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Kevin Aluwi

Published podcast speaker

Claims
14
Episodes
1
Shows
1
Named items
2

Books, apps, and tools

The evidenced stack.

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book / recommends

What You Do Is Who You Are

“What You Do Is Who You Are. I think that was the second most popular Ben Horowitz's book, but I'm really obsessed with building interesting and engaging cultures, so I think that's one. Another is a classic marketing book. Again, we talked a lot about branding today, so there's this book called How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp. I don't agree necessarily with everything in it, but I do think that it's a great primer on how to think about branding and marketing.”

Lenny's Podcast · 26 Mar 2023

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

How Brands Grow

“What You Do Is Who You Are. I think that was the second most popular Ben Horowitz's book, but I'm really obsessed with building interesting and engaging cultures, so I think that's one. Another is a classic marketing book. Again, we talked a lot about branding today, so there's this book called How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp. I don't agree necessarily with everything in it, but I do think that it's a great primer on how to think about branding and marketing.”

Lenny's Podcast · 26 Mar 2023

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

Claim ledger

What Kevin said.

14 transcript-backed records

01 / recommendation

Recommends What You Do Is Who You Are. Recommends How Brands Grow.

“What You Do Is Who You Are. I think that was the second most popular Ben Horowitz's book, but I'm really obsessed with building interesting and engaging cultures, so I think that's one. Another is a classic marketing book. Again, we talked a lot about branding today, so there's this book called How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp. I don't agree necessarily with everything in it, but I do think that it's a great primer on how to think about branding and marketing.”
Speaker
Kevin Aluwi
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

02 / uncertainty

I don't know what their latest numbers are, but just in terms of the numbers of people and the number of activity, I would place our scale among the largest US companies.

“I don't know what their latest numbers are, but just in terms of the numbers of people and the number of activity, I would place our scale among the largest US companies.”
Speaker
Kevin Aluwi
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

03 / belief

I found that a lot of literature out there says that product teams should be this communal best ideas come from everywhere group, which I think is well-intentioned and absolutely everyone should contribute ideas, but I think not having it be super clear who is accountable and who is deciding often slows down execution a lot.

“I found that a lot of literature out there says that product teams should be this communal best ideas come from everywhere group, which I think is well-intentioned and absolutely everyone should contribute ideas, but I think not having it be super clear who is accountable and who is deciding often slows down execution a lot.”
Speaker
Kevin Aluwi
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

04 / belief

I think that was the second most popular Ben Horowitz's book, but I'm really obsessed with building interesting and engaging cultures, so I think that's one.

“I think that was the second most popular Ben Horowitz's book, but I'm really obsessed with building interesting and engaging cultures, so I think that's one.”
Speaker
Kevin Aluwi
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

05 / preference

I would write copy, I would upload ads onto Facebook and Google and try and do my best in optimizing our online marketing spend. But I think I did all of those things, not because I wanted to be scrappy necessarily, but I do think that as, and this is probably most relevant for founders, less for executives, but I think as a founder, I do think it's really important to understand the work that needs to be done in order to see what excellence looks like.

“I would write copy, I would upload ads onto Facebook and Google and try and do my best in optimizing our online marketing spend. But I think I did all of those things, not because I wanted to be scrappy necessarily, but I do think that as, and this is probably most relevant for founders, less for executives, but I think as a founder, I do think it's really important to understand the work that needs to be done in order to see what excellence looks like.”
Speaker
Kevin Aluwi
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

06 / evaluation

Yeah, that I think is probably one of the hallmarks of this region in general where I have no doubt that what we were building and what we are today is a technology company, but I do think that in the early days you do have to be a lot more operations heavy. And then I think that lends to that scrappiness because there are a lot of things that to solve elegantly and technically will take a lot of time and just kind of over focusing on those type of solutions I think would be doing your customers a disservice because there are opportunities to make things a lot better just through probably more innovation in operations to kind of kickstart things until you have the more elegant, scalable, technical or product solution.

“Yeah, that I think is probably one of the hallmarks of this region in general where I have no doubt that what we were building and what we are today is a technology company, but I do think that in the early days you do have to be a lot more operations heavy. And then I think that lends to that scrappiness because there are a lot of things that to solve elegantly and technically will take a lot of time and just kind of over focusing on those type of solutions I think would be doing your customers a disservice because there are opportunities to make things a lot better just through probably more innovation in operations to kind of kickstart things until you have the more elegant, scalable, technical or product solution.”
Speaker
Kevin Aluwi
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

08 / preference

My Chrome tabs are just all over the place, and I love that they've figured out I would say the best approach to kind of tab management, and there's just a ton of little delightful, awesome design details in the app that I think is just really cool.

“My Chrome tabs are just all over the place, and I love that they've figured out I would say the best approach to kind of tab management, and there's just a ton of little delightful, awesome design details in the app that I think is just really cool.”
Speaker
Kevin Aluwi
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

10 / preference

I work with other founders to be able to maybe just share some of these experiences that I shared today and just figuring out what makes me happy and what are the kind activities that I find rewarding.

“I work with other founders to be able to maybe just share some of these experiences that I shared today and just figuring out what makes me happy and what are the kind activities that I find rewarding.”
Speaker
Kevin Aluwi
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

11 / commitment

We made sure that that was the only way that drivers could accept orders, but this app had a functionality that would automatically accept orders as soon as they came in.

“We made sure that that was the only way that drivers could accept orders, but this app had a functionality that would automatically accept orders as soon as they came in.”
Speaker
Kevin Aluwi
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

12 / evaluation

For us, we built an engineering center in Bangalore in 2015, and this allowed us to compete a lot better with the global giants because we had access to a really deep talent market in India at the time, but we were really early in this whole remote work thing because it wasn't common for people in our region, but also globally to have so much talent concentration outside of headquarters.

“For us, we built an engineering center in Bangalore in 2015, and this allowed us to compete a lot better with the global giants because we had access to a really deep talent market in India at the time, but we were really early in this whole remote work thing because it wasn't common for people in our region, but also globally to have so much talent concentration outside of headquarters.”
Speaker
Kevin Aluwi
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

13 / prediction

Eventually with enough time all moats can be crossed. And I think one so-called moat that doesn't get talked about enough is the fact that you're able to do hard things because hard things are hard and just simply doing things that are hard, as long as they create value to your customers, actually is a position that makes it harder for your competitors to be able to win over your customers because it's hard to do those things.

“Eventually with enough time all moats can be crossed. And I think one so-called moat that doesn't get talked about enough is the fact that you're able to do hard things because hard things are hard and just simply doing things that are hard, as long as they create value to your customers, actually is a position that makes it harder for your competitors to be able to win over your customers because it's hard to do those things.”
Speaker
Kevin Aluwi
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

14 / evaluation

Okay, I'm going to come off a little strong on this, but I am kind of annoyed at how much it's being mentioned these days. It's really popular in VC-consultant-analyst circles because it sounds really great on a strategy deck because all of the things that are really appealing, we'll talk about lower customer acquisition costs, higher attach rates to different products, talk about higher retention across different services, the ease of cross-selling and upselling.

“Okay, I'm going to come off a little strong on this, but I am kind of annoyed at how much it's being mentioned these days. It's really popular in VC-consultant-analyst circles because it sounds really great on a strategy deck because all of the things that are really appealing, we'll talk about lower customer acquisition costs, higher attach rates to different products, talk about higher retention across different services, the ease of cross-selling and upselling.”
Speaker
Kevin Aluwi
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast
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