44. Product, Sales & Heritage… A sitcom pilot by the great Sekander cousins.

In the technology world, Product and Sales are very much intertwined. 

Feedback needs to flow between the two. Product needs to be enabled to talk to customers in a direct way, to have a different type of conversation that sales would. Sales needs to trust the Product team, and what they are building, and understand it, to be able to communicate this to prospect customers.

But things can get ugly very quickly. Why did you promise this thing we don’t really have? Why are you so late on delivering this thing you told me was almost ready so long ago? And so on…

I happen to know two guys that have an amazing career in Product and Sales respectively, who are also Cousins, and first generation Americans from Afghan descendancy.

They are not only great at what they do, but most importantly, they have a duo dynamic going on that should have earned them a sitcom a long time ago.

The Sekander Cousins, Nake and Yosef, carry a name that means Alexander the Great in Persian. And that’s more or less how they feel about each other and themselves, their heritage and their family.

I’ve known Nake for a while now, we worked together in the past, I work with him now, and I enjoy his friendship. And I met his cousin Yosef, when we all got together for dinner in San Francisco, a city Yosef has called home for the last 10 years of his life. 

We got together to enjoy a superb chinese food dinner. A few hours (and various green shots) later, it was clear, 100% clear to me, that I wanted to get them together for a podcast episode, and just talk about life.

So that’s really what we did. The excuse? talk about what it means to build a career in tech in the US as a first generation American. The result? A fun, honest, informal and real conversation abound random topics ranging from tech, to moving around in the US and in the world, to the best way to cook Afghan rice, to the ideal all time soccer team, and much more.

It’s a very random conversation, but those are the ones I enjoy the most.

Listen, have fun, and enjoy.