Start-up lessons, the importance of self-honesty, raw journals, pitching products. — Dear Readers, I hope your entry into the new year was just what you intended — whether reflective, relaxed, jubilant, or simply relieved. My 2022 was full of growth. What does that mean? A few visits to the Pit. A few summits to the peak. A whole lot of learning. …

How we err, and how we must learn. — Dear readers, It is truly impressive how quickly the worlds’ sands shift nowadays. I mean, November must be a record in tech drama! Since the last letter, we saw FTX crash and burn, leaving a trail of carnage in its wake, more mass layoffs, and Elon rocking the boat hard…

A few weeks ago in our Manifesto for the Data Informed, one of the five beliefs presented was Company-wide familiarity with metrics rather than outsourcing to ‘data people.’ Immediately, we were pummeled with questions: Does this really matter? Is this a realistic expectation? How can an organization achieve this? So…

A famous Indian parable describes five blind men encountering an elephant for the first time. They each decide to touch the elephant to understand what the animal is like. “An elephant is smooth and hard, like bone,” says the man who grasped its tusk “Nonsense, an elephant is soft like…

How to think of our careers during layoffs + why the promise of data is better than its reality. — Dear readers, has it been a year, a WHOLE YEAR, since my last post?! I’m rusty. I’m a stranger returning to a changed hometown, the tap-tapping of the keyboard like music from a new era, the sentences awkward on the bright blank screen. Substack itself has new storefronts now; its…

Why is the promise of big data so much better than the reality? Data has been extolled as the vanquisher of uncertainty, the harbinger of a robotic future, a necessity in every role from product management to engineering, sales to design. Yet many of us who have tried to use…

Humbling stories, market dynamics, right playbooks at the wrong times, and other threads. — Dear friends, The month slipped away from me like red leaves from trees. It’s been an eventful one! I have stared into the dark recesses of a Twitter mob and lived to tell the tale. I have celebrated 2000+ Amazon reviews on my book. I have participated in an Angry…

What I wish the little voice in my head would say, and other threads — Hello readers, It’s decorative gourd season, mf-ers! Also the start of Q4 which for many teams means the start of holiday seasonality or planning for next year. I hope you find plenty of optimism among the chaos! When I look back at my posts the last month, a similar theme…

August’s weekly threads, in one tiny e-mail — Hello dear readers, It’s the end of a weird summer; yet, life marches on. I have a first grader now, and sent her off on her first day of school wearing a uniform and a smile underneath a mask. On the work front, our team has been diving into the…