Raya

AI is shaping both today and the future. ?? It will be incorporated into all products and businesses. That's why I decided to make my holiday gift to all of you a short list of AI-related resources that will enable you to bring AI to your work and organization and empower you to be most effective in your role in 2025 and beyond.? I hope you enjoy it! ?? ?? ?? If you've taken courses I recommended or read any of the books I suggested, please share your thoughts and learnings in the comments. ?? If you have other AI resources that you found helpful, please share with others in the comments, so everyone can benefit from them. Happy Thanksgiving and Early Happy Holidays Everyone! ?????? #AI #AImindset #AIskills #upskilling

Please join me and one and only Marily Nika, Ph.D, Gen AI Product Lead at Google (previously AI Product Lead @ Meta) and an award-winning AI Product leader on Wednesday, 12/17 at 9AM PST to talk about how to plan your career and set goals to become an AI Product Leader in 2025. Note: You can use code YASI to get $100 off of Marily's AI Product Management Bootcamp course on Maven (Now until December 13th): https://bit.ly/4fbIJyo What you'll learn from our panel conversation: * Five critical competencies AI PMs must harness in order to be trusted with mission-critical AI products. Where to get started on AI upskilling, today. * Get a list of trustworthy sources for AI knowledge. Learn how to evaluate new sources of information. Common pitfalls in AI product management * Get an inside perspective on where AI PMs get tripped up, distracted, and off-track. Build the muscle to avoid mistakes. Why this topic matters: AI is reshaping industries, making AI PMs essential for leading innovation and ensuring ethical, impactful products. Mastering AI-specific skills empowers professionals to build trust, tackle complex challenges, and drive business growth. Join us and grow into confident, credible AI leaders, ready to bridge technical and strategic gaps in one of the fastest-evolving fields. Runqiu (Rachel) Cai Jonah Wolfraim Maven #productmanagement #AI #careergoals #2025goals

People you surround yourself with are critical in any journey, particularly as you are building a business.??? As Steve Jobs said, “Great things in business are never done by one person, they're done by a team of people.” With that in mind, from day one when I decided to build Raya Advisory, I’ve been on the hunt for great people and looking for excuses to bring them on board as clients, teammates, or partners. I’ve always been looking for… People who inspire me.? People who are smarter than me.? People who have subject matter expertise that could be complementary to mine. I’m beyond grateful to officially announce all these amazing individuals who joined me and Raya in different roles and capacities in 2024 (our first official full year in business). We are super excited to enter the new year as a strong team, with different expertise to support you and your businesses. If you are looking for people who can become an extension of your team and help you with any of the items below, you can come to Raya and work with one of our experts: ? hiring ? product & AI consulting ? product and business strategy ? upskilling workshops ? deep behavioral and user research ? branding & website redesign ? executive coaching ?? Please meet our team members below and learn about their expertise by visiting our website (link in the comment). I’m personally involved in our talent acquisition/hiring, product & AI consulting, and upskilling workshops for our clients. ? Hiring & Talent Acquisition: * Andrew Reinhardt, Talent Partner (Meta, LinkedIn, The Climate Corporation) ? Product, Design, and Behavioral & UX Research Consulting: * Kirby Smith (Google, Fitbit, Tempo)? * Arev Steffen (Avenue Code) ? Branding & Positioning Consulting:? * Holly Camponez (Avenue Code) ? Executive & Leadership Coaching:?? * Yue Zhao (Meta, Thumbtack, coaching talents from OpenAI, Amazon, Microsoft, Tier 1 startups, Chief, and Women in Product) * Bosky Mukherjee (Atlassian, coaching talents from Netflix, Meta, Visa, other Fortune 500 companies & Women in Product) ? Raya AI Advisory Board: * Anahita Tahvizi (Instacart, Meta, Google, Youtube)? * Azadeh Yazdan (Meta & Intel) * Eric Xu (Hubspot, Meta, Google, Fitbit, Reddit) * Tanya Roosta (Amazon, UC Berkeley) * William Dinkel (Nova AI, Highspot, Cloudflare) * Rhonda Shrader (UC Berkeley)? * Matt Jaffe (Upwork, Microsoft, Box, Pinterest) For more information on how to engage with our team, feel free to reach out to me. #buildingteam #team #entrepreneurship #buildingbusiness

I’m often asked: How can I land an AI job? How can I position myself to become the AI person in my company? As I shared in the past, I truly believe #upskilling and mastering AI is the answer. We are still in the early days of AI. Investing time now to upskill yourself will enable you to supercharge your career. That’s why I partnered with Maven to offer some of my favorite AI Courses by world-class operators for you.? These courses will advance and uplevel your career. They will teach you the skills you need in AI and enable you to distinguish yourself from others: ? Marily Nika, Ph.D (Google): AI Product Management Bootcamp https://bit.ly/4fbIJyo ? Miqdad Jaffer (OpenAI): How to Build AI Products https://bit.ly/4fcmg3X ? Mahesh Yadav (Google): MAANG level GenAI Product Management https://bit.ly/3YTKri0 ? Nate Jones (Amazon): AI Career Accelerator https://bit.ly/3YRHzlN ? Max Haining & Harold Dijkstra (100Schools): No-Code x AI Bootcamp https://bit.ly/3YRjbR7 ? Sara Davison & Tyler Fisk: Scale A Business With AI & Agentic Workflows https://bit.ly/3YPRyIm Use code YASI to get $100 off any of the AI courses on Maven listed here (Now until December 13th): https://bit.ly/3YTPoaO #AI #Upskilling #AIjobs

The power of community is always mesmerizing to me. At the Harvard Business School Women Leadership Summit, where 700+ accomplished female leaders came together, I experienced that power in full play. It was heart-warming to see how many female leaders we have at the helm of many organizations and industries. These are some of the takeaways from the event: 1) Michelle Zatlyn, Co-Founder/President & COO of CloudFares (a company that started from HBS and now is a public company with $31B market cap) said that we are still in the early days of AI and there's so much potential with this technology. You can embrace it and use it to gain a competitive edge or resist it and fall behind. ?? 2) Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, Co-founder of Clerisy Gilt & GLAMSQUAD, reminded us that if you want to build something bigger than yourself, never lose sight of hustling, cold calling/emailing to prospects/partners, and getting up when you fail. Even to date after so much success building multiple companies, she's the one doing cold reachouts to potential partners/clients/talents for her portfolio companies. ?? 3) Hearing Nina Vaca's story on how to build Pinnacle Group from 0 to $1+bn company with a lot of recognition and accolades -- such an inspiring story. ?? 4) Hearing Christina Wallace, who's an #HBS Lecturer and (so much more), talking about how to build a Portfolio Life and Career that's a reflection of our various interests and skills. Hint: Read her book and you learn how to do this. ?? 5) Seeing my HBS friends and meeting my fellow HBSWA board members in real life were the highlights. Leslie Crowe, Stephanie Swingle, Maria Baibakova, Gulum Williams, Elizabeth Crabill, Heather Myers, Kathleen A Murray, and many more. ?? #HBS #womenleaders #leadership

?? Hiring Alert: Do you want to work in AI? Here are new, hot ???? roles our clients at Raya Advisory opened: ?? If you are interested in these roles, please comment below with the name of the role you are interested and our team will reach out to you directly. ?? You can, alternatively, add your name to our talent pool (link below). ? If you know others who are looking for similar roles, please tag them below. ? Re-share this post for the benefit of others who are looking for their next career move. ? VP of Product/GM: public company, SaaS AI ? VP of Platform Product Marketing: public company, SaaS AI ? VP of Product/GM: Series E company, SaaS AI ? VP of AI: Series E company, SaaS AI ? VP of Engineering: Series E company, SaaS AI ? Director of Product with gaming background: public company, SaaS AI ? Director of Product: public company, SaaS AI All these roles require the talent to be in the Bay Area (ideally) or relocate to the Bay Area as the clients have strong office cultures. #gethired #hiring #findingjob #jobsearch #findajob #talentacquisition

?? ?? I am beyond excited to announce that Andrew Reinhardt joined Raya Advisory as a Talent Partner to lead our Engineering and AI hiring efforts.??? ?? Andrew has built Engineering and AI/ML teams at scale at Meta, LinkedIn, and The Climate Corporation.??? ?? Andrew possesses a deep understanding of the AI/ML talent, the skills required to thrive in technical roles, and the current hiring landscape; he leverages this expertise to develop efficient and scalable recruiting processes for companies at any stage of hiring. Beyond his technical expertise, what I admire about Andrew the most is his laser focus on our clients and ensuring we intimately understand their hiring needs, their businesses, and their cultures. Andrew has been in this role for months, laying out our hiring function, serving our clients, and helping build the business. I’m grateful to be working with Andrew. Please join me in congratulating him on his new role.??? ?? ?? P.S. If you are hiring for #product, #engineering, #AI/ML, and similar technical roles and you need help with recruiting, make sure to reach out to Andrew or me. We do executive placements and help companies build engineering teams.??? ?? If you are looking for a job in the top tech companies, comment below and we get back to you with the next steps. #hiringannoucement #hiring #gethired #talentteams

There's something special about the "power of community"... That unstoppable energy; the one that can enable you to do great things together. That's why I truly enjoyed being among the impressive group of founders, investors, and operators at U & I Together: Tech Leadership Summit organized by Kim Moore, one of our awesome investors and board members at Cleo. This event was a great reminder of the "magic" of bringing a mission-driven, solution-oriented, and determined group of people together. Thanks to Kim and the rest of the organizers for making it happen. I enjoyed seeing old colleagues and friends while meeting new ones Pegah Ebrahimi, Noa Davidson, Sally Mueller, Amy Kux, Chris Stedman, CFA, Nikhil Abraham, and many more. I'm already looking forward to the next one! ?? ?? #community #founders #investors #operators

?? ??Hiring Alert: Raya is growing and we are expanding our team! We just opened a Content and Creative Master Mind role. This is a unique opportunity for various reasons: ? This person gets to work with an Influencer and LinkedIn Top Voice and learn how to build a personal brand with half a million (~500,000) followers. ? This role will have a front-row seat to learn how to build a high-growth, profitable business. ? This person has a chance to adopt the most cutting-edge AI tools to be more productive. For this role, the successful candidate could come from different backgrounds.Talents with past experiences in marketing, business analytics, content strategy, creative, or chief-of-staff roles could be a great fit. However, we are open to considering talents with other backgrounds. ??This role is fully remote. We are open to US and international candidates. You must be proficient in written and verbal English communication What Skills We Need: ?? Strong in identifying, strategizing, and creating high-value and engaging content Understand the attributes of various distribution channels. ?? Know how to create multi-media content including creating/editing videos, conducting surveys, creating charts and analytical information, writing contents ?? Master in researching and finding any types of information. ?? Know how to use design tools such as Canvas, Figma, others to create basic designs for contents ?? Have already been using AI tools ?? Must be proficient in written and verbal English communication ?? 2+ years of past work experience in a fast-paced environment Attributes You will Have: ?? Growth mindset: Massive interest in learning and growing. ?? Self-start & self-discipline: We are a small team. We need people who can set deadlines, unblock themselves, and deliver results. ?? Interested and able to work with Influencers & high profile people: In this role you will work with a lot of Founders, C-level executives, and high-profile people. ?? Startup mindset and commitment to our mission: We are in a mission to help 100s of companies build scaleable businesses by having the right people, products, processes, and technologies. This is hard work and we are in the early stages of building our business. We want people who have the same mindset and are in the trenches with us. ?? Have a track record of success: You could come from many different backgrounds for this role. What we are looking for is a past track record of success in work, sports, or school. ?? If you are interested in this role, please respond to the questions (link in the comments) ?? If you know someone who could be a good fit, please tag them in the comments. #hiring #openrole #gethired #hiringalert

It's great to be in NYC for another Flybridge Founder Week -- one of my favorite events of the year. What I love about this annual event is that it's packed with high-value contents from founders to founders and the opportunity to meet high-caliber people who are building scalable businesses. These have been the highlights of the events for me: ? I loved seeing my friend and incredibly inspiring founder, Shiza Shahid, taking the stage and sharing stories about how to build a substantial business, Our Place, in a short few years. Building a 9-digit revenue business and having people like Selena Gomez getting behind your product in 5 years are impressive milestones -- to say the least. ?? ?? ? What she shared very much resonated with me (and I often provide the same advice to companies we work with): In order to build a great business not only you need to have the best products, but all parts of your business including design, operation, customer service, marketing, etc have to work well together in synchrony. You need to keep the bar high on all fronts to keep the momentum and drive results. ? It was great to hear the panel of investors from A16Z, Insights Partners, Craft Ventures, and Threshold talking about what they look for in founders and startups for Series A and beyond. The gist of it is that what drives investors' interest is "sustainable and repeatable growth". The "perfect" founders and companies don't exist. Own your mistakes and focus on building a business and delivering sustainable growth. ? Love hearing some growth hacking tips on marketing and sales processes from James Theuerkauf, Julisa Salas, Will Greene, and Zach Shefska. ? Spending time with people I admire including Jeffrey Bussgang, Chip Hazard, Jesse Middleton, Katie Kirsch, Zina Ajlouny, and many others was great. I also very much enjoyed the walking dinner tour last night -- organized by one and only Cherae Robinson. ?? ?? P.S. I missed the names of some of the amazing people I met last night/today. Please tag your name below or comment, so we can stay connected. #founders #entrepneuers