Dani Grant

An intriguing startup called Fragment is shaking up the ledgering game. 💡 If you’ve ever dealt with tracking customer balances, you know how tedious it can be—Fragment's API aims to simplify that by offering real-time, double-entry accounting without the accounting jargon overload.📊 Founders Thomas Neckel and Omi Chowdhury are onto something big here, especially with their track record of successful startups. With early adopters like TruckSmarter and Nala already onboard, it's exciting to see where this tech goes. 🚀 #Fintech #Startup #Innovation #AccountingTech #TechTrends https://lnkd.in/eUrC-tJE

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The Xoogler.co community is lucky to have incredible leaders like Shiva Rajaraman help community members grow. He's speaking on being a Product Manager to General Manager in 2 hours time. Xooglers/Googlers don't miss out on hearing from him! RSVP: https://lnkd.in/gGEJQUKc Shiva has held leadership roles (Google, YouTube, Spotify, OpenSea, and now Uber) where product has extended beyond designing and prioritizing app experiences and involves content or services to make the experience exceptional. Thus good deals, operational rigor, merchandising, and deep P&L understanding are critical skills and these only get more important in today’s leaner and growth/margin sensitive environment. PMs need to act more like GMs and he’ll walk through what worked in that shift as well as what pitfalls to avoid. #product #gm #xoogler

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“If there is no clear owner, then it’s the PM that owns it.” I sat down with Esteban Contreras from #ProductState to discuss Product leadership, or Prioritization process at Productboard. We also dug into the concept of Extreme Ownership, which is a principle I firmly believe in. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eVN47mWn #productmanagement #productexcellence #ownership

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V2MOM, SMART, LRP. PCT. Behind those acronyms are actionable concepts that helped Manu Gurudatha, Engineering Leader at PagerDuty skyrocket engineering productivity. And he shared his exact process in an in-depth article where you’ll learn: ◾ How to implement V2MOM (Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, Measures) and plan better. ◾ Why setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals can bring you clarity and success in eng projects. ◾ Tips for effective Long-Range Planning (LRP) that aligns daily operations with your long-term business goals. ◾ How to reduce Process Cycle Time (PCT) to accelerate project delivery. Click on the link below to go from slipping to shipping, with real life examples at PagerDuty 👇 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eHUAc6qJ

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Looking for advice to handle tough times? 🚀  📕𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙃𝙖𝙧𝙙 𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝘼𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙃𝙖𝙧𝙙 𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 by Ben Horowitz isn't your typical business book—it's a raw, no-nonsense guide to surviving the toughest moments in entrepreneurship, leadership and business. Whether you're making gut-wrenching decisions or leading through crises, this book gives you the playbook for the problems no one else talks about. As a professional navigating today's business landscape, this book has been invaluable to me. #BusinessLeadership #EntrepreneurshipChallenges

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🚀 Tech Co-Founder Role Open at Find Me X NOTE - MUST BE A HANDS-ON LEADER Are you ready to step into a role where your tech skills directly shape the future of business innovation? I’m Amilcar, co-founder of Find Me X. With 23 years of hands-on experience under my belt, I’m still at the forefront, blending leadership with direct action—and I'm on the hunt for a dynamic counterpart to join me on an exhilarating journey to transform how we monetize on information. What We Ponder?  If google and the internet gave us access to information and GPT provided us with the ability to interact with information, can Find Me X help businesses “monetize” on information leveraging tech and fractional executives to avoid hallucinations? For the past four years, I’ve steered the ship through every storm, handling everything from idea to Series A revenue targets 100% bootstrapped. We’ve built a solid foundation with a proven business model that’s ripe for productization. Now, it’s time to scale our vision with someone who can bring our technical strategy to life! What's in It for You? + Lead & Innovate: You won’t just join a business; you'll shape its future. Directly influence product development and strategy from the ground up. + Ownership & Growth: This isn't just a job; it's a partnership. Receive significant equity and grow with the company as we expand our reach and impact. + Tech at the Forefront: Dive into cutting-edge AI technology that’s reshaping industries. Innovate and deploy solutions that make a real difference. + Dynamic Environment: Thrive in a startup culture that values agility, creativity, and rapid innovation. Every day brings new challenges and opportunities to excel. Just as I have maintained a hands-on approach while leading through decades of change, we expect the same level of commitment and capability from you. We need a Tech Co-founder who’s not only experienced but ready to stay deeply involved in both strategy and execution, driving our growth with both expertise and passion. 👀 Curious? Intrigued? There’s so much more to this story, and I believe you might just be the hero we need. Visit https://lnkd.in/efQSjq6n for more details about this game-changing opportunity. Apply > [email protected] Let’s explore how you can fit into the future of Find Me X! #cofounder #engineer #softwareengineer #hacker #fullstack #code #product #ai #genai #developer #programming #startups

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🚀 Exciting news: I'm now on Topmate to mentor aspiring Product Managers! After learning from incredible product leaders at eBay, Ajio, Amazon, and Paytm, I'm excited to pay it forward. I'm taking my informal PM coaching to Topmate to help more aspiring product managers. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜'𝗺 𝗼𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴: 1️⃣ Practical insights from my product management journey 2️⃣ Personalized mentorship (I invest in each mentee's growth) 3️⃣ Dedicated support to help you achieve your PM career goals 𝗔 𝗳𝗲𝘄 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀: 1️⃣ I'm still a learner, just like you. Let's grow together. Perfection is a distant, evolving goal :) 2️⃣ Opening up limited slots to begin with, due to work and family commitments. 3️⃣ There's a modest fee per session, which goes directly to the Spastic Society Bangalore (my go-to place since IIMB volunteering days). If you're ready to accelerate your product management career, let's connect on Topmate! #ProductManagement #Mentorship #CareerGrowth #GivingBack https://lnkd.in/grEpxbhh

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Bilt Rewards went from $0 to $1.5B valuation in under a year post launch. I had the pleasure of hearing Ankur Jain, Bilt’s founder and CEO, speak at FintechMeetup. It was extremely inspiring and I had to dig deeper. What is Bilt? The core idea of Bilt Rewards is simple and compelling. Why can’t your rent payments contribute towards home ownership in the future? Most of us pay rent through our bank since paying with a credit card adds an additional 2.5-3%. With the Bilt MasterCard, you not only avoid fees but earn points on your rent payments: redeeming 1 point for every dollar spent up to 100K points per year - that you can apply towards your down payment. Fascinating tidbits: 1. Before Bilt, you weren’t legally allowed to use points towards a down payment. So Ankur and team spent 18 months working with regulators to create the regulations required to make a system like this possible. 2. Ankur worked on the idea by himself for a year, pitching to real estate owners and finessing the model before even hiring the first employee. 3. Almost every real estate owner Ankur pitched to initially was opposed to the idea. Over the course of 4 years, Bilt built a distribution network of 4M+ rental homes that allows residents to pay with Bilt. Ankur shares lessons valuable to every entrepreneur: 1. Distribution and customer acquisition strategy needs to be at the forefront of your pitch. 2. Creative relentless vs hard-headed relentlessness: “No just means ask again differently. Slightly different changes. Slightly different approach. Slightly different person you are asking. That’s the key. Doing the same thing over and over again will only get you the same results.” 3. A great product will not sell itself. To break through change aversion and transform consumer behavior, you must out execute with relentlessness: “The irony is when you think about building a company, you’ve gotta have the right product to solve a real problem. You have to have the core business economics and all that stuff. But what people don’t talk about - it doesn’t matter how good your idea is or how perfect the timing is. If you are not relentless at taking no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no over and over again and still being willing to come to the plate, it doesn’t matter. That is the single most important trait I’ve found. Because for whatever reason, the world likes to reject change. There is such inherent resistant to anything different. So you have to literally will your idea into existence. It’s exhausting but fulfilling.” Keeping especially the last takeaway in mind as we forge new paths ✨

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As some of you may know, I run a book club at Gracenote a few times annually where we read books focusing on product management, strategy, and general business. For those interested, I've compiled a list of the best books we've covered and published it on Medium. You can find the full list here: https://lnkd.in/gfk3FgtS #BookClub #ProductManagement #BusinessStrategy #KnowledgeSharing

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Great session James Newell and thanks for hosting Jon Prentice and SVB! In terms of the answers and perspective shared from Voyager Capital and James…. The Good (for Seattle investing and VCs) —— * the opportunity in Seattle (and the wider PNW / Cascadia region) that Voyager is still capitalizing on, is that there is a ton of potential in Seed to Series A investing that isn’t as accessible elsewhere. * SF and other markets are saturated and less engaged as investors at this stage. * talent pool here is massive, especially on the engineering and product side. What would be a “Game Changer” for Seattle —— * there is a talent shortage especially in terms of sales and marketers locally. * Few sales and marketers want to do $0 - $1M journey again if prior successful. * Angels are more private here, and may not feel the need to give back to the start up community if that isn’t how they made their wealth Outside of Seattle specific feedback: —— * Founders need to be doers, not “leaders of leaders” (an issue with those coming from big tech); talent need to meet the stage and act accordingly. * AI as a tool and business foundation is only important in terms of delivering business value. * AI powered firms need to show they have an ability to access proprietary data or be linked intimately to workflows or both to be a sound investment [this is established consensus among investors] * Investing, especially very early stage, should be run as a process. Be your own best BDR for fundraising. And finally …. The top 2 pieces of advice most often given to founders…. 1) Try to avoid VC capital to the degree you can [which means you have a capital efficient business]. 2) find a co-founder to complement your skills vs doing it all on your own.

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a note on intuition and building products (via mike knoop, founder - zapier, go follow him on twttr) -- Wisdom for founding teams is "talk to users". Over the last 10 years this has become the playbook for doing 0 to 1 work. As the advice became dogma, some founders forgot why it exists, and a new failure mode emerged: "the blind walk to product-market fit". YC popularized "talk to users" in response to the classic mistake of coming up with some idea in isolation, building in secret for months or years, and launching just to learn no one cares. Talking to users forces faster contact with reality. Your initial idea and and intuition are likely wrong in material ways, so you want to shrink the time to learn this. At Zapier, I tell teams to try and model this behavior: ship in the AM, demo to users in the PM. If you do this, you get 5-7 hits on reality per week compared to a team on a 2-week release process (or worse). This all makes sense and many founders conclude their idea, intuition, or experience don't really matter. They model finding pmf as y=mx+b where cycle time is "m" and the initial idea is "b". In this model, founder intuition gives them an initial head start but impact is quickly overtaken by iteration speed. This leads them to heavily discount or even outright ignore their own experience and intuition -- many get stuck doing a fast cycle, but ultimately directionless, traversal through the pmf maze. The modeling mistake here is the "m" term is decomposed into (iteration speed) * (intuition). Every time you make contact with reality, you learn something new. And you get to decide what to do with that new information. Should you ignore it? Update but carry on? Change directions entirely? This is why intuition is important. Your idea and experience do not just establish initial position on the Y-axis. They are a multiplier on every decision or change you make. The faster your iteration speed, the more overall impact your experience can have. If you're ideas are right, they are right faster. If they are wrong, they are wrong more obviously. All other things equal, founders with experience in a domain outperform blank-slate founders doing the blind walk.

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For product-minded eng people out there, our call to action is simple. People Ops software shapes the experience of talented people (due to performance management, compensation, mobility, etc) to an extraordinary extent... Not to mention building something amazing for managers and leaders to run their teams better. What if we could build something as delightful as Linear to shape this experience?

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**In-person SWE roles at top NYC startups** Things are heating up at July, and we’re on the hunt for a fresh face to join our new office and take the last open desk (for now)! As a company, we’ve always kept things lean, operating with a “hire slow” philosophy to make sure we only bring on absolute KILLERS — and every one of them have been found through LinkedIn. If you’re looking for a new opportunity and want to play at the highest level, I would challenge you to apply. What we're looking for: 1️⃣ Side project junkies (people who love to build) 2️⃣ People who obsess over the details 3️⃣ Founder mentality 4️⃣ Those that love to hustle and want to level-up in all areas If not with us, a few of my good friends are also on the hunt for similar candidates. Daniel Andrews (Playground), Benjamin Döpfner (Vesto), Avante Price (Posh), Keyan K. (222), and Steven Schwartz (Whop), are also on the prowl for talented NYC based engineers that fit the above description. Comment your email down below and someone from our team will reach out with more information about the role! If you don't want your current employer to see you're interested in joining the dark side, DM me! I hope to chat soon 😉 #nyc #startups #growth

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What does bold leadership look like in 2024? In this latest Product Thinking episode, I sit down with Margaret (MJ) Jastrebski, the SVP of Product at Tegus. We dive into the key strategies for uniting teams, breaking down silos, and leading with transparency. Margaret knows the investor research space inside and out from her work at Tegus, a platform that consolidates key company intelligence to help investors make smarter bets. With experience spanning product, sales, and marketing at companies like Stylitics and TXI, Margaret brought a unique 360-degree view. We discussed: ►Uniting fragmented teams behind one vision ►Breaking down silos between product, marketing, sales, etc. ►Leading with transparency to build trust and alignment Margaret emphasized the need for product leaders to externalize their decision-making process. By communicating rationale openly, you empower teams to truly understand and even constructively challenge your calls. Whether you're an up-and-comer or a seasoned pro, you'll want to hear Margaret's insights on casting a clear vision, tearing down organizational barriers, and inspiring teams to achieve big outcomes. What strategies have you found effective for aligning teams and leading with transparency? Share your insights below! Listen Now: https://lnkd.in/gAdV7k56 #ProductLeadership #Alignment #Transparency #BusinessStrategy

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ENOUGH WITH THE FRAMEWORKS! If you've worked with me, you've probably heard me say that. Product teams should be focused on driving outcome and impact, not falling in love with the process. And that's something Peter Yang from Roblox knows all too well. We had a great conversation on Next Gen Builders about how the PM role is evolving, how to use #AI to focus on more important work (like talking to customers), and more. Tune in to our conversation: https://lnkd.in/dY-AZh2s

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A Simple Two-step Process for Career Advancement Want to get ahead in your company? Do these two things: 1. Give away your Legos 2. Generate more impact I didn't say it would be easy! Only simple. Giving away your Legos means sharing responsibility effectively. By finding (and training) others who can take over for you, you free yourself to take on new things. And, of course, you create opportunities and growth for your team. But remember the word, "effectively." You can't set it and forget it. You are still ultimately responsible for the results, and you have to ensure the quality and results are there. Finding new, more impactful projects is even harder. The farther (or higher) you advance, the harder it gets. Playbooks run out. Mentorship is scarce. Stay focused on business impact and prioritize your time ruthlessly. Scores of books have been written on both topics. But ultimately the formula is simple -- free yourself by investing (and believing) in others, and use that freedom to pursue impact and generate results.

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fam, i'm looking for a new role in product marketing/ops! i like to work in the intersection of design x product x ops and • tell good stories • have good taste in design • can take ideas from zero to one over weekends • have built teams • have spoken to atleast one customer a day in all my prev roles • can make pretty decks or prototypes and functional mvps instead of those ;) • bring customer-obsession to the culture • teach no-code to the teams and increase net output and efficiency ( big words) i have: • built websites for pocket money since 11 • done a chaotic mixtape of irl/internet hustles ~ sold tees with cute cats on them, to insurance and filter coffee • built, scaled and sold a design and smma agency at 15 • sold multiple weekend side-projects • worked as an ea, customer support, founder, product lead, ux designer, automations guy, i know my way around startup land. • have worked as a ui designer for companies like johnson & johnson • worked on the gtm & pmf hunting on multiple startups & made a few work • spoken at a few events, advocated for more non-technical founders to bet on their ideas • built & monetised communities to 2000+ members • worked with founders on their mvps whilst raising investment (3/6 did!) • organically built and ran cohorts/bootcamps with two universities to teach no-code x ai • written market reports for a venture studio that was adopted as a standard part of the process for each idea. • shipped something every week at work consistently for over 16 months and a few more less brag worthy things if you know someone’s that hiring or if you’re hiring, would love to connect! would have extra love for no-code & creator econ companies ;)

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Although understood why, I was never a fan of PRD drafting and maintenance. With AI, PMs should be able to allocate more time to identifying and solving core business problems (ironically often zoomed through or totally skipped in real life) and crafting high-level strategies, ultimately driving more impactful and faster innovation. Speaking of visual, it may provide quite some benefits if PMs try to prepare a project brief in the format of presentation instead of a word doc or JIRA epic. Not only it's more pleasant for all types of audience to read, it helps prepare PMs on future communication of the problem.

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