Abhinav Asthana talks with Dave Rael about vision, leading, value, patience, and using empathy to make something great
As a developer on a mission to simplify API development, Abhinav and his partners started Postman as a side-project in 2012. It has grown to become an industry standard API Development Environment. Postman has more than 5 million users worldwide and is used in every country and every industry sector. Growing from a simple REST client in 2012, Postman now helps developers do everything from design, testing, mocking to monitoring and publishing, in a real-time collaborative environment. Postman has offices in Bangalore, San Francisco and Austin.
Chapters:
0:36 - Dave introduces the show and Abhinav Asthana5:55 - Foundations and understanding what is happening beneath the surface11:12 - The success of Postman, marketing, great design,and product recognition16:21 - Turning a side project into a business and figuring out value points20:27 - The responsibilities of running a business, executing on a vision, programming as "the good stuff", and leadership24:32 - Abhinav on moving to San Francisco and seeing your software in action28:37 - The magnitude of Abhinav's experience and story30:24 - Abhinav's story of failure - deficiency of clarity34:50 - Abhinav on empathy and psychology38:12 - Abhinav's book recommendations39:56 - The things that have Abhinav most excited42:51 - Abhinav's top 3 tips for delivering more value45:04 - Keeping up with Abhinav
Resources:
Postman
Postman on Twitter
cURL
Segment from Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, including Postman (at the 4-minute mark)
Postman Collections
The Three Virtues of Software Developers
Postman Jetpacks
Ankit Sobti
Abhijit Kane
How Postman went from a hobby on the Chrome webstore to a platform of 3 million users
Abhinav's book recommendation:
Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
The Society of Mind - Marvin Minsky
Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms, Cities, and Companies - Geoffrey West
Abhinav's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
Be empathetic and listen
Get context from a wide variety of sources
Hold back and have patience on capturing value