#global-public-policy

How a Product Leader Thinks About Public Policy

Episode Summary

In this episode, we chat with Nikhil Chandhok, Chief Product Officer at Circle, to give us a window into how a tech product executive thinks about public policy. Product is at the heart of every tech company, whether startup or FAANG. Most of the key strategic company decisions center on product, but most regulators have no direct insight into product functions or processes. As a product veteran, Nikhil gives us his insights into how he's interacted with public policy experts and regulators over the years and how their feedback made its way into some of his most iconic tech products.

Episode Notes

Nikhil Chandhok is Chief Product Officer at Circle, a global internet finance firm that provides payments and financial infrastructure to businesses of all sizes. Prior to Circle, Nikhil led product development for Augmented Reality (AR) glasses, launching the company's smart glasses and Spark AR Studio, the largest AR creator network.

Prior to Meta, Nikhil was the AR Platform Lead at Google, overseeing Google's AR efforts. Before working on the products that would shape the Metaverse, Nikhil was the Founder and CEO of Bento Labs, a startup that built an AI-enabled Android distribution. He was also an early employee and Product Lead at YouTube, responsible for YouTube Music, growing the product to be the largest revenue and traffic driver, and launching the YouTube app on the first-ever iPhone in 2007.  Prior to YouTube, Nikhil was an early Google employee and spent three years at Microsoft developing the first versions of the Enterprise Data Storage and Compute Virtualization products.

Nikhil graduated from Pune University and earned his Master of Science in Computer and Information Science from The Ohio State University.