text: Awair Product Director on Building Hardware Products - Products That Count
  Dean L. Young AWAIR, Head of Product Member
  Building hardware products comes with its own unique set of challenges. Product Talk host, Anthony Atlas, and Awair Director of Product, Dean Young, discuss that topic and more. The whole episode of Product Talk is worth a listen, but you can catch the highlights below as well.
  My life has been a highly educational adventure. I spent my formative years moving around and seeing many parts of the US. I have also traveled quite a bit around the world, exposing me to many cultures. I am a sponge of new information, even the weirdest/randomest/most useless facts. But it all comes together to inform my two main philosophies. Product Philosophy: Move fast, and make things! If you aren't shipping products, then you aren't delivering on your Vision and Mission, which means you aren't bringing Value to your customers. The goal isn't to ship anything and everything, but you should be iterating and refining. Unless you're working in a laboratory, your product isn't new, so it's about releasing those improvements to the world rapidly as a way of finding product market fit as quickly as possible. Researching, tinkering, and perfecting for too long can kill innovation. Personal Philosophy: Never lose perspective. Get curious. Be humble. Find connection. Develop empathy. Ask lots of questions. This is how you get to insights and true understanding deep in your bones. This rings true in both my personal life and my career. If you think you know the answers, think again, and consider ideas and concepts from all angles. If you can't do this through a thought exercise, immerse yourself in the problem areas you are trying to tackle. If you don't struggle, you won't find answers.