Why I Left Tech to Run a Product Company (And Why It Made Me Better at Both)

A lot of people ask me why I ran a product company after years in tech.

Short answer: I saw an opportunity and took it.

Long answer: It accidentally turned into one of my biggest career assets.

Fast forward to last week.

I was advising a med-tech company trying to integrate their software into a hardware product.

The conversation quickly went from

 “Should we build hardware or license the tech?”

 to

 “Who is handling manufacturing, logistics, warehouses, customs, and international shipping… and at what point do we panic?”

Good news. I’ve already panicked. Professionally.

Running a product business taught me things no whiteboard ever could:

- How supply chains break

- The trade-offs between local and overseas manufacturing

- Navigating customs paperwork and freight forwarders

- Warehousing and inventory realities

- Choosing shipping options that do not ruin your margins

Because of that, I could help them think through owning manufacturing vs contract manufacturing vs licensing their software to existing players.

On the tech side, I could also go deep.

- I understand machine-learning models from my PhD research.

- I have been programming for decades.

- I was able to think through quantization, or shrinking the algorithm, to deploy it on smaller hardware devices.

That’s the real advantage.

I understand both:

- Software that lives in the cloud

- Products that live in warehouses

Breadth matters.

And sometimes the detour is the upgrade.