Ankur Sharma

This post has been long due. Around a month back, I did a talk on "How to Play & Win the Product Management Career Game" which was my way of saying "How to crack that elusive Product Manager Interview". Now most of us end up reading, Cracking the PM Interview , because everyone else has read that and it is a lovely book. But the challenge with it in the Indian context is, that well, it doesn't really fit in. To crack Indian company interviews, every good PM ends up making his own "Cracking the PM Interview". The attached presentation is mine. I am kind of open sourcing it so that more people can benefit off it. Please do let me know your feedback and share it with others who you believe are preparing for PM interviews. Anyone who needs further help can reach out directly. Will be happy to help in person. How to play & win the product management career game from Ankur Sharma

Last year, Cirque Du Soleil , came for the first time to India. For the uninitiated, Cirque Du Soleil, is the largest theatrical producer in the world and renowned for their shows all over the world especially in Las Vegas. It is a 34 year old organisation and has been a pioneer in terms of live stage show innovations. When they came to India, they especially designed their 43rd show, Bazzar , comprising Indian performers and even a performance based on Indian traditional sport called  Mallakhamba I went to see them with the family and it was revelation watching them. I learnt a lot about running a show and making sure the experience stays with the audience even after they leave the performance. Sharing some thoughts. Teamwork works best with things at stake for team members  : Almost all of their performance were team bound. They were such a marvellous piece of teamwork despite being dangerous, that each one can be taught as case study. What really worked in my op

I am a voracious reader and by experimentation have figured out that books and longreads are always better in ideas sticking longer with you than blogs, since they help reinforce the ideas with structure. Also, with them, you have the liberty to take pauses to deliberate on the idea and come back.  This year, 2018, I ran an experiment via books. I went deeper into specific themes and ideas via books. In 2018, my themes to understand ideas were Crypto, Behavioural Psychology and Greek Mythology. The reason I chose these themes were varied but primarily to understand the long term impact on I being a product person and parent of a 4 year old. Apart from these themes, I also read Autobiographies/Biographies which have remained my constant companion for over 5 years now, considering they help me peek into people mind - People who are/were successful in their respective fields.  Without further ado, here are my top 10 books. I am adding Goodreads link instead of A

This week, I spent time at IIT Guwahati giving pre-placement talk and the next whole day at the placement process trying to find our next Product Managers. The idea was to find someone who could join MakeMyTrip's Young Turks Program.  I and my colleague went through 258 profiles who had applied for the Product Management role. The number made us realise that it was one of the hotly contested role in the campus. We had some real good profiles - Students who were undisputedly working on super hot stuff!  While the shortlisting itself was a herculean tasks, eventually we could whittle it down to a manageable number. And when we started speaking to theses folks, I was blown away with the clarity in their thought process. Following are my observations from the experience: Electronics Engineers have finally found a niche! : When I was in college, placement for E&CE was always a tangential experience. Either you go to IT companies prevalent then (there were rarely any p

cc: Ben Ward While at a event  yesterday, discussing what an aspiring product manager should read, I mentioned the list of blogs I usually read. It ignited a lot of discussion. So here I am sharing the list of all what I usually read. Please take your pick. VC Blogs: Fred Wilson Blog : AVC   Benedict Evans:  http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans Mark Suster:  https://bothsidesofthetable.com Hunter Walk:  https://hunterwalk.com Sam Altman:  http://blog.samaltman.com Paul Graham:  http://www.paulgraham.com Chris Dixon:  https://medium.com/@cdixon/ Brad Feld:  http://www.feld.com Product Management Blog: Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG):  http://www.svpg.com/articles Stratechery:  https://stratechery.com Accidental Product Manager:  http://theaccidentalpm.com Good PM, Bad PM: Ben Horowitz Seminal paper on Product Management Technology News: Global (Primary):  http://www.techmeme.com Global (Secondary):  https://www.techinasia.com TechCircle:  http://t

cc: Katy While Google promptly fixed it, MS took its own sweet time and previously generated OneDrive shortened URLs are still vulnerable - LINK Not all productivity tools yield productivity. Slack turned it upside down for Agilebits - LINK Yes, you can build a sustainable income from apps. Here's how - LINK 1 , LINK 2 Looking a HackerRank like solution for podcasts. Here it is - LINK An open source project is revealing salaries at MS, Google and Amazon - LINK “Your performance is tied 100% to your attitude.”. OR as Coach Katia Verresen says, Abundant Thinking - LINK

cc: alienratt I have been hearing since eternity that how bad is Kindle for reading PDFs. The fact is everyone who says is has been doing it wrong. They transfer them directly via USB and grumble how bad PDFs look on Kindle. As far as reading PDFs on Kindle is concerned, don't transfer them directly.  Instead, do the following: 1. Go to your respective Amazon website ( http://www.amazon.in/ or http://www.amazon.com/ etc) 2. Sign-in with the e-mail id you have registered on Kindle 3. On the Top Nav, under Hello, drop-down, go to "Manage your content & devices". Quite , like this: amazon.in  2. In "Settings" tab, look for "Send-to-Kindle E-Mail Settings" - you will have an email id with @ kindle.com 3. Send  your desired pdf  to this @ kindle.com email  id from your registered email id as an attachment, with subject of email as CONVERT, nothing else in the email 4. You will have the book in your kindle in few min