What I do

I refuse to be labeled by a single profession, so I’ll explain what I do day-to-day:

• Day → I’m the Head of Product at Packsmith, where I lead product management, growth, & strategy.
• Night → I’m an author, where I write books on various topics. I also love doing my own weekend hackathons (aka “business hors d'oeuvres”).

When I’m not doing either of those, you’ll find me reading books for my Grit MBA curriculum, weightlifting, trading equities, or exploring coffee shops with my beautiful wife Amy.

What I know

I have extensive experience in on-demand marketplaces, logistics, fulfillment operations and fintech. I am head over heels in love with mathematics, business, and technology — so I’m using what I know to make an impact in the world.

My deepest inspiration stems from observing nature and it’s been a guiding force in building products, writing, or when I’m placing equity trades. I have spent 5 years building machine learning products and over 10 years in product management growing companies and acquiring customers.

I’m powered by a relentless drive that is unique to being a child of Afghan refugees. Having grown up in poverty until I was 15 when I began working to contribute to our household income, I’ve always charted my own path. My skills are all self-taught and I’ve been fortunate to find mentors worth emulating. Anything I do is with grit and tenacity.

Markov models & Bayesian probabilities changed my life.

What I like

• Benjamin Franklin
• Leather-bound books
• Popcorn (Act II Xtreme Butter)
• Incline bench presses
• Eureka! moments

What I build

Current

Head of Product, Packsmith

I lead product management for the entire platform, including the mobile app, logistics solution, and 3PL.

Author

I’m a published author who writes across a wide range of topics.

In progress:

• The Grimoire of Wealth → A set of business case studies from the Gilded Age highlighting the chaos of the times & surfacing valuable business lessons.

Published books:

• Manifest → This book explores the vast terrain of mathematics, starting with the history of mathematics, extending to complex problems in theoretical physics, and surveying the most important unsolved problems & conjectures. Click here to purchase.

Prior

Product Consultant

I consult tech startups and executives on product management, assisting with roadmap creation, prioritization, and product strategy.

Current clients:

• PeakSpan Capital → As a member of PeakSpan Capital’s network of expert advisors, I offer product consultation to their portfolio companies.

Past clients:

• Jyve → I provided product management services to build an in-store shopper app for Meijer’s supermarkets.
• Tapcheck → I provided consultation on new business verticals the company wanted to pursue.
• Squire → I instrumented the company’s onboarding system, including providing them with guidance on how to optimize their conversion funnel.
• Eaze → I instrumented the company’s onboarding system and assisted with their automated document collection capabilities.
• Instabug → I implemented a product management framework for the team to use, including roadmaps, prioritization techniques, and software for project tracking.
• Caliza → Assisted the team with roadmap development & prioritization efforts.

Product Lead, Found

I led our taxes, bookkeeping, & subscriptions product for self-managed businesses.

Senior Product Manager, Step

Led growth & onboarding of our customers — both teens & adult sponsors. Revamped P2P payments & built a mobile check deposit solution.

Senior Product Manager, Uber

Led two machine learning products for the UberEats app: home feed ranking (personalization) & search relevance. Also devised & built two newly-spawn products: an in-house personalization-as-a-service so our team can build & train ML models on behalf of other teams, and a solution to display restaurants located in areas where couriers will be in the near future during supply-constrained periods.

Senior Product Manager, Postmates

Managed the courier fleet within the three-sided market place. This involved fleet supply, growth, signups, mobile app for deliveries and routing/dispatching logic. Postmates has since been acquired by UberEats.

Product Manager, Intuit

Launched the Quickbooks Self-Employed product in 7 different countries, contoured to the localized sole proprietary laws. I also successfully pitched & launched the development of a Quickbooks acquisition ecosystem that would get small businesses & independent contractors on the full suite of Quickbooks products to cross-sell. I also product managed the Intuit Workforce product, an applicant tracking system (ATS) designed for on-demand companies that need to onboard large volume of self-employed contractors in a short time frame.

Competitive Intelligence Lead, Lyft

I built and led an internal competitive intelligence team at Lyft. As an in-house consultant on all-things Uber, I provided pricing insights that determined our daily incentive pricing strategies. I also pitched pursuing the following at Lyft: vehicle leasing program, grocery delivery services & marijuana delivery services.

Want some more details? Check out my LinkedIn.

Endless curiosity

Aside from my employment above, I’ve always worked on bringing my ideas to life.

• AfghanDAO — a Web3 DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) dedicated to crowdsourcing & preserving Afghanistan’s culture & history by storing it on the blockchain.
• Junto Trading — a short-term trading firm that specializes in equity trading and trading education. I worked on building quantitative models and deploying algorithmic trading strategies.
• Tarjoma — a crowdsourcing site for Afghans to contribute & vote on new words where there is no Dari analog (aimed to advance the language forward).
• Noah — an Amazon Alexa skill for natural disaster preparedness.
• Intuition Ingenuity — a residential spatial intelligence system that sought to manage all incoming and outgoing personal data related to domestic facilities management.
• Dodofare — an on-demand grocery delivery startup aimed at giving back to local charities.

What I say

I've done a number of lectures and panel discussions on technology and the on-demand economy. Check out what I've done in the past and my upcoming talks.