Aswath Krishnan

In a West Wing episode, President Bartlett returns from a trip to India with chess sets. He challenges Toby and Sam to games, while simultaneously dealing with China's aggression in Taiwan. When Sam tries to guess the right solution, Bartlett responds "Look at the whole board". Chess is a good example to understand what it means to be strategic in business, politics or any other aspect of life.  To be a chess player, you need to first understand the rules, and the advantages and disadvantages of pieces and positions. This comes through learning, practice and reflection.  To be a good chess player, you have to look at the whole board. You have to think about and use all the pieces and positions at your disposal, not just some of them.  You have to think of multiple moves ahead to try and create advantages and ultimately, a win. You have to predict the opponent's responses, keeping in mind past behaviors, strengths and weaknesses.  Things change - there are surprises ...

I received a powerful advice yesterday that's likely going to change how I communicate. I was putting together a product roadmap deck for an exec review meeting. The deck was organized by initiatives and features, with slides that had text descriptions and mocks. It was pretty dry and soulless. My manager suggested framing it as a customer journey and making it more concrete.  My UX partner and I took the advice and changed the deck to frame it as a story of a user. We gave the user a name, a photo, and shared imagery and details about the user's life and goals. We added a realistic journey of the user's day-to-day and weaved in natural interactions with the product and new features. We included how the user would come across a feature, how they'd react and how they'd feel. In between the story lines, we added discussion sections to dive into the functionality and business details of the product features.  The deck turned out remarkably better - it was much more eng...

We tend to overestimate the short-term, and underestimate the longer-term and power of compounding.  One advice that has served me well when making decisions - whether on choosing my next job, making a hire, investing in a stock or idea, or pursuing an interest - is to focus more on the trajectory, rather than where the options are right now. An article that I read recently advices to pick " springboard careers " - the ones that take you to the next job or life that you want. Chamath Paliapitiya advices to evaluate stocks by as a multiple of their expected revenue in 3 years.  Investing 101: Whether it’s been my job, my life or my investing, I’ve learned that ”longterm-ism” is an important key to success. I’ve gotten the most back when I invested my time, vulnerability and money with very few short term expectations but many long term ones. — Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath) September 17, 2020 Consider 2 companies - Company A is valued at $300M and Company B is valued at $1B....

Some of my friends tell me they want to start a blog. Most never do; some stop after just one or two posts. I have had similar starts and stops too. This isn't unlike what happens with other hobbies too. One common reason why people stop is because they write or do the hobby for others. They write to self-promote. They write as they expect others to read, share, comment, or give them a shout out. They write to get viral or famous. When those things don't happen and they likely don't for a long time, they stop.   I think the best way to keep yourself motivated to keep writing (or any other hobby) is to do it for the joy of doing, rather than for any outside recognition or outcome. I write to get clarity. I write to systematically explore a topic and understand my thoughts and conclusions on it. I write to remember and consolidate things I learn or insights I think of, so that I can look back on them 10 or 30 years from now. I write to be creative and play with words. I write...

All of us, however rich, old, smart we are, start with 24 hours every day. How we fill these 24 boxes is how we live our lives.  Most of us need 8 hours of sleep on average. 😴 What is life without even an hour of relaxation?. Maybe read a book, hang out with friends or watch a TV show. 😊  We need an hour to eat our 2-3 meals, shower, poop etc. 🍴 Most of us have chores (or people) to take care of - cooking, dishes, washing clothes, tidying up. Let's set aside an hour for that. 🧹  We need to take care of our body. Let's take 30-60 mins of exercise. 💪  🏁 We are halfway through the day! 🏁 Note that all these activities are kind of essential to survive, not just now but for the rest of our lives. If you have an existential crisis, you should have just half an existential crisis with this realization :). 

  Each of us are a part of many systems. We are born into some systems, like family or government, and we opt into others like jobs, partnerships, friends or neighborhoods.  Systems generally give us something (increase survival, convenience, or joy) and place obligations (like taxes or rules) on us in return. Systems can have significant consequences on our lives. For example, taxes to governments are the largest spend for many of us and we give the government permission to imprison us and take away our freedom if we don't abide by its rules.  The fundamental requirement of healthy systems is that they should benefit all members in them - i.e. belonging to the system should be better than going solo.  Individuals forced to be in a system that doesn't improve their well being is oppression.  Living in healthy systems can be better than going solo for many reasons - many things are more efficient at scale, specialization+cooperation increases productivity, and gr...

Our generation - the first one to have started a career after the internet and social media boom - has been inundated with advice to "pick a career you are passionate about" or to do your "life's work". Every new age company, at least in Silicon Valley - from food delivery to marketing automation - now uses the passion playbook to pitch their employees or candidates on why their mission to deliver burritos is so world changing and the most important part of your life.  Not surprisingly, we have collectively developed a borderline obsession with our careers. We spend a lot of time working and thinking or talking about our work, we expect to love it, we are anxious about our path, we feel the pressure to grow quickly and update our Linkedin with fancy titles, and we try to derive our status and purpose from it. This is quite a change from our parents and grandparents who had fewer options, stayed at one or two jobs their entire lives, and hardly talked about their...

Most of us worry often and a lot. We worry about things that happened in the past. We worry about mistakes we made (or think we made). We worry about what others think of us. We worry about our future. We worry about our close ones or society at large. Worrying sucks. It takes us away from the present and makes us unhappy. It makes us overthink and assume the worst. Worrying itself doesn't solve problems. It can instigate actions or change future behaviors that can. So why not just focus on the action and behaviors, and skip the worrying? Catch yourself worrying and examine why. Write down your worries and follow ups to get them out of your mind. Only care about a few important things and be carefree about everything else. Remind yourself you can't change the past or anything that you don't have control over.  Tell yourself that you are human, you aren't perfect and you make mistakes. You can only learn, grow and do better next time. Be more thoughtful about the things ...

Many years ago, I was trying to pick between a couple of jobs. This was my first job change and I was very confused and anxious. So I asked a few friends for their advice.  Most friends jumped to tell me to pick Job A or B because they have heard such and such about Company A or something bad about Company B etc. They didn't even ask me about the roles or offer package.  One friend, on the other hand, just asked me questions - what's different between the roles, the companies, the pros/cons that I see, what I value in my career and in my next job etc. Whenever I didn't have a clear answer, he asked more questions to help me clarify or shared some opinions. He succinctly and clearly summarized and played back my answers. He later checked in with me as well to see how I was leaning and why. He refused to give me an answer on A vs B, even when I asked for it, because he felt that it was my decision to make and his opinion may not fit my situation or goals.  The first flavor ...

As consumers and business managers, we often confuse price, cost and value.  Price is what customers pay for a product or service.  Cost is what it costs to make or offer.  Value, the most abstract of the three, is what customers "get out of it".  Value is a harder concept because it is subjective for every customer depending on their life, needs, moods and perceptions. An avid art collector may significantly value owning an original Picasso, whereas for it may not mean anything for a regular person. Value also changes over time as the customer and environment changes.  As consumers, deciding if a product or service is worth $X is a hard question because we need to compare a tangible price to an abstract and unquantifiable "value". So we tend to make mistakes - like passing up on a good purchase because they seem cheap to make (food at a restaurant) or because the value is hard to quantify (hiring a career coach for $100/hour), or by purchasing cheap but wo...

Dos Equis beer's Most interesting man persona Let’s start off with a quick exercise: try answering the following questions. What should be the key features of a food ordering app? List the qualities of an excellent restaurant waiter. Unless you are a gifted product guru, you found it easier to answer the second question and that answer, also, is likely the better one. To build a great product, you first need a clear picture of what your product should be; what it should look and feel like, what is the user experience, what are the features and workflows. This isn’t an easy process, these aren’t easy questions. Intrinsically, products are alien to us; humans aren’t. We can’t spec out great products as easily or correctly as we can characterize ideal people. Possibly a result of spending countless more hours interacting with people and tying those experiences to underlying human characteristics.

I have been helping my dad with his new venture, Bridge with Kista , that aims to help Bridge players improve their game with deliberate practice - by playing tournaments and then hearing my dad's expert analysis and feedback of the boards they played. We have been able to get this going remarkably quickly - from idea to 150 weekly paying users in just 3 weeks.  The joy of working on any new venture is the energy, creativity and speed of execution. It is also a critical phase where your decisions and approach can make or break the product or your enthusiasm for the venture.  Here's my framework for developing and evolving early stage products.  4 phases of early stage products Product Evolution Customer base Evolution

Product Strategy is one of my favorite aspects of Product Management. As a Product lead at Lyft, Quizlet and Opower, I have started and led teams on several new product areas. When starting on a new product area, one of my main priorities is to "Map out the space" and figure out our path (The other priority is to bond with the team and understand team dynamics). I aim to share the strategy with my team and execs within 3 months of starting as it informs the roadmap, helps me ramp up and demonstrate product leadership.  Repeat practice and feedback have helped me become better and quicker at defining strategy. I have tried to distill my approach into these discrete steps.  What is strategy? Strategy is an optimal path to achieving a goal - which can be either solving a problem or realizing an opportunity. Good strategy is usually simple and clear, ambitious but achievable, long-term and durable, leverages core strengths and mitigates risks. Good strategy also explicitly identi...

We are a few months into this pandemic now. Remote work and Zoom social hangouts are the new normals and the word on the street is that they are here to stay. Video chats are functionally great - latency and quality are pretty good (well, except for the "hey, you are on mute" problem), there are good tools to collaborate well, work gets done, and most don't miss a long commute or dressing up. What I'm missing in remote work is human connection. I'm not surprised as most of us don't have any close friends who we have met only online.  Talking pictures on a screen don't evoke the same emotion and empathy as physical presence. Remote work interactions are structured and mostly transactional - through meetings with a set goal, agenda and attendees; you share your work, check in on status or ask for help. I miss the serendipitous and casual interactions. The water cooler or pantry chats, team lunches, corridor run ins and waves, casual desk drop by, walking 1:1...

I watched  Robert Reich's Inequality for All on Netflix. He talks about how capitalism has created extreme inequality in the US, even though other economic measures are improving. (One stat that stood out to me is that the richest 400 people have more wealth than the bottom half -150 million people!)  I tried to understand his explanation better with this simplistic example of an economy with 4 stick people - Mr. Blue, Mr. Yellow, Mr. Green and Mr. Red. They all produce the same product - the Back Box-- and earn something for what they produce. But Mr.Blue is more entrepreneurial (and luckier) than the rest.  See how that unfolds over 3 decades: 

I'm enjoying writing and reading on my new Apple Pencil + iPad. The beauty of the iPad is how much it feels like a book. The Pencil and finger on surface feel much more natural than 1-step-removed interfaces mouses or keyboards. The UI is clean and fake constructs like windows, tabs or tool bars are all muted.  It transforms into a blank slate where you can create or a paper that you read.  The creator and the content shine, everything else is invisible. The ultimate technology is invisible. They are tools that empower users but get out of the way.  In the words of Steve Jobs: “And it’s the same with Toy Story. The audience isn’t gonna care about the Pixar animation system, they’re not gonna care about the Pixar production system, they’re not gonna care about anything–except what they will be able to judge for themselves, and that’s the end result, which they can appreciate without having to understand what went into it, what went into creating it. And that, I love."

Over the last few years, I have embraced  Buddhism  and  Stoicism . Both philosophies preach acceptance of the present moment, non-judgement and love, and exercising control over your response to stimuli. They are excellent defensive philosophies and regular practice has brought me peace and equanimity.  Now I am realizing that these are philosophies are essential, but not sufficient. They don't give me a forward direction - an answer to "what should I do every day". Lacking a direction and simply going with the flow makes life dull and may lead to regrets. So I have been converging on this new directional philosophy to supplement these defensive philosophies. Life is an improv - every day and every moment, you are creating and acting new scenes in your life. You get to act solo, or with other people, with different sets, and many props. While there may be no grand meaning or purpose to this show, they mean everything to you as they make up everything that you...

We can't get good unless we get going -VisualizeValue I fell into a classic writer trap. I started off publishing blog posts very frequently - short ones, 2 or 3 times a week. But after a few months of doing that, I felt my regular posts lacked depth or novelty to attract an audience and that I should focus on more quality writing than quantity. Well, that's harder to do and as a result, I stopped publishing frequently.  The path to quality is often quantity. To become a better and quicker writer, you should aim to write frequently, rather than aiming to write a handful of high quality pieces. Regular reps improve your clarity, speed, and quality. I feel it and I know it. Aiming for just great essays can become the enemy of regular repetition and daily improvement.  I think this applies to skills and habits beyond writing too. Doing something regularly and thoughtfully is a better strategy to learning and improvement, than starting (and getting stuck) with long and hard p...

I was at a meeting yesterday where we were trying to make a difficult decision. We all had our points to say and passionately expressed them, but did little to acknowledge each others' points or to identify and bridge our differences. We ended up talking past each other . Such meetings aren't very productive, and most people don't feel good or united after them.   In retrospect, we could all have been better listeners and made others felt heard.   Being a good listener means :  You can clearly articulate the other person's point and rationale. Even if they are unclear about and even if you disagree with their point, you try to bring clarity to it.  You understand how they feel about the topic, discussion, people involved, and underlying beliefs.  You can gauge their level of understanding and gaps about other points discussed. When you set this standard of listening and understanding for yourself, you'll pay a lot more attention to what others say and ...

Today's Congressional hearing with CEOs of large tech companies made me think about question of why and how companies should be regulated.  Goal of an economic system Firstly, the economic and legal system of a society is merely a tool to serve the goals of the society. So in order to judge an economic system or to recommend an improvement, we'll have to start with an understanding or definition of the goals of the society.  The goal of a society, just like the goal of individual life, is philosophical, with no absolute right or wrong answers. There is typically a starting definition of a society's collective philosophy that the founders have agreed on, but over time and generations, the situations and philosophies tend to evolve and diverge. The philosophy I currently hold is that the goal of a society is to improve the long-term welfare and freedom of all its citizens and future generations . There are other equally valid (or invalid) philosophies.  In capitalism, ...

Leading people can be joyful and fulfilling as it enables you to broaden and achieve your purpose, and because you can enable your team to experience that same joy too.  It's a magical feeling when a team works well together and makes great things happen.  It is not an easy to be an effective leader and I'm keeping an ongoing list of what it takes here: 1) Bring clarity around what the organization does and why (mission) .  You don't have to come up with these answers by yourself, but it is your responsibility to consolidate, edit, and develop a deep shared understanding.  If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. 2) Establish and embody how to work together, treat customers/partners, make decisions (values and culture).  Establish and embody a culture where everyone can do their best work towards the mission - a culture of high integrity, c...

My top highlight from Satya Nadella's book, Hit Refresh, is this advice to Microsoft's employees: "Instead of thinking of you working for Microsoft, think of how Microsoft can work for you." If you want your work and career to be meaningful long-term and if you want to be exceptionally good at it, you should start by defining what is meaningful to you  and then finding (or creating) a career or company that serves that purpose . We spend such an immense portion of our waking lives doing our jobs that it doesn't make sense any other way.  Such clarity and pursuit of purpose don't happen by default and are rare. In today's world with infinite options, it is hard to know, with confidence, what we truly want to do without broad exploration, experience, self awareness and maturity.

Some purchases happen once in a consumer's lifetime or a decade - booking a wedding venue, purchasing a house, buying an engagement ring, buying a mattress, hiring a lawyer for a law suit, finding a job, making funeral arrangements etc.  These episodic transactions are challenging for consumers because they don't have enough knowledge of the market to select the right vendor, pick the right product or service, negotiate reasonable prices, assess quality of the services, or pursue remedies if things don't right. When I was looking for decorators and catering for my wedding, I was pretty lost - is $5000 a reasonable price for flower decorations? Should I order 2 trays or 4 trays of dessert? Would it make my experience better with a wedding coordinator?

Marketplaces - like Uber, Amazon, Youtube, Thumbtack - connect demand and supply. They are brokers that make deals happen. Once established and scaled with positive unit economics, marketplaces can be lucrative and high-margin businesses. Here are some key steps for starting and scaling marketplaces:  1. Curate the parties  Define the purpose of the marketplace. Attract the parties that constitute supply and demand. For e.g., Airbnb needs to recruit and retain home renters and travelers. One main challenge is to get past the cold-start, chicken-and-egg problem. Even after you solve the that initially, you have to constantly maintain the balance between demand and supply. Users don't stick to marketplaces that only work some of the time.  2. Connect the parties

Six months into my job at Lyft, I was given the opportunity to take over another large product area. There were several projects in flight and I had partial or no context on most of them. During my first week on the team, I was invited to many large meetings and discussions. One of my reflections was that I may have been too opinionated and have spoken too much in those meetings, before fully understanding the new domain, projects, and status.  Without understanding, opinions aren't very helpful and possibly annoying. More opining, less listening and less asking slows down the pace of learning and understanding. It may also leave a bad first impression with your teammates, break trust, and hurt future collaboration.  The strength of our opinions on a topic should correspond to our depth of understanding of a topic . When you are new, consciously listen, do your homework, ask and be curious. If you have ideas or opinions, offer them softly ("would it make sense to ..." etc...

Most Likely Things go back to normal in six to twelve months if the stay-home orders only last for a couple of months. This situation is similar to a computer being shut down and turned on again - most programs will reopen and function as-is (unlike in 2009 where there was a software error and we had to delete and rewrite programs). Likely Acceleration in the "physical to digital" conversion that was already happening. Movie theaters to streaming, restaurants to food deliveries and cloud kitchens, shops to online grocery and regular shopping. Companies that enable this switch or can adapt quickly will benefit. Less discretionary spending, travel, home/vehicle purchases, and more savings due to unemployment,  recession, and fear of travel and going outside. More remote work as companies encourage work from home whenever employees are sick and during the regular flu season.  New wave of young entrepreneurs and digitization of small business that will replace ...

I find that having different perspectives of looking at the world and life helps. One interesting one is to imagine the world as a movie that's continually being shot: The movie opens with an explosion and a hot gaseous rock. Several chemicals and heat somehow lead to the first living cell. Chemicals, minerals, cells, astroids, an endless array of species shape the world over millions of years. Then, humans come into existence, live along with countless other species, and do a lot of strange and interesting things. How would this perspective guide your life? Enjoy and appreciate the diversity of scenes and actors. No scene is objectively better than the other.  Create a scene that you want to. If you have an idea for a scene, make it happen. If you like someone else's scene idea, join them.  Don't worry about how your scene will be received or how many see it. Enjoy your act. There are no awards for this movie. Don't hoard the stage. Know that you are a ...

The COVID-19 spread and shut down has simplified life. Everything now falls into two buckets:   1. The "essentials" or what keeps us alive like food and healthcare, and 2. The "non-essentials" or what makes it worth living like social gatherings, restaurants and theaters. The effect of the shut down of "non-essentials" on our moods and sanity makes it clear that while the former is more urgent and necessary, both are essential to living a good life. There's a joke that goes - "Not drinking and not smoking don't make you live longer, it just seems longer." I think there's a significant imbalance in our investment between these buckets even during non-COVID times. We put in a disproportional amount of effort into staying alive, by investing in our education, jobs, finances etc, and this often comes at the cost of our happiness. While this seems silly now as it's apparent that we are a point where staying alive is fairly easy...

COVID-19 spread is a once in a lifetime situation and there are many reasons to be worried about health, family, and finances. One thing that seems certain is that things will be back to normal in a year or two for most of us. There is a silver lining to most of the recent disruptions and changes: Office closed and WFH: bonus commute time and energy to exercise, read, pursue a hobby. Slow down at work or business: great, more time to flesh out that strategy, idea, side project, or to sharpen the tools that we never seem to have the time to do usually. Financial concerns: audit and clean up unnecessary spending and organize accounts. Social distancing: spend time alone, reflect, think of what you want to do and make some plans. Schools closed: enjoy the family time, figure out creative and fun ways to engage with kids. Panic and worry around you: practice empathy, kindness, service. There are ways to emerge stronger than the alternative of spending all our time reading the same...

The last few weeks have been quite eventful. My brother and sis-in-law were visiting us, then we were at my brother-in-law's multi-day wedding celebration, and then, we have been working from home because of the virus. I realized last week that I was feeling a bit meh, tired, and foggy brained. It didn't take much reflection to realize why - my routine had been disrupted. I hadn't been doing the many simple things that brought balance to my day, and helped maintain my mental and physical health. Since I had been working from home, I wasn't doing many things that were a part of "getting ready and getting to work" like waking up early, taking my vitamins, walking to the train station, and reading or meditating on the train. Working from home itself shifted my day's patterns - I wasn't taking breaks during the day by walking around or chatting with people, but by checking twitter, youtube, or the news, which doesn't really help me relax. And beca...

What you measure is what you get. So it's important that we pick the right metrics, especially for something as important as measuring welfare of a country. The most commonly used measurement of welfare and progress is GDP - the sum total of goods and services produced in your country. But it is flawed on several counts - not all goods produced and sold are good for people, the benefits of the production aren't evenly distributed, someone can be unhappy but still be productive, it doesn't take negative externalities and non-monetary activities into account etc. This is a hard problem and I definitely don't have an answer :).  But here's an idea. Welfare is subjective i.e. someone is doing well if they think they are. So maybe we should just ask people. I wonder if a simple survey with questions like these can give us a measure of welfare and progress. How do you feel about the quality of your life? 1-10 How is the quality of your life compared to last year?...

An approach that's helping me deal with problems positively is to consider them as a challenge and as a puzzle that needs to be solved, rather than as an annoyance. Colleague or partner not working well with you? Figure out how you can form a better relationship, why they are acting the way they are, or get help to fix the situation. Stuck on a project or career that's going nowhere? Write a retrospective on why, get thoughts from friends/mentors, figure out an actionable plan and change course. Feeling lack of motivation or energy? Reflect on why your brain and body are responding the way they are, and how you can take small steps get out of the rut. Getting frustrated and then complaining or wallowing in self-pity doesn't solve a problem. It makes you feel out of control and stops you from learning and growing. The expectation that life will always be smooth and without problems is absolutely unreasonable. So expect that that things won't go your way and be ...

I just watched "Formula 1: Drive to survive" on Netflix. I was awed at how contesters push the limits on car technology, driving, repairs, and monitoring. Watching it also made me more interested in cars Racing provides a playground for car companies to really innovate by offering a different set of requirements and constraints than their regular business. The excitement of it all has attracted a massive, engaged audience, which has helped fund the activity. It is a brilliant setup. In any field, competitive events push the limits, exhibit and celebrate top performers, inspire others, and generate excitement. Olympics and marathons push limits of fitness, training, and sports wear technology. Toastmasters competitions push on public speaking abilities. It makes me wonder if we should be extending this model and creating competitions for other professional areas to spur innovation and excitement. Say, a competition for plumbers to see who fixes a leak the quickest, a co...

This weekend I attended a Buddhism class where we discussed a couple of questions  - what would you do if you feel safer and how can you make others feel safer. The discussion revealed that nearly all of us felt unsafe and we'd live our lives more happily, generously, and ambitiously if we felt safer. Life is inherently unsafe and conditional. If you don't eat, you die. If you don't stay healthy, you die. If you don't do your job well, you'll be fired. If you aren't useful, others may not help you. If you don't have caretakers as you grow old and dependent, life is going to be tough. So, how do you create more safety for yourself and others in this world? The ultimate trick is to always accept life and the present moment as it happens, with no judgement. Every feeling of worry is because of an internal desire or expectation, and if you end that desire, you end the feeling. This requires a lot of practice - of awareness and renunciation. Find and imm...

Based on my own behaviors over the years and observing colleagues, I have noticed different levels of communication in meetings and other situations.   Level 1 -  Disruptor -  High expression, High noise Expresses many opinions with high conviction and confidence. Many opinions are wrong, impractical, or irrelevant. Derails discussions. Level 2 -  Participant -  Low expression, Low noise  Starts to understand gaps in personal knowledge and complexity of problems, so offers fewer opinions and asks more questions. Level 3 -  Driver -  High expression, High signal More competent in role and organization. Expresses many thoughtful and correct opinions, but not all are important or relevant. Drives discussions. Level 4 -  Leader -  Low expression, High signal Expresses few important opinions, but highly insightful, memorable, and inspiring. Opinions get repeated around the organization and impact decisions. Empowers and coac...

I spent the last 3 days in Vegas and played a couple of hours of poker every day. Playing poker is quite fun - it combines uncertainty, probability, psychology, reflection, and the thrill of winning (or losing) money. You get to make many decisions with incomplete information, in a compressed timeframe, and get feedback on it. On one of the days, my wife asked me what my winning goal was for the day, and I stoically responded that my goal for the day is to learn more. In situations where the outcomes are highly variable, you can only focus on your effort. I don't wish to be a professional player as I think there other things to do in the world that aren't zero-sum games and don't have the arbitrary constraints on performance or high dependency on luck. But I'll continue playing occasional games for the thrill and learning. At the end of the 3 days, I came out losing $300 but I still claim I learned a bit :). Here are some things I learned and how it can apply in re...

These two quotes, from Jeff Bezos on business risks and Sam Altman on personal career risks, convey the crux of this post. "If the size of your failures isn't growing, you're not going to be inventing at a size that can actually move the needle. Amazon will be experimenting at the right scale for a company of our size if we occasionally have multibillion-dollar failures." - Jeff Bezos in the 2019 Amazon shareholder letter "It’s useful to focus on adding another zero to whatever you define as your success metric—money, status, impact on the world, or whatever. I am willing to take as much time as needed between projects to find my next thing. But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote." - Sam Altman For something to make a difference to us, its significance should be proportional to our current situation. When we are kids, earning $10 can be a big deal, as it opened up options that...

It's nearly the end of the year. This is when we celebrate, reflect, and set resolutions for the next year. To set resolutions, we have to figure out what we want to do. The best lever we have for a good life is taking care of our health. If we can stay healthy - physically, mentally, and emotionally - until, say 80 instead of 60, we have increased your healthy adult life span by 50%! That's 50% more life time to enjoy, learn, continue our careers, make mistakes, try new things. Taking care of our health is largely in our control and a very worthwhile thing to prioritize. There's a lot of good advice on how to be healthy. Good diet and consistent exercise significantly bolsters physical health. We can develop your mental health with challenging and creative mental activities, managing stress, and by taking time to relax. Buddhist principles and loving family/friends help with emotional health. Then the question is how do we want to spend our time. How we spend our tim...

We were at a couple of cafes and restaurants in Seattle this weekend, and remarked how hip they are, and how hip the people are. We concluded the hipness of these cafes had to mainly do with the decor - usually a combination of exposed brick wall, indoor plants, wood, and bold colored walls and furniture. The fashionable baristas and the single source, $8 drip coffee selection contributed as well. Something is hip when it is unique, interesting, and potentially worth emulating. It is the cutting edge of fashion, decor, or culture. Hip-ness is an idea generation and selection mechanism for a society. Hipsters explore and extend the edges of these fields - by being opinionated, bold,  and willing creators and perpetrators of new ideas. There is a constant cycle of what's hip. As a hip thing becomes popular, then the industrial efficiencies kick in. The big brands step in, the products get manufactured and sold at scale. Then the hip thing becomes mainstream, and something ...

Seeing a flower Makes me wonder Why such beauty Has to naturally end From bud to bloom To an inevitable gloom Perhaps it is To make us Appreciate it more Perhaps it is To give life To some things new Perhaps the end Is just an illusion There never is one As our lives just continue as many different ones -Aswath

We often get frustrated when "something doesn't make sense" - when your wife is annoyed for a seemingly frivolous reason, when an unqualified president is elected, when your boss decided to pass you up for promotion, when a business makes their customers' life hard etc. In reality, "when something doesn't make sense", it simply means that we don't understand why it happened and how you could have influenced different outcomes.  We'll be better equipped in the future and happier if we approach these situations with curiosity and figure out why, rather than get frustrated. The expectation of "something to make sense" itself assumes you know everything, and that things are always predictable and rational - both of which are mostly false. The world is complex. Don't pick a fight with reality. When something doesn't agree with your expectations, be curious, deeply understand why, and update your mental models. 

A colleague told me an interesting story about Progressive insurance. Progressive started out by offering insurance to riskier drivers, who were turned down by other carriers. To do that and survive as a business, they had to get way better at underwriting - predicting risk and pricing these policies - than other insurance carriers. Fast forward many years, Progressive is now one of the largest insurers in the US and has expanded beyond this market to serve all drivers. Progressive's early (and necessary) investment in best-in-class underwriting gives it a definite competitive edge against other carriers. In my previous company, we signed on our first Japanese client, after nearly 100+ US client. The Japanese customer had a significantly higher bar on product quality and data security requirements. It was hard to keep them happy - we had to redo our technical architecture, add more compliance procedures, improve our product reliability, and QA processes. Our CEO had to fly over ...

Let me be blunt, There is none Trust no one who Says they know one No one knows  Why we are  Or where  We go next But since we are  And since we feel I say it’s better  To feel peace, joy  and love  Than sorrow  Or hate  How you do that Is up to you Here’s a clue -  It’s all in you. Spread it around With the golden rule Aswath

I wrote this a week before starting a new job as a Product Manager at Lyft. Every new job is an opportunity to do things better. This is a reminder to myself on what it means to be a good product manager. It boils down to three main things: 1. Product Strategy: Bring clarity to what your team is working towards, how and why As a PM, your key responsibility is to layout and communicate the game your team is playing, how we should keep score, and the strategy and path to winning. What success looks like : All members of your team and the exec team can articulate, defend and feel confident and excited about what your team is doing and why. Key deliverables : Team mission and vision, key metrics, goals and OKRs over different timeframes, roadmap over different timeframes, current metric values and dashboards, user feedback/insights/journey, project or feature specs.

In 2018, I started and led the growth function at Quizlet, the most popular study app in the US. We managed to hit a new milestone of 50M monthly users (up 66% from 30M in 2017)! This was my first experience in growth (I have been a product and a platform PM in the past) and I’m very glad I did it as it helped me understand a key aspect of scaling a business. This post is a summary of what I have learned. What is growth? Imagine you have a shop selling products. The product teams help improve the products or create new products. The growth team has a different role. They get more potential customers into the store, match them with the right products and help them understand the benefits, get more visitors to purchase the products and come back for more. Growth is a scaling function — you should invest in growth only after you have evidence of a product-market fit i.e. your product solves a need for a target user base. The tactics that you use for getting to product-market fit or t...

I was recently advising a couple of friends who were considering leaving larger companies to join startups. Sharing the main points of our discussion here.  Before diving in, I'll lay out some definitions. Pre-Series A startups are typically those that are still figuring out product-market fit. A Series A startup is one that has found product-market fit and is starting to scale growth and develop a business model. A Series B startup has a working business model and is starting to scale revenue. A Series C startup starts to resemble a regular, mid-size company - it's scaling growth, revenue, and maybe investing in some new product lines. When I say startups in this post, I refer to Series A or B startups. 4 questions to consider before joining a Series A or B startup.   1. Are you interested in the startup's space and mission (not just your functional role)?  You can succeed in larger companies by focusing just on your function. In startups, you succeed by mak...

1. Invest in developing a strong foundation -  long-term vision, frameworks, principles, etc. Often times, a strong foundation can make decisions easier. 2. Learn to discern which decisions are consequential (range of possible outcome) and irreversible, and which aren't. Be more deliberate making the former and quick to make the latter. Use a maximizer approach for the former and a satisficer approach for the latter.  3. Bring clarity to decision making by identifying key decision factors , laying out distinct options and how they perform against those factors. Learn to create new options that make things better. 4. Understand the first, second, third-order consequences ; and how this will play out in different time horizons - short, medium and long term.

A friend and I were sharing experiences on how we both had trouble sustaining new habits. I recounted how long breaks punctuated my "daily" exercise and meditation practice and she shared how she has to repeat courses to get back to good time management practices. Unless you are superhuman, change is hard. Developing new skills and habits is hard. Consistent focus and practice are hard. These are hard because you are trying to change your default nature and programming. So assume you are not superhuman. Assume you won't have focus and energy to do all you want, you will not follow through on some days, you will make mistakes, sometimes you will give up for months or altogether. This will help you avoid feeling guilty or bad when the inevitable happens, and instead adopt strategies that can work for our non-superhuman selves - like focusing on fewer things at a time, planning for how you will restart when you give up, for how you correct and grow when you make mistake...

Peace or equanimity is the acceptance of your current reality. Joy is the appreciation and celebration of your current reality.  By these definitions, peace and joy are entirely in your mind's control. Peace and joy are better to experience and share than disturbance or sorrow. But we often let outside factors determine our peace and joy, and make it conditional. "I'll be happy if I get that promotion", "if people are nice to me", "if I have enough money", "if my health is good" etc. Why hold our own peace and joy hostage? We think outside factors - people, environment, or events - disturb our peace or joy. When someone yells at us or cheats us, when there's an accident, when something doesn't go as planned, when losing something you like etc. In reality, our emotional response to these factors - anger, frustration, sadness, jealousy, fear - disturbs our peace and joy. Our emotional responses originate from our expectations...

This post describes a system that I'm using to plan and use my time effectively to execute towards my goals. This is part of a series of posts that I'm writing on systems that can help us live intentionally and effectively. Philosophy 1) How you spend your days is how you spend your life . If you want to spend your days effectively, you need to plan. Planning requires time and effort. Block off time to plan, reflect and process.  2) Have an intentional list of priorities and tasks; otherwise, your time is going to be spent on whatever comes your way.  Have a source of truth for all things to be done (to-do list) and events (calendar) Break up projects and larger, ambiguous tasks into specific and actionable tasks 3) Focus on only a few priorities every week and every year.  Protect your time and calendar. Say no to tasks and events that aren't important to you.  Allocate time and energy proportional to opportunity.   4) Your plans should include ...