Hey there 👋🏽

Rishi Athanikar

I’m Rishi. I’m a product lead at Justworks, where I'm focused on making payroll, payments, and taxes simple for SMBs.


I love figuring out the "why" with qualitative and quantitative user research.


I aim to help my team (and company) ship the right product to the customers.

Experience

As a product manager, I have over 10 years experience building and shipping consumer and technical products.

I relish tackling complexity, and focus on shipping products and solutions that drive a positive outcome for both the end-user and the business.

Previously, I have cofounded a marketplace startup (Beander) that connected green coffee importers in the US with independent roasters.

I've written more about my current and previous work here.

Product Management & I

I believe that great products can do much more than solve problems, but delight and even change habits at times.

I am strongly guided by these product principles —

  • Always start with the customer: Figure out what the customers really need, instead of what you think they need.
    Don't build for yourself – You are not your customer. There are way more of them than there are of you.

  • People don’t buy products. They buy better versions of themselves.
    People don’t buy products because of what those products do, they buy products because of what they imagine they can do with them.

  • Good products rarely begin with technical know-how – they arise from deeply considered solutions to problems.

Product curations

I aim to constantly learn and keep improving as a PM. These are some posts that have made a deep impression on me and guided my path to becoming a better PM.

Links

Offline

When I am away from screens, I am trying to be the best parent I can be to my 3-year old. Pre-pandemic, my partner and I used to enjoy exploring New York — from a cultural and gastronomic perspective. I also am a sports enthusiast, and love volleyball and soccer football. We cannot wait to take our first overseas family vacation, with our last adventure being in Italia.

Online