ML167: Neer Sharma on Navigating Career Change, Using Patents to Predict the Future and Experimenting with NFTs

Neer Sharma is the founder of Patent Drop, a newsletter that gives you a peek into the future by summarising new patents from big tech companies.

It’s become a lot more common in recent years for people to change jobs regularly but one of the misconceptions people often have is the need to have the next thing lined up immediately. Obviously the viability of this depends on a lot of factors but far too often, people jump into something else without regrouping and getting a sense of what they really want to do.

Neer is a prime example of someone who’s done this. He previously worked in investment banking before co-founding HaikuJAM, a mobile game that helps people feel better through collaborative writing, helping to grow the community to over 1 million users

At the beginning of 2020, he took a step back to figure out what he wanted to do next, a process which led to the emergence of his incredibly popular newsletter Patent Drop, which summarises new patents from big tech companies.

In this episode we discuss:
- How to navigate a career change without having the next thing lined up
- What the latest patents coming out of big tech tell us about the future of online interaction
- Neer’s experiments with NFTs (non fungible tokens) and what the technology could mean for creators

This conversation will give you access to the mindset and strategies of someone in Neer who has created a completely new career for himself by running experiments online as well as some great insights into the weird and wonderful virtual world that’s being built as we speak.

Show Notes

• Introducing Neer [00:36]
• The motivation behind Neer’s straight-A performance in school [02:36]
• When did Neer start to consciously think about his career? [03:41]
• What were the things Neer learned from his experience in investment banking? How did he realise that career path was not for him? [05:28]
• The challenges of stepping away from a successful project to pursue something else [09:05]
• What does the tech ecosystem in India look like today and what are the factors driving its growth?[13:15]
• What are the mindsets you need to navigate uncertainty? [17:19]
• The importance of exploring and testing out your ideas to get to the next great one [19:48]
• What is the role of the patent process in the development of a product? [22:57]
• How Snapchat’s bitmojis demonstrate a bigger shift towards digital identities [24:38]
• What should we be concerned about as we move to an increasingly digital society? [27:31]
• What is the overlap between physical and digital identity, and what does it mean for how we express ourselves? [29:02]
• Will multiple identities help or hinder the tone of online discourse? [33:50]
• How physical identities can restrict us from fully expressing our ideas and thoughts [36:27]
• How creating music helps Neer explore the different aspects of his identity [38:03]
• How can NFTs (non-fungible tokens) potentially change the way artists and creators distribute and monetise their content? [38:50]
• What are some good resources on NFTs? [43:26]
• Closing remarks [44:19]

Resources

Follow Neer online

Patent Drop Newsletter | Twitter

• The Defiant YouTube channel
• Friends with Benefits Discord channel