Published in December, 2022
The Problem Statement was to "Build a product that helps people achieve enlightenment", really vague and unusual product building challenge. This challenge was a part of hiring process of Zupee ($121M funded, an online gaming company). Out of 350+ Candidates, only 2 people were shortlisted, and I was one of them. Though I didn't get the offer, but this challenge helped me to think a lot, I personally loved working on this product problem.
In this blog, I will share my experience of working on it as well as share you my solution that i submitted. Ready for a spiritual ride?
Before delving into the assignment itself, I'd like to walk you through the conventional thought pathways that most individuals, including myself initially, might have traversed in their quest to crack it. You see, when confronted with such a challenge, the instinctive inclination is often to devise a product – an app, a tool, or some tangible creation – that facilitates tranquillity (peacefulness). Ideas like meditation guides, wellness optimization platforms, habit cultivation apps, or even comprehensive repositories of spiritual knowledge in audio-visual formats tend to dominate our thought process. BUT NO!
I wasn't keen on following the predictable and obvious trajectory. It wasn't solely because I envisioned many students might do the same, but more so because I found the customary approach lacking in its ability to genuinely guide people toward enlightenment. You see, my perspective on enlightenment is somewhat unconventional. It's not merely about inner serenity or mastering the senses.
Challenge Statement & Questionnaire
You are given unlimited resources and tasked with creating a product that helps people achieve enlightenment.
● Describe your product.
● What makes you confident your product will be able to help people achieve enlightenment?
● What fundamental insights led you to build your product this way?
● How do you expect your users to use the product?
● What do you anticipate could lead to the failure of your product?
Let's Begin -
“In a way, enlightenment means, you are an unblemished life, no branding”
“Clarity came, when you see everything clearly, this is what enlightenment is!”
Before reading my solution, you need to understand these three concepts from the given POV-
(i) Memory-self , (ii) Inner-self and (iii) Spiritual
Memory-self: “Everything that you are right now is memory” including evolutionary memory, genetic memory, elemental memory, atomic memory, conscious memory, unconscious memory, articulate memory, inarticulate memory. So, if your intelligence is too free from memory that means you must free from yourself.
Inner-self: “A person's true or internal mind, soul, or nature. A quest to find your inner self and your own uniqueness.” An enlightened being (not necessarily spiritual) understands his human condition in its utmost purest form without any memory intrusion, which enhances life in all aspects and delimits the barrier of human limitations from him”
Spiritual: “A person with the believe in supernatural realm beyond physical existence, mostly religious beliefs”
The attached pdf below is the solution that I submitted, Have a look at it. It also contains product mock-up visuals.
The detailed description is in above pdf with visuals to understand, but if you are in hurry - here is the summary:
Ques 1. Describe your Product.
Ans 1. e-Dimension App – An advanced AI Powered ecosystem that will learn from you & multiple factors about you and then separates you from your memory-self to your inner-self and took you through in a journey to attain enlightenment or your “e-Dimension”
I named my product e-Dimension (enlightened dimension), as it's an attempt to make yourself aware about Who you are? [I have written mechanism inside the pdf, how this product will achieve this]
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Ques 2. What makes you confident your product will be able to help people achieve enlightenment?
Ans 2. Enlightened being (not necessarily spiritual) understands his human condition in its utmost purest form without any memory intrusion, which enhances life in all aspects and delimits the barrier of human limitations from him”.
“Clarity came, when you see everything clearly, this is what enlightenment is!”
Before reading the below points, you need to go through the above doc where i have explained how this product works.
This Product “e-Dimension” will be able to help people achieve enlightenment for the following reasons:
a) This product has many capabilities to bring the user a mirror to his inner self which is a direction to path of enlightenment.
b) The more you engage with yourself (product) the more you use it to know more about yourself which will even polish your AI further to the truer version of yourself. This Cyclicity will make the product self-improving with time and create an urge in the user to keep using it.
c) It will be like another lively person in your life that can not betray you because it’s you only, this will empower you to talk & get your problems resolved with the help of your inner voice. Eliminates Loneliness to some extent.
d) When people will see their progress reports towards enlightenment & feel positive or negative about it, they will push themselves to achieve enlightenment, i.e, to know them better.
e) It will help people to make a clear distinction between their branded life (memory-self) Vs their enlightened self.
f) The Psychedelic Zone will help people remain calmer, balanced, optimistic in life which fastens your path to enlightenment.
g) The Daily Diary feature will help people recall their older self and talk about any particular old incident of life with newer & more fresh perspective, which will also help in achieving the enlightenment when you will understand how could you have reacted if you would have identified your truer sense earlier.
h) Interacting with enlightened self of yourself and ability to ask questions to it, will help the users to clear the fuzz or misconception people have of themselves in their mind either due to situations or societal feedback.
i) The Meditation, Yoga, Speeches of great spiritual speakers, training exercises of emotions will help the user build the strong aura of positivity, trueness & escape from the materialistic world.
j) Identification of Emotional Triggers by App can be a Gold feature for users as it will capture the impulsive reactions of users and promptly inform them to relax, the regularization of this activity will help them in longer run to deal with emotional triggers, in turn help achieving enlightenment.
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Ques 3. What fundamental insights led you to build your product this way?
Ans 3. The fundamentals of building my product in this manner is broadly based on the contextual definition of enlightenment by Sadhguru - Video Link
“In a way, enlightenment means, you are an unblemished life, no branding”
“Clarity came, when you see everything clearly, this is what enlightenment is!”
Understanding Memory Self, Inner Self and Spiritual.
I build the product in the manner that -
(a) helps people in knowing their memory self
(b) helps people in knowing their inner self
(c) helps people to understand the clear distinction between their inner self and memory self to have clarity on life
(d) helps people to keep their minds relaxed to achieve the state of enlightenment
(e) Clearing the buzz and biases of others opinions over your personality & understanding to the world
(f) steps to improve the enlightenment quotient of the user
(g) helps them track their progress in improvement of their emotional triggers, bad days, good days, etc.
(h) to battle their own thoughts with themselves by you to have a clarity which in turn will leads to enlightenment.
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Ques 4. How do you expect your users to use the product?
Ans 4. People spend the most of their time working for their & their people’s welfare in terms of materialistic pleasures, emotional comfort, future planning for a good life, etc. People judge others and themselves a lot and almost at every sphere of their life from performing in Boards Exams to performing in pleasuring your partner on bed. My Expectations with this product to be used by users are –
a) It is a product that will have high DAU, as once people get addicted to it (which is a human tendency as it helps you judge yourself and more the self it changes and learns with time). People will spend their at least 10 minutes daily on the platform to train their AI, some for real & some for its coolness or ability to surprise.
b) The initial retention will be a challenge on this product as the AI in the beginning will be not that good & will demand a lot of user’s information and patience. This can be reduced by pushing retention features like Relax Zone (Psychedelic Activities), etc.
c) Users will use this product in situation of confusion either emotional or non-abstract to have a double check mark over their decision, etc.
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Quse 5. What do you anticipate could lead to the failure of your product?
Ans 5. The possible pitfalls where the product “e-Dimension” can fail are –
a) The Improper GTM & wrong perception of this product as a game may lead to NO-TRUST factor among its potential users.
b) Humans have tendency to fake their emotions, ability to lie, tendency to keep good image in front of people even themselves as well, Hence the AI in the beginning might behave very unexpectedly if users hidden or faked the training requirements. BUT in the longer run, the AI infact will be able to flag such things as well which in turn well improve our product, still a threat for early adopters.
c) If people started treated it like GOD figure and started taking all decisions (that might not be good like suicide, kill, or which breach moral barrier, law barrier etc) it can be destructive and fail the product. Eg. The Shark Game with suicidal news in urge to complete the game or blindly follow it.
d) Lack of Early Retention features might lead to failure of the product as well, need to perform regular A/B test for retention activities like psychedelic Activities, games, etc.
e) The enlightenment product may become again a status symbol or Cool symbol for millennials and the product may lost its trust among real users.
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At the end, I loved working on this challenge as it helped me think beyond usual stuff of Profit & Loss.
"Though my interview went very well and ended very positively, Why I didn't get the offer?", on thinking over this question, I realized these might be the possible reasons I was not given the offer -
(a) The other candidate was a better fit than me for this role.
(b) The interview was with Founder of the company Dilsher Malhi, and there were few instances when I was not able to satisfy his search for Why for questions like -
(i) What do you think Nuclear Bomb are net positive or net negative to the world, I said net negative (though I have my own set of reasoning to it, and I still stand with my POV), but he was expecting net positive.
(ii) How much money is enough for you at a job? (I really did a blunder, honestly I tried to look down to earth and said 12-15 LPA, Now I realize this question was to test the hunger for ambition)
(iii) Why did you sit for Mastercard like companies when you are a product or founder profile guy? (I explained him as it's a safer way to go for placements, but I can see the disappointment on his face, he was looking for fearless people, which I explained him that I am fearless as I build my own startup prioritizing over academics but till then I might have lost him already)
Other than these three pointers, all other stuff went really well and I felt very positive, more thoughtful and especially no corporate vibes at the end of the interview.
That's all from my end for today.
Hope I didn't bore you. Thanks for reading!