete sponge – listening intently to a teacher at the peak of their craft, sparring with your fellow students and building new neural connections – lights me up like the Rockefeller Center Christmas…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…