Aswath Krishnan

In a West Wing episode, President Bartlett returns from a trip to India with chess sets. He challenges Toby and Sam to games, while simultaneously dealing with China's aggression in Taiwan. When Sam tries to guess the right solution, Bartlett responds "Look at the whole board". Chess is a good example to understand what it means to be strategic in business, politics or any other aspect of life.  To be a chess player, you need to first understand the rules, and the advantages and disadvantages of pieces and positions. This comes through learning, practice and reflection.  To be a good chess player, you have to look at the whole board. You have to think about and use all the pieces and positions at your disposal, not just some of them.  You have to think of multiple moves ahead to try and create advantages and ultimately, a win. You have to predict the opponent's responses, keeping in mind past behaviors, strengths and weaknesses.  Things change - there are surprises ...

I received a powerful advice yesterday that's likely going to change how I communicate. I was putting together a product roadmap deck for an exec review meeting. The deck was organized by initiatives and features, with slides that had text descriptions and mocks. It was pretty dry and soulless. My manager suggested framing it as a customer journey and making it more concrete.  My UX partner and I took the advice and changed the deck to frame it as a story of a user. We gave the user a name, a photo, and shared imagery and details about the user's life and goals. We added a realistic journey of the user's day-to-day and weaved in natural interactions with the product and new features. We included how the user would come across a feature, how they'd react and how they'd feel. In between the story lines, we added discussion sections to dive into the functionality and business details of the product features.  The deck turned out remarkably better - it was much more eng...

We tend to overestimate the short-term, and underestimate the longer-term and power of compounding.  One advice that has served me well when making decisions - whether on choosing my next job, making a hire, investing in a stock or idea, or pursuing an interest - is to focus more on the trajectory, rather than where the options are right now. An article that I read recently advices to pick " springboard careers " - the ones that take you to the next job or life that you want. Chamath Paliapitiya advices to evaluate stocks by as a multiple of their expected revenue in 3 years.  Investing 101: Whether it’s been my job, my life or my investing, I’ve learned that ”longterm-ism” is an important key to success. I’ve gotten the most back when I invested my time, vulnerability and money with very few short term expectations but many long term ones. — Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath) September 17, 2020 Consider 2 companies - Company A is valued at $300M and Company B is valued at $1B....

Some of my friends tell me they want to start a blog. Most never do; some stop after just one or two posts. I have had similar starts and stops too. This isn't unlike what happens with other hobbies too. One common reason why people stop is because they write or do the hobby for others. They write to self-promote. They write as they expect others to read, share, comment, or give them a shout out. They write to get viral or famous. When those things don't happen and they likely don't for a long time, they stop.   I think the best way to keep yourself motivated to keep writing (or any other hobby) is to do it for the joy of doing, rather than for any outside recognition or outcome. I write to get clarity. I write to systematically explore a topic and understand my thoughts and conclusions on it. I write to remember and consolidate things I learn or insights I think of, so that I can look back on them 10 or 30 years from now. I write to be creative and play with words. I write...

All of us, however rich, old, smart we are, start with 24 hours every day. How we fill these 24 boxes is how we live our lives.  Most of us need 8 hours of sleep on average. 😴 What is life without even an hour of relaxation?. Maybe read a book, hang out with friends or watch a TV show. 😊  We need an hour to eat our 2-3 meals, shower, poop etc. 🍴 Most of us have chores (or people) to take care of - cooking, dishes, washing clothes, tidying up. Let's set aside an hour for that. 🧹  We need to take care of our body. Let's take 30-60 mins of exercise. 💪  🏁 We are halfway through the day! 🏁 Note that all these activities are kind of essential to survive, not just now but for the rest of our lives. If you have an existential crisis, you should have just half an existential crisis with this realization :). 

  Each of us are a part of many systems. We are born into some systems, like family or government, and we opt into others like jobs, partnerships, friends or neighborhoods.  Systems generally give us something (increase survival, convenience, or joy) and place obligations (like taxes or rules) on us in return. Systems can have significant consequences on our lives. For example, taxes to governments are the largest spend for many of us and we give the government permission to imprison us and take away our freedom if we don't abide by its rules.  The fundamental requirement of healthy systems is that they should benefit all members in them - i.e. belonging to the system should be better than going solo.  Individuals forced to be in a system that doesn't improve their well being is oppression.  Living in healthy systems can be better than going solo for many reasons - many things are more efficient at scale, specialization+cooperation increases productivity, and gr...

Our generation - the first one to have started a career after the internet and social media boom - has been inundated with advice to "pick a career you are passionate about" or to do your "life's work". Every new age company, at least in Silicon Valley - from food delivery to marketing automation - now uses the passion playbook to pitch their employees or candidates on why their mission to deliver burritos is so world changing and the most important part of your life.  Not surprisingly, we have collectively developed a borderline obsession with our careers. We spend a lot of time working and thinking or talking about our work, we expect to love it, we are anxious about our path, we feel the pressure to grow quickly and update our Linkedin with fancy titles, and we try to derive our status and purpose from it. This is quite a change from our parents and grandparents who had fewer options, stayed at one or two jobs their entire lives, and hardly talked about their...