Rajesh Balachandran

product leader, startup enthusiast, co-founder @gatheringtree (exited 2013), founder @procuco (exited 2019), Mötorheadbanger, Lemmy for life. posts are mine.

[Rajesh Balachandran @rajballer]

#prodmgmt #startups #lean
i ask myself these high level questions while building the #MVP
1) is the problem worth solving? can it be solved?
2) will customers want it? will they pay for it?
3) what are the metrics to measure for success?
4) how can i accelerate growth?

[Rajesh Balachandran @rajballer]

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

# on shortification of "learning"

There are a lot of videos on YouTube/TikTok etc. that give the appearance of education, but if you look closely they are really just entertainment. This is very convenient for everyone involved : the people watching enjoy thinking they are learning (but actually they are just having fun). The people creating this content also enjoy it because fun has a much larger audience, fame and revenue. But as far as learning goes, this is a trap. This content is an epsilon away from watching the Bachelorette. It's like snacking on those "Garden Veggie Straws", which feel like you're eating healthy vegetables until you look at the ingredients.

Learning is not supposed to be fun. It doesn't have to be actively not fun either, but the primary feeling should be that of effort. It should look a lot less like that "10 minute full body" workout from your local digital media creator and a lot more like a serious session at the gym. You want the mental equivalent of sweating. It's not that the quickie doesn't do anything, it's just that it is wildly suboptimal if you actually care to learn.

I find it helpful to explicitly declare your intent up front as a sharp, binary variable in your mind. If you are consuming content: are you trying to be entertained or are you trying to learn? And if you are creating content: are you trying to entertain or are you trying to teach? You'll go down a different path in each case. Attempts to seek the stuff in between actually clamp to zero.

So for those who actually want to learn. Unless you are trying to learn something narrow and specific, close those tabs with quick blog posts. Close those tabs of "Learn XYZ in 10 minutes". Consider the opportunity cost of snacking and seek the meal - the textbooks, docs, papers, manuals, longform. Allocate a 4 hour window. Don't just read, take notes, re-read, re-phrase, process, manipulate, learn.

And for those actually trying to educate, please consider writing/recording longform, designed for someone to get "sweaty", especially in today's era of quantity over quality. Give someone a real workout. This is what I aspire to in my own educational work too. My audience will decrease. The ones that remain might not even like it. But at least we'll learn something.

[Rajesh Balachandran @rajballer]

@lennysan @netflix why are they going big on gaming? wouldn't they rather have their audience spend all their "free" on watching their content rather than gaming?

[Rajesh Balachandran @rajballer]

brilliant thread. good luck to all who are interviewing. stay strong!

[George from 🕹prodmgmt.world @nurijanian]

Are you interviewing for product roles?

So many layoffs.

It's tough to stand out right now.

At the very least, you should practice answering these questions:

[Shreyas Doshi @shreyas]

As a senior executive, you care a lot about your teams moving fast.

So when a team misses its committed launch date, you show great displeasure.

You demand more accountability.

You make an example out of this team.

Other teams see this.
They are not stupid.
So they learn.

And from now on, every single team hits their committed launch dates.

You are very happy.
I can see it.

But my friend, I am so sorry to tell you:

You are no longer moving as fast as you were before.

Plus, what you ship will no longer be as high quality as before.

And over time you start to see this too.
You are not stupid.

Even though everyone is hitting their launch dates, something has changed.

Things seem to be moving slower than before.

And you have no idea why.

So you call meetings.

You set up check-ins.

You set up processes.

But despite all your efforts, nothing changes.

That gnawing feeling that you are no longer moving fast persists.

That embarrassment of seeing your teams ship a shoddy experience is all too common now.

And you have no idea why.

The answer is right there.

You are no longer moving fast because of YOUR communication.

Instead of creating a culture where teams have intrinsic motivation to move fast — because they are energetic and they care — you started punishing the odd case where a team misses its aggressive target date.

And so, by doing that you sent a message to everyone: Don't be very ambitious, because the reward for ambition is punishment.

I know that isn't the message you wanted to send.

But by doing what you did, it is the only message you will send. 100 times out of 100.

What could you have done instead?

When that team missed its launch date, you could have sent a positive message instead of punishing the team's leaders.

You could have used this opportunity to build & maintain a culture of aggression and ambition.

You could have said:

"I understand why you missed the launch date.

I'd rather that you stay aggressive and sometimes miss the date than being conservative and always hitting the date.

I don't want you to stop being aggressive by default.

And we want more teams to be like you."

At this point, you are either seeing the value of this approach or you are trying to find reasons to reject it.

And your reasons are quite flimsy, such as: "But what about launches that have an external commitment?"

You are smart. You can figure that one out.

But okay, let me spell it out for you:

1. Most launch dates should not be committed externally. So don't commit dates for most launches.

2. A few launches need external commitments (to customers, or regulators, or partners...)

3. For the launches in # 2, sure, commit a conservative launch date that you are almost certain to hit.

4. But even for those, ask the team to devise an aggressive internal target date. It's okay if they slip this date. But it's important to have that aggressive internal target.

Why? Because remember Parkinson's Law:

Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.

Have you ever noticed how teams always struggle to hit their launch date, no matter how conservatively they've set them?

Yes, that's because of Parkinson's Law.

Look, I know it's easy to have dogma around "always hitting dates".

Dates are an easy, but incorrect proxy for your teams' velocity, ambition, and energy.

Though if you still want to maintain your fascination with hitting all dates, I am not sure I can (or even want to at this point) convince you otherwise.

But then I also guarantee that you will spend your entire career managing teams that move slower than they really can and/or ship lower quality products than they really can, and you will spend your entire career setting up check-ins, processes, spreadsheets, and carrots/sticks trying & failing to solve a problem that you created in the first place.

Best of luck to you!

[Rajesh Balachandran @rajballer]

this is a terrific community. I'm glad to be a part of it and I'd highly recommend to all my product peeps.

thank you for all your effort @lennysan

[Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan]

A recap of my newsletter community in 2023 🌍
∟ 265 local meetups
∟ 75 cities
∟ 35 countries
∟ 6 continents

Also:
∟ Shipped LennyBot
∟ Shipped Swag Store
∟ Announced book
∟ 150 mentors/mentees introduced
∟ 50 community wisdoms
∟ 10 AMAs
∟ 10 book clubs

[Rajesh Balachandran @rajballer]

Giving thanks to Motörhead for all the music. This year I couldn't stop listening to Claw.
@myMotorhead #SpotifyWrapped
https://t.co/ymxk1wvENV

[Rajesh Balachandran @rajballer]

Giving thanks to Motörhead for all the music. This year I couldn't stop listening to Claw.
@myMotorhead #SpotifyWrapped
https://t.co/ymxk1wvENV

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Sigh

[Lex Fridman @lexfridman]

The software engineering behind the X "algorithm" is epic. It has to distill 500 million daily tweets down to a personalized handful it shows each person. This algorithm runs ~57,000 times a second 🤯 ... and each execution takes 220 seconds CPU time, but runs in 1.5 seconds real time on average, which means compute is distributed across 12+ million CPU cores working continuously.

Each step of recommendation algorithm pipeline is fascinating: maintaining real-time interaction graph, embedding spaces for clustering interests, ranking via 48M param neural net, etc. I love that it's mostly been made open source, and hope more companies do the same!

[Lex Fridman @lexfridman]

Here's my conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, his 3rd time on the podcast, but this time we talked in the Metaverse as photorealistic avatars. This was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. It really felt like we were talking in-person, but we were miles apart 🤯 It's hard to put into words how awesome this was for someone like me who values the intimacy of in-person conversation. It gave me a glimpse of an exciting future with many new possibilities and fascinating questions about the nature of reality and human connection ❤

Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
0:52 - Metaverse
15:27 - Quest 3
30:16 - Nature of reality
34:54 - AI in the Metaverse
51:51 - Large language models
57:49 - Future of humanity

[Lex Fridman @lexfridman]

This is me speaking Spanish, thanks to amazing work by @Spotify AI engineers. The translation & voice-cloning are fully done by AI. Language can create barriers of understanding & thus fuel division. I can't wait for AI to break down this barrier & reveal our common humanity ❤

Great job @eldsjal @GustavS and everyone at @Spotify 🤯👊❤ I'm excited for what the future holds! Check out a full episode of me speaking in Spanish:
https://t.co/aVq5eTOTUg

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Perhaps we should run a poll on this?

[ISRO @isro]

Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
'India🇮🇳,
I reached my destination
and you too!'
: Chandrayaan-3

Chandrayaan-3 has successfully
soft-landed on the moon 🌖!.

Congratulations, India🇮🇳!

#Chandrayaan_3
#Ch3

[Rajesh Balachandran @rajballer]

TIL: front page test. what a great way to assess your decisions/ actions.

follow @GergelyOrosz for more insightful articles, opinions & information. highly recommended!

[Gergely Orosz @GergelyOrosz]

The “front page test” is a helpful way to decide whether or not to do something.

If - as unlikely it would be - a major publication would broadcast your actions as they happened: would you be comfortable owning up to them?

Applies to personal decisions and to business.

[Alex Cohen @anothercohen]

My wife just texted me this, I'm sleeping on the couch tonight

[Rajesh Balachandran @rajballer]

this applies to all companies, especially at startups 😂

[Shreyas Doshi @shreyas]

Every launch in a large company

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

𝕏 monthly users reach new high in 2023

[Rajesh Balachandran @rajballer]

this is such a great summary. thanks @nurijanian. and needless to say, thanks @paulg for the great essay.

[George from 🕹prodmgmt.world @nurijanian]

Paul Graham might be the most important person in the startup world.

He mentored Reddit, Airbnb, Stripe and so many more that went through YC.

I read his latest essay - How to Do Great Work, which takes 45 mins to read - so you don't have to.

Here are the best ideas from PG: