Pitch to someone outside your domain to get a new perspective I had the opportunity to engage with a host from outside the software development world during a recent podcast. My podcast host had prepped on my website, and he had honed in on the value proposition. “80% of your

Lately, I am reading a book called Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd by Youngme Moon. The book writes about why intense competition begets homogeneity. The writing resonated with me and wrote this note for my Zettlekasten. Examples heavily inspired by the author (all credit to her). When you measure something,

Today, I met an ex-colleague piqued with his current organization. He asked me for input to navigate his environment since I understand its ebbs and flows. My analysis… He is waiting for someone to give him permission to offer his perspectives. He has opinions but he is holding them back.

Life as an entrepreneur is exciting because it throws completely new challenges your way. In the last few weeks, a new challenge popped up on my radar that requires stretching way outside my comfort zone. Handling this challenge requires velvet gloves. Though, the interwebs have an article for every situation,

What is the right speed for driving a car in a car parking lot? What is the acceptable speed range that we should be driving in a car park? Is it 8, 15, 22 mph? Coming to think of it — Who thinks about the user experience of driving through a

You know her; you have seen him in action; and too often you have been one — a superhero who flew down, laid yourself on the broken tracks and let the train pass over your shoulders and saved the day. Have you been one? I know I have. There is an

As product managers, product roadmapping and planning is one of the most rewarding activities that we do in our jobs. Determining the most valuable problems to solve and finding the shortest path to bringing them to the market is the engine that drives business growth. The biggest challenge that I

Yesterday, I was at Emononu, a ferry station in Istanbul and spotted one of the most entrepreneurial person that I have seen. I was blown away by his entrepreneurial spirit. The Sultanahmet area in Istanbul is teeming with tourists and so if you are a tourist and have spent anywhere

Lessons learnt from leading one of the most successful open source software projects My colleague Kohsuke Kawaguchi, has built Jenkins, one of the most popular open source projects in the market. He has built a vibrant and thriving community (by conservative estimates, 2M+ people use Jenkins) that continues to grow

“Look at what you have built — did you ever imagine that this was going to be so big?” A colleague asked me this question at a team event fairly recently. My answer — “always”. I was confident in my response because I had laboured over for years on the degree of

Recently I wrote 2 blogs (tell me more, be an intern) talking about tips to conduct an effective customer/prospect interview for product managers. This blog wraps up the tail end of that series. One of the most effective power questions is “What else is on your mind”. I picked

20 Jan 2017 Finding the right problem, its details, from customer interviews are similar to finding an address in India. A problem while looking for an address in India is that neighbourhoods are congested and the roads are not labeled. One uses landmarks to reach to the right area, find