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And so it comes to a close…
10 years ago I graduated from Grad School. I packed up my life, and headed West to San Francisco. Most kids dream about world cups or flying to the moon, but I wanted to conquer Silicon Valley. It was the beginning of a new chapter in life And what a chapter! There’s no way 10…
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PM Hygiene: Push (everyone’s) bias out of your product regularly
Stop me fellow Product Manager if you’ve never heard some version of this line – Well, I’d never do {BEHAVIOR}, and so our customers would never do {BEHAVIOR}, and therefore this is the wrong decision Expectancy Bias is one of the key biases that Product Managers must fight in themselves, and break down in any…
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What’s old is new again – CES Edition
I think I finally understand the moral of the story of Rip Van Winkle. Except instead of finding the answer in a beautiful corner of upstate New York, my revelation came in the Las Vegas Convention Center. You see, had you attended CES about 10 years ago, and then found yourself a corner of the…
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Recency is a dangerous bias
As many companies did, we just finished product planning (at least for 1H) before the holidays. There are a lot of inputs that go into a roadmap – customer problems to solve, customer satisfaction to deliver, company strategy, product strategy, and beyond. Understanding how to prioritize and weigh these inputs is a critical part of…
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And I’m back…
After spending many a day by a pool, on a beach, snorkeling, or fishing, I’ve spent many a night watching US Open tennis, sitting on a balcony and listening to the waves, and rebuilding my personal website and blog network. And this is my – Welcome myself back – post. While rebuilding I made the…
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I build rocket ships
I’ve decided to refresh how people see me across various networks. One of those is LinkedIn where my summary is the one I wrote as a college student… which is now almost 10 years old. Here’s a cross-posting of the new, updated summary. I’ll post the old one tomorrow for posterity sake. I build rocket…
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Moving faster than the documentation
I’ve decided to hop back into the game, and build a new app. I’m not announcing what it is yet because it’s no where near ready, but I really like the idea. I’ve also decided to be really trendy, and use the latest in software development tools. This kills many birds with one stone: Challenge…
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Starting with questions
It’s very easy to see when there is trust in a culture/community/unit – people start with questions. The opposite is true as well. When there is no trust – people start with solutions. The reason that questions signify trust is that asking questions brings both parties into the topic without the need for defense. These…
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Accountability requires humility
A big area of improvement for any product manager is demonstrating that they can be more accountable for a larger and larger scope. First I think demonstrating that you can properly own a product is hard enough. Customer development, documentation, was it the right feature, should we kill it. All of these are not easy…
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Focusing on appreciation
We’re an extremely email happy culture at TokBox. We have automated emails, out of office emails, working from home emails, and then just a bunch of emails about getting things done. As I’ve been drowning in email lately, I started to notice a pattern that I really don’t like. In an effort to move through…