Hi, welcome to my virtual coffee bar, Decaf Product! If you’ve stumbled upon this substack and are wondering what its all about, read on..
Who am I?
I am a Senior Product Manager at Twilio. I work in Digital Identity and Access Management, building products focused on authentication, identity proofing and fraud mitigation. I am an avid enthusiast of all things product management (a product junkie, if you may) and have spent many years of my life strategizing about breaking into this elusive profession and then acing it.
A few years in, I’ve come to terms with the roller coaster nature of this job - sometimes wildly exhilarating, other times an intense grind, never ordinary.
My path to it has been a mix of traditional and non-traditional professional experience, meandering through 4 cities on 2 continents (you can read more in a brief history here), which gives me a unique lens to observe and respond to the world around me. It is this differentiated point of view that I’m hoping to bring to you, the reader.
I currently live in San Francisco amongst my radically liberal techie friends and family, and their kiddos and pets, who make living in SF comfortable and meaningful, and not feel like the rat race it can be. While I may have succumbed to the glorious Californian weather and outdoors, I still long for my old stomping grounds, New York City from time to time..
What is Decaf Product?
Decaf Product is my personal opinion piece and an artifact of my learnings as I navigate the business of tech and the discipline of product management.
I wanted a simple name that invokes a sense of mild curiosity, and captures the essence of a cafe - an informal place where people congregate and conversation flows freely, organic connections are formed and the wheels of productivity are set in motion.
I am fascinated by technology, people, organizations, management, influence, leadership, economics and industry forces, and how they all come together to help build awesome products and solutions that propel the human race forward.
This is my space to share my curiosity and enthusiasm with others - early to mid career and seasoned PMs, aspirants, those in product-adjacent roles and anyone who loves chatting product.
Why write?
I’m writing this substack for the following reasons:
Creating (social) value
Documenting my journey of learning and growing as a PM
Improving as a writer
Beating Imposter’s Syndrome
I write a lot more about this on my About page, so go check it out!
What kind of content can you expect?
For the longest time, I let the profusion of product management content on the internet deter me from creating my own. I’m put off when I spend 4-7 minutes reading something that doesn’t leave me with unique insights that change my life for the better.
Maybe its a discoverability problem, as I’m sure plenty of top 10% PMs are writing about their experiences. But I find a dearth of content that puts an interesting spin on common topics like succeeding in your PM career, or geared towards mid-career/seasoned PMs that highlights specific techniques, frameworks or case studies of how normal people (PMs) invented innovative solutions to their day to day challenges.
And so, I outline some base principles below for the kind of content that resonates. with me, and I *aspire* to create, with the humble acknowledgement that it will be a journey to get there.
Base principles
Before I enumerate them, a note about base principles
Base principles guide difficult decisions with strong opinion. It’s about surfacing the heart of the conflict in a decision and put a stake firmly in the ground, to concur on what matters most to the people involved in the decision, and drive alignment.
We use base principles to align on business decisions at Twilio. I’m a fan of the clarity they drive, and thought of using them to describe my content selection process.
Authenticity is key. Decaf Product will strive to be authentic and original instead of following what is sexy or trendy, choosing to forgo conventional ‘do-s’ and ‘don’t-s’ for Radical Self Expression (I had to throw a Burning Man reference in there!).
Depth trumps breadth. I will be biased towards more specificity, depth and digging into key insights, versus broad strokes or covering a lot of ground in one article. When both are important, I will stagger the content over a multi-part piece.
Me first, then you. This sounds really cocky, but hear me out. This is first and foremost a blog about what I stand for and believe will be valuable for people to learn in the near-future. My intent is not to disregard what readers want, but I’d much rather do an awesome job delivering on something you didn’t know you needed, than a crappy job at something you asked for, where I may not be the most qualified to offer a reasonably wise opinion.
Game. What’s coming up?
I have some fun stuff planned for next posts, which I’m quite pumped to get grinding on. (In no particular order..)
Negotiate like a PM (why learning to negotiate is one of the first things you should prioritize as a new PM)
The sketchy guide to hacking your growth as a first time PM
Do Sales Engineers make good Product Managers? (exploring the technical sales path to PM in conversation with a few ex-SE>current PMs)
If these pique your interest, I’d love for you to stick around by subscribing to my substack newsletter!