The ‘It depends’ answer always sounds like a cop-out. Often, that is the most useful answer. Founders will flip out and throw you off the building If you ask a founder, ‘Is SaaS dead?’ they are going to flip out. Most founders had just decided to brand themselves as SaaS founder. Just when almost the…More
How to get to product market fit in AI SaaS, crawl walk run guide for Indian founders
Going from Zero to Product Market Fit is like getting out of a Bermuda Triangle. For every direction that works out, an equal and opposite direction works too. Rare few get to product market fit on their first try, the majority of folks struggle. It is shocking how few get to product market fit. Only…More
Unusual founder lessons from the OpenAI saga
Friday, November 17 of the year 2023 will go down in tech history as a significant day. It’s a day that will be remembered and discussed for generations to come. It’s when Sam Altman found himself ousted as CEO of OpenAI for four days. This event holds some unusual lessons for founders. Yanked away from your…More
What should designers do in age of Gen AI
Gave a keynote to designer audience at Salesforce on how to look at design for Enterprise Applications.More
Building an engineering career in Gen AI
Gave talk at Intuit on how to build an engineering career in the age of Gen AIMore
Enhacing Clarity: Understanding Gen AI and ML
Gen AI has created fog of war. Published an opinion piece at Yourstory on how to defog understanding about Gen AI. Read more at: https://yourstory.com/2023/07/enhancing-clarity-understanding-ai-mlMore
Every Country Needs an AI strategy
Published a special for CXO today “Post gun adoption, those still fighting with swords and sticks quickly became enslaved and colonized. The recent platform shift arising in AI is one such technology inflection point. Every country is deliberating its choices.” Read more at: https://cxotoday.com/specials/every-country-needs-an-ai-strategy/More
Every enterprise needs an AI strategy, how to build yours?
Most boardrooms are discussing AI strategy now, and they are as clueless as a penguin trying to fly. Every few years an unknown phenomenon shows up in the world and poses a challenge to well laid out plans. COVID was that phenomenon three years ago. Last year it looked like interest rates and recession may…More
Investors wont fund your AI startup and they probably shouldn’t
.ai in your startup does not make it an AI startup. Every few years, a new trend emerges, capturing the collective imagination. It stirs a frenzy, spawning conferences and reports, birthing startups and luring investors. Picture a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean, with pirates gathered in a dimly lit bar, swapping tales of treasure…More
How to use OpenAI to not get disrupted, a SaaS founders guide
[originally published at medium here ] Platform shift underway You are experiencing the fastest platform shift of all time. What’s a platform?” Well, it’s not the technical term developers typically use. Instead, think of a platform as a space where people interact and exchange things. Before Amazon and Flipkart, physical street shops dominated the shopping scene.…More
How to make yourself Anti fragile ? Not the society
World has found a new interest in understanding antifragile again. With the onset of a pandemic, global survival is at risk. Everyone is pondering how could we have built an antifragile health system, financial back bone and an economy. Antifragile is not a theory. It is a set of heuristics at best. Antifragile is a…More
Rebooting yourself so that you can reduce head but increase heart in decisions you make
Life is a constant search of finding your own game player fit. What is the game that I am the best player in ? What are games that can provide me money (safety), meaning (love), identity (belonging) and more ? Being the best hockey player in a country that is devoted to cricket may not…More
India as Product Nation, lessons of the first decade
Nation means an imagined community. It stokes a certain pride in every human who belongs in it. Prefix it with Product and that makes it even more elite. In business terms it means climbing up on the value chain. Which in turn means more margins, more visibility and more power. I heard the word Product Nation first…More
CTS engineers are better SaaS founders than Google engineers
Surprise is a rock under which lessons are hidden. Don’t throw it away. Scott Cook, when coaching product teams often asks this question: “What is your biggest surprise?” First time I heard it, I marveled at the power of this question. Using this question is like the situation when the examining eye doctor puts that one lens…More
Friedman was wrong, World is not flat
At least for enterprise software startups. Fact, one of two enterprise startups in the valley has an Indian founder or a co-founder Fact, earlier they had back office in India now they have front office as well. Largely due to how SaaS is changing how buying & deploying is done inside an enterprise. Still pause…More
Product you are building. Is it a Pot, Potter or Potters Clay ?
What is a product? Typical answer from engineering founders is that, ‘A product is a set of features’. This mindset leads to a never-ending spiral of building ‘new features’. Over time, the number of features gets so enormous that it is not clear what the original vision of building the product was. Prasanna is very fond of calling this…More
Why meaningful founder exits are better than go big go home
Most startups die, only a few exceed expectations and become successful beyond imagination. These successful ones become the talk of the town, while the failed ones quietly fade away into the background. Nevertheless, it is the story of the moderately successful ones that get buried on the other side. In the purview of unicorn-chasing investors,…More
Best Indian Founder of the first startup decade
Best Indian founder of the entire last decade 2008–2018 Is Undoubtedly Lee Fixel of Tiger Global. Every founder attempts to create value. It is not that hard. If money is handed out for a purchase, it is bound to create a consumer surplus. As Bill Gurley, legendary VC at Benchmark Capital says To turn it…More
India is eating SaaS
Change is easy to miss, hard to get right Policymakers take pride in thinking that they create markets. Many believe that the 1992 World Bank report which called India as likely software superpower was responsible for the creation of $150bn IT services industry. In emergent systems like markets, it is hard to say which inputs…More
When you don’t play the right game
When Mario plays soccer can he become a Super Mario? Everything about the future is so clearly visible when looked through the rearview mirror. Wish I knew what influenced outcomes for a tech startup founder in India. When you look back decade-long to sketch the picture from 2007 till now, leaving out the frenzy of…More