Hello. Glad you found your way here.
I'm Sumit. I build products, and I write about the parts nobody puts in the frameworks.
Sit down for a minute. This isn't a landing page, it's a letter, and it's addressed to you.
Most of the internet looks the same now. Same fonts, same hero, same three cards, same "I help X do Y". A lot of it is written by machines and reads like it. I didn't want that for the one place on the web with my name on it. So I built this by hand, on paper-coloured pages, with a red pencil for the margins.The scribbles in the margin are me, interrupting myself.
Here's what I actually do. For about ten years I've been building products in India, mostly in places where the textbook stopped working the moment it met a real customer. A bootstrapped startup. Ed-tech during a pandemic. Manufacturing, where I taught a machine to price a custom CNC part in seconds because the humans were taking days.Still the thing I'm proudest of shipping.
Along the way I went back to school for data science, because the product needed it and nobody else was going to. Now I can't stop thinking about what AI does to my job. Not the conference version. The Monday morning version: what does a product manager do when the machine can draft the PRD, run the analysis, and propose the roadmap? My working answer is "the part that was always the real job". I'm still testing that. Out loud. Here.
What I write about
- Product Building things people use. Mostly what nobody tells you in the frameworks.
- AI What changes for a product person when the machine can think a little. What does not.
- Work Careers, teams, ambition, the actual texture of a working week.
- Philosophy Why we do any of this. Slower thoughts I keep coming back to.
Recent
- Why this site is a letter and not a landing page
I rebuilt my website from scratch because everything online started looking the same. Here is what I wanted instead, and what I'm going to do with it.
- Product management resources, the list I keep sending people
Every time someone asks how to get into product, I send them this. Paths in, people worth reading, communities, and the tools. Kept roughly current.
Things I'm currently unsure about
- Whether "AI product manager" is a real job or a label that expires in two years.
- Whether taste can be taught, or only caught by sitting next to someone who has it.
- How much of what I learned in ten years of shipping still applies when shipping is cheap.
- Whether writing in public makes you clearer or just louder.
I'll edit this list as I change my mind. That's the point of it.
Reach me
The easiest way is email. I read all of it, and I reply to most of it, slower than I'd like. If you're building something where product and AI collide, or you're a PM trying to work out what comes next, I'd genuinely like to hear from you. I'm also on LinkedIn, where I post shorter versions of what ends up here.
Letters from Sumit
Get the next letter
One letter when I have something worth saying. Usually every two weeks. Never more than one a week. Unsubscribe is one click and I won't take it personally.
Right now this is done by hand: email me the word "subscribe" and I'll add you myself. Tell me one thing you'd like me to write about while you're at it.
Talk soon,
Sumit