This week we lost both Betsy and Byrne to true start ups (venture backed companies as opposed to our corporate backing). The lovely Nicki Dexter is in town, and we’ve been jamming about what it is that makes TokBox tick.<\/p>\n
The combination has led me to think quite a bit about how we can fight the Silicon Valley game.<\/p>\n
The obvious things don’t make for an interesting blog post. They are what they are, and we’ll do our best to make them work. The selling points for joining the product team at TokBox are actually quite simple:<\/p>\n
#1 really speaks to the kinds of problems you want to solve as a product manager or designer. Do you really want to customer insight your way to the next widget on the machine that makes it 10% better? The answer should be yes for 99% of people. And that’s okay. I want that 1%<\/p>\n
#2 speaks to your personality. The non-obvious, and the vaguely defined have to be friendly or somewhat well known playgrounds. Coming from a well established place that has millions of customers doing trillions of events against your stack isn’t going to translate. We’ll be there in two years. But today you’re playing with different numbers, and so the game has less of a playbook.<\/p>\n
And I think #3 is the one that should speak to your career the most. Platforms are the next (or current) major contribution that Silicon Valley is throwing into the world. Platforms take really hard problems, and they make them accessible to folks who don’t want to solve those hard problems. Learning how to be great at developing product is transferable to the fullest order, and we know how to build platform.<\/p>\n
So I can’t give you equity or visibility to the latest VCs in the business. But I can help you change the world, and be excellent at it in the process.<\/p>\n
So come join us \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week we lost both Betsy and Byrne to true start ups (venture backed companies as opposed to our corporate backing). The lovely Nicki Dexter is in town, and we’ve been jamming about what it is that makes TokBox tick. The combination has led me to think quite a bit about how we can fight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[62,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQyAq-hj","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1705,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2016\/05\/03\/im-leaving-tokbox\/","url_meta":{"origin":1073,"position":0},"title":"I'm leaving TokBox","date":"May 3, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Friday will be my last day at TokBox. It ends an eight year journey through multiple products, lots of different target audiences, four CEOs, and three different careers. I asked Scott if I could say a few words at my last team meeting. I didn't make it to the first\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life Updates"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1348,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/11\/17\/3-days-til-30\/","url_meta":{"origin":1073,"position":1},"title":"3 days til 30","date":"November 17, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, I've run out of ideas, and steam. So today's post will be a photo gallery of the last 10 years. Thanks for keeping up with me :-) (Post-looking up all of the photos... holy shit what a great decade)","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":297,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2010\/02\/26\/building-a-community\/","url_meta":{"origin":1073,"position":2},"title":"Building a community","date":"February 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I was talking to someone today about the TokBox Platform that we're building. It's been something that I've been working on since I joined the Box, and something about which I'm very passionate. I was discussing with them my three goals for the Platform from a developer point of view\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":483,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2011\/11\/17\/its-not-okay-to-say-nothing\/","url_meta":{"origin":1073,"position":3},"title":"It's not okay to say nothing","date":"November 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I found out today how important it is to be vocal when you really believe in something. First some background: I believe that the reason that TokBox is successful right now is because we've built the right culture. Hiring in the Valley is a bitch, and if you aren't careful,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Becoming a PM"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1069,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/03\/31\/its-official\/","url_meta":{"origin":1073,"position":4},"title":"It's official...","date":"March 31, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"My promotion to Director of Product Management has been announced to the team. I set as a goal for 30 to be promoted. I've wanted this for two reasons: 1) External validation that I've contributed to the story of TokBox. I've been here for almost 6 years now. I've had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Becoming a PM"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1450,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/11\/19\/1-day-til-30\/","url_meta":{"origin":1073,"position":5},"title":"1 day til 30","date":"November 19, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The good\u00c2\u00a0moments\/learnings\/thoughts\/regrets of the decade in no particular order: Meeting Micky\u00c2\u00a0&\u00c2\u00a0marrying Micky Moving to California Learning how to build a product Luka Amelia Getting OpenTok built, and convincing Ian it was a good idea Birthday break up Growing up, and building a team at TokBox Building a product that got\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1073\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}