About

I build technology products, and have worked in various product and engineering leadership roles at Plaid, Twitter, Zynga and Amazon. I also angel invest in teams and missions I care about.

To find out more about what I’ve done, check out LinkedIn.

You can reach me via Twitter DM (@umang) or email me: umang@umangj.xyz.

These days, I’m interested in the following:

• The Product function: For all the craft PMs put into building products, we don’t put nearly enough into building our own function. Hiring, retaining and growing PMs, org structure of and around product management, product processes, working with other functions all need to be thoughtfully crafted.

• Single-player to multi-player: When I used to work on Farmville, we used to joke that in spite of Farmville being the largest social game at the time, being a farmer on your virtual farm was actually a very lonely undertaking. Many tech products similarly miss a true multi-player mode which is a loss for the fabric of human connectivity. My post ‘On Connection’ talks about why this is so important to me.

• Higher abstraction tools: Steve Jobs has this anecdote on why he considers computers to be bicycles of the mind and it truly is fascinating to see a simple bicycle help humans be better than every single animal in terms of energy efficiency of motion. A simple tool helps us beat evolution. We need more tools at higher levels of abstractions aimed at specific problems.

If you want to discuss any of these at depth or want a sounding board to bounce ideas, I welcome cold emails even if we don’t know each other.