S01E01 - Tu बीयर Hai

It’s 12:57 am on a weeknight. I was hoping, mellow Prateek Kuhaad music would take me to my beautiful make-believe world but my mind is glued on this list in front of me:

• Share feedback for the new website designs.

• Clean up my PRD for an upcoming product.

• Update my standup document

• Write this article

It’s the last one I worry about the most.

So that’s the night of a 23-year-old Product Manager. She’s a semi-workaholic (forever in denial about it) and has taken up (forced herself) the task of writing a blog series.

Who is she?

I am a computer science graduate who jumped from internship to internship till I found my one true love, product!

I love everything about building a product; that light bulb moment, the research that goes into creating an MVP, setting up your team, getting the UI designs ready, working with developers to ensure we are on track, spending late nights doing testing, and deployments, chasing growth metrics, getting feedback and everything else that goes into bringing a product to life.

Now, I understand that I sound insanely naive but to be fair I haven't been at it that long. I jumped from an analyst to a product manager role in a fraction of a second and I still have a lot of learning to do.

All I know for sure is that I want to build good products and I am ready to work my ass off for it.

What is “The Startup Life?”

In the legendary TV series “Pitchers” (watch it if you haven’t already) one of the protagonists tells his friend, “Tu Beer hai”.

He is trying to convince this friend to leave his job and follow his dreams. He’s referring to the job as a beer bottle and the glass in front of him as his dream. To enjoy the beer, it has to move outside the comfort of the bottle and move into the glass.

The Startup Life is me being beer and writing about my life in the startup culture of India. It’s a collection of my learnings and experiences as I find my way around as a product person in this crazy ecosystem.

The first set of blogs are going to cover my journey through the GrowthX Bootcamp, an intensive 8-week program for inquisitive professionals who work with tech products built for scale and who are looking to upskill!

For you, “The Startup Life” is a sneak peek into the world of tech and what makes this industry work!

Okay, I actually don’t know why you’d want to read this.

But I’m guessing you work at startups and can find this relatable, or nostalgic and sometimes will just make you smile. Isn’t that reason enough?

Why am I writing a blog?

Now the big question is that if I am so busy and if I have a ton of things going on then why in the world would I start a blog series?

I want to write about my Startup Life

It took me less than 6 months of working in a corporate company to realize that it wasn't my cup of tea. I was blessed enough to work at great startups like QuezX, Clevertap, and Meesho.

Once I joined PwC, I missed the dynamic, fast-paced, fun environment of a startup. So I quit PwC and found Azent where I started as a business analyst and moved to product management in less than 2 months. (Yay!)

And as much as it unnerves me, I want to document it and share my learnings along the way. Yes, documentation. Classic PM move.

The best way to learn something is to write/teach it I have decided that I am going to upskill and I want to make the most of it. I don't want to just do a course on product management, or SEO, or Growth Marketing, I want to make sure I deep dive into it. Since I am a generalist at heart, deep-diving into a skill is very unnatural to me. That’s where blogging comes into the picture, the idea is that I will learn 3X if I am to teach a skill or at the very least just write about it.

I really really want to learn how SEO works Yes, you read it right! I am writing a blog and using my readers as a way to understand SEO. It is a tough topic and practical experience works better than theoretical knowledge. So, just help me out a little, okay?

I like to think I am a good storyteller (and a little funny) I truly believe that a good story is the best way to teach something. Anecdotes have higher retention (such jargons much wow) and I want to use them to get someone going with their 'Startup story'.

It is important to be uncomfortable A friend of mine told me that you aren't growing if you are comfortable and I kinda resonated with that thought. So here is me taking UD's advice and stepping out of my bubble by writing a blog series. So if this exercise turns out to be a complete disaster, we know whom to blame, UD! 😛

The world is on fire The world around me seems to be crumbling with the rising number of cases. While nothing will take away my anguish around the situation, I wanted to channel some of that anguish to this blog instead of dumb scrolling social media all-day

So yeah, I hope I have given you a few reasons to stick around. As a parting note, I want to leave you with “Tu बीयर Hai”!

Thanks for reading! :)

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Hey! I am Rutvi.

Thanks for checking out The Startup life.

It’s my escape from the daily rut and I hope to become a better version of myself through writing.

I do product management at my day gig and writing by the night. Also a Mumbai girl and marine drive is ♥️