Case studies leading two products @ VRBO — Once a company finds a product-market fit, i.e., …

A 1-on-1 is only effective if you take them seriously and prepare for them. — 1-on-1s are a common managerial practice, but few among us recognize their real importance and impact, and fewer still know to do them effectively. I know this was true for me. I spent the early years of my career at startups. Time was scarce, and 1-on-1s were used to escalate…

And avoiding the common mistakes that derail most test efforts. — This article is the 3rd one in my series of articles about A/B Testing. In the first article, I presented the intuition behind A/B testing and the importance of establishing the magnitude of the effect you hope to observe and corresponding sample size. In the second article, I talked about…

Choosing whether to split the test when a user lands on your website vs. when they get exposed to your test can significantly impact how long your test takes to complete. — When I started my A/B testing, there were several things that I understood at a superficial level (stuff I had read in books or online videos). However, I was fortunate to have colleagues that helped me understand these ideas intuitively, including basic concepts behind test design. …

Case study: Shopify Fulfillment Network — I’ve observed that product managers tend to get hyper-focused on day-to-day execution and delivery which means that they don’t pay sufficient attention to the macro trends in their industry. …

A Primer for New Product Managers — Purpose What is the point of hypothesis tests such as A/B Tests? For that matter, why do we test new things? What are the results of the A/B Tests telling us? How confident should you feel about the result of the A/B Test? How do you really understand what is happening…

Imagine for a second, you are a product manager of a product that helps doctors diagnose whether a patient “may” have cancer by looking at the photographic scans of the human tissue and then making a prediction about the presence / or absence of cancer. Now clearly, doctors have been…

When a product manager begins to use Artificial Intelligence (or machine learning) for the first time, especially in a use case that directly involves an end-user, she is faced with a decision: Should I use Automate the user task or should I Augment it? Here is a couple of example…

From 2009 to today, we’ve seen Airbnb grow from a fledgling startup to a behemoth in the vacation rental / alternative accommodation marketplace. This level of growth, especially in 2 sided marketplaces, does not happen by accident. Over the last 2 years, as I’ve worked at Vrbo, I’ve tried to…