Entries
35 entries written over 23 years.
2025
When everyone can think, only few choose
I have been recently challenged by many on the question on what happens to all of us with the advent of universal AI. The answer to this question for a while was this was too ha…
Take Reversible Decisions Fast
I’ve sat in meetings where a simple decision, like which pricing model to try or what default view to show, gets dragged out for days or even weeks. Everyone is waiting for just…
Why Product Market Fit (PMF) is not static
At some point in every product’s journey, there’s a quiet moment of celebration. Something clicked. Users are coming in. They’re sticking around. They’re even telling their frie…
Why We Built AnyDB and Why It Matters
I’ve spent a good chunk of my career building products, scaling teams, and helping businesses operate better. One pattern kept showing up across companies big and small: success…
2023
Faroe Islands Photography
The Faroe Islands are a mystical and moody destination for anyone, but spectacular for anyone interested in photography. You will need approximately 5 full days to cover the Far…
Model: Supermaring Spitfire Mk.I at 1/72 scale
This is my second build and things were considerably a lot smoother. I especially liked the camouflage that came out great using masking using Silly Putty. There were still prob…
Model : P-47M Thunderbolt at 1/72 scale
This build is my first build and is also the longest. I started this back in early 2018 and stopped in middle discouraged by the way the airbrush/compressor combo operated. I re…
Creating Organizational Strategy
Strategy is a big word, often bandied about by managers/leaders as the important work they do vs being in the weeds. In fact, you get to see charts like these below where as the…
Why Leaders Should Speak Last
Imagine you are a senior leader attending a meeting. The meeting organizer starts the meeting and begins by explaining what the meeting is trying to accomplish. Before he finish…
Good To Great: how organizations get better
Jim Collins's book 'Good to Great' is generally highly regarded and recommended as having identified many principles that huge companies that outperform the market over long per…
Why not taking a decision is also a decision
If I look back on my company's growth history, I can clearly see which changes had the most impact. The decision to only bill as Software-as-a-Service SAAS (even though we shipp…
Things they don't teach in school but should
The world is changing so dizzyingly fast that it is beyond most people's ability to comprehend the sheer scale of changes. Not only is it changing fast, the rate of change is al…
Why I love a small phone
I have always had the smallest phone possible. Starting from Nokias to Sony Ericcson to Windows Phones and then to iPhone 5, iPhone 8, and iPhone 12 mini. Each of these has been…
What is Leadership?
Who exactly is a leader and how are they different from being a manager or a boss? I have seen many many definitions of leadership out there, and from every single book I have r…
Why things are never equal
The biggest lie I frequently hear is when someone says for all intents and purposes, every option has pros and cons and they can be considered equal when you weigh everything. T…
The One Key to Employee Onboarding Success
If you read the general literature (for example: here, here, or here) on the best practices for new employees to be successful after joining a company, you will see many things…
Why your Powerpoint deck sucks
Or how you can learn to communicate bette r by keeping things simple What is something common you can find in the phrases below: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness Veni…
Building a Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled company
As your startup grows, the first sign things are falling apart is that it takes longer to keep everyone in the loop and pulling together in the same direction. Decisions take lo…
Running an efficient status meeting
This is a continuation of my notes on better meetings, read Part1 (Improving Meetings)and then Part 2 (Different Meeting Types). The oft-criticized dysfunctional meeting you hea…
Improving Different Meeting Types
Make Meetings Happen at Work Review the previous blog post on improving meetings. This continues the theme of discussing the various types of meetings and what are some specific…
Improving Meetings
There are two primary reasons to improve meetings across any organization. Meetings are the key lever for improved employee engagement and productivity Meetings as synchronous c…
Don't make resolutions for the New Year, have goals instead
It is common to see people making New Year's resolutions like 'Be more healthy', 'Excercise more', 'Read more' etc. Typically these do next to nothing to help you be more motiva…
2021
2020
Things they should teach in school - Managing Money
In David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, one of the most important characters in the book next to the eponymous hero is Mr. Wilkins Micawber. His famous quote: Annual income twe…
Standardize your tech stack
As your company grows, it might be tempting to diversify into many different tech stacks. A more diverse technical team with different backgrounds and experiences will naturally…
Things are always falling apart
One of the things you learn about in high school is entropy. Entropy is basically the disorder in any system and that always increases with time. This concept of physics surpris…
Why you should work at small companies
Early on you might be lucky enough to be able to choose between different career paths including choices between small and large companies that you could work for. While the lur…
Why job titles don’t matter
One of the first things that I initially struggled with as we grew is what title a new hire should have. If someone has more than 5 years experience does it mean they are a seni…
When companies go bad slowly
Many companies start with the best of intentions, to serve their customers, and to build the best possible product and to be the best at what they do. Slowly, however, something…
Managing starts with Trust
As I started managing people, this is one of those things that I wish I found out early. As you hire someone and work with them, you need to trust them completely that they are…
Most hiring success predictors are useless
If you read books or blogs on hiring, you might be led to believe that there is a magic set of top attributes that make a difference for a hire or that play a critical role in p…
Madhan Kanagavel Now Page
What I am doing now! (This is a now page, in the great tradition of nownownow) Updated: June 20, 2025 We just launched AnyDB about a few months ago in April 2025. We already hav…
Getting Remote Work Done - eBook
This is a book that I have been working for a while on. Given the recent interest in remote work, I went ahead and published it so that it could be helpful to everyone intereste…