So long...so long (since I blogged)

So a LOT has happened in the last year or so. I have launched another product, have shifted sectors within Google. Am working on a crazy new product which is both intense and invigorating, and involves shuttling between Bay Area and Toronto.
And most importantly, I got married :) More about all this later.

All this may explain the lack of blogging to some extent. But the real reason was that I got so immersed in the operational world, that the core motivation to write this blog became at odds with why I started it in the first place.

Initially, it was my chronicle of the journey towards becoming a VC. Now, after a couple of years in the industry, that motivation has become incidental. I am not sure if I want to find the opportunity to be in VC anymore.
Now, before you get me wrong :)... I would like to be in investing and I would love to work with startups, but the intersection of great group, culture, awesome investment thesis, good people, and luck is so small, that I don't think this is an industry choice anymore. If an opportunity works out for you, great! But there are so many I know who just do VC for the heck of it, and are not happy about it.

The few who are doing it and are happy, are those who landed in that small intersection. So, instead of looking, I am just going to do what I like, and if the chips fall in the right place, and I like the opportunity, then I will do it.

This means that I am equally likely to be a VC, entrepreneur, operational guy in a large company, cafe owner or run a bookstore :)

Somewhere along the way, ambitions morph from a specific role to a state of mind. With marriage, good job, happy family, my ambitions are turning...like the leaves outside in Toronto. Its going to be fall.

New Product Launched

My first product launched today :)

Here are the details: Google Official Blog Post

Excited.

Long time...

It has been an incredibly long time since I posted. I need to get back to this before I make it a habit of neglecting my blog. So while I am out here, let me post an update.

Work is progressing at a fast clip and I am feeling more and more certain of my products now. It is amazing how something which is such a small piece in terms of the overall scheme of things, needs so much work and coordination to get done. My products are small, probably will not be noticed much in the first couple of years of their existence as they evolve and gather critical mass, however they require an enormous amount of time, resources, money to put together.

This whole experience has been very humbling. We spend so much time using Internet based services, and it is so easy to be critical of a product experience, or worse, just take it for granted. However, the truth is that a lot of thought and work goes into building a usable, intuitive and smart product. I have been a part of technical teams building up ideas, invested in companies, built one before myself, and still I am constantly overawed by the creativity and vision required to take the seed of an idea and make it into something that impacts people's lives.

So yes, I am having an incredible amount of fun trying to build this up. My life is chaos currently, work-life balance has gone for a toss. And I am just loving it!

PS: Will write more about the key issues one should worry about when putting together a consumer facing product. Right now, this is just to signal that I am alive!