Author Archives: Rakesh Agrawal

About Rakesh Agrawal

Rakesh Agrawal is Senior Director of product at Amazon (Audible). Previously, he launched local and mobile products for Microsoft and AOL. He tweets at @rakeshlobster.

TiVo remains king of TV

Twenty years into the existence of the DVR, there is still no substitute for the company that (almost) started it all: TiVo. The company, whose name is synonymous with the digital video recorder, continues to create the best of them … Continue reading

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Favorite things, day 5: Alaska Airlines

What’s not to like about an airline that more or less runs like the good old days of air travel? Courteous staff, clean planes, great terminal facilities at San Francisco and Seattle, where I travel the most. Their social media … Continue reading

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Favorite things, day 6: First Republic

I had somehow left my card in Hong Kong and was on my way to Zimbabwe. ATMs are common, but few businesses take credit cards. So I needed cash. I emailed by banker and she offered a couple of options. … Continue reading

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Favorite hotels from around the world

Here’s a list of my favorites. St Regis Vommuli Resort This is in a class by itself. St Regis New York St Regis Princeville, Kauai (now the Princeville Resort) St Regis Dubai (now the LXR Habtoor Palace) St Regis Deer … Continue reading

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Let’s not call Goldman Sachs evil (yet, and for this potential infraction)

Goldman Sachs is the company everyone loves to hate. I’m among them. They perpetuated the financial crisis by creating financial instruments no one understood; they bet against their own customers; they benefited enormously from a government bailout; they will continue … Continue reading

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5 things Andrew Yang must do for the next debate

As a lifetime product guy, I pay attention to substance, style and marketing. Yang has the first one nailed. He’s talking about two issues that will make or break the country and the world in the next decade: income inequality … Continue reading

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My personal environmental footprint

It’s a trend in corporations (at least those outside the extraction industries) to do a self analysis on your environmental effects. I wanted to think deeply about mine. I recently mailed a mercury thermometer to a friend where she has … Continue reading

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FAANG + Microsoft market matrix

Here’s my quick take on the current state of the technology market and assessments of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Netflix. What did I miss? What do you disagree on?  

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Thoughts on this week’s suicides and how you can help

Suicide and mental health get the public’s attention when you have notable deaths like those this week. But there are thousands that go unnoticed every week. One of the dirty little secrets of Silicon Valley is the high percentage of … Continue reading

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Autonomous vehicles are going to affect a lot of jobs

Autonomous vehicles will change society in more fundamental ways than most imagine. Yes, there are the obvious ways that everyone talks about: driverless Ubers, automated trucks, cities without private vehicle ownership. But there is a large ecosystem of occupations that … Continue reading

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