Akshay Agarwal

A book is an introvert’s favorite friend and also the main source of their learning. Here are two of my all time bests: Outsiders ( Will Thorndike) - As they say, the CEO’s main job is to allocate capital (and bandwidth when there is no excess capital). Contrary to popular belief, bombastic and charismatic CEOs like Jack Welch of GE are not history’s best business leaders. Just as in cricket, the quiet champions let their bat (and ball) do the talking, in business, the greatest CEOs let their capital (and resource allocation) do the talking. Will Thorndike (also hosts probably the best podcast on business - 50X) tells us the stories of 8 such incredible CEOs and their exploits in this book. An absolute gold mine. The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz) - This is probably the exact opposite of the above book in terms of scope and lessons. It talks about what it means to be a founder, when you have no capital, no nothing, and you set out to do something from absolute scratch. Anyone who has founded a company knows that the headlines are misleading. Only they know how close they are to demise all the time in spite of all the blood, sweat, hate, fear, nightmares, turmoil while trying to be upbeat and inspirational (it’s the biggest irony of entrepreneurship).  They don’t count the hours and think about work-life balance ( what would you call taking a shower while constantly thinking about how to make next month’s payroll or some other impossible problem - work? life?). The truth is, if you imagine the worst possible situation a founder goes through, you would still be underestimating the founder's struggle.  This book is for these founders, relatable and inspiring, scary and motivating at the same time. While we are on the subject, let me throw in a couple of terrific podcasts as well, for inspiration, reflection, and connecting the dots: https://lnkd.in/dXjhwm78 https://lnkd.in/dTScMn2k At Rebel, some of us learn through reading, and here is a list of books recommended by Rebels https://lnkd.in/dgbVjaPT

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Immediate Reaction of Layoffs is Imposter Syndrome ! If you got impacted by layoffs, remember 1. There are so many reasons a company has to do layoffs. It’s part of business and may not be related to your performance. 2. If you were marked Under Performer in last few Appraisal Cycles - there could be multiple reasons for that.. poor leadership, high complexity of work, bad environment, lack of learning, personal situation etc etc and not all of these would be in your control. So, give yourself a Benefit of Doubt and Keep Going 🙌 Not all Companies are same..Not all Managers are same..Not all projects are same. Things will work out for sure 👍

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The role of product managers is evolving fast. I sat down with Saurabh Agarwal (VP Product Management - JioHotstar, ex-Google and LinkedIn) to decode what’s changing and what will not in the field of product management in the next few years. It was exciting to interact about his decade plus learnings on building products for 500 million+ Indians that most of us use daily along with uncovering how they came up with the ideation of the much revered Max-view feature in Hot-star, that went from idea to launch just in 6 weeks, as first ever vertical content consumption for live sports globally! Not just that, we covered the following elements in the conversation ✅ Engineer → PM → org-builder: how the scope and stakes grow ✅ Judgment vs data: when to trust instincts over dashboards ✅ The MaxView story: from insight → prototype → launch in ~6 weeks ✅ Product trade-offs at true billion+ internet scale ✅ Designing for India’s Next Half Billion (NHB) users ✅ Where AI is actually reshaping PM & design ✅ Why simplicity beats cleverness in execution He also dropped a bunch of timeless nuggets on velocity, taste, and building for constraints. Thanks to Rati and team at Product x People for the invite. Link to the full conversation in comments. #productmanagement

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Meet the most intelligent bill scan ever built. Built for 99.9% accuracy. Say goodbye to OCR. Mysa AI doesn’t just extract data — it understands it. Trained on millions of vendor formats, it adapts to even the strangest, most unstructured bills — across 20+ Indian languages. Every scan makes it smarter, sharper, and more attuned to your workflows and bill types. Behind the scenes, a dual-engine architecture constantly validates LLM reasoning against ML precision, using calculations/tax parameters as ground truth — so the output data is always clean, reliable, verified, and compliant. #ai #llmscan

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Over the last three years, my startup, Athyna, has come frightfully close to making layoffs more than once. But instead of taking the easy out—we backed our team in. Maintaining your team means you: 1/ Keep culture at a high 2/ Retain institutional knowledge Two things that are insanely valuable in high performing companies. Too many founders take the easy road. This is the wrong road.

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