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Behzod

@behzod.com
949 followers 262 following 203 posts

Building a portfolio of play now-ish — behzod.com/now-ish consulting & advising — yetanother.studio

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Behzod @behzod.com · 24/02/2026
A dinner conversation this weekend helped catalyze why love and play are uniquely human and, just maybe, the whole point. behzod.com/blog/be-roma...
behzod.com
Be Romantic — Behzod
Why the most important work comes from people who care about things nobody asked them to care about.
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Reposted by Behzod
Dave @thisisdavekim.com · 24/02/2026
Whether you call it play, care, dreamweaving, or just giving a damn, how you do something matters. Great post by @behzod.com on infinite romance.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 17/02/2026
Somehow it's already been 11 months at the triangle factory. This is a reflection on my role(s) and why care, not process, is the real operating system companies need. behzod.com/blog/11-mont...
behzod.com
11 Months at the Triangle Factory — Behzod
Over the last eleven months at Vercel, I've been playing three overlapping roles: Chief of Staff, leading ShipOps, and Forward-Deployed Executive. This is what I've learned about why care, not process...
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Behzod @behzod.com · 14/05/2025
🙏🏻🫶🏻
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Reposted by Behzod
Jimmy Lee @jim.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
A flag post for my dear brother @behzod.com who through my perfect judgement is an excellent startup operator, organization designer, researcher, drummer, human and friend. He is a man who understands service and how to be of service. via flagpost.org
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Behzod @behzod.com · 05/05/2025
A brief reflection on my first month at Vercel — behzod.com/blog/30-days...
behzod.com
30 Days at the Triangle Factory — Behzod
A brief reflection on my first month-ish at Vercel as Chief of Staff for Product & Engineering.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 04/05/2025
“Be with people who make you feel alive” — an airport reflection
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Behzod @behzod.com · 02/05/2025
August 5th is the next time the sun will set in Seattle before 8pm.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 23/01/2025
Reviewing my past course content as I build "Mastering Customer Feedback" for Reforge (launching in March: www.reforge.com/courses/mast...). I knew it was long, but I didn’t realize it was 550-page-book long.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 06/01/2025
🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 thanks for being a force multiplier for indies.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 06/01/2025
Yet Another Year in Review - Year 04.5: behzod.com/blog/yet-ano... In this (very delayed) annual-ish reflection, I highlight lessons from the first four years of being me-as-service and talk about how I prioritize projects based on earning and learning.
behzod.com
Yet Another Year in Review - Year 04.5 — Behzod
I’ve now been working for myself longer than I’ve had any other job. May 2024 marked 4 years and it felt a bit surreal, not because I didn’t think that I would get here, but because being here has fel...
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Behzod @behzod.com · 04/01/2025
No pics of the goods?
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Behzod @behzod.com · 23/12/2024
"Every gift you give this holiday season will (most likely) be disposable garbage." Thank you Kasey for this kind of writing and thinking.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 11/12/2024
It’s a good one
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Behzod @behzod.com · 11/12/2024
Feels like we’re moving back into an era of products giving us more levers to control our experience. I love how elegantly Particle does this for content preferences. (particle.news)
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Behzod @behzod.com · 06/12/2024
"Building a portfolio of play" is how I hope to spend the rest of my professional life — finding great people to collaborate with and letting that be the north star across all that I do.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 06/12/2024
Prior to being in tech, I ran social media for a climate change documentary, helped make movies, and built kindness curriculum for kids. In the last 4.5 years, I've done traditional research and strategy consulting, but also helped a city reimagine downtown, worked on a bag, and run dinner parties.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 06/12/2024
In doing this, I've somewhat left the "sports" of a traditional corporate environment with established rules, players, etc and am leaning more into "playing" new and different (and sometimes made up) games with people (at least in terms of how I get to show up).
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Behzod @behzod.com · 06/12/2024
It's part charter and part challenge. Since I started consulting/advising, my hope was that I get to work on projects that matter with people I respect. Instead of having a clear set of offerings, I've leaned into being "me-as-a-service" (behzod.com/blog/me-as-a...).
behzod.com
Me-As-A-Service — Behzod
A riff on what it’s been like to be a solo studio / service business over the last four years.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 05/12/2024
One of the recurring themes from talking to other indies/solo studio folks over the last 5 years is the need for more community and conversation as we navigate our practices. So, if you're interested in a Solo Studio Summit (series?) in January, lmk 👇🏻 docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com
Solo Studio Summit(s)
I've been fortunate to have dozens of conversations with thoughtful individuals who run some form of a solo practice over the last 5 years. A recurring theme in those conversations is a need for more ...
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Behzod @behzod.com · 28/11/2024
And morning glory muffins on other days
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Behzod @behzod.com · 28/11/2024
Jonathan Lee of Trainer Road has a dope wattage cottage in his garage — go here and see the dream garage highlight www.instagram.com/leejonathan_...
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Behzod @behzod.com · 27/11/2024
Fair point — putting something on the calendar to deem it "important enough" to be worth time and attention is a good thing. And doing it poorly so that you realize you want to get better at it can also be a good thing.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 27/11/2024
And maybe *I* need to be more nuanced about the difference between doing something well and the performance of doing something (or the wasted time of that performance). I'll noodle on that.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 27/11/2024
I think my main contention with "just talk to customers" (especially in the continuous discovery framing) is research at an arbitrary cadence for the sake of “regularly engaging with customers” feels as foolish as filling a water glass every hour, regardless of whether or not you’ve had a drink.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 27/11/2024
I appreciate the feedback — you’re right that I probably should rephrase “nothing” as “no meaningful progress.” In some cases you do get something out it: you’re led astray per @miekd.bsky.social here bsky.app/profile/miek...
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Behzod @behzod.com · 26/11/2024
🙏🏻🫶🏻 Appreciate you, my friend!
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Behzod @behzod.com · 25/11/2024
You two should get coffee.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 25/11/2024
Exactly! I don’t think that the presenters have to do it in the talk themselves, but I would love there to be a clear activity or leave behind for everyone in the audience from each talk. I am also more than happy to volunteer as a speaker coach to provide feedback to folks 👀
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Behzod @behzod.com · 25/11/2024
I think a lot of expanding human agency is helping people recognize the difference between a real and perceived barrier. Presenters/facilitators should help people identify where those lines are and what to do about them.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 25/11/2024
Would love to see you nudge speakers to use the learn one, see one, do one model (or similar) with the audience (i.e. share an idea, share a case study, guide people through an exercise).
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Behzod @behzod.com · 24/11/2024
I agree that getting started helps, but I've watched people spend a year going to the gym, do the wrong things, and be worse off than where they started.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 24/11/2024
I hope this was helpful to folks. If you want to go deeper, I'll humbly suggest checking out "Effective Customer Conversations" on Reforge reforge.com/courses/effe... You can also DM me and we can find time to chat more.
reforge.com
Reforge
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Behzod @behzod.com · 24/11/2024
I think the hardest part is having the actual conversation. You have to manage your own energy and your customer's, listen well and know where to go next, and be open to detours along the way. You also need to be able to make sense of what you heard before your next call.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 24/11/2024
Knowing who to talk to and what to talk about can be a challenge. I use this mad libs style exercise with clients to help them articulate who they want to engage with and on what topics. This helps us to identify the attributes, experiences, and problems we should recruit for.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 24/11/2024
Decision-making is like wheel of fortune. It's important to focus your time and energy on getting new letters on the board, not just going through the motions for the same ones. You also need to be focused on the decisions that actually drive the business forward.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 24/11/2024
The most important place to start is to have a reason for talking to customers. Good research helps you make maps or decisions.  By "maps" I mean awareness of a landscape - whether that's a domain, set of behaviors, etc. I talk about decisions here: yetanother.studio/blog/the-mis...
yetanother.studio
The Mistake Almost Everyone Makes When Doing User Research — Yet Another Studio
Good research is about learning in service of making decisions.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 24/11/2024
Doing this well requires you: 1. Have a reason to talk to customers 2. Talk to the right customers 3. Talk about the right things 4. Actually engage in what they're saying rather than just listening to hear validation.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 24/11/2024
"Talk to customers" is the same kind of advice as "lift weights" — it's directionally correct and also lacking sufficient detail to be useful. In the same way that you can spend hours in the gym and see no results, you can spend hours with customers and get nothing out of it.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 22/11/2024
@dieworkwear.bsky.social 👀
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Behzod @behzod.com · 22/11/2024
I’d love to see Demi Lovato support Linkin Park on their tour. HOLY FVCK is an underrated album.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 19/11/2024
"edge cases aggregated are actually your actual user base, but they're annoying so you'd prefer to ignore them" Big plus. One of my favorite quotes about research from a non-research source is "No is is normal when you look close enough."
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Behzod @behzod.com · 19/11/2024
Where I am still stuck to a degree is that so much of work is the known unknowns or unknown unknowns. I'm still wrangling with where averages help there.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 19/11/2024
I keep going back to my (probably incorrect) mental model that these synthetic users are a set of "average behaviors" so interacting with them helps you compare against the mean. In that regards, it feels more analogous to QA. "Can [behavior] be completed in [product]?" These are known knowns.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 19/11/2024
Agree with you and @sladner.bsky.social that we should think differently and critically about this. I'm curious to read the paper, but this really makes me wonder how much "low hanging fruit" / basic human behavioral understanding is ignored/missed generally.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 18/11/2024
Great minds 🧠
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Behzod @behzod.com · 17/11/2024
I really wish Tesla owners had to watch a video on how regenerative braking works before using their car. My rate of getting carsick from “uber drivers in Teslas” feels like it’s almost 100% and braking is the number one culprit.
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Behzod @behzod.com · 15/11/2024
🌊🌊🌊
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Behzod @behzod.com · 15/11/2024
Enjoyed this piece by John Maeda on embracing a hybrid path — johnmaeda.medium.com/embracing-th...
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Behzod @behzod.com · 15/11/2024
Could you add me? 🙏🏻
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