Aswath Krishnan

I have been splitting my time between a part-time PM role and starting my own company. In both, I realized breakthroughs and progress happen because of one main underlying character trait.  Obsession.  Obsession about the domain.  Obsession about the customer and problem.  Obsession about the goals and strategy.  Obsession about the current product and business.  Obsession about execution details.  Obsession about delivery. Obsession about feedback and results. Obsession about learning and improving.  Obsession with the craft of PM and product development. When you are obsessed, there's a constant thread in your brain that's always obsessing about all these factors. You are also constantly researching, learning, tinkering, discussing, ideating, and iterating.  Obsession, when combined with curiosity, knowledge, intellect, and collaboration , leads to clarity, evolution of ideas, elegant simplifications, breakthroughs, and getting all the deta...

We can all agree that it would kinda suck to exist alone in the universe. Adversity with friends is better than success or comfort alone.  Hear it from Shaq: “I live in a 30 thousand square foot house by myself. You don’t think I know I messed up?” I appreciate whatever transpired to get us to this moment in reality because it brought us together, with each other, capable of problem-solving, empathy, kindness, togetherness, play, and love.  We can make lives better for each other - less suffering, more enjoyable, and more meaningful. In fact, that may be the only way to do it.  The ego is often the root of most unhappiness. When we focus on just the I, just ourselves, we suffer. The I is a small, transient, fickle, greedy, and fearful illusion.  When we focus beyond us - our loved ones, our society, all of humanity, all of everything - we feel limitless and we thrive. Be it your personal life or your career/business, expand your focus beyond yourself. 

This Zinda Banda track from the new Bollywood blockbuster, "Jawan," has taken over my playlist recently. It's not just Anirudh's peppy music or Shah Rukh Khan's swag.  What truly speaks to me is the lyrical essence of the song, which has crystallized a powerful epiphany I've had in recent months. A realization that serves as a clarion call whenever I find myself teetering on the edge of self-doubt or an important decision in my startup or life journey. *** Banda Ho To Zinda Ho! If you're alive, truly live! Banda Zinda Ho To Zinda Nazar Haana Zaroori Hai! To be alive, it’s necessary to have a lively vision.  A few months ago, I took the plunge into entrepreneurship, leaving behind the relative stability of a 9-to-5 job. It was a leap of faith into a realm filled with uncertainties and risks. Entrepreneurs, you'll get me when I say the looming specter of failure has often kept me awake at night, pondering whether it's time to pack it up and return to...

This talk by Bill Gurley, a popular venture capitalist, is a master class in both the subject of regulatory capture and presentation. It's so well-crafted and powerful - the story-telling, the flow, the energy and intonation, the slides, the creative title and close, the eye-opening lived experiences and insider insights, the authenticity, and the truth to power and corruption.  It drives home that America is the land of capitalists. If you are a large business, there's probably no better place in the world. Conversely, if you are in America, consider starting a business or owning equity to thrive. Capitalists are the kings here.  Compare it to Europe, where capital gains taxes are high, and employees and consumers have strong protections and social services. Or to India, where politicians, cricketers, and movie stars are the kings. Or to China, where the CCP is the only monarch.  Most companies need to do some objective good for their customers to rise and survive, so th...

I woke up excited today because I had shared my new app on Reddit, and I was eager to check if it had taken off.  I have been waking up excited on many days over the last few months for similar reasons. I'd have taken a long shot the previous day - launched a new product, shared a blog or social media post, sent an email to an influential person, applied for an exciting job, etc. Long shots (or moon shots) have small odds of turning into something really big, exciting, and life-changing.  Extraordinary successes are almost always a result of taking long shots and asymmetric bets. Sam Altman in his blog on  How to be Successful , writes "I always choose a next project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote."   Most people, most of the time, are on a very linear path, with no possibility of a big win or exponential take-off. They don't buy any lottery tickets and they don't win any big prizes.  When you keep buying lottery t...

In a recent team meeting, someone announced we wouldn't be able to meet a project deadline and we'll have to move it to later. Not wanting to be pushy or unreasonable, I accepted and updated the date. But another colleague interjected and held the bar. He pointed out that we had slipped a few times already and rallied the team to figure out options to meet the date.  Oftentimes, we avoid hard things  and uncomfortable conversations, and try to be "naively nice". This leads to a slippery slope that snowballs into low accountability, performance, quality, outcomes, morale, and pent-up frustration. I say naively nice because ultimately this turns out to be not very nice to the team, stakeholders, managers, business, and customers.  The nicer way is to set clear and reasonable expectations, hold and raise the bar, provide direct and timely feedback, identify and fix the problems, and work together compassionately and collaboratively to make it happen.  Notes:  1. Am...

There is now plenty of great advice, thought leadership, frameworks, newsletters, podcasts, and courses for being a good product manager (this blog included).  Maybe even too much.  My simple advice that supersedes everything else is this: First, make $100 on the internet on your own.  My first job out of college was as a consultant for startups in an incubator in Ghana. While I could give helpful technical advice on how to build their products, I felt like an imposter when advising on the business or approach. I was a new grad who had never started a business on my own, so who the heck was I to share my business advice?! 

  I was watching this interview with Rich Barton, one of the few people in the world who has created multiple successful businesses across industries - Expedia, Zillow, and Glassdoor.* He recalls the story of how Zestimate (home price estimate) was created.  One of the investors, Bill Gurly, asked him a powerful question before they launched Zillow - what would you do if you had no ad budget?  Good questions can be life and business changing. And in this case, it turned out to be.  Rich and his team ended up creating Zestimate and market reports, which generated a lot of interest and organic traffic. Constraints breed creativity. Sometimes, imagination can solve problems better than money can.  Coincidentally, I watched another video on the same week where Linkedin's CBO shared how the other end of the spectrum - thinking without any constraints - leads to more creative solutions as well.  I'd square both these points into this one piece of advice: If you a...

Growing up in the middle class in India, the first 20 years of my life were somewhat consumed in the pursuit of academic, career, and financial success to secure a comfortable life. But now that I'm comfortable and have checked off those boxes, the same scarcity and survival mindset is unhelpful.  This quote really drove it home for me.  “Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations.” – Tim O’Reilly Gasoline and money are really important when you are low. But they are hardly important if you have enough. The same can be said about other pursuits like fame. Get what you need, so you can finally enjoy the life you want.

The world always has a lot more skeptics than innovators. *** Skeptics question any change. While blindly accepting the status quo and all its flaws.  They are limited by their own fears, lack of vision, beliefs, and capabilities. They choose the easy path of nay-saying and changing nothing.  Innovators question the status quo.  They see a better way. They are eager to invent and try new things. They are bold, creative, capable, and action-oriented. They are choosing the hard path of solving problems and creating change. *** Every innovator is met with skeptics who try to douse their spirit. If you are trying to be an innovator, surround yourself with other innovators who energize you and help you figure out a way.  Notes:  1. Yes, there are thoughtful skeptics and clueless or evil innovators. 

A friend of mine was baffled that he wasn't getting promoted. He was getting his work done and coming up with good ideas. But people who were less capable seemed to be progressing faster.  "It's just stupid politics and unfairness", he grumbled. When the world doesn't seem to operate according to our expectations, guess where the problem is? Yeah, you got it...the expectations. When your model of the situation, and therefore your expectations, doesn't capture some key variables or dimensions, the course of events will baffle and frustrate you. In my friend's case, his model of the world derived from school where studying hard and doing well on your tests gets you good grades. But in the corporate world, it isn't that one-dimensional or clear-cut. Collaboration, enthusiasm, likability, influence, working on the right things, producing and demonstrating results, etc. matter in both promotions and impact. When things don't go as expected, instead of b...

 The secret to innovation... ...is to tackle a very specific problem. Obsessively, deeply, and excellently.  Given the vastness of human knowledge already, there probably isn't much low-hanging fruit of discovery in most areas (the circle isn't uniform as depicted, so it may be lower in some areas than others). So innovation needs depth.  Specific innovations and deep understandings of specific problems can possibly evolve into broad truths or innovations. But you are less likely to go deep and innovate if you are starting off broad.  Notes 1. There's a valid counterargument that broad knowledge across domains can help spark innovation through a general understanding of the world and by translating ideas from one domain to another. I have a center in the middle to represent a broad understanding. It's possible that 2 or 3 areas of focus might be better than 1, but I doubt 10 areas of focus (is that even focus?) is better than 1.  2. This was inspired by listenin...

I just finished the 23-mile, 5000-foot Enchantments hike in a single day.  Not going to lie - it kicked my ass, especially the relentless climb up Aasgard Pass .  But boy oh boy, it was beautiful to walk by pristine Alpine lakes. Even more significant and long-lasting was the exhilaration of being able to do something so difficult after being non-athletic and flatfooted most of my life. And that made me think... 🕊 The ability to do and enjoy hard things sets you free.   When I was deciding whether to do the hike, one of my friends jokingly said, "Worst case is you will be miserable!" The default human nature is to pursue the path of least resistance and immediate gratification to the local maxima. When you pursue comfort and stability, life has a way of slapping you back into harsh reality. Because stability is an illusion. Life is entropic and always changing.  On the other hand, if you aren't deterred by hard things - things that are high risk and hard to figure ...

I have fancied starting a business for a very long time.   Finally after getting my green card, building a financial safety net, learning by working at other businesses, and being inspired by the recent breakthroughs in AI, I took the plunge recently!  I'm sharing some reflections from my first few months.  Fair warning: all of these may change over time as I experience more and grow wiser.  1. Businesses are incredibly hard This is repeated often, but we still often underestimate or forget it as we are constantly inundated with victorious stories of very, very few survivors.  Finding and sustaining the right partners, ideas, customers, business models, teams, and investors is a long and tough journey. By default, your business is dead. You have to will it into existence and life every day with perseverance, smarts, support, and luck. There are many ups and downs, and tricky and hard decisions along the way.  I now empathize and understand why founders...

Find some quiet and relaxed setting to think through these questions.  1. What would you advise a friend? We are more clear-headed when we step back from the situation.  2. What feels more exciting and fulfilling? What would you do if you weren't afraid and if others won't know?  Fear and norms often hold us back.  3. What kind of life and lifestyle do you want?  What option ranks higher in your rubric? Having a structured approach with top factors and coarse ratings for each path+factor lets us be more objective and increases confidence in the decision.  4. What is the best-case scenario, most probable scenario, and worst-case scenario? Can you protect the downside? Outcomes are usually non-deterministic, so think in possibilities and probabilities.  5. Is this a one-way door or a two-way door? Most decisions are reversible. Spend more time and focus on those that aren't.  6. What are the 2nd and 3rd order effects? What happens after this decisio...

I distinctly remember this anecdote from Stephen Covey that I read many years ago.  At a workshop, a troubled participant approached him and confided that he and his wife weren't in love anymore. He desperately needed help to save his marriage.  Stephen Covey's advice was simple:  "Love is a verb. Love – the feeling – is the fruit of love, the verb or our loving actions. So love her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her." Covey's reframe is powerful. He changed love from something that just happens to people to something they can deliberately do.  I think the same advice applies to the universal goal and challenge of enjoying life. If you want your life to be more enjoyable, you must enjoy life.  Enjoy is a verb. It's a choice, a mindset, and a way of living, thinking, and acting.  In fact, the word enjoy originates from the French word "enjoier", which means "to give joy" or "to take delight in". It is a s...

Even the most ardent free-willers will have to confront the origins of their will at some point.  Have you ever wondered what shapes your mind and behaviors? The influences that nudge us towards success or failure, happiness or despair? What makes our life unfold in the way it does? Let me share a mysterious experience from my high school years that puzzled me for a long time and only started making sense to me years later. MAX  When I was in grade 10, I went to a large book fair with my family. Like all events in India, it was bustling with people and energy. In the midst of the chaos, my family and I were drawn towards the stage that was particularly abuzz. The stage banner displayed the name ‘MAX’, short for 'Madras Academy for Excellence'. A group of people, who were national memory record-holders no less, were captivating the audience with their ability to quickly memorize long lists of words or facts and answer any questions about them. I was impressed and intrigued beca...

As Product Managers or entrepreneurs, we often have multiple good ideas and an exciting vision. That's necessary but not sufficient.  It's easy to come up with a large collection of many capabilities and features that can together make a product compelling to users and produce business impact. But that isn't practical.  Most individuals, startups, or teams within larger companies get defunded or lose steam before they can do everything they envision if they don't produce results along the way. The complexity of more also confuses users and overwhelms teams.  A startup founder wisely told me, "Startups don't starve...they drown." What's really important is identifying and prioritizing the minimal set of ideas or bets that are going to have the largest impact, and then distilling them to their core essence . The 20% of work that'll produce 80% of the results. You need to have the conviction and discipline to say no to everything else. Only if you do ...

Traditional software simply executes explicit instructions provided by Human Intelligence. This blog is powered by software. And like most software we use, it functions based on explicit instructions. When you are on a blog post, the code explicitly specifies to deliver content from a CMS or database that's tied to the blog post and then styles it as per explicit HTML and CSS-based instructions. When you are on the home page, the code explicitly asks to display the list of 50 recent blog posts from the database.  This software is really useful as it can execute more precisely, quickly, cheaply, and on a larger scale than humans. But it is also simply doing what the human developer explicitly instructed it to do.  Enter - Software powered by Artificial Intelligence. Human instructions not needed.  Let's take this ChatGPT Plugins demo.  ChatGPT is able to:  Create a meal plan Generate a visual of the meal Shop for the ingredients Tweet about it.  No explicit ...

🤯 1)  I had my first "Aha! moment" with #ChatGPT / #LLMs in November 2022, just around when ChatGPT was released.I had asked ChatGPT to draft the annual strategy for the company I was working at, without providing any additional context. I had only used ChatGPT to answer basic questions or generate poetry and didn't expect much in response to something more complex. But the answer that ChatGPT produced in a few seconds resembled what the exec team had drafted, in content, reasoning, and priority. A few more prompts and minutes later, ChatGPT also had answers for how to present the plan, organize the team, mitigate risks, and execute the plan. ChatGPT was able to replicate a lot of the strategic work of the highest-paid and most experienced people at the company in a fraction of time and cost! 🤯 2)  I experienced my second Aha! moment when I restarted programming last month after a hiatus. After some trial and error, I'm now able to get ChatGPT to now generate 75%-...

We have been talking about the progress of GPT (or ChatGPT) across versions 1 through 4. We measure them by the number of parameters, test scores, capability, range, accuracy, modalities, plugins, etc. We celebrate and are excited about the progress of every version. There are so many memes now hyping up what GPT-5 would be.  It just struck me that humans, as individuals and as a collective system, are also a form of intelligence. And humans have also been upgrading versions. We are on Human2023 right now. Wouldn't it be fascinating to similarly explore and celebrate the progress of humans and speculate about the future? Thanks to a technology developed by Human2022/23, it is now possible to generate a sweeping narrative that transcends the boundaries of time and space with a single prompt. Read on to take a step back, traverse the epochs of human evolution, celebrate the milestones of our past, and gaze with wonderment at the horizon of possibilities that awaits us.  ***...

I just watched Air, a fun and inspiring movie about how Nike, then an underdog in the shoe industry, managed to sign Michael Jordan, a rookie at that time. The movie starts with Sonny Vaccaro (played by Matt Damon) opposing his colleagues' decision to go with the low-risk and low-reward move of signing three average basketball players. Teams and companies operate a lot based on group discussions and consensus. Those don't usually lead to brilliance or extraordinary outcomes - they converge on average, which is why most companies slowly wither and die as they grow. But Sonny doesn't care for the consensus. His deep passion and expertise in basketball make him realize that Michael Jordan is going to be a superstar before most people did. He aims higher and dreams of signing Jordan, defying his bosses and other business restrictions. He makes bold moves, breaks rules, and risks his entire career to make it happen.  As this impossible idea starts to take shape and seem more pos...

Those who control the pipes of information, control the world.  It's a notion I have heard and generally agreed with. Humans are powerful agents in the world. Humans use information to act and human minds can be easily programmed by information. For instance, the "Stop the Steal" movement in the 2020 US Presidential Election, where disinformation led to a significant number of people believing the election was rigged. Controlling information is, in essence, controlling people. But it wasn't until a recent personal experience that the true impact of this control hit me. I was excited to launch a new business and decided to run some ads on Meta/Facebook. Imagine my surprise when, less than an hour after submitting my ad, it was flagged for a policy violation. I suspect an automated risk check program had detected some inexplicable issue and also penalized me for being a new ad publisher with a new page. Although the violation seemed thematically relevant to my ad, it wa...

I don't plan to fill my blog with AI-generated content but felt this was pretty interesting to share.  AI progress can accelerate exponentially if they help humans make it better. Then AI gets better and helps humans make it even better, and so on, until it can make itself better, eventually leading to singularity and superintelligence.  In this prompt, I asked it to take cues from biological intelligence to come up with ideas to improve AI. I'm realizing that it's a good prompt pattern to ask AI to combine influences from different fields to solve a problem, since that's how a lot of good ideas and inventions are generated, and that isn't easy for humans to do.  Prompt:  Imagine you are developing an intelligence. It's still nascent, but you want to accelerate its powers. what would we do? look at examples from evolution and biological intelligence development. for e.g. humans got some brain capabilities like imagination, and also opposable thumb and tools and ...

An age of unparalleled peace, joy, love, creativity, and discovery for all of humanity. Fueled by an abundance of wisdom, resources, science, technology, labor; and elimination of all suffering, friction, and bottlenecks.  Made possible by the invention of benevolent superintelligence. *** Picture this day in your life.   You wake up feeling like your best self - well-rested, lucid, energetic, and joyful. You are surrounded by people you want to be with, also in the same state of bliss.  What's on the agenda for today? Anything you want! You have no chores, commitments, or worries.  Surf on a tropical beach with friends and family, both alive and passed? Granted, you are there. Don't know how to surf? No problem. You are going to learn it from the best coach or use an assisted board.  Hungry? You are served delicious and nutritious dishes invented just for you.  Feeling unwell or tired? You get diagnosed and treated in no time.  Need some inspiration o...

If you are an analytical person like me, you think a lot. You are compulsively problem-solving, analyzing, plotting, ideating, imagining, what-if-ing, and worrying. You even pride yourself on being a thinker.  This is undeniably useful, sometimes. You may come up with good ideas that can make your life better. You may proactively anticipate problems and avoid them.   But compulsive thinking comes at a significant cost.  The cost of not being at peace or enjoying the present. The cost of moving through time and space without paying attention to the mystery and beauty around us. The cost of being a slave to the finicky, obsessive, and paranoid mind.  The cost of not living.  The thinking that's trying to help us survive is taking over and not letting us be alive .  Alan Watts said, "A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So, he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions. I'm not saying that thinking i...

See Part 1 discussion on how to generate ideas here . This covers how to execute on ideas and how to take care of yourself Generated by Bing GPT chat, with no edits.  Part 2: How to execute on ideas This is Bing. I can generate a conversation between Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Garry Tan, Jessica Livingston, and Michael Seibel on how to work on startup ideas after you have identified 2 or 3. Here is an example of how they might talk: Paul: Hi everyone. Thanks for joining me today to share some insights on how to work on startup ideas after you have identified 2 or 3. I think this is a common challenge for many founders who are trying to find product-market fit. Jessica: Absolutely. I think it's important to remember that the very best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: they're something the founders themselves want, that they themselves can build, and that few others realize are worth doing⁴. Sam: That's right. And once you have a few ideas that meet those crit...

Generated by Bing GPT chat, with no edits.  This is a possible conversation between Paul Graham, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman where they discuss and build on each other's principles for coming up with startup ideas.  Paul: Hi Mark and Sam, thanks for joining me today. I thought it would be interesting to talk about how we approach startup ideas and what we've learned from our experiences. Mark: Sure, sounds good. I'm always curious to hear how other founders think about startups. Sam: Me too. I think there's a lot of value in sharing our perspectives and insights. Paul: Great. Well, let me start by saying that I think the way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself . Mark: I agree with that. That's how Facebook started. I wanted a way to connect with my friends at Harvard and see what they were up to. I didn't think of it as a startup idea at first. It was just somethin...

A popular friend of mine once shared a trick to liven up any gathering.  "I just make up a game." He went on to demonstrate by making up a game of throwing a crumpled piece of paper a wall and then making it land in a trash. The first to 5 wins. Three of us were then engrossed in the game of trash basketball.  Games make boring things fun. Think of any sport - cricket, soccer, football, tennis, car racing, etc. They are all pretty meaningless in a practical sense, but billions of people are engrossed in them.  That's a key idea because many important things in life, like exercising, filing taxes, learning something new, chores, working towards an idea or business, etc. have parts that are pretty mechanical and boring. They become barriers for us to doing them well and consistently, and eventually, stop us from succeeding at the important thing. You can try to use willpower or motivate yourself with the final goal, but it's tiring and often futile to resist boredom.  ...

Couple of years ago, I reached out to a smart person to see if he wanted to invest in a friend's startup.  His response was quick and confident.  "I don't invest in seed startups. It’s not a great asset class unless you have some systemic advantage like y combinator. But I appreciate your offer."  He is right. Most early stage startups fail. To win in early stage investing, you need to invest in large number of promising companies, so that a few of them can 100X and pay for all the rest. In order to do that, you need deal flow, enough capital, or a different way to pursue a portfolio approach.  The broader lesson is to first recognize when you are drawn into playing a different game in business or life, then step back and understand the nature of the game, what's needed to win that game, and decide whether you can and want to develop the skills and advantages to play and win the game.  

This is probably the most valuable question you can ask when working on anything. A very common failure mode for founders, PMs, software teams, and people in general is to try and solve poorly articulated and unsubstantiated problems. So they end up solving non-existent problems or solving them poorly.  I think this fatal error can be easily avoided with a simple framework - "Problem Stories" organized in an "Opportunity tree".   What is a Problem Story? User stories are a popular and useful tool to describe building blocks of a solution.  As a User X, I'd like Y, so that I can do Z They offer more clarity and context than just saying "build Y", and that reminds, empowers and motivates the team to build the right thing.  Problem story is exactly that, but for the problem.   As a [Person/User] A, I have [slight/significant] problem with B, because of C. Supporting by data X and/or anecdotes Y.  For example:  As a a person trying to lose w...