Mihika Kapoor
Hot Seat At The Dinner Table
Inspired by Mihika Kapoor episode
Mihika Kapoor invented "hot seat" at Figma—two minutes, ask anything, everyone opens up. Works in product teams. Also works at dinner when nobody's actually talking.
Mihika had 15 PMs working together remotely who knew each other from Zoom squares and Slack threads. That was it. She made up a game: everyone gets two minutes where anyone can ask them anything. What happened next is they actually became humans to each other.
The quiet person revealed they think about product design the way they think about building Lego sets at age seven. The confident one admitted they're terrified of demos. Suddenly the team wasn't just functional—they were friends.
Try it at dinner. Two minutes. Kid can ask you anything, you can ask them anything. No "how was school" autopilot. Real questions. You'll learn your four-year-old thinks the moon follows the car because it wants to be friends. The six-year-old is worried about whether clouds get tired.
The magic isn't in the game—it's in the permission to be curious about each other. Turns out that works whether you're building product or building family.
