As a deeply curious, lifelong learner, Asha Susan Cherian has consistently sought out new technologies as well as opportunities to hone her craft of product management.
It is this relentless growth mindset that’s made her a prominent authority in product management for mobile, web3, NFTs and the Metaverse.
With her time split between New York and Austin, Texas, Asha’s passion for innovation, futurism and web3 technologies has earned her respect as a trusted startup advisor and global advocate for women in technology.
This self-described “impact-driven and user focused product person” specializes in web3, NFT and metaverse product management for startups and Fortune 500 companies.
With a solid background in strategy, entrepreneurship and executive leadership, her career has included being a startup founder in the digital health space as well as leading teams to build software products in diverse sectors, such as e-sports and gaming, social media, e-commerce, travel, ed tech, marketing tech and beyond.
In her current work as a Senior Product Manager, Asha oversees teams of developers and designers to build innovative products across web2 and web3.
She is on a personal quest to “get web3 product management right” and expand innovation and education across the web3 ecosystem.
She’s also a mentor and cohort leader at Co.Lab. “In this collaboration incubator, I’m training the next generation of software developers, UX/UI designers and product managers, helping them enter the technology industry for the first time.”
Describing product management as “among tech’s most coveted career paths,” Asha shares her excitement on LinkedIn about a project she’s been “planning behind the scenes for quite some time.” This entails hosting three live Linkedin Audio shows to highlight the most innovative web3 builders, investors and companies in the space. “The hope,” she explains, “is that they’ll educate and inspire talented individuals to build exceptional web3 companies and products that solve problems for people across the world.”
Asserting that “user empathy, problem-solving abilities and critical thinking skills trump all else in product management,” she comments that 99% of web3 hiring managers clearly don’t understand “the hiring paradigm for product managers has to shift away from the emphasis on crypto and web3 experience.”
While interviewing top web3 companies, Asha’s learned some useful lessons: “Throw out old assumptions and be ready to design a product manager role like a product” and “Web3 is not necessarily a zero-sum game in today’s market.”
Asha shares her insightful advice for hiring in this new world: “Hire experienced web2 product people because they’re the candidates most likely to possess the most critical skills. Understand there’s no such thing as a web3 product manager yet, so focus on hiring the best candidates with web2 experience and web3 foundations, then let them lead and build.”
Stating women are the “foundation and future of technology,” Asha encourages web3 companies to “give that strong, smart female identifying product manager or engineer you just interviewed a shot, even if your perception is that they’re slightly less qualified for the role than you’d like.”
Asha is concerned the lack of Product Managers with web2 fundamentals at web3 companies is significantly impacting the space. “It’s preventing the majority of smaller, community-first and artist-based projects and companies from achieving outsized success.”
Regarding the Metaverse, she stresses there’s not one, but numerous Metaverses, citing Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, Decentraland and Sandbox, among others. While we’re still early in the history of the space, expect many more Metaverse platforms, currently being built, to launch, both on- and off-chain in the next several years!
Experientially, the Metaverse will “unlock innumerable opportunities for interactivity as well as solving real human problems.” For example, in the various Metaverses, instead of a website, companies and brands will have ‘web spaces’ or an experiential presence in the space. “In these 3D immersive spaces, you can explore and navigate a company or brand experience, inserting yourself onto the screen via your avatar rather than viewing a video or static image.”
Asha cautions against “underestimating the impact this distinction will have on the human psyche.”
This perspective shift ─ from the web2 experience of observing something outside yourself, to a web3 metaverse experience of seeing a representation of yourself immersed within a digital environment ─ is “a massive psychological shift for how humans will experience the internet going forward.”
She remains confident about the Metaverse and web3 space, remarking from a business perspective that the Metaverse is a massive opportunity to experience a monetized, immersive, social sphere in a much deeper way, irrespective of geography.
She’s upbeat about “the impact of verifiability and trust on the blockchain,” predicting “many solutions will emerge to improve our lives, and most people won’t even know they’re blockchain tools, just as the majority of people today don’t know Amazon is an AI company.”
Spending much time considering the massive potential of web3 technologies to improve the lives of women and girls in future, she sees “many web3 use cases for women to take back their power and level the playing field.”
Asha entices people to “get involved in the space now and build for the future — the water is warm.”
As for her own future, this charming tech pioneer makes one thing clear: “I’m just getting started, so watch out for me! You’ll be hearing a lot more from me regarding web3 products that could potentially solve massive problems for women in the coming years!”
