Jason Knight  0:00  
Hello, and welcome to the show. I'm your host, Jason Knight. And on each episode of this podcast, I'd be having inspiring conversations with passionate product people. If that sounds like the sort of party you'd like to be invited to, why not head over to https://www.oneknightinproduct.com, where you can find interviews with some of the finest minds in and around product management, bins to back catalogue, subscribe on your favourite podcast app or share with your friends. And if you fancy popping some spare change into my tip jar to help with hosting costs, there's a handy donation link right up the top. On tonight's episode, we talked about moving from established tech companies with all their lovely processes norms and creating your own startup and having to work it all out for yourself. We talk about the product principles you should stick to those you can work out as you go along and some of the challenges of starting a company with a founder who lives 10,000 miles away. We also talk about the similarities between improv comedy and product management and how we might go from status quo to idea all the way through to the punch line. Through all this and much more, please join us on One Knight in Product.

Jason Knight  1:07  
So my guest tonight is I'm Amogh Sarda. Amogh's a former Atlassian and Intercom Product Manager term company founder who's currently struggling about 500 timezones in his day job when he can get some sleep. I'm also a keen performer and loves to take that MVP mentality onto the stage as an improv comedian. And marketing says a lot for product managers to learn from comedy, which certainly explains JIRA as a few things to say about product principles and how all of us product folks should be a little bit kinder to ourselves. I can assure you, I'm giving myself a hug as we speak. Hi, Amogh. How are you tonight?

Amogh Sarda  1:36  
Good. Okay, good. Feeling fresh, ready to talk.

Jason Knight  1:40  
So, first things first, you are one of the cofounders at Eesel, based out in Australia, with a team in Ireland, as far as I'm aware. But before we talk about your timezones, what problem does, he's also for me?

Amogh Sarda  1:52  
Yeah, so I mean, the problems pretty universal. In some sense, I think we've all kind of struggled to find the documents that we need to get our job done. Yeah, the classic example we tend to use is you can find Obama's shoe size on Google in a few seconds, but then finding your own, you know, meeting notes from yesterday, somehow, that ends up taking a bit longer. It's pretty obviously broken, right? And that was a pain we felt, I felt at Atlassian as well. And things sort of spiralled from there. It just felt like someone had to fix this. And it felt like there was a huge business to be made fixing in that sort of ways. 

Jason Knight  2:28  
Okay. So how are you fixing that specifically? Like, are you some kind of meta search engine that you can put across all your documents? And it sort of searches inside and categorises them? And lets you find that out? Or is there some other much more complicated way to describe that?

Amogh Sarda  2:43  
Yeah, I think that that sort of sums it up, I think instead of we bring all the documents that you have across all your different apps, right in your browser's new tab. So you know, whether it's a project brief in Google Docs, or a mirror board that you use for brainstorming, or design and figma, you can sort of search across all your web documents right in your browser, a new tab. And the sort of magical thing that we do is that it all kind of works without any setup. So you simply instal easel, and it actually uses your browser history to do sort of the heavy lifting, and just get set up in just seconds really? And yeah, the idea is that you can now start to build a shared source of truth for your teams, you know, with all the documents and folders that you've got, it's automatically organised inside easel. And that's sort of like the other big thing that we're pushing for is just automatically organising everything. Now. we're firm believers that a lot of this stuff, you know, a lot of the existing solutions that are out there today, because if you think about it, right, like it's not a problem we haven't tried to solve before. Yeah, we try to organise things into Google Drive folders or motion workspaces, or Confluence spaces or out a pin things on Slack threads, all kinds of things, right? These things are really hard to keep up to date. And so really, we think that the solution in this space sort of just needs to work. It doesn't need to depend on, you know, your colleague, or you remembering to put that one thing in that one place. It just needs to work as your work. And yeah, that's all I do.

Jason Knight  4:07  
Sounds good. And if you can save us from the hell of pins, Slack threads or random slack conversations, which basically become specifications, and you have to try and find them using Slack search, which isn't that great, either. I mean, yeah, pull in Slack stuff as well. Can you save us on that? 

Amogh Sarda  4:23  
Yeah. So right now, easel is only going to work with things inside the browser. So if you use Slack inside the browser, then it can work with slack as well. I think chances are people use the web app natively with Slack. I think there's there's definitely an argument to be made there will plug into that as well. I think in theory, any link that you're passing off on Slack is then being accessed inside the browser. We will then pull it from the browser as well. So I think in theory, we haven't really encountered it as a major problem yet that people are asking for that Eesel users are asking for but you're not That's

Jason Knight  5:01  
Fair enough. But you're talking about users there. So that assumes that you have some. So you're nearly two years in to the mission. I think so. Would you say that you've actually got Product Market Fit yet? Or is that still a kind of early adopter thing where you've got a few passionate people that are just trying it out? Like, how's that going for you?

Amogh Sarda  5:19  
I think we've got product market fit. I think I can confidently say that. So we've got, you know, people have been using us every day for a long, long time. Now, we've got pretty healthy retention. I mean, I think we've got, like some cool logos, or we've landed users in like Spotfire. Campo and like that. But I think even beyond that, I think, anecdotally, what screams to me product market fit is that, hey, you know, people have changed jobs. And they've brought easel with them. They've changed laptops, and they remember to instal these. When Eesel doesn't work, they fiercely complain, right? I think these signals really make me feel like okay, cool. We've got product market fit with the heart of the app. Today.

Jason Knight  6:00  
Yep. So that's interesting. And are you selling then into the company's like a b2b play, or people kind of getting on their credit cards product lead growth study, and just taking it with them as kind of almost like bring your own app type thing to their to their jobs?

Amogh Sarda  6:15  
Yeah, I think what you're touching on is pretty much the boundaries of where we're at today. So we've got this thing that people tend to use to find documents, and they use that themselves. These are daily, we're now at a point where we need to get distribution, right? Not enough people know about it, when they know about it, they stick around, but not enough people know about it. And so that's what we're trying to crack. We're building some team features. The idea is to, like you said, use that product plant growth, it's a bit of a buzzword phrase, in some sense now. But yeah, there's some credibility to it. So So I think the idea really is that we will grow virally inside teams where one person starts using useful and then they have some team features that unlock collaboration. And yeah, we're going to be heading into that b2b space and monetizing with these team plans.

Jason Knight  7:05  
Going upmarket. But you touched on it earlier. And we touched on it earlier that you're working very distributedly at the moment. So your co founder is from Ireland, I think, and I believe still lives in Ireland. You're in Australia, as we probably could have guessed. But that's like a 10 hours time difference or something like that. I guess that depends also on the time of year and daylight savings and all that sort of stuff as well. So that can't be easy. I know, we were chatting before this, that you having meetings in their mornings and your evenings. And that's something that a lot of people have to put up with when they're working for global organisations or distributed organisations. But from your perspective, like, how's that going? And do you have any top tips for distributed founding teams to actually make this stuff work?

Amogh Sarda  7:53  
Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think early stage startup life is sort of hard enough on its own, I think you're working so listen closely with someone. There is so much uncertainty you're dealing with? Yeah, pretty high, intense situation. So yeah, I think this whole asynchronous, I guess, adds another layer of fun, let's say for us. I think we've used it to our advantage. In some ways, I would say we've really pushed to develop this async work culture, you know, when COVID came around, really, weirdly didn't affect how we were operating, in some sense, like we were doing before it became cold, is what I'm saying. I think essentially, we have really built out the processes in a way that we can kind of hire anywhere. I think as a company, we're still really small, but even give you an example. We're looking to hire another engineer right now. And we have Kevin, who's on the team, who's an engineer, and He's based in Paris, but we're looking to hire another engineer now. And we're interviewing people from all over the place, even east coast US. So I think just generally, I guess what I'm trying to get out is that hey, there are some perks to this. I think it just means that we're super open when it comes to talent is one of them. I think another one is we're really, by definition anti meeting would be a big one. I think I bet a lot of the listeners probably can empathise with the day jam packed with lots of meetings. That was certainly my life at Atlassian. But yeah, I mean, by definition, we don't have that much overlap. We need to make the most of that when we do with reasonable hours. And so we optimise a lot to it, making decisions offline now on Slack or undocumented. So yeah, I'd say that's another one. But But I guess to your second point around tips for founders that are starting their journey into into these things, I guess at least age teams that are working really sad. I think my biggest tip would be to get really good at writing, I guess writing and reading and it sounds super Elementary. Trade, I think there's a lot we can do a sink than we give credit for. And so I think I'm certainly sort of like that, like, I think I default to, hey, can we just talk about this very quickly. But I think not being able to do that forces me to get clarity of thought, because I may now need to write down my thoughts. And then it's also forcing me to get really good at reading because a misunderstanding is a lot of friction, because if I misunderstand you, then I reply wrongly. And now I wait for your reply. And it just all sort of compounds. So it's really forcing me to learn how to read really well as well. Text and empathise with the readers of my message, right? I'm working on something that my team is working on something else, I need to be confident that I'm empathising, with their point of view when I'm writing and sharing enough context. So yeah, I think the main tip would be like, get really good at writing and reading I guess it sounds simple alphabet. 

Jason Knight  10:56  
I think you'd be surprised. I think it's also refreshing in the wake of the recent Elon Musk go back to work memo that there's people out there still fighting the good fight as well. But you touched on it just then as well, like, you've worked for a couple of decent sized product companies, well known product companies, you've gone from, presumably a fairly structured working environment to basically being able to make your own laws and kind of make things up on the fly a little bit if you really want to. So how's that been as a transition for you, like, moving away from that structured, everything being defined for you and kind of just being able to do what you want? Was that an easy transition for you?

Amogh Sarda  11:35  
I think you're touching on I would say the biggest difference between early stage life and waiting for I think last year was a good example, because they're even bigger than outcome. I think, yeah, the level of uncertainty that we have, right? I think, does train actually from a common thing is this some sort of PMF side of this analogy where you're in a house, and imagine, you know, the foundations of house, inside the house, your furniture, and so on. And you do different things to the house at different cadences. Right? You change the furniture of the house, maybe every couple of years, I guess, maybe paint, even within a longer timeframe, more years, let's say go by before you repaint the house, the foundations probably, you know, in some sense, never change. Or maybe they change when you demolish the house is something extreme there. But then, of course, you have on the other end of the spectrum, you have some things inside the house, like you know, the position of the headlamp, etcetera, which you can change, you know, more regularly, obviously. So I think the thing I'm trying to get at is that I think you've got these, this framework, and you've got different things that you're challenging and different cadences. And you have that it's at a company, it's analyse him, there were certain foundations, there are certain ways of working, there are certain things about the product, I wasn't going to suddenly question and be like, oh, yeah, this JIRA Software thing game. Like I don't know, if we should have done this. It wasn't given right. It was a given.

Jason Knight  12:59  
You should have... you should have asked that question.

Amogh Sarda  13:02  
I mean, have you seen the market cap? I use that argument? I think, yeah, well, obviously, there's some things you can't question. And then the things I was questioning where I think, are much smaller scale. And that's totally not the case. It's sort of life, right? Like, there is no framework, there is no house, I'm building the house as we're talking. And it's all just like, what is really something we can question? And what is something we shouldn't question? What is something we shouldn't be questioning and reinventing the wheel on. And that was something we really struggled with, I think it's tough. I think it's especially tough if you haven't worked with the people, before you start your early stage thing. And I've seen this pattern a few times, because I've seen my friends now, like a few of them, the X Atlassian. Actually, those are the people I tend to come in with, because they work in my time zones, unlike my colleagues. Yeah, so they, you know, a few of them are exit last year, and then it's just meant that their culture, their ways of working, it's just sort of got this Atlassian flavour to it. And so they kind of almost assumed this foundation to a lot of what they're doing. Whereas my co founder, I worked with one of them, but there was the other teammates who haven't worked with before. And there was a lot of, I'd say, questioning things that I was otherwise assuming is true. And so yeah, I think I think this level of layers of uncertainty is probably one of the toughest thing in early stage startup life and you need to kind of really confidently pull insights and you know, cement some things as truths. I say, to cement them as truth because you can still question them, but the cadence of questioning can't be every week, right? There's something's actually, this is kind of it. And we're not going to question this every day, right? Because we have all these other things we're going to if you're going to question everything every day, and then when I'm gonna make anywhere any progress, right? Yeah. So you kind of build layers of confidence layers of truth with varying degrees of confidence and varying degrees of cadences of Family question limit kind of progressed from there. So that's slowly been how we built these foundations, I would say with?

Jason Knight  15:06  
Absolutely, that sounds fair enough. And obviously kind of energising in some ways, and probably pretty stressful in other ways. But you gave a talk at Australian product tank event A while back where you talked about applying nuance to product principles. Now, that touches a lot on some of the stuff you just talked about, like, you know, what you question and how often you question it, and how there's no truth or there's only the truth that you make. And that sort of attitude, I guess, makes a lot of sense. But, again, you've worked for some pretty decent companies, as we've said, had these standardised processes, norms, principles, and so forth. So when you're talking about applying nuance to product principles, like, where do you start, like, going back to the house analogy, if you've kind of got to work out the basic plans, like the core architecture, like where the windows and the doors are gonna go, and stuff like that? Where do you start? And how principled do you have to be for how long before you can start being flexible? As we've kind of touched on?

Amogh Sarda  16:06  
I think, when it comes to applying principles, I think there are probably only a finite set of really, really fundamental things that you need to be doing all the time, I would actually struggle to even articulate what those are. Principles, I mean, it's a thing where you see around like, people will explain what they did. And, you know, the principle that they drew from it, but then there's always a little asterix and a caveat that Oh, actually, this may not apply to you, or actually, in these situations, you should apply your new answer makes sense or not, etc. So just so you know, if you get a bit abstract, what are the most foundational, always apply kind of product principles that we have? And I would struggle to actually give you one? And I think I think one that does come to mind. And it's a bit too meta, in some sense for some people, which I think is fair enough, would be really that product is the discovery of truth. And this is perhaps not even a principle. But I think it's just a way of approaching product. I think that holds true. And I don't think there's any caveat to this. So this is a stone cold fact, that I don't think is debatable, in some sense, I think product is a discovery of truth. And so what I mean by that, I think that a lot of product work is essentially trying to understand the real problems that people have, and you know, not the problems we want them to have, or we wish they had, but really the reality of their situation. What are they genuinely struggling with right now? The reality of their world? Besides just the problem you have? What are what are the other tools that they're using? In this case? Are the other things that are doing about the problem? What if they do look like what their anxieties are? You get the gist. So really, I'm saying the truth of their world, and understanding the truth of the landscape in general, you know, what are the industry trends that you should be aware of? Things like that, and understanding even the, I guess, once you do build things, understanding the truth of the impact, that's hard, and so on, so you can kind of see where I'm going with this. I think, I think, if I was to like, really generalise the fundamental thing that could hold without any questioning, I think it'd be just this principle, maybe there's something else I don't know, I haven't spent too long in the meta clouds of product thinking. Because apart from anything other than me, would have done that. But yeah, I think more specifically, though, when it comes to applying product principles, I think the main point that I tend to make is that, and when I say product principles, I mean more concrete things like, Hey, you should always start with the problem. I think there are a lot of points around saying no, when it comes to strategy, right? That's the general let's say, vibe around product culture around saying no, that's how you bring focus. That's how you've got to pull your Steve Jobs s persona and bring focus because that's what builds good product. So I think the nuanced in my head comes to these kinds of things where you have all these product principles that actually think could go with a little bit more nuance. So maybe I can pick one and clarify that. Let's start with the you know, you should always start with the problem. But actually, I think there's a lot of credibility to starting with solutions, just at the start at very least, I think solutions are sort of where you can bounce ideas right into the space of solutions is sort of where we can bounce ideas, blend our creative juices flowing, in some sense, as it's sort of the comic side of our brains. And sure you need to edit that down and, of course, ground yourself on problems eventually. But I think there's a lot of value to be said that, hey, when someone comes to you, with a random idea, could be inspired by some random new tech that came up, but they came across or just even the new design pattern, you know, whatever, whatever may be the inspiration. I think there's there's some value in sort of, yes ending that and if I can use this face for improv, to build upon that idea. Is and see where you can take this. And then of course, bring it back to the reality of problems at some point later on. That's it. I'm not just saying this in a vacuum. A great example of where someone has done this is Alexa. Right? Alexa didn't start as some concrete. We need this thing because this is gonna solve this problem. It was really just someone watching 2001 Space Odyssey. And then it sort of evolved from there and then someone else watching Star Trek and I'm not even joking. Like this is sort of how I went from one movies iterator to another Vivian's for inspiring someone else to the Alexa that we see today. So yeah, I think I think I think there's something to be said around by nuancing These principles.

Jason Knight  20:43  
Absolutely, I think is much more important to be flexible and adapt to the situation and use all of the different tools within your armoury rather than being too wedded to a particular process or following a certain framework or anything like that. But yeah, I guess it's definitely an interesting one. But let's move away from the metaphysical and into the humorous and talk a little bit about your forays into improv comedy, which you just mentioned, as well. Now, you wrote an article called your product is a joke. But before we saw the contents of that article, I'm sure we've all worked for a bunch of comedy products, by the way. How did you get into improv in the first place?

Amogh Sarda  21:23  
Yeah, I got into improv purely out of chance. I think I was at Atlassian at the time, and there was someone who came in to do a random exercise on public speaking, I think they were someone from the National Institute of Dramatic Arts here in Sydney. That's probably where one of the where all the cool hip actors, Australian actors and actresses they you probably went to. And yeah, this person just came ran a workshop on this. And it was an improv, right. But it was something to do with speaking and moving our bodies. And it was just so fun. I just thought this is this is what I want to be doing a bit more of. And that's sort of where I got into improv. I took a class and things sort of spiralled from there. And yeah, I started performing at some point.

Jason Knight  22:13  
Sounds fantastic is something that I've never imagined being able to do. But it's good to know that you can be trained to do it. But the article does talk about how improv principles translate into product management. Back to this, your product is a joke concept. So not that your product is a joke itself. But the way that you build products could be very much seen as, conceptually is the way that you build up these improv jokes and these skits that you do. You call out three specific areas of the process of framing and improv skills. So let's chat a little bit about how they map. So first of all, you talk about the bass reality, which sounds very grand and very, maybe maybe even metaphysical on its own. But how do you define the base reality? How does that translate between the two? Yeah,

Amogh Sarda  23:07  
I love how much of a philosopher I sound like. Definitely. Convert. Yeah. So I think the what is base reality so so an improv the base reality? Is that who want where? Right? So I guess we should maybe even clarify what improv comedy is, before we get into these specific things. Improv comedy, improvisational theatre, maybe the the general thing is really creating things, creating scenes on stage with perhaps an audience prompt. But beyond that, it's all sort of made up on the spot, right? You've got two three people, you can have more people, but they're just kind of conversing and making humour out of nothing. In some sense. It sounds crazy on the outside, right? Oh, like, wow, I would not be able to just go on stage and come up with these jokes just on this one. Turns out actually, a lot of people can be trained on this turns out comedy is pretty formulaic. I think, much of an art in some sense, I think people would make you believe I think our own intuition would make you believe, I think, anyway, I'm digressing. So yeah, base reality is the who, what, where, so when, let's say two people are on stage. A key principle in improv, that's a key thing with improv is that you have these guidelines, you know, these just like in product, land and subsets, we have these guidelines and these principles that sort of make things a bit easier. So if you're a bit lost, maybe default back to one of the principles can help you steer in some way. So it's the same in improv, or you have this principle. And the principle is, hey, usually, if two people onstage and say, they should establish who they are at some point, because the audience needs to know that they need to know that themselves, like, you're not going to take the scene somewhere if, you know, we don't know if we're friends, or we don't know if Yeah, you know, what, mother and son and so on. There needs to be some relationship there. And that's probably like the biggest thing actually, you really need to bring up a relationship because that's really the foundation everything you need to know where you are. Maybe you don't know what you're doing maybe. So yeah, these are the foundations, I guess you could say the backdrop, right? Yeah, who is going to be funny that what's not going to be funny the way it's not going to be funny? I mean, it could be right. It could be that it doesn't need to be in some sense. It's totally fine. If it's just a husband, and their partner, let's say, just in the kitchen, cutting the veggies in an evening, that's totally fine. It could also be Batman and Superman, in, you know, meeting in the laundry, trying to do their laundry, let's say, that's funny on its own, as well. But yeah, it doesn't need to be funny is what I'm saying. Because the game, the funny part comes later. So maybe I should just compare what the base reality is to product. In product, what I'm getting at is that, hey, the base reality is sort of the truth of what people are doing today with your product, about their problem, if they're not using your product, you know who they are, things like that. So understanding this base reality, without necessarily bringing anything funny in some sense. And what I mean by funny in the context of product is, without necessarily bringing any unique insight, you don't need a unique insight when it comes to understanding the base reality. Base reality is the base reality, it's the foundation and on top of which the good stuff comes.

Jason Knight  26:17  
That makes a lot of sense. But you then talked about the game. The second part now, I know a game is but in the context of improv, and then transfer into product, what is the game? And by the way, just for all my listeners, you've all just lost the game.

Amogh Sarda  26:33  
So yeah, in improv, the game is the unique insight. And so the general premise is that cool, you've got this base reality, and then you're trying to now unpack the funny, right? There's just gonna be a boring scene of two people just in the base reality, there's something unusual that you're trying to find. And then you try to unpack that unusual, right? And that comes later. So that's what the game is. You need to identify the game and kind of call it out. So in the case of the Batman and Superman, doing their laundry, I've sort of coupled the game and that actually, the game is how unusual that they're doing their laundry, like, of course, they need to do their laundry, okay, they need to do their laundry, what else do they need to do? That's super common? Like, do they also go and get coffee? Just like I do? And do they also brush their teeth? Actually, how does that work, and so so things like that, so So that's, you can see where I'm going. Like, that was the game, the game was super natural people doing everyday natural, boring things, that's amusing. So that's the game. And in product, it's similar sort of thing where you find your unique insight that then that is really what you're going to be doubling down on that no one else is doubling down on in some sense, something you might have an unfair advantage on. And that's going to be in some sense, the core thesis of your existence as a as a company as a product. And so you know, an example I guess, maybe I should ground all this would be a canvas based reality candidate, the design tool, that base reality would be a cool, a lot of designers have designed tools. And their game would be non designers also have design need, right? That's their game like that's the that's a specific, unique insight that they had that they then double down on it to build such a huge company.

Jason Knight  28:21  
Yeah. But you wrap this then with a, either a funny scene or a great product, depending on which track we're on. So let's go all out, come over outputs here and consider the funny scene and the great product as the outputs and success as the outcome. So we're basically we're bringing it home, either onstage in front of a bunch of people or in front of a bunch of potentially willing buyers. How do you bring it all home in both contexts?

Amogh Sarda  28:46  
So I think once you've got the base reality once you've got the game once you've identified it, well, it's just about cashing in on that game, right? It's about exploring the impact of the game in different situations. And heightening it. So how crazy. Can we take this out? Crazy? Can this be? So what's the most in the case of this Batman Superman? By the way, I'm totally making this up.

Jason Knight  29:10  
Or you're improving on the spot.

Amogh Sarda  29:13  
So I haven't done it forever in a few hours, because I've started to be back I guess. This is Batman Superman scene that we just started making up on the fly. In this case, a case of heightening would be you know what is because the game is supernatural. People doing really, really basic, boring natural things. How far can we take this? Like, what is the most boring thing that I do that I'm gonna make Superman or Batman do right now? I don't know. I don't know what the most boring thing is maybe having a vacuum, I guess. I think maybe that would be the most boring thing. So yeah, it's sort of heightening things really far. And in product. What we're trying to say here is that hey, you've got this unique insight. And I think this is where I would say a lot of people tend to be led astray. I think with early stage startup life, I think we just talked about the uncertainties of early stage startup life, and how you've got all these things you can question, I think what tends to happen is that people sort of lose focus, they go, Well, this is the game. But then actually, that's also a game maybe. And actually, that looks like a cool game. And then they sort of spread themselves thin. And just like in comedy, you to keep focus, it's not funny, if there are 50 different things happening, like the game is just all there 10 games in this Batman Superman thing. They're doing boring things. But then in the middle, there was also some random alien that comes out of nowhere. And it's just unusual, like relationship conflicts with Superman and their partner and Batman and things like that. You just don't want to have 10 Different games happening at the same time. And comedy is the same product, you need to keep focus, because that's really fistful, your resources are finite. But that's really how you can have a cohesive thing that you built a company, a product team, and so on. And, yeah, so So that's sort of what you did you explore and you heighten all the way to build a funny thing. You know, you ask questions, like, cool, if this game is true, you know, what else is true? From there? Why is it true? You try to unpack this game. So I mean, I can use Ezel, as an example here. Our game really, is that people tend to say the base reality is that, hey, it's hard to find the documents that I need to do my job. And then I would say one of the key insights that we had is that actually, people generally just need to refer to the documents that they've seen already. Right? Yeah. It's not like they're usually trying to find something that they've never seen before. They don't even know exists. It's usually it's like, I know, someone said this to me, like five months ago, two weeks ago, or I saw this yesterday, but I just don't know where it is. That was our game. And that was like that aha moment where we went, Okay, cool. Maybe you just using your browser history actually takes us really far. And then we started to unpack that, we went, Okay, perhaps we could actually go really far. We don't even need API integrations to connect with all these different apps, we could just use your browser history and a plug in with all their docs that you've seen and just surface that and let you search over the things that you've seen before. And then we kept doubling down on that. And we Okay, web standard. Well, there's all these other other benefits of using the browser, it means that it'll works with any app inside the browser, even if it doesn't have API integration. So if works with your company, internal tool, which may never have an API, if works with funky, new product on the app that doesn't even exist today, it will work with that if it's in the browser. So you can see what I'm getting out here. Like we didn't know all this when we first stumbled on the game of browser history, which unpacked that more and more. And we discovered this, and here we are today.

Jason Knight  32:52  
Here we are today. No, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. And I think one of the things that occurred to me, as you were talking that through as alongside the focus, it's almost this kind of keep it simple, stupid type approach where you just need to focus and simplify what you're doing and not try. And because I can imagine in an improv situation, as you can have, when you're given a talk or something like that, you start to almost interrupt yourself and go down rabbit holes, because things occur to you as you're going. Like you say, you're sitting there and you're just creating this almost a world of stuff as you go. And then you basically find it really hard to get back in the room because it's so you've kind of just meandered too far off the original point. So I guess, again, that does translate a lot to making sure that you focus your product, making sure that you make the good decisions around a core and not try and go too wide too quickly. And where can people find you after this if they want to get in touch? Find out more about easel or challenge on some product management principles or maybe even try and start off an improv skit?

Amogh Sarda  33:59  
Yeah, I think the easiest place would be the Eesel.app. So that's a E E S E L dot app. And you'll find the blog there or my Twitter handle, which is @amoghito. I'm always keen for a chat about improv or product.

Jason Knight  34:18  
Go I'll be sure to link that into the show notes. And hopefully you'll be getting some people collaborated with you on some Tiktok input on a channel.

Amogh Sarda  34:28  
So I haven't gotten on Tik Tok yet, so yeah, that's definitely on the to do list,

Jason Knight  34:32  
There's always time. Well, that's been a fantastic chat. So obviously really good to spend some time with you on some interesting times philosophical topics. Hopefully we can stay in touch. But yeah, that's for now. Thanks for taking the time. 

Amogh Sarda  34:45  
Thank you.

Jason Knight  34:47  
As always, thanks for listening. I hope you found the episode inspiring and insightful. If you did again, I can only encourage you to hop over to https://o.com, check out some of my other fantastic guests sign up to the mailing list, subscribe on your favourite podcast app and make sure you share your friends so you and they can never miss another episode again I'll be back soon with another inspiring guest but as for now thanks and good nights