I picked up work on Revarta’s organic traffic strategy in the last few days and got a solid reminder and learning on early product development. Here’s what I discovered while implementing a sustainable, cost-effective approach to content generation and keyword research. Effective SEO doesn’t require expensive tools or complex workflows — especially in the early stages. The Sophistication Trap I started by looking at the “standard” SEO toolkit. The reality hit quickly: quality SEO tools easily run $250+ per month just for data and insights, before you even think about content generation. For an early-stage product like Revarta, that’s a significant investment with uncertain returns. They also didn’t seem to get me all the way there and left the execution bits out. ...

After speaking with dozens of founders building AI-powered products, I’ve noticed a pattern. They’ll complain about model quality, debate between GPT-4 and Claude, or worry about hallucinations — but when I dig deeper, the real issue is simpler: they’re not controlling the temperature parameter. This single setting can dramatically change your results, yet most builders treat it as an afterthought or ignore it entirely. Understanding Temperature: The Technical Reality Temperature controls randomness in text generation. Here’s how it works: ...

It’s January. Everyone’s thinking about the “1% better every day = 37x improvement in a year” math. It’s inspiring. It’s also not how improvement actually works. The math assumes every gain stacks on the previous one. But most improvements don’t compound. They reset. You get better, then you lose the thread. You make progress, then you can’t tell what’s working. You ship something, learn nothing, and start over. James Clear said it well this week: “New goals don’t deliver new results. New lifestyles do.” ...

This is my new home for long-form writing. I’ll be sharing ideas here and syndicating shorter versions to LinkedIn, Twitter/X, and my newsletter. What to Expect Original essays and articles Thoughts on technology, business, and building things The occasional deep dive Stay tuned.

We’re all familiar with the popularly adopted RICE framework which teams, product managers use to prioritize quarterly and annual roadmaps. While a handy and easy to understand tool the application of the tool often misses key contextual aspects and the required depth to make high quality prioritization decisions. I’ll call out a few gaps that might arise from RICE: #1 Time horizons Impact should be framed in terms of time horizons. Initiatives can take time to mature, show sustained and long lasting benefits. Imagine an initiative that requires improvements to retention, loyalty or a new business line. Keeping an artificially short time frame can over emphasize the value from incremental improvements because those could potentially materialize impact sooner. ...

One of my favorite management techniques is delegation poker. Delegation poker is a technique to arrive at how decisions are to be made. The decision makers can be two individuals (manager and report) or entire teams and their team leaders. The 7 delegation levels are: Level 1: Tell Level 2: Sell Level 3: Consult Level 4: Agree Level 5: Advise Level 6: Inquire Level 7: Delegate There is a ton of material out there but one article I frequently share is by Miquel Rodríguez which gives good detail and examples. Specifically love the non work examples with kids and restaurants: ...

I frequently get asked how non technical product managers can become more technical. I compiled a list of a few things that can help, but before get to it a little bit of rationale is warranted… Firstly, I think most people make a mistake of trying to become a software developer themselves and start with a coding 101 course. Coding is hard and will be futile for most practical situations where you need to be more “technical”. ...

As a product owner deciding what to do or not to do for your product can be tricky. Most often the number of opportunities in front of you are more than what you, your team and company can focus on. Between the qualitative and quantitative data from your customers, competitors, stakeholders and your own team this decision making can become over whelming. Getting to key focus areas is definitely an exercise that involves both art (intuition) and science (frameworks). Intuition as I define it is judgement, insight borne out of observation and possibly experience. There are probably better words to describe intuition but I’ll leave that for a different post. Let’s talk about frameworks… ...

Welcome to The Lift by me, Vamsi Narla. Engineering and Product Leader. This is where I share my thoughts on building products, leading teams, and the lessons learned along the way.

Learning is a lifelong endeavor — whatever roles we might assume (student, working professional, parent, boss, entrepreneur) there are always new things for us to learn and excel at. Willingness to learn is highly valued value and obviously without internal motivation learning becomes an arduous process. Assuming you do have the willingness there are 3 foundational pillars for learning. Putting all these together are essential for success. So what are the 3 pillars of learning? ...