CDOQ

At the last Figma conference , two Google employees presented their updated design principles.  One of classic design principles that most designers follow, including those at Google, is "form follows function." Google has now updated this to "form follows feelings." The change can be observed in the latest Google product releases. The relevant employees feel good about releasing the products that do not function well. 😀 

People don’t buy inferior products just because they are good for the environment.

With a career spanning T-Mobile, National Semiconductor, Facebook, and multiple hi-tech startups, I have firsthand experience in taking innovative ideas from conception to market success, generating billions of dollars and reaching hundreds of millions of users. Aditionally, I have advised hundreds of startups, gaining valuable insights into common pitfalls and effective strategies. Whether building AI-driven enterprise solutions, climate-tech B2B products, or consumer e-commerce mobile apps, the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) approach and the post-MVP journey have been instrumental in reducing risk and accelerating development. Let's explore how you can leverage the MVP framework to not only speed up your development process but also create products that resonate deeply with your users at scale. Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a methodology to reduce risk and increase speed in development. The concept has been around for over 20 years. MVP is a milestone in the new product developm

Immature leaders tend to solve hypothetical problems at the expense of real problems. 

The excitement around Artificial Intelligence (AI) is contagious. Ever Curious Corporation, a startup I co-founded in 2015, was based on AI. A lot has changed since then. One of the most significant technical achievements has been the development of Transformer technology , which enabled the creation of Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer). I’d like to take a moment to offer a cursory explanation of how LLMs work.  In simple terms, when you ask an LLM a question, it understands the question using the Transformer model, deep neural networks , and other methods for context, syntax, and semantics. It then responds based on this understanding. Before LLMs can be useful to humans, they have to be trained. There are three main techniques for training and enhancing the performance of an LLM: Fine-tuning: This process involves further training a pre-trained LLM on a specific dataset to improve its performance in particular tasks or domains. Humans often r

Practical self-interest often prevails over abstract notions of identity.

Eventually, substance outshines the sparkle. 

There are thousands of technology companies working on building products, but only a few create products that delight their users. Generally, startup founders or product leaders start with a beautiful product vision, but what eventually gets released is not as pretty or delightful (see Figure 1). The main reason is that building products requires many people who think differently to work together, resulting in a compromise.  Figure 1 - Vision vs. Reality (image courtesy of Christine Wang) How do you build the culture and process that delivers products that delight users? The answer is simple: solve user problems and don’t compromise on the product vision. However, executing this simple idea is hard. Let's explore how we can make it a bit easier throughout the rest of this article. The organization needs a clear mission and an understanding of how solving user problems will deliver on that mission. Customers don’t buy your products because they like your mission; they buy them becau

How do you effectively lead an organization? There's no one-size-fits-all answer. It depends on various factors, including the organization's size and industry, your leadership style, the experience of your management team, and more. Throughout my career, I've held various management roles (GM, CEO, CPO, VP, etc.) in organizations ranging from startups to those generating $100 billion in annual revenue. This experience has allowed me to develop a set of guiding principles that I not only operate by, but also share with my teams. They are: 1. Ready. Shoot. Aim Thanks to Sam Walton , founder of Walmart, for this principle. This mindset was instrumental in the growth and success of Walmart, as it fostered a culture of experimentation, rapid response to market demands, and continuous improvement. It means that you should prepare to take action and, instead of spending time in deliberation and planning (aim), take action (shoot) and iterate your way to the target. 2. Understand

Last weekend, I finished reading - What I learned about investing from Darwin . It is a fascinating book that shows how evolution theory can be used to create an investment strategy. I might be biased towards liking the book because I used evolution theory to explain how Silicon Valley works . I found the following two concepts particularly interesting: 1. One selected behavioral trait of animals can trigger many physical changes in animals over generations. Following edited excerpt clarifies the idea: A sixty-year-long study focused on selecting silver foxes for only one trait: their willingness to be tamed. The researchers were not interested in body size, coat color, skull shape, ear stiffness, or any other physical characteristics. They took great care to ensure that selection was based solely on tameness. However, this single behavioral characteristic triggered many physical changes in the animals.  This principle is applied at Nalanda Capital (NC), the investment firm run by th

Google spends a lot of time and money developing the Transformer , the technology behind ChatGPT, but does not commercialize it. Microsoft invests billions of dollars in OpenAI , the company behind ChatGPT, to commercialize the technology. Apple makes a deal with OpenAI to incorporate ChatGPT into the latest iPhones without paying much for it. Apple will make billions of dollars by selling new hardware with minimal AI investment. :)

In an executive management role like CPO, COO, or CEO, you spend a lot of time aligning people you work with. How much time you spend aligning depends on the organizational structure, organization size, complexity of the product, growth rate of the company, and, above all, the culture of the organization.  Let's take an example of a dysfunctional organization, i.e. everyone is doing their own thing and there is no clarity on what the organization is trying to achieve in the short term. To a new person, the situation might seem like chaos. How do you bring order to the chaos?  From chaos to order  With the breadth of my experience over the last two decades, I have developed and practiced an alignment methodology with five steps:  1. Understand why the dysfunction exists 2. Build trust  3. Create a shared vision  4. Execute on the shared vision  5. Establish an operating rhythm   The methodology assumes that you are aligned with the board. Implementation of the methodology varies dep

Mulberries ready to leave the tree are sweeter. 

Money might not be able to buy love but it will definitely help you lease it.