On Path

Here are some relevant links from the conversation:

• Jonathan Moffett (a.k.a. Sugarfoot) playing Smooth Criminal on the drums
• Usain Bolt in the 2011 World Championship Semi Finals (the key part is from minute 1:00 to 2:00)

Show notes:

• 2:54 My semi-deportation from the United States
• 4:41 How moving often helped me deal with the sudden move
• 6:56 Comfortable with being an outsider
• 7:33 Where am I from?
• 7:48 What brought me to Switzerland
• 9:37 My work at startups
• 10:06 My shift from computer science to marketing
• 11:28 Marketing to software developers
• 12:57 Why I started the On Path podcast
• 16:10 A quote that shapes my view on careers
• 18:05 Who I look to for inspiration
• 21:33 How I integrate inspiration into my life
• 22:54 Creative pursuits: conceptualization vs execution
• 25:18 My family and the inspiration I get from them
• 28:40 My #1 travel recommendation
• 30:38 What I would want in an 80th birthday toast

Here are some relevant links from the conversation:

• siilo.com where Drashti currently leads marketing and brand
• Drashti Patel on LinkedIn
• First Round Review by First Round Capital
• "Today's CMO" article on Google Think

Show notes:

• 1:05 Interning at Tom's shoes
• 3:19 Transition from individual contributor to manager
• 5:03 How Drashti explains her role
• 6:06 What is product marketing?
• 7:26 Product marketing at Microsoft
• 10:51 Drashti's process for nailing down brand
• 15:23 What shaped Drashti growing up?
• 16:19 Favorite book as a child
• 17:11 Moving from the US to the Netherlands
• 18:56 Work-life balance
• 20:01 How Drashti landed her job at Microsoft
• 23:24 Bootcamp at Microsoft
• 25:50 Still in touch with bootcamp mates
• 26:37 Takeaways from her time at Microsoft
• 27:53 Moving to an agency then startups
• 33:00 In-person vs virtual conferences
• 35:25 Influential people in Drashti's career
• 37:44 How to go about seeking a mentor
• 39:00 What she used to insist on that she's now flexible about
• 40:42 What she used to be flexible about that she now insists on
• 41:48 Life now as compared to envisioned a decade ago
• 44:15 Can she believe she's in Amsterdam?
• 43:48 Collecting hobbies as a hobby
• 46:04 Writing a children's book: Hamsterdam
• 46:48 What would a perfect day look like?
• 48:49 Drasthi's preferred tea
• 49:28 A bicycle work desk
• 50:34 Recommended blogs and reading

Here are some relevant links from the conversation:

• Shikha's food blog: shikhalamode.com
• One of Shikha's on-demand webinars for Slack
• Shikha's online pastry classes
• Shikha on LinkedIn

Show notes:

• 1:18 Swimming with sharks
• 2:42 What is product marketing?
• 4:36 What skills are needed to be a great product marketer?
• 6:17 Growing up in the Bay Area
• 7:55 How Shikha keeps in touch with people
• 9:42 Slack as a personal communication tool?
• 10:20 From a food blog to working in tech
• 12:56 Shikha's favorite pastry recipe
• 13:55 Working at high-growth ventures: Uber, Dropbox, Slack
• 14:39 Working in restaurants
• 15:49 Internal opportunities
• 17:14 Building internal relationships
• 17:42 Screen-free interaction
• 19:33 Influential people in Shikha's life
• 20:41 Great managers
• 21:29 How is life different than envisioned 10 years ago?
• 22:17 What Shikha doesn't compromise on anymore
• 24:06 Specific aspects of company culture
• 25:16 The impact of virtual on company culture
• 26:55 Important life lessons
• 28:43 Juggling being a professional pastry chef with a career in tech
• 30:32 Saying no to things to create time
• 31:52 Calendar blocks
• 32:50 Road trip from California to Vermont
• 36:20 Virtual pastry classes

Here are some relevant links from the conversation:

• Bridgewater Associates
• Ray Dalio
• Principles by Ray Dalio
• Young, Gifted, and Non-dominant
• CORE at Columbia
• ABRA, a cryptocurrency startup
• Richard Feynman
• Rachel Syme, a writer

Show notes:

• 1:29 100+ hours of user interviews
• 2:49 Interviewing a Bletchley park code breaker
• 4:11 How payments in the US differ from Europe
• 5:32 What is Bridgewater Associates?
• 7:09 The culture at Bridgewater
• 8:23 Discovering blind spots
• 14:42 Building product at Bridgewater
• 18:16 How Kevin landed his position
• 21:19 Growing up in Southern California
• 21:39 Kevin's love of reading
• 27:20 Kevin's first job working with city's Community and Parks Dept.
• 28:42 Co-founding Young, Gifted, and Non-Dominant
• 32:27 Serving as President of CORE at Columbia University
• 38:38 How Kevin plans to make future career decisions
• 40:25 "Seek out the counter-cultural. Live out your counter narrative. And dare to imagine better."
• 44:41 Kevin's perfect day

Here are some relevant links from the conversation:

• kirupa.com
• Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein 3D video games
• Pixel art
• Kirupa's Youtube channel
• Kirupa's books on web development
• Microsoft Silverlight

Show notes:

• 2:12 IDDQD cheat code
• 3:03 An explanation of Product Management
• 4:27 Skills Kirupa looks for when hiring PMs
• 5:12 Solutions sometimes provided by a technical customer base
• 6:40 Why MIT?
• 7:51 Online personality = Offline personality
• 8:54 Working at large tech companies
• 10:54 Working on Silverlight tools
• 12:05 A love for pixel art
• 13:37 Gray areas of fields like design and development
• 15:54 Staring kirupa.com
• 19:31 Juggling a full-time career with side projects
• 20:39 Youtube videos
• 21:30 Kirupa's cat: a regular attendee at work meetings
• 22:25 Deciding what to invest time in
• 23:36 How working from home has changed things
• 24:58 Walking meetings
• 25:17 Influential people in Kirupa's life
• 26:37 The role of luck
• 28:36 Would any of this have been a surprise?
• 31:02 An 80th birthday toast
• 32:25 Ask for help early, ask for help often

Here are some relevant links from the conversation:

• The Knowledge Project podcast
• The Peter Attia Drive podcast
• How to Get Rich by Naval Ravikant
• Ayrton Senna on Wikipedia

Show notes:

• 1:50 Killer coffee
• 2:22 A perfect day
• 3:30 Dan's role at Google
• 6:16 Skills to be on Dan's team
• 8:07 Growing up in São Paulo
• 9:07 Personal safety
• 11:54 Industrial engineering at Georgia Tech
• 13:46 Getting into consulting with Deloitte
• 15:20 Deciding to do an MBA
• 17:46 What Dan got out of the MBA experience
• 19:31 Traveling with classmates
• 21:43 MBA coursework that served as a career inflection point
• 24:22 The second stint at Deloitte
• 26:30 How to be a stand-out candidate on the job market in 2020
• 28:20 How Dan landed his position at Google
• 30:38 People that have inspired Dan: Ayrton Senna
• 32:23 People that have inspired Dan: Naval Ravikant
• 37:08 How is life different than envisioned 10 years ago?
• 39:22 Decompress time in schedules
• 40:36 How being a father has changed Dan
• 42:20 Injecting a bit of Portuguese at home
• 43:04 Dan's love of golf
• 45:20 More on coffee
• 46:51 Recommended podcasts

 Here are some relevant links from the conversation: 

• Revisionist History podcast
• Rough Translations podcast
• Singular

Show notes:

• 1:18 Studying Art History in university
• 3:41 Product Management
• 6:19 Background of Product Managers
• 7:31 What does Singular do?
• 8:33 Singular customers
• 9:35 Growing up in Venezuela
• 12:51 Moving to Canada
• 13:46 Adapting to a country that's much safer
• 15:48 Learning to love where you live
• 16:32 Moving to Israel
• 18:44 Learning Hebrew
• 21:15 Lisi's 85 year old grandmother
• 22:31 Summers in Peru
• 23:03 Lisi's great grandfather
• 24:05 Learning to be more confrontational
• 26:50 Discussing issues without attacking people
• 29:23 "You look tired"
• 29:49 Lisi's perfect day
• 30:28 Podcat recommendations

Here are some relevant links from the conversation:

• Dan's TechTalk with a drone demo
• DevOps Cafe podcast
• Kubernetes on Wikipedia
• DevOps on Wikipedia

Show notes:

• 1:06 Dan's drone demo
• 3:54 What is DevOps?
• 6:34 Automation is not the core purpose of DevOps
• 7:07 Growing up in Moldova
• 8:32 Being a competitive candidate on the job market
• 9:07 "Programming for Managers" course
• 14:58 Dan's career path so far
• 17:21 Hackathon at EY
• 19:27 What keeps Dan in DevOps?
• 21:03 Kubernetes Slack group
• 21:48 DevOps Cafe podcast
• 23:25 Influential people in Dan's life
• 24:38 A new interest
• 25:28 Conquering a fear
• 26:21 Dan's ideal day

Here are some relevant links from the conversation:

• Lumi by Pampers
• Boogaloo dance video by Yoav in Japan
• How I Built This Podcast
• Invisibilia Podcast
• Perpetual Traffic Podcast
• Kara and Nate Income Reports

Show notes:

• 2:06 - What got Yoav in to dancing
• 3:06 - Lumi by Pampers
• 5:03 - What got Yoav in to marketing
• 8:41 - On setting KPIs
• 12:33 - Reviews in ecommerce
• 16:53 - Always treating your ecommerce store as a first iteration
• 17:40 - The value of email marketing in ecommerce
• 22:25 - HTML vs plain-text emails
• 23:20 - Working with agencies
• 26:31 - Resources to learn about ecommerce marketing
• 29:15 - In-house vs freelancers/agencies
• 32:54 - Trying new things
• 34:28 - Yoav's time in Japan
• 37:42 - Failures
• 39:21 - People who influenced Yoav
• 40:43 - Yoav's podcast recommendations
• 42:00 - A perfect day for Yoav
• 43:20 - Lessons Yoav has learned for himself
• 45:28 - Links between dance and life
• 47:45 - Hip hop and popping
• 51:08 - Money or time to solve challenges
• 53:44 - Kara & Nate Vlog

Thank you very much for listening!