Garima Goel

Garima GoelJul 23, 2026

I didn't get into Y Combinator Startup School. Thousands of people applied and there was only so much space. The email said I was one of the most promising people who applied and put me on a last-chance waitlist. I've decided to read that as a note about trajectory rather than arrival. The shape is right. The distance isn't closed yet. Both halves are useful to know. Here's what I keep coming back to, though. What I wanted from Startup School was never a syllabus. It was the room. Other people building at the same moment, at roughly the same stage, close enough to compare notes with. YC is unusually good at assembling that, and two days of it in one city is a hard thing to replicate. But the ingredient was never the venue or the speaker list. It's people showing up. Rooms get built, not granted. Three people making something, showing up consistently, being useful to each other. Nobody has to admit you to that. So I'll keep building mine in the meantime. If a seat opens up, great. If not, I keep working. That's the plan. If you're building something right now, I'd like to know what it is.

Garima GoelJul 31, 2026

New city. Chicago to San Francisco. 🌉 Graduated in May, packed up, and landed here two days ago with two suitcases and a lot of opinions about what I want to build next. The last few years were split between building a company from a dorm room and shipping products inside big tech. Selling to customers, shipping things that broke, fixing them, then walking into a large org and learning how software gets made at scale. Two very different speeds. Together they taught me more than any classroom did, and made the decision to come here pretty easy. What I keep coming back to is AI safety infrastructure. Mostly because the building part feels underbuilt compared to how fast everything else is moving. I'm looking at founding roles and early team seats, and I'm most interested in companies still small enough that everyone does a bit of everything. If you're building something like that, or you just moved here too, I'd love to grab coffee. My calendar is unusually open and I'd like to spend it on good conversations. Writing this from Corgi Cafe. Come say hi if you're here, or anywhere in the city really.

Garima GoelFeb 12, 2026

The hardest PM skill isn’t prioritization. It’s saying no. In one of my AI projects, we had momentum. The system was improving. Metrics were trending up. Stakeholders were excited. And that’s when the requests started. “Can it also handle this edge case?” “Can we expand it to higher-risk scenarios?” “Can we add one more layer of intelligence?” None of them were unreasonable. In fact, they were good ideas. But we were still stabilizing core behavior. I had to decide: Add more capability or protect clarity? Every new feature meant: more failure modes more monitoring requirements more surface area for mistakes more operational risk Saying no didn’t feel innovative. It felt restrictive. But over time I’ve learned: Every “yes” adds complexity debt. And complexity debt compounds quietly. Velocity feels good. Focus scales better. What’s a feature you’re glad you didn’t ship? 💬 #ProductManagement #ProductThinking #PMLife #ProductStrategy #DecisionMaking #TechLeadership #AIProduct