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.

Favorite things, day 5: Alaska Airlines

Posted on December 18, 2019 by Rakesh Agrawal

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

Posted on December 16, 2019 by Rakesh Agrawal

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

Posted on December 6, 2019 by Rakesh Agrawal

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)

Posted on November 12, 2019 by Rakesh Agrawal

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

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Rakesh Agrawal

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

Posted on August 22, 2018 by Rakesh Agrawal

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

Posted on August 21, 2018 by Rakesh Agrawal

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

Posted on June 8, 2018 by Rakesh Agrawal

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

Posted on May 23, 2018 by Rakesh Agrawal

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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How technology chips away at jobs

Posted on February 9, 2018 by Rakesh Agrawal

Many in the technology world are dismissive of notions that technology costs jobs; part of that may be because jobs don’t disappear overnight. We hear on the news about mass layoffs; we rarely hear about steady declines caused by adoption … Continue reading →

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