I saw a comedian on a Youtube Short who said "I used get bullied as a kid and so I decided to learn karate. The thing about Karate is, it only works so long as both people in a fight use the same rules." Shortly after, on LinkedIn, I saw a post about "minting pokemon … Continue reading Breaking a paradigm by stepping outside of it
Changing I to You
It's been a while! I've been noticing an interesting trend - after going through a coding bootcamp from May 2022 - Sept 2022 and starting as a Software Engineer at AppFolio (property management SaaS company) I've dropped a few rungs on the corporate ladder. Namely, I was a Lead Product Manager or the equivalent at … Continue reading Changing I to You
Breaking up with consumer FinTech: it’s not me, it’s you.
The Beginning I've been working in Financial Services (FS) since I started my career in 2015. I started at Citigroup, working on retail banking strategy for our Asian private wealth management clients. The name of the game there was rewards and incentives both for the sales people and the new customers. In that same role, … Continue reading Breaking up with consumer FinTech: it’s not me, it’s you.
Offer Comparison Tool
I'm a big believer in sharing tools that help others make decisions. As such, I created this tool to compare offers between 4 different types of companies (and of course you can compare similar companies by simply copying and pasting the company type in question elsewhere in the sheet). This is a google sheet available … Continue reading Offer Comparison Tool
The scourge of recurring meetings
I had a conversation with a more junior member of our product team and had to talk him down from scheduling a recurring meeting that takes up a lot of time for many people on the product leadership team. To mitigate this, I put together a quick set of requirements for when a meeting needs … Continue reading The scourge of recurring meetings
Why do you Product?
In reading Start with Why by Simon Sinek, I got to thinking about why people get into product management. I have narrowed them down to roughly 4 archetypes, but they are not mutually exclusive and I fall into multiple of these buckets myself. My goal with this is to explain the product manager archetypes as … Continue reading Why do you Product?
Product Hiring through hypergrowth
Having been through the hypergrowth phase a few times, a crucial trend has stuck out that I thought was worth calling out explicitly: the move from generalists to specialists. This is an attempt to outline how I believe most companies pursue product managers through their growth. Seed / Series A - No Product managers needed … Continue reading Product Hiring through hypergrowth
Build pyramids, not rocketships
Hypergrowth is a thing we need to acknowledge. It's been here for a while and it's something that will not go away while there's still billions of dollars being poured into the startup ecosystem. One thing I've started to experience is that as companies grow and scale their products, when successful, they can build a … Continue reading Build pyramids, not rocketships
Employee Retention Over Time
Over the coming weeks I'll be writing about employee retention. As much as I believe this applies to Product Management jobs, I believe this applies much more broadly and can be used for teaching across teams regardless of industry or job function, The Gist When it comes to recruiting, I've found recruiting teams, interview teams, … Continue reading Employee Retention Over Time
Becoming a Product Speaker Topics
Over the course of the next few months, I would like to give a talk, be it at a conference, a product school, or fireside chat. Over time I will add to the list below, but here is what I'll be writing posts about to develop my thoughts on a future speaking engagement: Product Management … Continue reading Becoming a Product Speaker Topics
Amaan Lakhani 