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Part two of a four-part series on how a Product Manager thinks about using machine learning in products. Before we get to the Product Manager part, we need to understand how a Data Scientist thinks. Steps involved...

Part two of a four-part series on how a Product Manager thinks about using machine learning in products. Before we get to the Product Manager part, we need to understand how a Data Scientist thinks. Steps involved...

The first part in a four-part series on how a Product Manager thinks about using machine learning in products. The key, you don't need to learn how to do the hard parts. You need to understand why they do what they do. Once you learn how people think and what they value in their work, you learn...

When I was prepping for a interview with Stripe last Oct, I learned something they talked a lot about. The SCQA framework — what's the Situation, Complication, Questions, and Answers And today, I remembered how it's connected to something I quoted years ago.

Is it all about the "user"? Some nuances of what it means to serve the "user." It doesn't mean, focus all on them and put little curiosity into the other aspects of your company.

Okay, so I go back, rewatch the videos, make detailed notes. And you should know, I'm pretty good at writing notes these days. But when I get to the assignment. It's the same. 10 hours later. Nothing. I still can't start! "What's wrong with me?"

Something I think about and have a fresh perspective on now is the saying. "Why are people working at FAANG where they could be starting their own, solving the world's biggest problems"

When I hear debates on scrum and agile now, I think they were a solution to the fixed mindset problem. The we know the future two years from now.

I was never sure what to think of the saying, being right, a lot. But on reading this, I love this framing. Be wrong, less.

Don't tell me — Show me! A lesson from storytellers. Cinema's about, Don't talk about it, show it! You don't talk about a character's experience. You show them having that experience.

The experiment roadmap. This image has become popular on the web. We're taught to do the lowest fidelity test on your idea, especially for startups. But what's often forgotten is to watch out for false-negative signals.

Writers are also actors and directors. They use the director's skills to paint a picture in the audience's mind - the shot, what's in the frame, focus, zoom level. They use the actor skills to connect with the audience. The only difference - they paint and act with words.

The purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge. It's wrong. You have to do both!

If I ask you to explain "value," what pops into your mind? Do you think of money? Something nice and expensive like diamonds? Maybe it's something you get, use or own. Put in your home? Or perhaps you're picturing something going up? That's what I thought two years ago too.

I understood "capital" just like you. You and I believe what we hear on tv, movies, books. We hear the word capital and imagine finance and money. Or does your mind wander to capitalism and picture buildings, businesses, and its problems?

The idea of creating a startup started on a day in September 2019 with a few friends. You get together, bring your ideas and talk. You do it for a few months and try to force the idea out of nothing. Turn to today. What I know now is you can't force it.

This is day zero on building in public. Revealing what it takes to bootstrap, discover and build a business from nothing. I've been in deep study and practice for six months. It's not magic, after all. There isn't one way to do it, but this is what I learned if you lean to systematic thinking.

What tech and product gets wrong. Business is a professional skill like any other. You need to study and learn it. But wait! Isn't business something unruly, chaotic, mysterious? No!

We all struggle with this to a point. With creatives, more so. These are simply my favourite parts from the book. I, too, used to play for fun...

So what happened? We fell for the myth – startup success means you do it at scale and become a billion-dollar company.

I'm different. I usually become curious about anything you tell me. Two years ago, I asked a few friends. Let's start our own company?

It was fall 2018 and I stepped into my first senior manager role. Five years working on product delivery, I read INSPIRED: How to Create Products Customer's Love and knew it was the next thing I wanted to build mastery in.

It was 2018. Our team's product manager and I worked to put together the picture of what really happens when a company wants to go public (i.e. IPO) to the shares ending up in customer's accounts. I was curious, is there an angle to innovate with this for startups?

It was 2016, our WebBroker product team were chatting on the future of banks and technology companies. Are we a technology company? I remember a quote that stuck with me.

All podcasts and articles touch on pieces of his theories. I didn't know how the dots connected. This book — made everything connect!

I have made the difficult decision to leave TD in March. The last fifteen years have been a journey I couldn't have imagined and couldn't have been more fortunate.