From Public Policy to Product: Rajan Trivedi on Navigating Risk and Reinvention

In this episode, I interview Rajan Trivedi, a seasoned product leader who has made significant transitions across various industries. Rajan shares his unique framework for career transitions, focusing on the utility of making switches focused on either industry or function. He delves into his journey from consulting to the public sector, a startup in Kenya, and finally to product management roles at Prudential and Chegg. Rajan also discusses his changing risk appetite, the nuances of being a people manager, and the critical role of data in driving product decisions. Don’t miss this in-depth discussion on career growth, adaptability, and leadership.


00:00 Introduction to the Push-Pull Podcast
02:16 Interview with Rajan Trivedi Begins
03:06 Rajan's Early Career and Education
03:46 Consulting Experience and Public Sector Work
05:51 Evaluating Career Options and Transition to Public Policy
12:38 Working in the Obama Administration
13:33 Millennium Challenge Corporation: Mission and Impact
19:40 Transition to a Startup in Nairobi, Kenya
24:04 Joining M-Changa and the FinTech Journey
29:24 Reflections on Grad School and Career Clarity
33:14 Unique Path to Product Management
33:52 Grad School Experience and Thesis
36:11 Breaking into Product Management
38:07 Journey at Prudential
49:01 Transition to HomeLight
53:45 Joining Chegg and Career Growth
59:39 Reflections on Risk and Career Transitions
01:04:33 Current Endeavors and Final Thoughts

Shoot thoughts, questions, ideas, or intros to varun@pushpullpodcast.com!

Transcript

Varun Rajan 0:06

welcome again to the Push-Pull podcast. My name is Varun Rajan and I interview professionals about their careers and specifically about the push and pull factors behind the transitions when they went from one part of their career to the next. Today I interview Raj Ti. He is a product leader that has worked across a number of different marketplaces. Uh, he and I met when we were at Chegg together and we had an incredible conversation. Rajan thinks about career transitions in a framework of two dimensions, industry or function role type. It is easier to make a transition from one of those dimensions to another while still staying in the other dimension. So for example, Early in his career, he started in consulting and moved to the public sector and then to a startup before going back to grad school, with an eye towards becoming a product manager. but once he was a product manager. He moved from finance to prop tech to ed tech, but he stayed a product manager the entire time. the thesis really being that, making that transition from one industry to another or staying within an industry and going from one job function to another is a much easier way to re down to your career benefit without really backtracking. The other thing that's really interesting about his career in general is the way that he thought about risk and adventure. over the course of his career, uh, he had a high appetite for risk early on his career As he got more and more deeply into product management, he found that the risk appetite changed and adjusted to fit the role that he was in. He found a lot more complexity in the product management role and risk factors within the different companies and industries that he could be in. Um, so that's really interesting to, to listen to over time. Another thing that stood out to me was his love for discovering product management and data in particular, and how that really drove him to understand that he could be driving outcomes on a scale that he could actually see the results of the work that he was doing. Uh, that was something that really motivated him. So hope you enjoy the conversation. we're here with Rajan Trivedi, a product leader, who has worked across a number of different marketplaces. thanks for being with us, Rajan.

Rajan Trivedi 2:24

Yeah, thanks for having me and super excited for the conversation, Varun.

Varun Rajan 2:27

Awesome. give us a 30 to 62nd overview of who you are and what you care about today.

Rajan Trivedi 2:33

Yeah, totally. I'm a FinTech geek and I come from three generations of bankers. My mom worked at SunTrust Bank, my grandfather worked at the State Bank of India. Like no surprise, I got interested in financial services. I'm a product leader. I've worked across, highly regulated industries in many different marketplaces. in my career I've done three different career switches, and of the seven jobs that I had since undergrad graduation, six of them came in from networking and so happy to have the conversation. Excited to talk about career transitions and my product management journey.

Varun Rajan 3:05

Awesome. let's start with, if I were to ask you about the beginning of your career, where would you start us off? and what did you study in undergrad?

Rajan Trivedi 3:14

I studied economics, in undergrad, thinking that I was going to do a 30 year career in the public sector. I had a lot of excitement and passion around international development. and I had done, research in the international development and geospatial lab. I was definitely the, dork and nerd, in college. and really, saw and thought that a, career in diplomacy and development, was my passion. And I did with most folks undergrad do, which is, I had no idea what I wanted to do. So I went into consulting. that was where some of the gravitational, recruitment from William and Mary kind of pulled into. It was either DC New York, and or, consulting in finance of the public sector, right? And spent about three and a half years in consulting, and really enjoyed it. I think that it exposed me to a lot of different operational and financial and risk problems. but I got really excited. I wanted to work in the public sector. I really wanted to serve in the Obama administration and really wanted to go into that world. And so I

Varun Rajan 4:12

Did you see,

Rajan Trivedi 4:14

from there.

Varun Rajan 4:14

did you see consulting as a transition point? Like when you started consulting? did you have an eye towards the public sector the entire time? it sounds like you, you did, as you were talking about, why you chose the economics degree. how did you end up at doing consulting and what was the story of you actually landing there?

Rajan Trivedi 4:32

it's a great question. consulting was one of those seven opportunities that I landed via the career and alumni network, and got matched. I did a summer internship in another company called Ernst and Young, which is a big four consulting company. And, every job I've got into, I've never really thought I'm gonna switch out and only stay here for x number of years, anything like that. I really wanted to give it a shot, learn, be a sponge, and, evaluate. Is this something that I, am looking for? Now, I don't have a personality where I imagine maybe like a doctor or a lawyer is I'm gonna do all 30 years of my professional life in that one area. I always knew that I was going to, expose myself to a lot of different industries and technical domains. and so I probably went in eyes wide open, but really naive about what my next step would be. On the flip side, when I did get into consulting and I was working with public sector agents around budgets or financial models or, enterprise, like ERP implementations, what I often found was that the decision makers in the room, were, coming in as a political appointment. appointees, they were leaders or SES folks, senior executives, around that. now I, in my time in consulting, I was very much so one of those millennials that has evaluated and thought about many different careers. and I was actually evaluating as my next step for consulting three different things. one, I had applied, for a Fulbright scholarship, and thought about going to Peru and doing some research there. two, I had applied for teaching for America, and I was placed in Brooklyn to teach, middle schoolers, I think it was math. and then third, I was really targeting getting into policy, and doing a combination of one going onto a campaign. And this is during, 2010, if you will. So getting ready for the reelection campaign in 2012, or going directly into the public sector, as a civil or a political servant. And frankly, I evaluated all three of those options.

Varun Rajan 6:29

Yeah.

Rajan Trivedi 6:29

and I am happy to go into how I landed into public policy and public service. But, I thought about all those different things after spending a number of years of learning the consulting game,

Varun Rajan 6:39

Yeah.

Rajan Trivedi 6:40

excelling, getting promoted, growing a really large network and then evaluating and saying, do I wanna do a transition? Is there anything more I wanna learn and accelerate? that might be within the industry or within that domain.

Varun Rajan 6:52

tell me a little bit more about the consulting itself. So you mentioned having public sector clients. was that, were all of your clients in this consulting firm, public sector? tell me more about the consultancy that you were with. What was your role? What were the kind of clients that you had and what you liked and didn't like about it?

Rajan Trivedi 7:09

totally.

Varun Rajan 7:10

Okay.

Rajan Trivedi 7:11

at a company called Grant Thornton, which is a tax, audit and advisory company. many, I might have heard of the Big Four Co, the big four, which is K, p and G, Deloitte, PWC, and Ernst and Young. grant Thornton is one of the, second tier, larger in, consulting companies, that I joined and had a huge alumni network from my undergrad, which is how I got there. yes, I was specifically in the public sector group focused on state, local, and, federal as well as international clients. grant Thorn has a large established private sector practice, but I was recruited into the public sector. So working from the Department of Homeland Security to the Department of Justice, department of Commerce, and then working on, how to think about, state and local, but then also international growth, right? Working with, the World Bank and the IMF around some public sector engagements as well. Now on the technical side, the beauty of consulting is that I was able to do everything from like project management down to Six Sigma. I was able to do like financial controls and financial modeling. So I really think that having anything from a three to seven month engagement allows you to get exposed to a lot of different gnarly problems to solve, a lot of different managers and, people and stakeholders you have to work with. and on top of that, it allows you to just try things out. And I was within the public sector and I really enjoyed the practice of consulting. but I also knew that I was motivated to serve to a higher good, still within the public sector, but really perhaps have, higher impact within policy.

Varun Rajan 8:44

Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. I'd be curious to know, and you talked a little bit about having a few options next. and you touched on this a little bit and I think I just wanna get to that transition point of it sounds like even in 2010 you had just started trying to figure out what was gonna come next. was there a point at which you thought consulting was not gonna be for you long term? Or did you come into this knowing, Hey, I'm gonna expose myself to a lot of things and maybe there's something that is gonna stand out to me as something I wanna spend more time in doing, like when it came to my clients or the kind of work that you were doing with your various clients?

Rajan Trivedi 9:19

I was what many probably call an inpatient millennial, wanting to try and see a bunch of different areas, wanting to switch around, and not necessarily, seeing myself grow, in the consulting game. And what I mean by that is that they're really in consulting, two elements of success. One is client satisfaction, and two is business development. so I had spent so many nights and weekends rocking out some business development and helping to generate proposals in order to bring in revenue. and my clients, I love working with them and they love working with me. And I really like the client delivery part and less of the business development part. And as you grow in consulting, the expectation is, the long tail is gonna be less and less around, the client delivery and more around sales. I didn't see that as a, as part of my future growth and what excited me, what kind of got me out of the bed, but then also on top of that, I knew that I was good at it. So consulting is something that we can always return to, is, was my perspective. and at the right age of 24, 25, I thought to myself, okay, this is the right time to accelerate, try something new. also knowing that grad school is potentially on the horizon.

Varun Rajan 10:31

that's so incredibly helpful of an insight, Rajan, that like both of those two angles about consulting and you were good at both, but getting ahead, right? Like really advancing as a consultant meant leaning into the aspect of the business that didn't excite you as much as the other aspect, which is actually delivering awesome work product for your clients. So you have your push factors, which is okay, advancement here means leaning into the part of things that are totally valid for what advancement takes in consulting. But what I wanna do is be more focused on the problem solving and execution. so and so what pulled you to, towards what you did next with the options that you had on the table?

Rajan Trivedi 11:11

I think there was this, light bulb moment I had, which is that I should index on risk taking, I had some options on the table, right? I had the Fulbright, I had Teach for America and this quest to go into public service, and there are a few different ways to go about it. I wanted to index on risk, And something that I thought I was really passionate about that I could talk about for the rest of my life. you know, with, the excitement and the opportunity in Asian American Pacific Islander organizing, seeing how exciting the tech cycle was, within the Obama years with an niche trooper and open data, having a CTO and the USDS, like the digital service, I was getting really passionate and excited about, that area of the world. And I started really small when I was in consulting. I started to organize and get involved, with some political action committees that was really, focused on grassroots mobilization of the A API vote, as well as the youth. I used that to get out and go do nights and weekends and, get out the vote and knock on doors, go to fundraisers and meet, folks in the community and do a vast amount of networking. and that's what really kinda landed me an opportunity to volunteer and to start taking leadership in South Asians for Obama. I really need to see that. president Obama is reelected at that time, and so I really focused on, going to as many states as possible, knocking on hundreds of doors. and I think that really allowed me to open up some doors, in the Obama administration.

Varun Rajan 12:36

Awesome. that's so cool. So tell me a little bit more about how you were serving in the Obama administration. What organization were you under? I.

Rajan Trivedi 12:44

Yeah, totally.

Varun Rajan 12:45

Yep.

Rajan Trivedi 12:47

I think, in general there, it's really difficult to make CR career transitions. In a different industry and in a t different domain, right? So I'm thinking about like a two by two bell curve, right? and on the X axis, having something like industry, right? public sector or healthcare, tech, right? and then, within the domain, areas that you might be excelling at, product management, finance, marketing, whatever they might be, right? different tools you might work with, like Salesforce or MarTech tools or, knowing really internal tools versus, student facing or customer facing experiences. And for me, as I was getting into the Obama administration, my goal was to stay within a similar domain, but make an industry shift. And I was able to, find a, a series C, a special appointment, political appointment into the Millennium Challenge Corporation. I was working for the CTO and CFO at the time. and just for folks to know, the Millennium Challenge Corporation is a bilateral, international development agency that was started during the Bush administration, really trying to use like business and private sector approaches to international development. Working with a smaller number of countries, but probably a lot more, are a lot higher in terms of budget allocation. From 200 million to a buck and a half billion, right? So a lot larger footprint and kind of sister agencies to U-S-A-I-D or opic. I was able to work with the CFO and CTO around everything from how to think about, the budget and how to work with the Office of Management and budget around the budgeting process. Like what an a 1 23 control might look like, right? How do we do procurement of, of contracts and vendors. how do we think about, streamlining services for a very international and distributed workforce? and then what really riled me up, really excited me was it was the around how to organize Millennium Challenge Corporation data, making it open and accessible, machine readable so that practitioners in the world could use that data, right? So that could be geospatial data monitoring and evaluation data.

Varun Rajan 14:52

Cool.

Rajan Trivedi 14:53

reality was, is that I was willing to do anything. I was truly an assistant to a, a senior executive. think that the passion, the excitement, as well as this, the willingness and low ego, to roll up my sleeves allowed me to get exposed to a lot of different stuff.

Varun Rajan 15:08

what were some of the outcomes that you saw, from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, while you were there? what excited you about working there from like a mission perspective and maybe it was more about the work and what you were able to do rather than like what those discreet outcomes were. like all of the stuff that you're talking about the data transparency seems really cool. I just curious just to get a better, a more tangible understanding of what the organization was doing. just trying to wrap my head around that a little bit.

Rajan Trivedi 15:34

totally. So I think one of the most exciting tools that I created and worked on was using, MCC data for, companies to enter new markets in Africa and latam.

Varun Rajan 15:47

Cool.

Rajan Trivedi 15:48

we're working in, Ghana, we're working in Lutu, we're working in, areas that have potential high. political and economic risk. an international corporation or an NGO is looking to enter, and or understand, opportunities in the market. imagine like a Unilever, or a PepsiCo kind of thinking, okay, we want to go, do distribution and sales there. what's the infrastructure there? making available those data sets, to practitioners, PhDs and academics all the way down to folks in the private sector around, hey, like, how can we even see where, aid flows are happening, within, the developing world? that's some of the outcomes that I was able to work on, in addition to, to, closing out about a billion, plus dollar, budget, right? with, on year over year and living through the 2011 government shutdown. Oh, please don't quote me. No, 2013 government shutdown, excuse me. and, and then, really being motivated around international development, that's what really excited me, and I saw that as being my ultimate career. And there were a lot of learnings in working with the civil servants, over my two years there. that then helped me transition to say, I really want to take another risk. And I worked at a really early stage startup in Nairobi, Kenya as a result of that. But that's another current transition.

Varun Rajan 17:03

to Totally. let's talk about what led you to, to that. It sounds like you, with the work that you were doing, you got really excited about international development. You came in probably a little bit excited about that and like policy more broadly. and my question is like, what are the things that you liked and didn't like about the work that you were doing? Like at what point did you, say to yourself, Hey, it's time to move on. Or even it's time to look for the next thing that I want to do.

Rajan Trivedi 17:28

so in this career transition, and I had really been in policy in DC world for five years, and I am fast moving. I really, some might call it, have a high level of a DD, really needing to see the impact and the results of my work. Now, when we work in policy, we're talking about 5, 10, 20 year outcomes. I need to see the impact of my efforts on a daily, weekly, if not a quarterly basis. And that was really what frustrated me. we were working about 10 year out policies, and I didn't know how I was making a contribution to that ultimately, given the long-term impact of it.

Varun Rajan 18:10

so you can, so the work that you're doing, you're able to turn around very quickly, like while you're at MCC, right? And like you're able to implement stuff and deliver to your clients, to the civil servants, to like whoever those stakeholders are that you're delivering for. but then the output of that and the actual outcomes of that are gonna take a long time to really develop and mature in terms of, seeing what the results of that are. is that fair to say

Rajan Trivedi 18:32

Yeah, the mission statement of the MC is to reduce global poverty through economic growth. that's a 5, 10, 20 year time horizon,

Varun Rajan 18:40

it's not something you can do in a sprint?

Rajan Trivedi 18:42

right? that's far from, a mid release within a sprint. and let alone talking about quarterly waterfall projections, we're talking about a 20 year outcome. And

Varun Rajan 18:50

Yeah.

Rajan Trivedi 18:52

appreciate the value and the importance of policy as it relates to global growth, and reducing global poverty. I appreciate diplomacy as a part of that, but what I learned in five years is that I have a higher sense of urgency and I needed to see the impact of my work, which is what excited me about getting into quicker cycles of development, quicker, cycles of experimentation and quicker cycles of learning.

Varun Rajan 19:22

so let's talk about what came next. your push factors here are results, outcomes, KPIs, metrics, I need to be seeing the results from what I deliver sooner. what did you end on moving on to? Were there other trade offs that you had in mind with other opportunities on the table? tell me a little bit about the stories of what came next in this next transition.

Rajan Trivedi 19:39

totally. I up, transitioning from the Millennium Challenge Corporation and working at a super early stage startup in Nairobi, Kenya. I was doing a combination of business development and trust and safety, and it was a super early stage startup. We're talking about five people less. and, my decision point around this transition was, do I want to go work in a startup in the technology space or do I want to further my public service and political pointee world, and try to mobilize upward, in that sphere. was a gnarly, tough decision, and one that I spent hours and lots of counsel, and really thinking about. And in that phase, I was a sponge. I talked to as many people as I could. I knew no one in Kenya at that time. I knew that, if I were to go down, the startup and technology, lane, I had three criterion of what I wanted to work on. One is that I wanted it to be international. I wanted to get out of dc which is the largest employer, at least at that time in the world. And I really wanted to work at a smaller kind of company, and really build zero to one products. And then the last criterion is that, I really wanted to feel motivated and excited about the impact of the, of the product. And I did tons of networking. I looked at a number of opportunities. I took a gigantic pay cut, and I, picked up my life, put myself into a backpack, and lived in and moved to Nairobi, Kenya. I did a very calculated risk assessment as well. There were a couple of ways I did that. One is that I had applied for grad school and I'd received admission to, a master's of public Policy programs, up across, the East coast. and two, I had enough savings in the bank where I was able to do some gallivanting around the world. So in that timeframe as well, I was able to go to the World Cup in Brazil. I was

Varun Rajan 21:31

Nice.

Rajan Trivedi 21:32

to, spend time with my grandmother who was in the nursing home and see ultimately, unfortunately her passing and just be highly

Varun Rajan 21:40

Sorry to hear that.

Rajan Trivedi 21:41

I was able to do a lot of, with that time and that time is often limited and so valuable. I was able to nurture that in between these transitions and really go head in first into my startup in Kenya.

Varun Rajan 21:53

You said you had a bunch of networking calls. Were there any insights, from those calls if you can remember that kind of maybe pulled you one way or another? if you were thinking about doing something outside of the opportunity that you had in Nairobi or even grad school at the time? what, were there any kind of like words of wisdom that you received at the time that made you think differently? or informed, ultimately what you ended up prioritizing?

Rajan Trivedi 22:16

That's a great question. Lemme take a quick second to think about that.

Varun Rajan 22:19

Totally.

Rajan Trivedi 22:44

Yeah, I would say a few kind of words of wisdom, came with the 60 plus people I networked, connected with, chatted with evaluated counsel, and I got mentorship from. and it really comes down to risk, adventure and the fact that time is a gift. and indexing on all of those, in my mid twenties, not in a relationship, have a little bit of security and backup. all were elements of how I thought about, a career in a startup in East Africa. on the flip of that, there were some more, professionalisms that are important. International experience is always valuable. and working in different, environments is critical. Being able to deal with ambiguity is a skill that's. That is, highly sought after in all the different industries. But, all those were just isms that were not motivating. What was motivating was that I was looking for the most adventurous, highest risk and, time in order to, to enjoy those years that I spent, overseas.

Varun Rajan 23:57

Yeah. Excellent. cool. So tell us about the startup that you went to in Nairobi

Rajan Trivedi 24:03

Yeah, totally. the startup is called mga. I joined in, yeah, of course, doing a little bit of everything. and really M-Changa is where I started my FinTech journey. M-Changa is really trying to rethink credit and access through a crowdfunding platform, that offered a number of payment rails like m Besa, air till money in addition to cards, and then worked with PayPal, for remittances as well. my experience at m is what lit the fire and excited me about product management. I was there to help drive in acquisitions and leads. I was there to, develop, partnerships and then, really harden the platform to think about trust and safety, fraud, and some of the internal and external checks that we needed to do as the company was looking to scale and do a round of fundraising. I was working, with the Gates Foundation to structure a, scheme where we would use our platform to offer a sub some amount of money to users in, in, refugee camps in, on the border of Uganda and Sudan. and essentially, with the Gates Foundation, what we were looking to do is, give out these small micro loans, and. Be able to analyze the transaction behavior, and based off of that, look at what are the reasons for fundraisers? It's a crowdfunding platform like, Kiva or our, Indiegogo, Kickstarter and so on, right? And most of these are fundraisers for Kenyons by Kenyons, therefore education funds or funerals, weddings, right? Different life shocks, that require this idea to changa or to really depend on the community, to grow out of a hardship. And in working with the Gates Foundation, we were able to actually see like levels of social standing. We were able to see

Varun Rajan 25:49

Wow.

Rajan Trivedi 25:50

leader in the community was giving more. Now sure, they might have been higher net worth, right? but we could see based off of giving patterns, potentially signals of social credit in an area where, in a segment of the world where credit doesn't exist, there's no Experian, in the emerging markets, let alone any credit history where, you know, M-Pesa and many, payment methods have been leapfrog altogether. and so in working with the Gates Foundation, enabling this partnership, and really piloting in these refugee camps using a technology platform, I learned about this thing called product management. I had no idea I was doing it. I was working with developers and engineers and folks on the business legal. I thought I was just, enabling a partnership, but really what I was working on is creating a platform, a series of, processes and tools, and to be able to, to ship, learn and use data to iterate on it. And I was truly hooked, on, in product management afterwards.

Varun Rajan 26:41

That's amazing. can you tell me a little bit more about what were those, maybe some of those aha moments, when you were leading this partnership with the Gates Foundation, you implement this, you're working with engineers. at what point were, was it like seeing the data come in? What was the kind of data that you were looking at, and one of the things that you had talked about in your previous role was like, Hey, it's very hard for me to see the results or the outcomes of the things that I'm actually working on. And so that's one of the reasons that you wanted to join a startup. Were you able to see that here and, how did that kind of like coalesce with your, it stepping into this product management role?

Rajan Trivedi 27:17

Yeah. One thing that I did mention earlier was that, the age of 16, I had done an internship with a microfinance organization in India. and they were trying to use micro funds to empower, women in the state of Gujarat in India, but then also India more broadly and offer, overall end-to-end financial services for that population. and so that really grounded me, right? I did a lot of my, my research in undergrad around microfinance. and I really, like I said, like thought that microfinance and development was really a pathway for reducing global poverty. What was so cool about my experience at M Changa is that I saw that at the micro level, and I saw that on t at the transactional level, right? I could see transactional giving around different areas. Hey, you need a cell phone, or you wanna start a business, or you have, a wedding coming up, right? We were able to see all those signals on a, at a micro level, and that was one of those aha moments for me to see, this is giving behavior, this is core needs of financial access, and financial services for a segment. that's largely untapped. what I think I was most excited by was to be able to see some of those outcomes moving to the right. I can't say that we really saw true, reduction in global poverty through economic growth in that particular POC, but it was really exciting to see some of these signals and these behaviors that are happening in a very micro based way and very informally and a sector, that is often looked, away from large telcos or large banks in, in developing regions.

Varun Rajan 28:48

So you're doing product management for the first time you're working with engineers, you're building a platform that you're getting people to use. You're talking directly to those actual users to get an understanding of if, the platform is being used properly, and if we actually provide these services to people that may not have access, to financial services in a traditional sense. ending global poverty is a, many decades, kind of thing, but you can see the amelioration of, symptoms of poverty, in what you were doing in real time. at the end of the day, what was, what was leaving that organization like for you and what was it informed by?

Rajan Trivedi 29:24

I applied to grad school in both 2013 and in 2014. and just recently I compared my applications in 2013 to 2014. and everything that I said in 2014 that I wanted to do professionally, as it turns out, with a couple of left turns and right turns, I have largely been on that path, in 2013, I had absolutely no idea what I was looking to do and why I wanted to use grad school, and what were gonna be some of the goals, as a professional career around that. And in 2014, I. Rooted myself in this idea that I wanted to use grad school to catapult myself into product management.'cause I learned about this world.

Varun Rajan 30:08

I.

Rajan Trivedi 30:08

I wanted a very multidisciplinary, cross sector, education that include design and engineering doing classes at the Harvard Business School. But in addition to that, learning about, social enterprises and startup and entrepreneurship, at the Harvard Kennedy School. And I was excited about, opening up academic and the freedom to think and learn and become a sponge for a couple years in grad school. uplevel and fine tune those skills, and transition my career into product management. So I ended up staying at M Changa, until up until I, got in and attended grad school, which I then went to the Harvard Kennedy School, and spent a couple years in very frigid and very cold Boston. and, I really attribute the time that I spent in Kenya as accelerating my eq IQ around what do I really want professionally?

Varun Rajan 31:02

That's incredible. Yeah,

Rajan Trivedi 31:04

show that by looking at the

Varun Rajan 31:05

I,

Rajan Trivedi 31:06

and the clarity I had between 2013 and 2014.

Varun Rajan 31:09

it's so interesting because I've, I've spoken to so many people who have gone to grad school because they're like, it's a thing to do, and I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for. And it sounds like you were thoughtful about all of those decisions and even when you applied in 2013, like you had some idea, but it was still like, it was just one of those like. You didn't take that bet on grad school before you really knew more about what you wanted. and then the time that you spent in Nairobi really helped clarify and ossify for you, like what you were looking for, which I think is like super crucial, for anybody making that decision to go back into school.

Rajan Trivedi 31:44

I. I envy people like my sister. my sister knew in high school that she wanted to be a doctor, and she's now a radiologist, a medical professional. and she had sure a debate in high school, do I wanna go into teaching or do I want to go into medicine? But at the ripe age of 17, you basically have charted your path from 17 until the age of 35, 36. It's structured. You know exactly what you need to do. And I would say largely speaking, anything in medicine, anything in law, maybe even in engineering to some extent, right? there is a structured path, and there are trade offs to that, right? It's hard to, it's hard to go where I am today into medicine, but then also hard to get outta medicine. cause there are certainly golden handcuffs in that process as well. went into grad school wanting to spend that money on a goal that was gonna allow me to get into a career I wanted. there is nothing wrong with going to grad school of, Hey, I'm out of a job. I have no idea what I wanna do. and an MBA is always good, or, I think that there are certain degrees or potentially higher value than others. I certainly think that, there are general. degrees that can accelerate your career and some that can potentially be a barrier to growth. Certainly the financial side as well. Having that clarity allows use of the two to three years that we have, in grad school and really opens up a lot of opportunities in that way as well.

Varun Rajan 33:09

so Kennedy School for Public Policy, this is like cream of the crop. and you're going to a public policy school also knowing that you want to get into product management. I haven't talked to many PMs who have an MPP. tell me a little bit about what you're aiming for there. it sounds like you, you really had a very specific vision for yourself and wanting to target product management and also going to a school for public policy. that's a very unique combination and I think like very, it fits a very unique vision that you had for your career going forward. and maybe that's just a statement more than a question, but tell me a little bit more about going to grad school. tell me about the experience there and anything that, particularly stood out to you during your time there that informed maybe what you wanted to do next.

Rajan Trivedi 33:52

Yeah, I, Agree that the, world of technologists, let alone product managers with a policy background, is limited. and I evaluated and looked at both MBA and policy programs, as well. and I probably intended to do a dual program, but, got to the goals that I was looking for, without that, I did a shadowing of a large, hiring company that's based in the Bay Area, and I met with a product leader, like one of those winner shadow programs. he is now, the CEO of that company. This is a publicly traded company. and what he told me really resonated. He said There are really like three flavors of product managers. The first is that you get like an x blank, right? Like X engineer, X management consultant, x lawyer. Those are minimal, right? The second is like a storyteller, Like I'm just really good at telling stories and weaving and communicating. And then you have a little bit of that last one, which is a Swiss Army knife, right? I've been exposed to a lot of different domains, and, I. I wanted to use grad school, to become the Swiss Armenia t pm and find a niche, right? at, in grad school I wrote my master's thesis on anti-money laundering and fraud detection in the payment space. One beautiful way to be able to create a product strategy for a startup. really get deep into an area of financial services, that is so critical to the bottom line of the company. and also meet with a ton of folks, in the industry. And a thesis allowed me to generate a network, but then also do some thought leadership, within that space. I was exposed to, all sorts of courses in, at the Kennedy School, and I absolutely loved working with my classmates. I think that grad school affords just more time, more learning, more ability to be a sponge certainly comes with the cost. And I certainly pay, Harvard on a monthly basis, my tuition bills. But, it was a lovely two years, where I was able to accelerate, get a very cross-disciplinary, learning path, get some credentials, and, meet some of the next generation leaders in public sector and private sector.

Varun Rajan 36:05

Incredible. so as you were wrapping up your time there, what, what was coming next?

Rajan Trivedi 36:11

I think in a, another question to ask is like, how did you break into product management?

Varun Rajan 36:16

Yeah.

Rajan Trivedi 36:16

without an actual product management, ever on, on my resume. and, the honest answer is that a product manager gave me a shot, right? I got introduced to the chief product officer of, of an Intuit product called Quicken at the time, and that person, provided a Master's degree in product management in a five month period. story, uh, Kendra was someone, who lived in San Francisco, and we actually commuted to Menlo Park, together. and he often bummed me a ride, right? And so I, in addition to working for the CPO and doing, I shipped a number of really cool features. I integrated Zillow and Kelley Blue Books into Quicken. I did a market entry study for, for offering new personal financial management tools in the property manager and small business owner space. honestly, my education was at every day on the 1 0 1 we drove from, Menlo Park to San Francisco when he would drop me off I would just learn and let him talk and talk and ask him every question under the sun. my break into product management, was by working and interning with Stoen. and each role after that, I think I mentioned that six of my seven roles were all through networking. each of my opportunities and product have followed as a result of that except for one. I followed the chief technology officer from Quicken to Prudential. I, followed the hiring manager from Prudential to Chegg. and all of that has been network based. But my break and the hardest break to get product management on the resume is that first one. And that was a break from someone who just believed in, in me and wanted to gimme a shot.

Varun Rajan 37:59

That's amazing. And so this happened, while you were in grad school?

Rajan Trivedi 38:03

It was a summer between, my first and second

Varun Rajan 38:05

First and second year. Gotcha. Awesome. and so you said the CTO, you followed the CTO at Quicken to Prudential. tell us a little bit about that and how you ended up at Prudential.

Rajan Trivedi 38:14

Yeah, absolutely. I followed her from, Intuit to Prudential. as I, was really looking at gigs in my second semester of school, I, one of the trade-offs to an atypical education is that you're not gonna have the recruitment cycles, that come to that school. So if you go to a Berkeley or a Stanford, a strong engineering shop, people come to your campus fairs for recruiting offer roles. I had to create those opportunities. and so I definitely used the network that I had developed from, from my master's thesis, from, my summer internship, to land myself a job. I, Was really excited about working in product management in a company that had operated now for 150 years. They've obviously found product market fit. they were really trying to rethink the value of the customer, and create a customer centric sales service and marketing platform. and, what I really also loved what it was my opportunity to make it to the Bay Area. it was my birthday in mid-April, second semester in grad school. my partner and I, were looking around and had snowed on my birthday and we were trying to decide between moving to New York City or moving to the Bay Area. and literally that day we were like, yep, we are going to San Francisco. and we lived in San Francisco, commuting back and forth between, the South Bay and the city for seven years.

Varun Rajan 39:39

Wow. Wow. Wonderful. tell me about your time at Prudential. what was, what were you hired to do there? And then, what did success and advancement there look like?

Rajan Trivedi 39:49

Yeah. I was hired to really rethink and launch a direct to consumer investment platform that helped consumers around, financial security. All right, so this is an industry that's complex and jargon filled. It's an industry where there's like a nurse in Tennessee who, wants support from, experts, around how to handle money. they're really looking for investment products and insurance products. They're looking for ways to save and optimize money, around different goals. I was hired on the platforms team on the servicing side. and I was quickly promoted from a senior product manager into a director that was a people manager, expanded into owning more capabilities around sales, and really taking more ownership it is scary to me how little I knew and how many resources I was given. Right. I. a young buck, product manager, had a handful of user stories, really didn't understand first principles. I, had two different squads 10 or 15 different engineers full stack And I was giving a really a blank canvas in many different ways, I really leaned in onto having a strong manager at the time. unfortunately she's no longer with us, but she was such a seasoned product manager who was so detail oriented, and delivered. her mentorship was my ground floor for product management of product delivery. I created a 20 plus customer journeys. Um, and, and really, uh, that allowed me to get really highly detail oriented, really focused on the output and the outcomes that I was looking for. I think focusing on the why and the how in Marty Kagan terms is really important. Marty Kagan attest that product managers spend too much time on the why and not enough on the how. and what we get paid for as product managers is the how, right? We should really spend 20% on the why do first principles and really understand the problem statement and if it's big enough to matter, but that how is what we get paid for. I was able to master my craft with shipping, and shipping over probably 60 plus releases, over maybe three to four different product lines. Working on a number of different users, internal, external, a lot of different surfaces from marketing initiatives down to core platforms around how users sign up and sign in to risk credentials around should we block a transaction it really, allowed me to execute, launch, and iterate quickly.

Varun Rajan 42:29

so curious about a couple of different things here. was that when you came in as a, as an individual contributor? what changed between that and being, promoted to director level

Rajan Trivedi 42:40

Now, when I was promoted, a separate manager previously told me this, but I think it really is true. a person is promoted, their job must change. My job didn't change. I was

Varun Rajan 42:57

Hmm.

Rajan Trivedi 42:57

coach. I was still expected to deliver, while also being a people manager for two PMs.

Varun Rajan 43:03

Gotcha.

Rajan Trivedi 43:03

and so it was just more workload, right? I was operating that next level. it was just more, responsibility and scope that I was responsible for. I would say that the promotion, that I experienced at Chegg that was where I saw my job actually changing. but ideally the job changes, at, going from an IC to a people manager, responsibility,

Varun Rajan 43:24

I feel like I've had this conversation with a lot of people in product, and I do feel like I've been in environments where group product managers or director level, whatever the title is, like you end up with a small number of reports and like you still are expected to deliver or be in charge of some squads yourself or something like that. the, do, have you seen that as something endemic to the product management function? where it's like you're a highly effective person and you get rewarded for your output, with a title and raises and all that kind of stuff. But the trade off there is a little bit of lack of clarity around the boundaries of what your role actually are.

Rajan Trivedi 44:02

Yeah, I think. management is a little bit like a chess game. I'll attribute this analogy to, a coach of mine, Mark Rose who offered it to me, and I'm repeating it. So all credit really goes to Mark a very wise product person. with that said, and I see there's a chess board, right? and there are a set of rules, and predefined rituals that are expected, as a part of that chess board. And the goal for that one chess board is to beat the competitor, right? and to win over a number of sequences, right? but I'm fixated on that one chess board. and when we go and get promoted to a group or director, right? Then we have actually a set of three chess boards. and really we're trying to optimize, and focus on winning versus just that, those individual steps along that journey, right? and ideally we're trying to win all three games, because one out of those three games, is a major loss for some of the metrics, or that we're really trying to move, right? And you can see this gonna go and scale from, director to a VP who's thinking about multiple teams and functions. going from an IC to a people manager means we're really moving the chessboard scope and the responsibility. But this is all part of a larger game of how do we win? And we are either focused on that individual game down to all the different games, that are operating on, that the Grand Master might be, puppeting all, all along the way.

Varun Rajan 45:25

One of the things that really stood out to me, about your time when you came into this job was like really getting into the customer journey, getting really into the details and understanding all of the pieces and how they fit together. how was it having to Continue to do that in some cases, but then abstract yourself a little bit and do the kind of like higher level thinking and guidance for your direct reports.

Rajan Trivedi 45:46

Yeah, all of my product management roles, I've started, as a player coach and, was a people manager. And I think that there are differences between a company as a people manager, or. Joining as an getting promoted, and really owning that product. and the reason for that is that unless you happen to be an expert in joining a company in that domain or that industry, you've never shipped on that product. you don't know the inside out. You don't know, you don't know where the dead bodies are buried, right? You don't know how to unblock them, the right stakeholders, at least initially. I was able to organize a team, around different sales and service capabilities and a number of features along that we wanted to be able to build, grooming a team to own different parts of that customer journey.

Varun Rajan 46:40

Totally. so tell us a little bit about what, what led to you moving on from Prudential.

Rajan Trivedi 46:47

potential is 150 year old company where you often hear This is how things have always worked. My work life balance was great. I was able to work on impactful things, and the numbers were working fine. but I was young or I am young. I was very hungry. I wanted to evolve and grow. and I was getting, static. I. And so that was often what motivated me, with an awesome inbound, and I said, Hey, this sounds like a really great opportunity to join a PropTech startup. Uh, that was a, a, a unicorn at the time that was based in San Francisco, helping develop a strategy and executing on that strategy in the title and escrow side of home purchasing. And so, um, it was really exciting to me.

Varun Rajan 47:29

So you were at a place where, you were doing product management, learning a lot, you were delivering on things that were impactful, you were getting promoted, you had direct reports, you were like navigating the space of okay, how do I be responsible for a larger portfolio of initiatives and deliver on all of them effectively, And you're successful along the way, but you're working at this financial services company that is 150 years old and as a result of that, when you are in a function that. Demands, moving nimbly in order to deliver quickly, those things were a little bit harder to do. is that an accurate way to, describe what was going on at Prudential at the time before you ended up moving on to home Light?

Rajan Trivedi 48:10

that people, process and technology were parts of the push factor. in a new side of a heavily regulated industry was a pull factor. also go back to what are my ambitions, professionally? and I definitely, going back to my grad school applications, I have an ambition to become a chief product officer, of a technology company. and looking at maybe the funnel, of experiences that we want. within that, I think that going, from large to smaller organizations, allowed me to maybe, be bold, expose myself to different problem areas and maturities. but ultimately I. combination of the push around people, process and technology down to the opportunity to be able to grow was a major, motivation for taking the next opportunity.

Varun Rajan 49:01

tell me a little bit about home Light, your time there, k and like your responsibilities and then eventually like how you ended up moving on.

Rajan Trivedi 49:07

Yeah. I joined, home Light as a director of product management responsible for, the title and escrow business, for being able to buy a property, right? So Home Light was really trying to make the home buying process simple and satisfying. and it's absolutely broken. it is highly fragmented, and it is a confusing, process for two-sided marketplace with both agents as well as home buyers. I was responsible for once House is bought, how to underwrite it with insurance, and, that's called Title and Escrow. And I was really responsible for two things, how to activate users, in the Title one ESCO workflows. and then how to, create a customer, tracking and a notification platform to, really digitize the Title One ESCO process. How to really make sure that users understood, what actions that they were required to do, and making that really frictionless. it was such an awesome startup that I, that I worked for, probably about 800 people and less. and I had a killer, squad that was really dedicated to Title One Escrow. and, really enjoyed, the culture really enabled me to be bold in all the different ideas around where that particular product could go. and I joined as an individual contributor. so I, I joined in at, really thinking about what should be the strategy and then executing on that strategy. and that was a deliberate decision I made from being a people manager to an ic, knowing that could potentially have grown. And I really enjoyed, my time in a marketplace that I think is really critical. but there were a couple things that I knew that were happening. it was in the middle of Covid and I had seen that real estate prices, interest rate changes, and market conditions changing, there are major layouts. Have any at Zillow, Redfin, open date, Opendoor. potentially there were headwinds coming to the pop tech industry. and then second, I was about to have a kid, and my newborn. And, lo and behold, a hiring manager that I had worked for three plus years at Prudential called me up, said, Hey, I have a really op awesome opportunity. and it's also joining the band with a another person for Prudential, who was then the CTO of Chegg. and I knew nothing about EdTech, but I knew all about platforms and I loved working for that particular hiring manager. And so I said, sign me up. And that's what made the transition from home light to Chegg.

Varun Rajan 51:28

That makes a lot of sense. So you joined a startup, but you joined in 2021, and, you were tracking the market. you're very intentional about the career moves that you're making. and there were some pro probably some level of consternation that you had about the state of the industry that you were actually getting into, very quickly, as a part of it. it doesn't sound like you were making all sorts of moves, but let's say like you, you had a kid along the way, and then there's one aspect of having your, you did talk about, let's say like work life balance that you had at Prudential. and you have, you're making a pretty big change in your life. You're about to be a father. and there's probably some aspect of that you're thinking about too, like working at this like unicorn startup, versus a team that kind of understands you and knows you as a person a little bit more. And not just from a working perspective, but in a place where there was a culture, that you had really appreciated and probably understood could enable you to continue leading the life that you wanna live as you grow and mature and become a dad and stuff like that. is that fair to say?

Rajan Trivedi 52:26

Every job change guarantees that the first 18 months of that new role is going to be intense as you ramp up, as you deliver, and then potentially go through the first calibration and then look to, to grow in that role. And whenever a person takes a new job, know that there's gonna be an intensity period that potentially could then, lead to more work-life balance or as Amazon likes to call it, work-life harmony. I think that 18 month actually becomes higher in intensity and longer in duration in career switches

Varun Rajan 52:59

mm-hmm. Yeah. Totally, totally makes sense. cool. So then, you followed a team, getting the band back together when you ended up joining Chegg. tell us a little bit about that.

Rajan Trivedi 53:47

Yeah, sure. I don't know if but Che's a two-sided marketplace, that has, that's really all focused on digital learning, right? So they have like textbooks and rentals as well as then, individuals that are lurking to learn around math and writing and different, learning products. and then a network of tutors, and, that are really helping to empower students. I joined on the platform team initially, responsible for, payments and payment processing as well as an identity and access quickly got promoted, and took on a leadership role, as a people manager to be able to grow a function of being able to own the movement of money. and so that included, a really the full lifecycle within the revenue organization, how to really drive acquisitions and, how optimize involuntary churn everything from, the top of the funnel where our user signs up and signs in all the way down to were we able to build them, and have they retained as a happy and satisfied customer. you know what I learned and loved about Chegg under this. Constant quest to learn more around data informed decision that Chegg was constantly rapidly experimenting. and there were often concurrent ab tests that I was responsible for that were at scale, and that were creative and that were really driving the bottom line. and so this was the pan ultimate experience where I was not only able to have the data, structure, to be able to analyze data and to really be able to use qualitative data, and understanding and empathizing with users, but now at scale, being able to run tons and tons of ab tests to see how can we really move the needle in terms of the bottom line. That's what I really enjoyed about my tenure at Chegg.

Varun Rajan 55:40

That's really awesome. and a similar question to when you ended up as a manager at Prudential for the first time, did you have more management responsibilities or like more direct reports during your time at Chegg? obviously that Chegg is where we met, and, I had dotted line reported into you, so I'm sure you had a bunch of dotted lines as well. how did your responsibilities change over time o over the course of your time at Chegg? what was it like being a manager? What are the things that you you know, what were the things that you learned during that time being like a product leader?

Rajan Trivedi 56:12

Yeah, sure. I joined as a people manager of one and really, grew to manage and work with a team of four PMs and a couple dot dotted lines, including working really closely with you. and, when I got promoted because, we were really looking to evolve the team from a feature factory into a true product team, and really ground ourselves in first principles, really ground ourselves on delivery with quality, and really focus on owning the end-to-end experience. I was gifted amazing managers at Chegg. I think in three years I had four, managers and, was involved in five different org changes. and often I think that with org changes, as long as we're bought into the vision and we're also know, or have some confidence in the security of our role, org changes are almost always for the better. and so keeping my head down focused on the work, really being able to, use my managers, as learning and growing, and then being a people manager for, all individual contributors, both senior and junior, hiring them, growing them, getting them promoted, motivating them, focused on really unblocking them just shoot the shit.

Varun Rajan 57:29

So you talked about reorgs. I've experienced, some of those reorgs, with you. reorgs in particular are something that I think can be like, I really, I do appreciate the really like good faith, positive interpretation for those reorgs. having, worked at a bunch of startups and companies and seen reorgs in all sorts of places. I know that it causes a lot of consternation, And I'd be curious to know how you dealt with that as a manager. fundamentally allowing them to have some sense of belonging and trust in a changing environment with changing dynamics.

Rajan Trivedi 58:03

Yeah, I think that, uncertainty is difficult to traverse. I think I use a few things to ground both me and my team. first is show a high degree of empathy. second motivate around. that person, and last articulate and gate around the controllables and the uncontrollables. being able to gate and motivate that individual on your team around what's happening up top and how that affects what you're working on, everyone is motivated by the bullets on your resume, right? So there's also al always life after that particular organization. Not to say that you're trying to leave that organization, but there's always life afterwards. And so what are those truest, proudest accomplishments that you are going to put on your resume My job as a people manager is to set that person up for success with at least one opportunity That's gonna be the bullet point on their resume. so motivate around the work. knowing that up top it's a little insecure. and there might be risks associated to that as well. just last but not least, controllables and uncontrollables, if it's uncontrollable, there's nothing for you to be able to do. Acknowledge it, know it's present, and have that empathy around it. But it's just, focus on what you can control.

Varun Rajan 59:33

There are a couple of things, to this point in your career, that I wanted to think about and maybe just close the loop on them. So one of the things early on that we talked about was like your risk appetite and your sense of adventure for wanting to try new things. Like when you went to Nairobi, working at a smaller company, at this point when you got to Chegg, did that risk appetite change? your motivations for your transitions have been very, very interesting, made a lot of sense of what you wanted to focus on, what you wanted the work to be about, how you wanted the work to be informed, IE data scale, et cetera. people management. so I'd be curious to know how that sense of like risk taking changed over time or did it not? did you find a sense of risk coming into Chegg, let's say? so that's the first thing that I'd wanna talk about as one of those through lines.

Rajan Trivedi 1:00:16

I think that. My twenties and early thirties allowed me to take significant risk to multiple pieces of the chess puzzle, career switches or the motivation for career switches is limited. If you found a passion for what you do. I like, I love the intensity, the fact that every day is different. It is, it's a so's job, meaning that you have to say no more often than Yes. and it is, one that is, being challenged by technologies outside, left and right.

Varun Rajan 1:00:47

Some of the risk is built into the function.

Rajan Trivedi 1:00:50

risk in the industry and that might have changed also, Microsoft used to call product managers, project managers, Or, and there are different names for it. But, potentially if we look at a career, a along a time horizon, we say that risk is being able be able to find ultimately what that passion is. And passion might be something that you're good at, that also that you can monetize and get paid for. I was really good at consulting. but I probably wasn't gonna be able to monetize business development. And so I tried that out and I took risks to try another area, I think the younger we are, the higher risk we could take. Now, on the flip side, the average age for a student getting a master's degree at the Har Harvard Kennedy School is 40 plus.

Varun Rajan 1:01:34

Huh.

Rajan Trivedi 1:01:35

am. Those are, in my mind, are the true champions because they have done an entire career, probably 20 plus years, they've probably landed on something they're passionate about. that's monetizable. And even then they've decided to take on another risk in transition. I don't think there's a glass ceiling to when risk should be, curtailed. but in this point of my professional journey where I am in the career, I have chosen, I really like what I do. and risk requires maybe a little bit of a refinement around, industry and domain. in career transitions, making a change in both industry and function is very hard. But making a change within an industry, into a different function or within the function, different industries, potentially will allow the flexibility in that transition, but two different changes within industry and function. it's not impossible, but it's much more stacked against you.

Varun Rajan 1:02:33

And it's more likely you'll be doing something a lot more lateral, than like advancing along the way. Yeah.

Rajan Trivedi 1:02:38

That's right. Like growth might not be guaranteed in that, both in terms of scope, responsibility, numbers and all that. And that's where risk comes in,

Varun Rajan 1:02:46

Yeah.

Rajan Trivedi 1:02:47

If I want to make a jump, can I do that? I made the jump from public sector to a startup and took over a 50% pay cut because I knew that I wanted to catapult and take that risk to get into technology. The industry, I discovered the function of product management. and now, my risk appetite to leave product management is very low. But the risk appetite for, another industry that's not ed tech is incredibly high.

Varun Rajan 1:03:12

Yeah, totally makes sense. The other question I wanna ask you about, being up until this point in your career as a director of product at Chegg, You, there was multiple times. you talked about very quickly getting promoted, into a manager role. what would you say to someone who is trying to get promoted either into a management role or advance one way or another? what were the things that you did that allowed you to get promoted so quickly in multiple roles?

Rajan Trivedi 1:03:37

I have never asked for a promotion, or negotiated one. It's always been given to me. and I think that it is incredibly hard, both as individual contributor going to people management, or even more so in product management in comparison to consulting and consulting, there's a rubric, right? but on the flip of that, uh, I go back to that 18 month bell curve. those first 12 to 18 months is where we press the gas pedal. and not to say we by any means go into coast and in a neutral after that, but I think that's the timeframe to hit the ground running, deliver with high impact, and rewards comes a re as a result of that.

Varun Rajan 1:04:17

Yeah, no, that, that's totally fair. It's make your mark early on is what I'm hearing. and take that first year. First year plus like very seriously. and for you, the results have spoken for themselves and like you've built trust very quickly, and gotten promoted as a result without even asking for it, which I think is really awesome. cool. Let's, wrap up with your time at Chegg. and let's talk about what you have on, on, on the docket now. I.

Rajan Trivedi 1:04:38

Yeah, totally. so post Chegg, post having a newborn, I've been able to, and fortunate enough to be doing some fractional product management consulting work with early stage startups and like the InsureTech and the hiring AI space. I was at Chegg for about three years and really was at a point where I was able to execute with my eyes closed. And I was also impacted by a reduction in force genis indeed disrupting business models left and right. and, the stock price of that company went from 120 share down to a buck 50, right? Now, for me specifically, like my entire team was outsourced to India. and in addition to that, like I was there at Chegg in the glory years of a lot of build, and with cost cutting and, efficiencies in place, there was a lot more of a buy and a vendor based commerce, mindset at the company. And so in a very Netflix way, like I bought myself out of a job. and as a result of that, I'm now looking for opportunities and product management, either as an individual contributor or as a people manager. but in the meantime I'm also doing some fractional product management consulting work, I am really enjoying the space in my life where I'm honing in my craft, working on a lot of different marketplaces and a lot of different problem areas, really focusing on that first principles, and in the meantime making and changing a lot of diapers.

Varun Rajan 1:05:53

That's awesome. Thanks so much for your time, Rajan. I think our listeners are gonna learn a lot from this conversation. I learned a lot from this conversation and, really appreciate your time.

Rajan Trivedi 1:06:02

I appreciate you having me on. good luck on the journey to scale out, push Pull podcast, and really excited to be here with you.

Varun Rajan 1:06:08

Awesome. Thank you. hope you guys enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. we got to cover how he thinks about career transitions and the frameworks that he would apply to his trajectory over time. the other thing that was really impressive, and this is something that I noticed from working with him as well, was how quickly he wants to get his hands dirty, really understand the customer journeys, the entire ecosystem and landscape of every company that he's working with and for, what was really interesting is how his involvement in the complexity in order to deliver something changed or didn't change when he became a manager. to be an effective manager for individual contributors who are really in the game trying to move the ball forward for their scope of work, while still making sure that he can lead them to success and also be working on his own surface areas that require him to be more in the weeds. So the combination of having to delegate and abstract yourself and provide coaching and mentorship. While also being in the weeds in other areas is an interesting challenge that I got to pick his brain about. A lot of this resonated with me because I do feel that. It's very relevant to product management specifically, but I think it applies more broadly as well. I think anyone in any type of job function where you get promoted to a manager or a lead where you have more surface area, more projects that you're responsible for There's always going to be a challenge of understanding how in the weeds you need to be. it is definitely given me a lot to think about. I hope it's given you a lot to think about. And so, yeah. if you enjoyed this, please, subscribe and follow. give us a review on your favorite podcast platform, like or subscribe if you're watching this on video on YouTube. if you have any questions, and you're in my dms, please do, reach out and, you can also send me an email at Varun, that's V-A-R-U-N, at push pull podcast.com. So thank you very much.