CDOQ

Problems arise when we outsource our thinking to models—AI or otherwise.

Failures repeat patterns, success requires novelty. 

One is not fascinated with the familiar. 

In the fast-paced world of technology, being a product leader is like walking a tightrope. You’re constantly balancing four critical objectives—each pulling you in a different direction, yet all essential for success. As shown in Figure 1, balancing these four objectives—User Experience, Profit, Competitive Advantage, and Technology Advancement—is the key to successful product leadership. Let's look at the interplay of these four objectives.  Figure 1: The art of balancing four objectives 1. Making the user experience (UX) better At the heart of every great product is an exceptional user experience. It’s not just about solving a problem; it’s about making the solution so seamless and delightful that users keep coming back. Whether you’re tweaking software daily or rolling out hardware updates over months, the goal is always the same: better UX.  For enterprise products, reducing the total cost of ownership ( TCO ) is an essential part of enhancing the UX. By minimizing the tim...

All software products are a result of hundreds or thousands of small decisions made by a group of people overtime. Not everything can be captured in Product Requirement Documents (PRDs) and Jira (a project management tool) tickets for the engineers to make these small decisions. Furthermore, with remote and globalized workforces, it has become increasingly important that all engineers operate with the same set of principles to create a good product. Over the years, I found the following principles to be helpful:  1. Build trust with the users  For example, if you are releasing an update, ensure that it does not disrupt customer operations.   2. Let fresh eyes verify the code before release (peer code review)  Framework, culture, and tooling are needed to support this principle.  3. Everything that could change with time should be implemented as a configurable parameter (high configurability) Over-configurability can lead to increased complexity.  4. Speed d...

Many startups are in the business of raising money instead of making money. 

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 oft...

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 ...