Mahshid ata

Studying people. Building things. Developing taste.

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

@alexmarin Hello

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

Some image exploration
From left to right
Flower X-ray
Flower blur gradient
Ceramic flower flashing blur
Butterfly X-ray modern typography gradient blur

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

When improving a product, where do you start? With existing user needs or new technological capabilities?

Great product thinkers have started from different places. Steve Jobs started with customer experience, while others started with emerging technology.

One approach to AI product thinking I find valuable is combining both: deeply understanding human needs and what’s technologically possible, questioning existing assumptions, using judgment to identify meaningful use cases, and turning those hypotheses into features or MVPs to test quickly.

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

@flboelter This is great. Well done 👏

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

If I had to reduce most professional success to one skill, it would be clarity.

Thinking clearly enough to know what you want, and communicating it clearly enough to make it happen.
With people and AI

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

Getting better isn’t the only way to increase your luck. Sometimes the smarter move is to stop waiting to be chosen and create a version of the opportunity yourself.

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

A beautiful UI doesn’t mean you have a good successful product business. It’s just one aspect of it.
Good design goes much deeper than how something looks.
It asks whether you’re solving the right problem, for the right user, in the right way.
And that’s exactly where DESIGN becomes valuable: not just in making the experience smoother, but in helping reveal when the product itself is built on the wrong assumptions.

And AI gives this illusion to builders that if I have a good UI, I have good design.

[Miles @uxmiles]

As a design studio founder, I hate to admit it but Opus 5.5 is insanely good at motion design/launch videos.

This video took 3 prompts

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

@jonbrosio I say don’t even wait until you earn money even the freedom of creating things and add value (pre-money) out of job is an indicator job is NOT the only option

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

I expose myself to a lot of random things.

Different events, books, articles, conversations. One day I’m reading about LLM evals, another day it’s motion design, then fundraising, psychology, product, or something completely unrelated.

I like learning this way, without everything needing an immediate purpose.

Recently, I came across something about entropy and closed systems that confirms exposure to new things has value.The basic idea was that when a system is closed off from new energy and input, it starts to break down.

And it made me think about people.

Maybe we need some controlled chaos in our lives too.

We need an edge, a part of life where we expose ourselves to things outside what we already know.

Not because all of it will be useful. But because it gives serendipity more chances to happen. It gives us more dots to connect. Sometimes two unrelated things meet somewhere in your head and become something new.

But the edge alone is not enough.

If all you do is discover and consume, eventually you get tired. You have taken in a lot, but you have not had the space to do anything with it.

That is where the center comes in.

The center is where you stop taking things in for a while.

You let your mind go quiet enough for things to connect.

That is usually where you start to understand what any of it actually means for you.

Maybe you should start something. Change jobs. Run an event. Move somewhere. Rework your portfolio. Maybe none of those.

At some point, your mind needs enough space to connect what you have collected with who you are and what you actually want.

The outside world gives you input.

But the decision about what to do with it has to come from you.

You need the edge to discover.

You need the center to make sense of it.

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

Building is not equivalent to maintaining. Becoming a founder requires building and maintaining a business. Many don’t start or it takes them more time to start because they need to think about longe term plan and about maintaining it(growth, scaling etc…)
Also for the same reason as computer doesn’t make everyone software engineers

[Peter Ramsey @PeteRamsey]

Prompt 1: Build my app. Make no mistakes.
Prompt 2: Copy Built for Mars

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

@ZeyaTheZeya @perlegobooks @builtformars @ElevenLabs @mobbin @PeteRamsey @RamenClubHQ @usecardboard @UseCorgi @heyclicky @tryresult @YouArtStudio Hey thanks so much for taking the time to clarify this. Really appreciate it. 🙏🙏

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

Hey! Thanks so much for sharing your experience at the hackathon!

Just wanted to clarify one small misunderstanding in the post. Perlego wasn’t trying to solve a subscription conversion problem, nor was this a challenge they were facing.

I invited Perlego to be our challenge partner, and we used their onboarding journey as the basis for the hackathon. We created three different user scenarios and challenged participants to explore how they could improve the onboarding experience for those users.

Would you mind updating that part of the post to reflect this? I’d really appreciate it. Thanks again for sharing!

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

@oscarfalll Happy birthday

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

Sometimes we want something so badly that getting it becomes the centre of everything we do.

But the more attention we give to obtaining it, the less attention we may have left for building the conditions that make it possible.

And that's the paradox.
To get closer to something you deeply want, you may need to stop focusing directly on getting it and devote yourself to what makes it possible.
You don't have to want success any less. You have to stop making success the object of all your effort.

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

Not knowing what else to try from where I am to reach my goal reflects the limits of my knowledge. Saying the goal is impossible because I don’t know what else to do makes a claim about reality.
There’s a HUGE gap between the two.

Not being able to see the next step doesn’t mean there are no more steps to take. It means I need to find the people, perspectives, and experiences that can help me see a way forward.

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

@Andy_AJT Yes Astra deserve a one full day. Sad I can’t attend this one. When is the next?

[Mahshid ata @AtabakiMahshid]

I do like this product. Never seen sth similar than can find jobs that is more aligned with my goal and needs. I do need visa sponsorship and Jack has been great at finding them.
I’ve not managed to get hired through any job Jack found for me but it stopped me looking at those fake general jobs on LinkedIn, so looking forward to more good things on that side.
Congrats.