New Capabilities Beat Headcount Reduction
It’s 6am on a Sunday, you run a hot AI company that largely delivers on what you say, and you are thinking of a marketing campaign to drive some excitement, have serious people demo the product. Would you rather talk about new capabilities unlocked leading to stuff you never imagined before or do you want…
utterly useless marketing metrics – A Love Story
A LOT of growth-stage marketing leaders I meet in the SF Bay Area treat demand generation in two ways: 1/ Seduced with measuring every bottom-of-the-funnel metric you could possibly imagine and tying it to annual recurring revenue. These people have financial models tying clicks on e-books to annual recurring revenue, to LTV, to company valuation.…
How AI is Transforming Hiring Costs: A 50-Year Analysis
Having spent last 5 years in HR Tech, today, I requested Perplexity AI to craft a compelling piece on the cost per hire trends in the US for the last 50 years. What follows below is ~99% as-was generated. If you are looking to understand more about what elite recruiting teams are doing, feel free…
Flour & Branch, SF
This is my second visit to this cafe in two days – Flour & Branch. I think this is truly a one-of-its-kind cafes in San Francisco. That’s why I just compelled to write and share more about these folks. The space is incredibly inviting, has very good coffee, very good cookies (oh my god! you…
Vibe coding experience
Right now tools like Cursor, Replit promise a lot but deliver next to zero value for non-technical people like myself. I’m a non-technical person who ended up trying Cursor, Replit, OpenAI, Claude, and GitHub. I had a very specific goal in mind: stitching together various tools and applications into simple web interfaces that actually worked.…
Dreaming in Software: Some brutal realities of VC-backed businesses
I’ve spent ~4 yrs observing and working on Software sales, marketing motions and the operating side too. Naturally, I’ve developed some strong opinions based on these experiences. It seems like that the narrative that surrounds VC-backed SaaS businesses trying to grow 100% year-over-year even at $100M revenue scale often glosses over the harsh realities—sky-high customer…
My takeaways along with Coatue’s insights on Generative AI and where software services could be headed: Software, Productivity, and Business Models!
Summary: Process automation is a never ending game and companies want to level up all the time. VC backed software companies may not be the answer to deliver that process automation. What does the current investment landscape in generative AI look like? Most AI funding (70%) targets model development, aiming to build smarter algorithms. However,…
Everyone can learn to speak well.
Professor Patrick Winston @ MIT: We will be evaluated based on our ability to speak, our ability to write, and on the quality of our ideas — IN THAT ORDER! My takeaways from Prof. Winston’s legendary lecture on How To Speak How to start? Never start with a joke because people are not ready for it. Start…
Decision making by Thinking in Bets: Annie Duke
Annie Duke: American poker player and author of the book, Thinking In Bets Shane Parrish: Host of The Knowledge Project If you have two hours, above-average patience, and don’t mind a lot of pauses for notetaking, the conversation between Annie Duke and Shane Parrish is compelling for three reasons: You will realize that you can…
What It Takes: Steve Schwarzman
A couple of days ago, I chanced upon this podcast in which Steve Schwarzman (King of Capital) shared what he learned in life and what made him successful. Learning 1: Not surprisingly, early on, his parents repeatedly encouraged him always to keep trying and NEVER look for external validation. Hard work is hard for a…
Rohan Manchanda 