Latest / Women Who Ship / 7. Proof of Work as Insurance Part 2: Building publicly with AI

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7. Proof of Work as Insurance Part 2: Building publicly with AI · Women Who Ship

• Sarah Williams: Welcome to Women Who Ship, the podcast for women in tech who are tired of proving themselves in rooms they've already earned a place in and are ready to lead like they know it. I'm your host, Sarah Williams. Let's dive in. Sarah: Welcome back to Women Who Ship. Today we are diving into part two of my conversation with the incredible Tanushri Panagrahi, founder of the Stay Ahead of the Curve community and Substack. In this episode, Proof of Work as Insurance Part two, we discuss the practical, real world ways you can start building publicly with AI to actively build your courage and your career confidence. Let's jump back in. I think this also leads into exactly the premise of your your podcast around showing your work. This is where that whole proof of work comes in. So why do you feel like it has become the real insurance policy, even if it doesn't end up guaranteeing someone their next job? Tanu: yeah, guarantee. Honestly, nobody can guarantee anything today, can they? The market is shifting so fast for guarantees to mean much. but but I can speak to what happened to me personally. So when, if you recall when GPT happened, Chat GPT happened or was launched back in early 2024. and then the whole wave of AI started moving. you know, there was a lot of uncertainty. And I was in the exact same p place as a lot of people probably are today as well. I genuinely started feeling like I will lose my job to AI, if not today, tomorrow. I didn't know where to start. Like I said, you know, I was trying to catch up with the market. Try to Google around and find different sources. There weren't many two years ago, two and a half years ago, many channels and sources. Today it's amazing. So I'll make some progress and then I'll lose it all over again. So it felt like, you know, the pace was relentless, and I knew humanly it was impossible for me to catch up to that. then what changed things is when I started learning and building in parallel. I mentioned that earlier. I started with something small and maybe if we have an opportunity, I'll I'll mention few examples later on as to where I started, what the different things that I did in diverse areas and categories. And that kind of became my own proof of work. And and and that's when I realized that I'm not behind. I should not be setting up a summit or a goal that I am approaching towards because there isn't one. I need to continue doing this. I need to love the journey and I don't need to apply for a new role. I am not looking for a guarantee for my next job either. But then I also realized that a lot of people are in the same position. Nobody has enough experience in AI because it is still new in the market. So I stopped worrying about chasing something or competing with anybody or anything. and and like I said, you know, I love the journey and that is what keeps me going and not worrying about if I'll lose my job, if I'll get a next job, am I keeping up my skills for my next job? When I keep everything aside, I think that makes life easier. Sarah: I I love this. That is so beautiful. You know, I feel like I kind of reached a similar thing with AI where, you know, I we I worked on like a really exciting machine learning project a couple years ago. And, you know, then something new comes up. Then you've got agentic AI that pops up. And so you kind of like are on this roller coaster. Tanu: Yeah. Sarah: Of just when you think you've mastered something, there's a new thing that comes in. And then after agentic II was MCP and all, you know, so like there's no end to it. And so really leaning in on that, your value of curiosity, your value of enjoying the journey along the way, and not kind of pushing for a summit is I think the exact mindset approach that people need to take with this transformation. Okay, so thinking about that cycle of catch up and then you lose it all, I think so many people will recognize that just like I did. So what finally broke the cycle for you? Tanu: stretching myself too thin and trying to learn everything. The moment I stopped doing that, just building one small thing, learning from it and going to the next one, that actually broke that loop of constantly feeling behind. Like I said, you know, I didn't set up a goalpost, and then I'm not trying to learn everything. Today, NA10 came and I started learning that and you know, connecting to Obsidian. There was like a ton of videos on Obsidian. I started doing that. Now Gemini launched a new model. I start playing with that. There's an open weight model. I start playing with that. So I was trying to do everything. When I stopped doing that, I think that kind of broke the loop. Sarah: Did you find that there was ever a moment where you felt like you had built enough proof? Or does that feeling never fully arrive? Tanu: no, that feeling never fully arrives. But but like like I was talking, maybe I'll rephrase it. You stop needing it too. you don't want it to stop. You're not looking for, you haven't got like a f finish line that you're aiming towards. So you don't need that anymore. You just get that enough confidence of the hab from the habit of building and then not. like hitting a target goalpost or a finish line. Sarah: That showing up every day, making progress. Yeah. Tanu: Yeah. Yeah. Right. So so Sarah, speaking of that, if in your coaching practice, what do you tell your clients, someone who wants that same confidence, but hasn't found their version of building yet? Sarah: Yeah, I think that confidence is built on action. You know, a lot of this conversation, we've kind of circled back to that where once you get in, once you start do showing up and doing the thing, even if it's messy, even if you make mistakes, that's the only way that you're gonna build confidence in yourself. If you keep waiting for it to just appear or come from the heavens, you're gonna be waiting for a while. Tanu: Yeah, true. Sarah: So for you, Tanu, once you have that proof, how do you do the extra step of making it visible to people outside of your day-to-day? So tell me a bit about like the tools that you use, your writing, some of the sites and things you've developed to make that possible. Tanu: Sure. I mean, before even I share what I do, I I definitely want to mention a couple things. You want to share, and this is important in today's world, if you are trying to build your brand, like not for some title, not for any of those things. Like I mentioned, I still stick to that principle of mine. but definitely branding yourself is important. Even if you want to start something on your own, like yourself. you want to self-brand yourself. So that's important. But you could be one of those people who don't who who doesn't want to publicly self-brand. You're just happy doing what you do. But that also needs to need a community which will give you that encouragement, share ideas, et cetera. There are a lot of communities out there, builder communities, new builders, having experience, experience builders, all of that in amazing communities. So you still want to do that. So Showing your work is important, your aim could be different, self-brand or collaborate. Now, I started not from sharing my bills, but one thing I'll share is I used to write a lot when I was in my middle school. I carried that, journal writing to story writing, but it was all for myself, my my own satisfaction. It went on till my early professional life as well, but then you know, life did. And you know, you get busy with home, work, and all that, and you don't have time to do that. And that was kind of, you know, let go. I stopped making time for it with the busy life. So, what I did first is I started writing again and I started two separate tracks, one on a personal track, which I started sharing my personal thoughts. so I started writing personal blogs and I also started writing about what I was building. I did not wait for some bills to be perfectly finished, only then share, even if it was half baked, I started writing about it. Then another amazing thing happened. 10, 12 years maybe, I was doing a course at Boston University on data science, and I opened a GitHub account at that time, which I totally forgot after the course. I did not even realize I had one. I started sharing all my Build repositories publicly there. I never made anything private. Everything was public. and I shared. And I was surprised that you know, people would reach out saying, Hey, I have built something which has something better than yours, or they would want to pick your idea. There were all kinds, right? There are amazing builders out there in the community, like I mentioned earlier. So I started doing that. I also created my own portfolio. website, which is not like branding myself, but sharing all the ideas, the all the builds that I'm doing. So multiple channels and multiple ways to express all the things that I'm building, even all the things I'm thinking point of views as well. Sarah: Was there a specific post or a specific piece of feedback that made you think like, okay, this is working? Tanu: yeah, several. But the first time when I got a personal note, personal note about a DM about a build that I shared on LinkedIn, I used LinkedIn as well. I share most of the things on LinkedIn, not everything, but a lot of things on LinkedIn as well that I build. So a first direct message about something that I have built, the GitHub repo that I shared on LinkedIn. with their own use case ideas to extend it from. And and this was somebody at at a VP level in one of the largest cable industries, a cable company today. that was amazing. It was not like he was applauding me for what a great job I'm doing, but sharing ideas. Hey, I have this idea. I think you know, I would like to copy, fork your repo and reuse that alongside what I'm building. I'll be honest, that makes you feel happy and n definitely feels good about what you're doing. So meaningful, what you're doing is meaningful. Sarah: And I think one thing that really stuck with me about what you talked about was being willing to put things out there, even if it was messy and in Tanu: yeah. Sarah: progress and not perfect. So for someone who is actually terrified by the idea of sharing something imperfect, what would what advice would you give them? Tanu: yeah, first time coming on camera and saying something or recording something solo or writing and just throwing it out on public is scary. That's the honest truth. But when you go ahead and do that first, you realize that there are so many of us. Most of us are like that from inside. so nobody is actually judging. That's when you realize that nobody here is judging you. And nobody's looking for a finished polished product product from you. right. I mean, they what they look for is your intention of collaborating, sharing ideas, and that you have a great idea. And sometimes even to tell you that you probably are not, you're trying to reinvent the wheel, you don't need to do this. either way, it's a good thing. But nobody's judging, that is for sure. After doing this for almost a year now, I can tell that nobody here is judging. So Sarah, you just launched Beyond Certainty on exactly this theme. You know, recognition you have already earned from your from from this. So what's the block you see most often stopping someone from actually putting their work out there in public? Sarah: Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that show up thematically for women. And it's it is due to, I think, the way that we were socialized. So I think the first is that a lot of times as women, we're, you know, taught not to self promote, taught not to talk about what we're doing. We kind of think that if we just show up and do great work, it's going to lead to the recognition and the promotion Tanu: Yeah. Sarah: that we deserve. But That's not the case, especially working in a male-dominated field. You have to be willing to put yourself out there to talk about yourself, to talk about what you're doing, even if it does feel, you know, awkward at first or cringy in some way. Tanu: yeah. Sarah: You know, yeah, you you have to put yourself out there in that way. And the other thing is, you know, what you talked about, where I think a lot of times women get this like perfectionist tendency of that. I have to wait until this is a beautiful polished product. And even I struggle with this with the podcast and with a lot of the work that I put out for Tanu: yeah. Sarah: my coaching business, you know, you want to present a certain image, but like you said, people are not looking for perfection. They're looking for authenticity. They're looking for connection. They're looking for something real in the world. And so I think if if you just remind yourself that it's okay to put something out. that's not perfect and that you may not ever feel perfectly ready, that it's still the right thing for you to do to build courage, to build confidence in yourself and your own skills. Tanu: No, that is so true. And that the the the the one thing that you mentioned that kind of hit me is we are trained not to show our work and appreciate our own self. and and that comes from work, unfortunately, you know. no matter where you are, which company you are, that kind of comes from work, especially in the tech world. And that thing did hit me few times in in real career life, and then based on that I did Not a vent out, but sharing my idea exactly what you're talking about. I did write a blog post on that as well. when you're reminded repeatedly that you need to have gratitude and you need to, you know, bow down, you know it, but don't show and tell. Be don't be vocal about it that you know all this. And that's how I have been throughout my career, actually. So this channel of doing my own stuff and sharing kind of gave me a way to really show what I can do without having to wait for somebody saying, Okay, you're doing a great job because I'm not wanting that anymore. Sarah: So do tell us a bit, Town, walk us through a couple of your own builds, like from those enterprise problems to the personal ones that you tackled, and let us know kind of what showing your work looks like for you. Tanu: yeah, so I I I have a ton that I would love to talk about, but I'll share a few so that you get a perspective that especially women who are waiting there to build to get an idea that it doesn't have to be a very big problem to start with. If you have one, great start, but it could be very small as well. So I'll give a couple from my personal experience, personal things that I build. it was a few months ago that my husband and I were talking about a Some financial decision we were trying to make. and then that conversation triggered. And he knows I'm doing a lot of in in his head. it's like he's in tech world as well. But he in his head is like, Well, you're doing a lot of AI. Why don't you figure this out with your AI tools and all? I'm like, No, it's my personal financial stuff. I can't go ahead and upload my bank statements and my modga statements onto a local, onto a cloud AI to Chat GPT or Claude or anything, right? So Sarah: Right. Tanu: That gave me the idea that I need to build something local. So use an open weight model and build something local. And that will be my personal financial analyst assistant sitting on my desktop. And nobody is accessing my personal data. It's all local. So I built that. and then that that was actually kind of an eye-opener to think about how enterprises also need to think. That there are certain use cases where you need to go local, certain use cases where you can rely on those frontier cloud AI tools. And then the second one was that also sits in around the same thought. It was not local, but it was like early spring, I think, is when in Massachusetts here we have the parent teachers meeting. And they sent you a long. digital document of all the things that your kid has done throughout half a year right now. And I've been through that for a few years. And it takes time. Both me and my husband will read through the document, make notes what we want to talk. And then it has happened a couple of times we'll forget that piece of paper at home and we'll go. So now we have no idea. So that kind of gave me an idea that I need to prepare something like a conference prep coach. Very simple. It was quick to build, and it's a very simple problem as well. I upload that, I share, I braindump my ideas as to what I want to talk to the teacher. I also provide the time limit because if you're lucky, you get 15, otherwise you get 10 minutes literally on the clock because they have a number of parents to talk to. So I build that and I shared that with a couple of my son's friends' parents as well. And they used it, they shared few feedback as well, and then I improved on that. And I love that not only that I used it, but it was kind of validated by other working parents as well, which was helpful to them to have just few pointers and it's on their mobile phone, they can go use the phone talk. So that was from a personal standpoint. And then coming to the enterprise side, I have been in consulting where I have worked on a lot of pursuits, a lot of deals. I do that here as well. I help partners on the deal side. but Being on the consulting side, I would be taking that heat of the timeline that you have next 26, 48, 72 hours to come up with that final oral presentation that you need to provide because you're now shortlisted among those top three vendors. That was a lot of work. And it used to be a big pursuit team as well. Different people will have different roles, and then somebody will have to consolidate everything and be responsible for that final presentation. that led to solution that I called Deal War Room, where there were five different agents, just like your pursuit team or your deal team. They run in parallel, not one after another. And then they provide what they need to. And there is a final one, final agent who will consolidate everything and have like a real MD level, partner level final deck ready to be presented to the client. Now, on the other side, when Sarah: Amazing. Tanu: these deals are submitted, the client side, there is a procurement team, there is a security team, which will review all this. And those are critical, other than how great your solution is. they are important to say yes or no to your proposal. so I thought from that perspective, they are like two sides of the same coin if you think about it, the RFP responses that come through. So I thought about that, but that was Again, more data sensitive. So I used Olama as an open weight model and built something locally that procurement teams can use. so yeah, those are a few examples. personal small to big enterprise, but then again, none of it is a production ready somebody to use it. But I'm sure somewhere, some consulting companies are definitely building this and using this today. Sarah: with such great examples of excellent use cases. So, you know, processing a lot of data, poking holes in, you know, the like the deal or how things work. Those are great use cases for AI. And then I also loved how your enterprise experience like came into play. With your personal experience where you were like, I don't want to load all my personal financial data to the cloud. And so it made you really think through that problem in a very specific way of like, okay, how do I keep myself safe? Because I think that's top of mind for all enterprises right now. How do I keep my data safe, but also get the benefit of what AI can do? So so thinking through specifically for like the deal war room and that procurement tool, they did feel like kind of two sides to the same coin. Did building one kind of lead you to think of the other? Tanu: Yeah, definitely. So once I saw how well these multiple agents, especially for the deal war room, could could, you know, share the work, divide the work just like a real team would in in a deal management. And the really hard problem all the way to the deal submission, to the proposal submission, that immediately kind of triggered that What happens on the flip side? If I flip it around, it's all submitted, all these beautiful things come in that we can do all of it. Now, let me just do a pressure test from vendors promise, the promises that you have in those documents, building your own stuff. So how do you how do you test it as a procurement team, as a security team? that kind of did lead to the third fourth solution, which was for the procurement. Sarah: And what surprised you most about like once it's all actually working? Tanu: Yeah, I actually took publicly available data. So when you search, you can find publicly available data of different vendor responses, especially to the public sector. Once those deals are done, if you search, you can find real RFP responses, procurement responses, et cetera, unless unless there is something confidential. So I took that data, downloaded them, and when I tested them in the procurement tool, honestly, I didn't really expect that all of those responses that I used, every single vendor they have the same kind of evasion pattern. That consistent that consistency across, like you know, that that was a real surprise to me that everybody kind of gives a very diplomatic answer to where they don't have a concrete binary zero or one answer. And this tool was catching those sentences, those question answers. Sarah: Okay, last thing about your projects, how did you decide what's worth building versus just like what's an interesting idea? Tanu: Yeah, like all the examples that I gave today were all from personal experience. So I I have seen that happening repeatedly. I have been through those challenges myself, whether it was a personal project or or a work related, enterprise related. So that's definitely a no brainer to pick. And then as work goes on, as I read more stuff, what's going on, that kind of now triggers and gives me more ideas to see if it's a real problem. Should I actually s spend my energy, my tokens to go ahead and build something, or it's one off. I don't need to worry about it. so Sarah, everything I just walked through all those examples, which one would you actually push a client of yours to try first? Or something related? Sarah: Yeah. I loved your approach of picking a tangible problem in your personal life and starting with that. You know, it it just feels like so much more relatable because you deeply understand the pain points. That that was something I heard from your the previous podcast about deconstructing the problem space in order to like fully solve it with AI. And so I think when you really deeply know the pain point that you're trying to solve, it helps you deconstruct it more. appropriately. And I also feel like it gives you a chance to learn in a really like low stakes way. You know, if you don't end up getting a great solution, like the only thing you've lost is a bit of time that you spent working on it. And you're still going to get those valuable learnings. So I definitely would say like for someone who maybe hasn't worked as much with AI yet and they are wanting to get their hands dirty and start working on a build, I would pick one of those like personal problems that you'd like to solve in your In your personal life. Yeah. Okay, if there was one thing you'd tell women in tech dealing with AI anxiety right now, what would it be? Tanu: Well there's if there's one thing I would tell a woman in tech, who I mean, I can speak for tech primarily, who are feeling this anxiety right now because that is where it is AI is hitting the most, it's that the anxiety goes away when you build confidence. I'm not talking about, you know, gaining knowledge alone. It could be different methods for different people to gain that confidence. So, and then what I felt was confidence only comes when you truly know your subject matter. Because when you have to speak, you need to really know that subject matter to be able to speak to it. learning it alone by reading stuff or going through a course would not really build that confidence. Confidence will really develop when you use the tools that you're learning to solve a real problem, like we were just discussing earlier. Solve something small, something personal, that you really know the problem. You have been through that problem, which no class, no certification can actually give you. So so and I and I would add, don't wait for the direction from your current job. I have said that repeatedly. Don't wait for that to use the tools. That time may not come. You may not be picked for that either. Maybe there is an opportunity, you did not get that. So don't wait. Don't don't limit yourself, put boundaries just around your work title, your current role to give you that opportunity. Do it personally. I didn't wait and that has helped me. Sarah: Yep, a hundred percent. So that feels like the perfect place for us to close. And thank you so much for this conversation. Anything you want to leave my listeners with about where to start like tomorrow. Tanu: Yep. I mean, pick one of those annoying recurring problems in your life, from your personal life, from your work life, doesn't matter, and build that roughest possible version to fix that problem. It doesn't need to be code only. it could be a simple prompt, it could be a simple checklist, and then you get started from there, or could be one of those AI conversations that's sitting in the archive, but you know. You can count on it right now. So find out what's the real problem in front of you right now, not a hypothetical one, because you can only know the real problems if you have faced it. What's that smallest version you think you can spend time building? Spend a couple of weeks doing that. And I would show it to someone, even if half finished. share it publicly. Do that. Get that. out of the window and you will start building that confidence naturally. and of course I also would want to add something, Cherub, you know, and since we talked so much about sharing your work and reinventing yourself, I definitely want to leave your audience with few tangible things that they can take away. for me, I I wish I had the book here with me. My son loves that book as well. Show Your Work is is an amazing book, especially that you know, sharing with the with the public. That inspired me a lot. I came across information about that book from one of the one of the videos that I was going through. And I I ordered it immediately. It's a very small book, doesn't take a lot of time to read, but repeatedly looking at that book gives you the confidence that you can go ahead and share it, share your work, build your brand. so definitely that and few others that I can share with you, you could share with your audience. and then few things Courses, few, AI newsletters which are free of cost, you can subscribe to, just so so that you can skim through them on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, spend five, ten minutes so you don't feel left behind what's going on. so that your audience feels like, you know, it's not that big talks. Maybe there is something tangible that they can take away and maybe start reading and start building. Sarah: Bit. Yeah, well, I'll link in the show notes. I definitely want to get that show your work book, and then we can link in the show notes to other resources that you recommend for the audience. Tanu: Sure. Sarah: Thank you again so much. Great conversation. Also, can you tell folks where to find you and follow your work as well? Because I think it's really impactful. Tanu: Sure, I'll I'll share that information with you as well. my Substack link, my GitHub, and also my portfolio site where I publish everything that I work. so I'll share that with you. but Shara, I want to thank thank you for having me, giving me the opportunity to be here and really creating that space like women who ship, where these kind of conversations can actually happen. for being open to weaving into what you are already building with beyond certainty. I love that. I I hope this gave your listeners something they can actually see, not just do or nod along with us as they are listening to it. So thank you so much. Sarah: Yeah, thank you. Let's go ship some good stuff together. Tanu: Yeah, let's go. 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