Most advice about the vp of product role starts in the wrong place. It tells you to think bigger, act like a mini-CEO, and own the vision. That sounds impressive. It also produces a lot of weak product leadership. The role is not about personal ownership theater. It is about disciplined judgment across a portfolio, […]
In 2012, I watched a brilliant team with a technically superior social product get dismantled by Facebook. Their product was faster, cleaner, and more privacy-conscious. They still lost because users did not buy “better tech.” They bought familiarity, identity, network effects, and a product that felt meaningfully different in their lives. That lesson has stayed […]
I learned this the hard way: the template is rarely the problem. The problem is that most PMs treat templates like documentation artifacts, when the best teams treat them like operating systems for decisions. When I was leading product teams, the strongest PMs did not win because they had prettier PRDs or cleaner roadmaps. They […]
If you use podcasts for learning like background noise, you get inspiration. If you use them like a PM operating system, you advance your career. That distinction matters more now because podcast listening has scaled into a mainstream learning behavior. In 2019, 20 million consumers listened to a podcast for the first time and another […]
Check out the conversation on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. The future of PM teams (05:46) Aakash: You and I were chatting off air and the way product management teams are heading, product managers are supporting more and more people, whether that’s more designers and engineers or more cross-functional team members. It feels like one PM […]
As a PM leader who's hired and managed teams at companies like Google and high-growth startups, I've seen countless product managers stumble on one critical question from their CEO: 'Do we have product-market fit?' A vague 'I think so' won't secure your next round of funding or earn you a promotion. You need a defensible, […]
Being a Google Product Manager is one of the most sought-after roles in tech. You're handed the keys to products that touch billions of lives, setting the vision and strategy for what gets built. As an experienced PM leader who has hired and mentored PMs at top-tier companies, I can tell you it’s a role […]
Forget the generic advice. If you want to land a top-tier product manager job on LinkedIn, you can’t just passively scroll the Jobs tab. You need a system. As a PM leader who has hired dozens of product managers at companies like Google and various startups, I see the same patterns. The candidates who cut […]
Check out the conversation on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. The code vs canvas debate (02:22) Aakash: There is this debate that I am seeing with the new wave of designers. One prefers the flexibility of designing with code, using Codex to actually lead the design process and maybe bring Figma in later. The other still […]
If you want to get hired, promoted, and ultimately become a top 1% Product Manager, you must become fluent in the language of numbers. It’s that simple. In my experience hiring and mentoring PMs at Google, Meta, and various startups, the clearest signal of a high-potential PM is their ability to connect product work to […]