John Washam

I am incredibly inspired by and grateful for my teammates at Verse for achieving our first fundraising milestone together: we recently secured $20.5 million in Series A financing led by GV (Google Ventures) 🙌🏾 🎉 with participation from Coatue, CIV, and MCJ Collective. I've been trying to contain my excitement for weeks 😊 as am sure are my colleagues now that we can share the good news. I'd like to give a big shout out to the engineering team - Jessica Greenfield, Kaleb Pace, Shawn Toubeau, Brandon Clayton, Ryan Kladar, Ryan Triolo, Yuzhou Jiang, and Mahdi Kohansal - for the speed and precision of every line of code they've written, and to Seyed H. Madaeni, Ph.D., Matt Penfold, Shehzad Wadalawala, Dane McKay, Alison Mickey, Debi Ryan, and Tanner McAuley for leading and driving us on the business front. We'll be on the look out soon for more folks to join us 😉 As we used to say at my last job: "We haven't won yet." The path to decarbonization will be a multi-decade, if not multi-generational effort. Verse is just one organization in a constellation of thousands developing real solutions to the climate change problem. Until we achieve net zero emissions at a global scale 🌏 🌍 🌎 our mission remains to be done. #software #ai #energy #sustainability #climatechange #startups https://lnkd.in/gG-DEX5x

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Everyone, today marks a significant milestone here at Sort. We've launched a new way for anyone in your company to help fix your data. We're calling this feature Sort Change Requests and it's available for you to try out on https://sort.xyz immediately. With Sort Change Requests, we've taken software engineering change management best practices and applied them to your database. If you are familiar with GitHub Pull Requests then Change Requests should feel familiar, except instead of modifying your codebase you are modifying your database. Propose your data changes --> have them reviewed by the data team --> then apply them only after sign off. If there's a problem during execution, the changes are automatically rolled back. 😎 Today's launch includes support for Postgres so if you're team is using a different database please let us know and we will prioritize appropriately. Give Sort Change Requests (beta) a try today and let us know what you think. -- Aaron

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Here's what we covered in my chat with Amplitude CPO Francois Ajenstat: 1. How I transitioned into product management  2. Why marketing and product roles might become one 3. How I coach PMs and how I think the role will evolve 4. How to make customers the most important member of your team 5. How I use AI in product and how to stay ahead of emerging tech 6. Closing words of advice for product builders Watch the full interview here: https://lnkd.in/gnmWpM2n

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Is this the end of embeddings? Hear from Josh and Tashrish on the pros and cons of using embeddings-based RAG for document data extraction and our experiments with switching to completions-only RAG.

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In the last episode of the Skip Podcast (https://lnkd.in/gM5QJk2j), I coach a product manager who is mid-career, looking for advice on applying to late-stage tech companies. I shared that joining a leadership role in big tech is very different than getting a more junior position. But most people use the same process and have similar expectations - find the biggest role with the most exciting project you can identify. Push hard and succeed, and then you’ll have a lot to show for your efforts. For leaders, I think this is the wrong approach which could get you fired. Roles with very high expectations require you to be productive and comfortable almost on day one. Sure, in your past when you had a small team or project, it was possible to quickly get your bearings and show impact. But the more senior the position, the broader the scope. And each project, team, and challenge requires time to understand before even considering suggesting taking action. You see the issue? The company has an opening on a hot project, you’re flattered to get the offer, you bet on yourself and take it. But you immediately need to have the answers, don’t have the context and six months later you’ve failed to meet expectations. Now you’re stuck and worst of all, might give up on a late-stage career. No wonder most companies stick to their tenured staff when selecting leaders, and why so few outside hires in leadership roles succeed. So how do you navigate this? Think of any leadership position in two phases: the starter role and the prime role. Select a role where you can exceed expectations. It might not be the most glamorous work the company is doing with the best peers and most glamorous manager. But it gives you time to really get your bearings, identify the right vocabulary to leverage your strengths, build the relationships you need to navigate challenges, and get back into a flow where your thinking aligns with how the company needs you to think.  Maybe that's 12-18 months. You might not get promoted but you'll start to get noticed. Then make an internal transition to that prime role. With a bit of tenure you’ll have access to roles not open to outsiders. You’ll start that role with far more context and relationships. Then you can really accelerate impact. The downside is it takes longer, a long term play requiring 3-5 years at the company to make this double jump. But I don’t think you should look for a quick hit if joining a large, complex company with thousands of people. You need time to learn the right lessons, and I think this advice could shift how you approach roles at companies you're considering.

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This last weekend my brother Arthur Zey and I just finished the "Improving Your Product Sense" course by Shreyas Doshi. Unlike most courses that aim to give you specific tactics, frameworks, and processes to use - this week-long course aims to improve the quality of your thinking and arm you with different mental models and perspectives to make better decisions. By that score, I consider the class a resounding success and I'm eager to apply our insights to sharpen up our strategy and product definitions at RP Strength. If you're a founder of or senior product manager for a software company, I think you'll get a ton of value out of the course. Check it our here: https://lnkd.in/gENYXyTJ

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