Allvin Muthunayagam

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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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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I delivered my first lesson in product management and 😨. It didn’t go as planned…. It was way better 🤩 Over the weekend, I served as a Product Management Facilitator for #NoCodeRequired2025. NoCode Techies put together this webinar to help “non-technical” folks explore no-code pathways in tech. Most of the attendees in the product management track were looking at transitioning So I shared one basic definition of product management: Solving problems using excellent design (not UI but UX) and technology. And then 3 things that streamlined my transition journey years back 💪 Play by your strengths: Product management = problem solving and decision making. Domain knowledge is at the foundation of this, as a transitioner. Choose a domain you have a strong footing in and focus. Mine was healthcare, education or recruitment/HR solutions. Domain knowledge can be tapped from academics, hobbies or work experience. 🎯 Choose your poison: There are so many business models that define how you product-manage: B2C, B2G, B2B, B2B2C etc. You can’t optimize for all of them while transitioning and so you would have to choose. One of the lowest hanging fruits is to build an internal product with automation tools (n8n, Zapier) and existing software (Excel etc). This gives you mileage for B2B/B2B2C products and sharpens your systems thinking skills. 🤖 Adaptability: AI usage is a must and that’s the new measure of adaptability. Whether you are sharing ideas with stakeholders, discussing your approach for a take home assignment or you’re evaluating how much of a good UX your product would have, AI comes in clutch. Zapier has a whole AI competency framework for recruiting. Shopify now “expects” you to vibe code your ideas during hiring processes. LinkedIn launched an Associate Product Builder program that blurs the boundaries between Design, Product and Engineering, optimized with AI. We had other discussions like the PM competency framework by Ravi Mehta which you can always plug into ChatGPT/Gemini and get coaching for starters before you reach out to a mentor. We finally gave a shot at building some resume bullets because often, you do product management in the past without knowing 🤓 Thanks for the opportunity Jess and Dorcas and glad to have collaborated with you Emmanuel and Dara. S/o to you: Isaac and Kingsley for availing your experience for the practical resume bullet building exercise. If you’re planning to transition into product management, this is your sign to start. #JayOnProd

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Recently, whenever I ask someone to refine their written piece - generally a document / work message etc - they go to AI to do so. No harm in that, but one thing that gets skipped in this process is the clarity in your own understanding. When you write something down in a structured manner which is clear, concise, it gives clarity not just to the reader, but to you yourself. The more you do it, more deeply you understand what you're writing and can preempt what questions your audience will have. Communication in general is one of the greatest skills successful people have, with AI maybe the written communication skill can be covered, but the clarity that you get with it, is not. So take AI's help to beautify your communication or brainstorm what all to write, but try to do a few revvs of structuring it out yourself, it will deepen your thinking a lot. More coming on structured thinking in next few weeks.

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There has been a spike in "AI" Product Manager openings in several companies, and quite a few folks have been asking how to make the leap. Why do we keep adding trendy prefixes to job titles? That's a topic for another day! 😉 Today, let's cut through the noise and break down "AI" for product professionals. Right now, it feels like everything is getting a "AI" prefix, as a generic/broad reference. From a product perspective, here's the way I see it: 1️⃣ 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐀𝐈 🧠 👉This is about building the core engine and models. You will be experiencing it as part of organizations that are advancing foundational AI research, creating domain-specific algorithms, developing novel multimodal capabilities, and pushing the boundaries of AI. 2️⃣ 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐀𝐈 🏗️ 👉 Redesign products and infrastructure for an AI-first world - the plumbing needed for AI to thrive. There's plenty of opportunities in this area currently. Examples include designing for agents as a first-class user for websites/apps, achieving compliance for agent-to-agent standards, building new quality control and guardrails for autonomous workflows. 3️⃣ 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐈 🛠️ 👉 Embed AI features within your product to simplify existing use cases or to enable entirely new use cases that weren't possible before. This is where you bring the magic of AI to your users. Examples include automated insights for decision-making, review summarization, personalized ratings, and intelligent prioritization of support cases. 4️⃣ 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐈 🚀 👉 This is about leveraging AI as a builder’s companion for faster product iteration. It's the most visible one (used as general/broad reference to AI). Examples include using AI to analyze customer feedback at a scale, generate quick mockups or prototypes for concept validation in minutes over weeks, or automate repetitive product management workflows with RAG agents. AI is fundamentally reshaping how products are imagined and delivered. Understanding these distinctions is key to moving past the buzzwords and focusing on building something truly meaningful. #productmanagement #ProductLeadership #AIFirst #ProductManagement #FutureOfWork

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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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