Bo Peng

New episode of the Product for Product Podcast out now 🚨 A calm mind makes better product decisions. Key Quote:"Creation becomes meaningful when the one who creates becomes clear." That’s the thread running through this entire conversation with Product Leader Bhavesh Ratanpal, author of Product Ashtangi. Ashtangi is a practitioner of the eight limbed path of yoga. Eight principles that build self awareness, discipline, and clarity of mind. Bhavesh connects the eight limbs of Ashtanga yoga to modern product practice. Not as a wellness exercise. As a way to lead with clarity instead of reacting from ego. As a PM this hit home for me. The moments I’ve made my worst decisions were the moments I was least at peace. Calm and in control is a product skill most of us never talk about. Moshe and I really enjoyed this one. If you lead product and want to bring more intention to how you work and decide, give it a listen. Listen below👇 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eGzD5WzZ Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/e7r6A4qC YouTube: https://lnkd.in/esjsNraF Amazon Music: https://lnkd.in/ezmcequP Spreaker: https://lnkd.in/ewak65rW

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As founders, year-end wraps are not about celebrating milestones, they are about checking whether the direction compounds.   2025 was a year of execution at ideazmeet. Not growth for growth’s sake, but building the underlying rails required for a manufacturing ecosystem to scale.   Our focus stayed deliberate: • Expanding the network with manufacturers who actively engage (28,000+) • Moving beyond discovery into repeat workflows and real collaboration • Investing early in AI-led flows that reduce friction instead of adding layers • Building credibility through ecosystem conversations, not noise   One signal we are paying close attention to as we enter 2026 is that more sourcing conversations are beginning to progress beyond intent and into execution-ready workflows.   That transition matters.    Manufacturing does not fail due to lack of supply or demand. It fails in the handoff between trust, context, and delivery.   What is becoming clear is that workflows proven in India’s fragmented manufacturing base translate naturally to global sourcing corridors. Some of that execution is now starting to take shape, with a focus on closing the gap between discovery and delivery. 2026 is about depth, stronger execution, cleaner handoffs, and scaling what already works.    #ManufacturingTech #B2B #DigitalInfrastructure #MakeInIndia #ideazmeet #dotsupply  

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After watching insights from Ryan K. Rigney, Kenan Saleh, Emily Bennett, Fareed Mosavat, and Troy Kirwin on the a16z speedrun investor roundtable, I realized just how much of startup applications is about clarity, honesty, and founder-market fit. This was such an insightful video, it told me what I need to double down on and what needs to change in my application and that is REALLY valuable. Here's the key points: Market > Team > Traction. This is most partners look into your app, if one of these pillars is weak make sure to keep the other two strong. Bragging is encouraged but lying is beating yourself down, if you are not full time on your idea, no need to tick it, when you do not show the progress a good full time founding team can make in a particular time duration it shows in your application and the Investors aren't dumb, there is a reason they put a part time option in there too. Even though they don't have a lot of time for reading the application, give as much information about yourself as you can. No need to hold back, the trick is in articulating it well and how much you can convey in how little words - which again does not mean you have to use less words. From my understanding rather than using less words and delivering less go all out, they will read it thoroughly if everything leads to how you are the best fit for the idea. Not hollow words though. A trusted partner from Highschool is more valuable than another elite you met 3 days ago in an event, the point isn't that the elite is bad, it is that for things challenges up ahead you need someone you can trust to watch the flag when you're not looking and having someone you can open up to was highly encouraged. I learnt so much of what I need to change and so much I need to double down on more. One underrated thing I feel they did was sending this video in a mail just after the applications were over so that people who didn't make it could leverage it and keep up the confidence to apply in the next batch, this small effort goes a long way... Here's the link if you wanna watch it for yourself: https://lnkd.in/ggr9mQ7K #Startups #VC #Founders #a16z #Speedrun #Entrepreneurship #StartupLife #AIStartups #FounderJourney #BuildInPublic

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Few weeks ago at ACE Kathmandu , a Avinash Gupta Dai threw an open question to the room: "What product do you want to build?" Over 20 ideas came out. I was listening with a product enthusiasm ear and what I noticed wasn't the ideas themselves. It was the pattern underneath them. 5 Clusters I Observed 1. Trust & Verification Infrastructure Fact checker via AI · Digitization of citizen wards · Digital voting · Rental booking verification 2. Government & Citizen Services Single window for government · LLM for government services · Community for better governance · Digitization for citizen service access 3. Agritech & Rural Economy Analytics for farmers · Cold storage availability · Producer-to-consumer direct · AI in agri production · Health records for farmers 4. Legal & Financial Access Legal assistance in plain language · Credit score with privileged services · Legal NLP interface 5. Lifestyle, Learning & AI Assistance Offline teaching courses · Caretaker platform · Lifestyle app · Travel itinerary AI · App-behaviour recommendations · Local form auto-fill My observation: Every single idea was a response to a broken system not a gap in entertainment or convenience. This room wasn't building the next social app. They wanted to fix trust, access, and information asymmetry. That's not a startup trend. That's a society articulating its pain points through technology. My Perspective as a Product Consultant The ambition is right. The sequencing is where most will stumble. Three things I'd tell every person who raised their hand that day: → Start with one user, one pain, one measurable outcome. "Single window for government" is a 5-year program. "Helping a small business owner submit one tax document without a middleman" is a product you can ship in 3 months. → The infrastructure problem is real don't ignore it. Offline courses, local form-fill, cold storage availability these all signal that connectivity and physical reach aren't solved. Your distribution strategy is as important as your feature list. → Many of these need regulatory alignment before product-market fit. Digital voting, legal AI, credit scoring these aren't just UX problems. Build your government and stakeholder relationships as early as your MVP. The ideas in that room weren't naive. They were honest. And Nepal's next generation of builders deserves more than enthusiasm they deserve frameworks to actually execute. If you were in that room or building something in this space I'd love to talk. #ProductThinking #Nepal #Startups #ACEKathmandu #GovTech #Agritech #Fintech #ProductStrategy #Entrepreneurship #KathmanduTech

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Fintech Product Management: EXPECTATIONS vs. REALITY Expectation Build a slick UI, get users to click "Verify," and watch the numbers scale. Reality * Navigating evolving RBI & regulatory guidelines in real-time. * Solving for high drop-offs in CKYC fetches. * Mastering DigiLocker integrations to ensure government-verified data flows are seamless and instant. * Engineering defenses against deepfake fraud to stay ahead of synthetic identities. My journey as a Senior PM at Decentro has been a masterclass in the latter. When I first started interacting with FinTechs, I realized that "onboarding" isn't just a screen - it’s a complex trust exercise. I remember my first interaction with a Merchant; it was a reality check on why "moving fast" must coexist with "moving securely". Whether it's perfecting a DigiLocker-driven journey or optimizing a CKYC fetch, the goal is always the same: Making the gate invisible without ever leaving it unlocked. India isn’t just following the global fintech roadmap; in the identity and onboarding space, we are writing it. Proud to be building the infrastructure that makes "Trust-as-a-Service" possible for thousands of businesses. #Fintech #ProductManagement #DigiLocker #KYC #Onboarding #Decentro #FraudPrevention

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Devashish and I dissect apps every week to uncover unique growth loops. Last week we looked at one designed to be non-addictive. We met when he was at Fabulous building growth systems. Our product conversations turned into this weekly thing where we pick an app and tear it apart. This week: PokPok, a kids' learning app with no notifications, no streaks, no rewards. Just slow, calm, hand-drawn interactions. Interesting to me because I've spent years building habit loops and gamification. They're making $500k/month, 90% of parents say their kids are calmer, Apple Design Award winner. But their onboarding? They throw you into a paywall after 4 screens without showing what the app does or how it makes kids calmer. We ended up talking about how apps need to design for intrinsic motivation - users enjoying the action itself instead of relying on streaks and external rewards as the primary driver. Here's a snippet from the conversation! If you want to watch the whole conversation https://lnkd.in/grdraW_u

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I just curated a list of 20 proven, top-tier candidates (IIT grads, YC alumni, ex-FAANG, and top startup operators) actively exploring new roles along with their current base comp. Ex-Founders: 1/ Principal Product Designer @top YC W21 AI security platform. Ex-Delhivery, founded a studio serving Infosys & Landmark Group. 11+ yrs exp, 64 LPA 2/ Chief of Staff to CEO @one of India's largest fashion e-commerce platforms. Co-founded a YC-backed social shopping platform. UCLA Anderson MBA, 9+ yrs exp Backend: 1/ Senior SWE @fast-growing enterprise AI platform. Ex-UiPath, YC S19 startup. IIT Indore grad, 4+ yrs exp, 40 LPA 2/ SWE @top Indian payments platform. Ex-Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley. 6+ yrs exp, 55 LPA Frontend: 1/ Founding FE @$9M-funded AI financial platform. Ex-Bitgo. 6+ yrs exp, 60 LPA 2/ Senior FE @fast growing fintech platform. Ex-Hevo Data (multiple promotions). 6+ yrs exp, 40 LPA Full Stack: 1/ Full Stack @$11M-funded AI sales platform. Shipped LLM apps with LangChain. Ex-Roost AI. IIT Bombay grad, 5+ yrs exp, 34 LPA 2/ Full Stack @Fortune 500 tech corp. Ex-Rapido, led the pricing engine. 5+ yrs exp, 27 LPA DevOps: 1/ Principal Security Ops @world's leading design software company. Achieved 85% system hardening. 7+ yrs exp, 32 LPA 2/ Senior DevOps @one of India's top ed-tech platforms. Cut infra costs by 56%. Ex-VMware, Mastercard. 6+ yrs exp, 58 LPA Design: 1/ Founding Designer @Emergent Ventures-backed Gen AI platform. Ex-Microsoft, BYJU's. IIT Delhi grad, 8+ yrs exp, 58 LPA 2/ Product Designer @ex-Twilio. Unified UX across 30+ products. 5+ yrs exp, 27 LPA ML / Data: 1/ Senior ML Engineer @leading AI financial data platform. Achieved 94% KPI accuracy. Ex-Dream11, built rec engines for 200M users. IIT Bombay grad, 6+ yrs exp, 140 LPA 2/ Senior Data Scientist @global supply chain visibility platform. Worked on 50+ ETA models, achieving 30-50% accuracy uplift. 4+ yrs exp, 33 LPA Mobile: 1/ Senior Mobile Engineer @UK's fastest-growing neobank. Payments infra, Flutter. 5+ yrs exp, 38 LPA 2/ SDE @India's largest mobile ad platform. Achieved 65% revenue uplift per user. 4+ yrs exp, 32 LPA Product: 1/ PM @innovative US healthcare AI SaaS. Ex-Protium, scaled lending to ₹8B+ revenue. IIT Bombay grad, 6+ yrs exp, 37 LPA 2/ Senior PM @leading logistics SaaS platform. Managed products doing $40M ARR. 9+ yrs exp, 46 LPA Tech Leads: 1/ SDE 3 @global e-commerce platform. Cut delivery time by 50%. Ex-Salesforce. IIT Roorkee grad, 6+ yrs exp, 53 LPA 2/ Tech Lead @fast-growing speech therapy app. Founded an AI edtech startup. NIT Srinagar grad, 7+ yrs exp, 40 LPA If you have a relevant opening and want to chat with any of these folks for free, shoot me a DM. Additionally, I’ll share 5 additional role-specific profiles if you share the JD for the role you’re trying to close.

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At Auth0, we see it every day: startups shouldn’t have to rebuild identity from scratch. Our teammate Shreya Gupta breaks down how #Auth0 empowers B2B SaaS founders to scale faster and focus on what really matters—their product. ✨ What we’re excited about: 🏢 Effortless multi-tenancy 🧩 Fully customizable authentication flows 🔐 Secure delegated access 🚀 1 year of B2B Pro features to accelerate growth 👉 Dive into the full breakdown here: https://bit.ly/4iWaHAY

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Day 1 of a series on PM-developer alignment in the age of AI. --- "The PRD doesn't create the user experience. The code does." I sat in a meeting last week where two smart people argued for an hour – only to realize they weren't even talking about the same version of a feature. PRDs are supposed to be the source of truth. The sacred document where PMs and engineers align. But let's be real. They're not. Here's what actually happens: → PM writes a spec → Developer starts building, realizes there's a gap → Developer fills in the gap his way (without understanding the business context) → Or developer hits a technical constraint, builds it differently → Neither update the PRD → Decisions get made in Slack threads → Those decisions never make it back to the doc → PRD becomes stale within a week Now multiply this across 10 features, 5 engineers, 3 PMs. Everyone's working off different assumptions. Different understandings. Different versions of reality. And it's not anyone's fault. It's impossible to one-shot a PRD with perfect coverage. You can't anticipate every edge case in abstract. Logic gaps only reveal themselves when someone's actually writing the code. So where does the real source of truth live? The code. The PRD doesn't create the user experience. The code does. If only there was a way to sync the PRD FROM the code. Not the other way around. In a perfect world: → Code updates → PRD syncs automatically → PM annotates what needs to change → Changes get coded → Cycle repeats But PMs aren't always technical. They can't just read the codebase. Here's what I've been thinking about: AI is literally built to process massive amounts of information and abstract it into something understandable. Why can't we treat code as source of truth, have AI abstract it into a living PRD, and finally get PMs and engineers on the same page in real time? I'm going to build something to test this. Follow along! I'd be sharing what works and what breaks.

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The least helpful person in a startup is the one who's really good at finding problems but never solves any of them. This taught me something interesting about how we hire at Meridian. What we look for: - People who find the problem and then go solve it quietly - Optimism as a default setting, not something we have to coach - Solutions-oriented thinking even when the problem is messy and unclear - People who move past what went wrong and into what we do next What we've learned to avoid: - Brilliance without action. Being right about why something is hard doesn't build anything. - The habit of pointing out risks without proposing a path forward - Cynicism disguised as intelligence Skills and processes can be learned. But someone's attitude towards problems can be sticky, and it's really hard to change once it's set. The way a person reacts when something goes wrong on a Tuesday morning tells you more about them than any resume ever will. Culture is really just who you hire and what behavior you accept when things go wrong. We try to get that right from the start.

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Separating Product Management from Product Design — where do we draw the line as someone who practices both? Over time, I’ve realized how easy it is to blur the boundaries between both roles; especially for those of us who brought Product Management as an add-on to Product Design. After spending 3 years in design and adding PM to my stack in my 4th year, Yes the transition made certain aspects of product management easier; I could visualize solutions faster, empathize with design challenges, and communicate intent clearly. But there’s also a conflict of interest. Pushing pixels started to feel like second nature and sometimes, almost expected. Over time, I’ve had to consciously pull back and create space for designers on the team to own their craft. After all, they’re capable, and they deserve that autonomy. So I’m curious; what do you think? Should Product Managers with design backgrounds occasionally help with design tasks? Or should those lines remain strictly defined? Would love to hear how your teams handle this balance.

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MVPs are Built for Learning, Not Just Launching When most people hear Minimum Viable Product (MVP), they think: “Let’s launch fast, get users, and scale.” But here’s the truth, MVPs are not about launching quickly, they’re about learning rapidly. The goal of an MVP is not to impress, but to test assumptions. It’s not about flashy features, but about validating core values. It’s not a “small version” of the final product, but a learning tool to reduce risk. Too many teams fall into the trap of treating MVPs like a final product. They overbuild, polish, and spend months perfecting—only to discover that the problem they’re solving isn’t even real or that customers don’t care. Instead, treat your MVP as an experiment: ✅ Define the biggest risk or assumption in your product idea. ✅ Build the simplest possible way to test it. ✅ Collect data, feedback, and behavior from real users. ✅ Learn fast, adapt, and iterate. An MVP is not a destination; it’s a compass. It helps you navigate uncertainty, avoid wasted effort, and uncover what your customers truly need. If your MVP gives you actionable insights, even if it “fails”, it has already succeeded. Because in product management, learning is the real launchpad.

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Today, we’re announcing a $2M Seed round led by Kalaari Capital, with Antler, Infinyte Club, and Careernet joining in. Having one of India’s most respected early-stage funds back us is a strong signal of where recruiting is headed. For years, recruiters have been stuck with tools that only track candidates. The real work - sourcing, outreach, screening, evaluation, and follow-ups—still rests on human shoulders. HireBound is built to change that. Our Agentic AI now runs sourcing, engagement, screening, and recommendations end-to-end across Voice, WhatsApp, SMS and email. It has already powered over 3 million candidate conversations, been trained on 2 million+ resumes and 30,000+ roles, and helped teams significantly reduce cost-to-hire. This round allows us to double down on what’s working: deepen our agentic engine, expand globally across staffing firms and enterprise talent teams, and evolve from a hiring copilot into a true talent-intelligence layer. We’re grateful to Kalaari Capital for leading the round and believing in a category-defining opportunity in AI-first recruiting, and to Antler, Infinyte Club, and Careernet for their continued trust. The execution layer for modern recruiting is being built now and we intend to be that layer. https://lnkd.in/g7iHYMyM Kumar VikramadityaTanmey GoswamiAman ChopraHarsh BainsJebin JoyDhanisha HedauYashika KhuranaNishant ThapaSrikant KumarShashank BistMD FaizalSuvam MoitraZaid H.

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Your Go To Market is a Product: You wouldn't ship software without a roadmap, MRD, PRD, UX testing, and iteration. So why do we deploy GTM strategies once a year and hope it works!? Treat your GTM motion like a product: build, measure, test, learn, and iterate constantly. #GoToMarket #GTM #ProductManagement #Strategy #TestLearn

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For this post 4 of 5 of my YC S25 cohort analysis series, I've been exploring the cohort's regulated vertical plays - healthcare, finance, enterprise operations. A pattern emerged that I didn't expect. It's not about features. It's about what you can't retrofit. The Rebuilding Problem. Legacy platforms in regulated industries face three constraints that create a genuine dilemma: 📋 Compliance by Design: Audit trails built for human decision-making don't translate to autonomous agents. When regulators ask "who's liable when AI makes the mistake?", retrofitting an answer into existing systems is exceptionally difficult. 📊 Economic Model Inversion: Per-seat pricing assumes humans executing the workflows. When agents handle the work and humans shift to oversight, the unit economics flip. Transitioning pricing models while maintaining current revenue is a challenge most companies struggle to navigate. 🔧 Workflow Architecture: Platforms built for heavy human touch become agent-first only through architectural rewrites. Bolting autonomous workflows onto systems designed for manual processes rarely works. These constraints aren't problems you solve with an AI feature release. They require architectural decisions most incumbents won't make. And that creates an opening to build from zero. So who's Building from Zero: Healthcare: b-12 (chemical synthesis copilot), CareSwift (AI scribe for ambulances), Wedge (governance layer for hospital AI) Finance: IronLedger (property accounting agents), Magnetic (vision model for tax prep), Socratix AI (fraud investigation coworkers) Enterprise: Certus AI (restaurant phone AI), Comena (order entry automation), Janet AI (AI-native project management) --- #VerticalSaaS #YCombinator #EnterpriseSoftware #HealthTech #Fintech

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Had a meaningful conversation with Nik Calugaru from Replit’s GTM team about the future of AI-assisted software development, developer tools, and the opportunities ahead for markets like India. What stood out to me was Replit focus on giving builders more than just speed control over code, flexibility in the tech stack, collaboration, deployment, and a stronger path from MVP to real product. We also discussed how India’s startup and software ecosystem could benefit from platforms that help teams build faster without losing technical ownership. Conversations like these are important because the next wave of software will be shaped by builders who understand both technology and market opportunity. India has a serious role to play in the future of AI, developer tools, and startup innovation. #Replit #AI #DeveloperTools #IndiaTech #Startups

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Really interesting launch from noon.design A design tool that works directly on product code reducing the constant back-and-forth between design and engineering. Feels like a step toward tighter product loops where what you design is much closer to what actually ships. Definitely one to watch!! Aditya Bandi Kushagra Sinha Manish S Sugandhi

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Hot take: The smallest unit capable of reaching PMF is now one person. AI didn’t remove work. It compressed execution into systems. Which means founders who stay closest to users now win faster than those who “scale early.” PMF is no longer something you scale into. It’s something you design for.

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