I have often found myself saying, “Being a product leader is hard, building a startup is harder; but consulting product leaders on how to build and grow their startup is still the hardest”. Failory reports that 90% of the startups end up failing with 70% doing so in the first two to five years. Even […]
Yearly Archives: 2023
Navigating the shift from PM to leader
“What got you here, won’t get you there” I was fortunate enough to experience this in a good way, twice First when I went from engineer to engineering manager Second when I went from #productmanager to PM leader If the first one was hard, second one was one of the toughest Off course, getting promoted […]
New PMs, welcome to the real world! Throw away those 30-60-90 day plans…
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist – Picasso Riding the PM wave For product managers, especially those who’ve recently joined, the role can be super exciting. But we all know that building products is no easy feat and it’s natural to get carried away or get overwhelmed. […]
Your product needs focus
Well, even if you are not like Bruce Lee, Your #startup should be That is the only way to escape early stage “death valley” And more importantly get past that into early stage growth and beyond. If you lookup “startup” failure on the web or even on LLMs, You will find the usual surveys on […]
Beware of AI!
Forget GIGO Now you have model hallucination, blackbox model and emergent behaviour. Yes, I am talking about #ai and specifically the current set of #llm s that seem to be taking the tech world by storm. When I learnt about computers in school, it was the 80s. Back then computer lab was the only place […]
PMs need to constantly innovate
The most frequent thing you do as a #productmanager, Might not be helping your product succeed… And here I am referring to managing the product backlog, And defining the requirements or scenarios and stories, You may have some “experts” say things like: “Feature wars are over” or “Features don’t matter”. While that statement is to […]
How to validate a product idea
“Ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is everything.” If you interact with VCs or people who have built product businesses, They will confirm this. Of course, like everything that is catchy, this is only partially true. Biggest problem lies in how people vet and validate their idea. Coming up with ideas could be easy […]
The challenges of consulting product founders
Becoming a #productmanager is hard Building a #startup is harder Being a #consultant helping #founders and #productleaders is one of the hardest things I have had to learn. (And yes, it’s harder than cracking JEE and studying rocket science)! And it’s far from done, still learning every day. For a founder or a PM to […]
Product management training needs a dose of the real world
Your #productmanagement certification could be worthless. Let me correct that a bit – it has some value, If you are getting your first job in product, If you don’t have real world exposure to building products, If you have never really learnt the theory, Does that mean all training for #productmanager is a waste of […]
Say no to free POCs
“We love your product, but it’s new and we would like to do a POC.” If you are a #founder of a startup or #productmanager of a new product, then surely you would have heard this. But the one word that often accompanies this statement should make you run…. And that word is “Free” There […]