Gokul Rajaram

Gokul Rajaram is an operator/investor associated with Google, Facebook, Square, DoorDash, Coinbase, Pinterest, The Trade Desk, and Marathon. The wiki uses him as a source for Software Moats, AI-era product management, ads businesses, North Star metrics, product-led self-serve, and work-project hiring.

Key mental models

• Eight moats: data, workflow, regulatory, distribution, ecosystem, network, physical infrastructure, and scale.
• AI-era PM: PMs guard the why, define customer-behaviour-change hypotheses, prototype hands-on, and own evals for non-deterministic software.
• Outcome-based software: access products can keep seat pricing; work products should price around outputs or outcomes.
• Full-stack vertical AI: one AI function in a vertical is rarely enough; the ambition should be to own the broader system.
• Work projects: assess candidates by making them do realistic work and looking for agency, customer contact, and premise-questioning.