Praval Singh 🇮🇳

Good morning, India! 🇮🇳❤️

While the general mindset around building a business is to move fast and break things, we asked, how do you stay the course and build one for the long term?

At @Zoho, we chose an unconventional path by taking our time to validate our convictions and building a suite of world-class products. None of this could have happened overnight—it has been a journey of patience and perseverance, and one that required staying true to our beliefs, through all the highs and lows. This campaign is a reflection of our approach towards sustainable growth.

Watch video (English): youtu.be/4ivmul54L-w

Watch video (Hindi): youtu.be/lJen7rbL6vg

Website: zoho.com/time/

#GoZoho

😂

💭 While my coffee was brewing this morning, my mind was very busy thinking about what's happening around us. And it made me wonder: Are we still painting the pixel, or watching where the puck is going?

This week, @Canva told about 22% of the company that their roles are changing or ending. This follows what happened at Microsoft and at other places. We all know there's more coming. Sad, but true.

Canva co-founder and CEO @MelanieCanva said growth had slowed for the first time in a decade, and small changes wouldn’t be enough. She didn’t pin it on AI directly, but she did say technology is changing what people create and what they expect from the products they use. It’s a hard week for a lot of good people there; well, pretty much everywhere in tech.

It also says a lot about where the puck is heading. For years, software was where the work happened. You opened the app, learned the menus, and did the job inside it. Now, agents are starting to open the app for you. You describe the result you want. The agent picks the tools, moves the data, and hands back the outcome. The software keeps running underneath, mostly out of sight. I was reading about how people have replaced Canva with Higgsfield MCPing into Claude. Similar stories exist in other areas too.

My personal experience with agents has been nothing short of surprising (I wrote about it last week). What started as a fun experiment and a source of excitement has now started to feel scary as someone who's worked at the intersection of technology and marketing for over 18 years.

AI (now centred around agents) has changed things whether you’re in design, marketing, or code. Output keeps getting cheaper. Knowing which output the business needs hasn’t gotten any easier.

Amid all this, I’ve come to protect time that looks unproductive: reading customer feedback, watching how people actually use these tools (versus how the launch videos say they will!). Or simply sleeping on an idea before touching it.

As a marketer, if you notice people asking AI agents, LLMs, and chatbots for recommendations, you will rethink software discovery. The designer who sees an agent finishing the task before anyone opens the app starts asking what the screen is for. Same goes for the creator tired of generated sameness, or the developer reading support tickets next to the spec. It's ubiquitous!

The person closest to the work usually spots the gap first, but only if they slow down and introspect. Speed is everywhere now. Knowing where to point it takes time, and you can’t automate that.

Maybe it's time to rethink how your work *really* impacts the business. Paint your pixel well. Just keep an eye on the puck. 🏒🧘🏻‍♂️

This! 🔥

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