Episodes
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Nancy Wang, Venture Partner @ Felicis and Former GM @ AWS, joins us to discuss strategies & considerations for scaling costs, becoming enterprise ready on Day 1, maintaining business health, and more. We cover Nancy’s journey as a founding product manager at AWS and how those lessons have guided her throughout her career & how she coaches founders. We address why it’s paramount to prioritize scaling costs early on as a founder, how to make design decisions with cost considerations in mind, and what tools you can employ to identify the features that most benefit your customers. Finally, Nancy & Patrick talk about how to land on your V1 while being enterprise-ready from the get-go and trends / growth opportunities that founders should be aware of today.
ABOUT NANCY WANGNancy is a product & engineering executive, advisor, and investor who is passionate about creating seats at the table for women, especially within engineering and technical roles. Most recently, as General Manager of Data Protection at AWS Nancy scaled her engineering teams from 18 to 100+, all while averaging over 45% female and delivering triple-digit YoY growth businesses that delivered over $1B+ ARR including its integration into Amazon’s suite of AI products.
Previously, Nancy launched Rubrik’s (NYSE: RBRK) first Cloud SaaS business, growing their company valuation to over $4B in less than 2 years. Rubrik IPO’ed in Q22024, as one of the fastest-growing enterprise SaaS businesses. As Founder and Board Chair of the non-profit Advancing Women in Tech since 2016, Nancy helps prepare women and underrepresented minorities for leadership roles. She is currently a Venture Partner at Felicis, looking after their infrastructure and cybersecurity investments.
SHOW NOTES:Nancy’s journey as the founding product manager for AWS (2:57)Why AWS was launched & how it scaled (5:31)How to build a successful business within the confines of your org (7:41)Insights into the people side of scaling your business (10:25)Understanding the cost component of scaling / founding (13:12)Ensure your processes aid the overall health & mission of the company (15:43)Why founders need to prioritize scaling costs early (17:15)Breaking down different cost scenarios founders may face (20:08)Avoiding design decisions that create exponential cost but linear revenue (22:51)Considerations for being enterprise-ready from Day 1 (28:10)Think of hyperscalers like a T-rex (32:31)Nancy’s lessons learned on landing your V1 while being enterprise-ready (34:05)Questions founders can ask to help identify their market & where to start (39:24)Current trends / growth opportunities for founders to consider (40:59)Rapid fire questions (43:31)LINKS AND RESOURCESCEO Excellence - McKinsey & Company led a research effort to identify those CEOs whose companies grew demonstrably healthier during their tenures, looking across more than 20 years’ worth of data on 7,800 CEOs from 3,500 public companies across 70 countries and 24 industries to further identify those whose actions have led to breakaway success.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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In this episode of Engineering Founders, we discuss something we’ve never covered before – why you SHOULDN’T be a founder! Travis McPeak (CEO & Co-Founder @ Resourcely) joins the pod to share his founder story and questions to ask yourself to truly validate if the founder lifestyle is right for you. We also address how to de-risk your org & understanding the two main kinds of risks; things to consider when raising capital, like going bootstrap vs. VC; balancing the wedge vs. long-term vision; and how to create a lifestyle that supports you as a founder.
ABOUT TRAVIS MCPEAKTravis is currently Co-Founder and CEO of Resourcely which enables platform, security, and DevOps engineering teams to offer simple self-service to their developers. Prior to Resourcely, Travis served as the Head of Product Security at Databricks. With an extensive background in application and cloud security, Travis enjoys building automated solutions to hard and critical problems. Prior to joining Databricks, Travis led the team at Netflix that automates application security including vulnerability management, asset inventory, and security reviews. During his time at Netflix Travis also built Repokid, a tool that automates least privilege at scale. Previously Travis led large security initiatives at IBM, HPE, and Symantec.
Travis is an extrovert and enjoys sharing ideas and meeting new people. In his spare time, Travis leads the OWASP Bay Area chapter, mentors people getting started in security, and loves to help startups. He is an advisor for four companies including Ermetic and Appaegis. Travis is an angel investor in startups including Temporal, Truffle Security, and AuthZed.
" The stress is going to get you anyway, and your mindset about how you approach that stress is going to make the difference. So you're the one that's like, ‘All right, it's challenge time. Let's do this.’ Or are you like, ‘I'm overwhelmed right now. This feels too hard for me and then you go like hide in your shell.’”
- Travis McPeak
SHOW NOTES:The origins behind Resourcely & Travis’s founder journey (1:52)Questions to ask before starting a company (5:07)What it was like for Travis to answer these questions for himself (8:00)Processes for becoming more self aware (9:06)What you should do / think about before starting a company (11:12)Methods for de-risking the two main kinds of risks (14:28)Resources for better understanding de-risking business risk (16:30)Identifying when to go bootstrap vs. VC for funding (19:00)Frameworks for differentiating which investor path is the right fit (21:30)Presentation strategies & considerations when raising capital (22:48)Linking together the wedge vs. long-term vision (28:21)How Travis was able to have 45 conversations in the first 45 days (32:31)Adapting to the founder lifestyle & increasing your odds for success (34:25)Strategies for prioritization & developing discipline (35:39)Practice rigorous scheduling (40:23)Rapid fire questions (41:49)LINKS AND RESOURCESThe Mom Test - Rob Fitzpatrick’s quick and easy handbook about how to get more learning and more sales out of your customer conversations. Even when everyone is lying to you.Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin's dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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Missing episodes?
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Mariane Bekker, Founder & CEO @ Founders Bay, joins us to discuss the power of building your distribution channel and network within the startup community. She shares best practices for community building based on her own experiences developing Upward Recruiting and Founders Bay & why being able to articulate / communicate your company’s mission (the “why” of it all) is instrumental. Mariane shares her favorite networking conversation starters, tools for staying organized as your community expands, and pitfalls to avoid. She also dissects strategies for building an MVP in eight weeks and the role of distribution/community in accelerating that process.
ABOUT MARIANE BEKKERMariane is a tech executive and the founder & CEO of Founders Bay, a venture studio in Silicon Valley, where she works closely with early-stage founders to build their products from the ground up with her team of engineers and designers. She also runs the most active community of female tech founders in the Bay Area on a mission to increase funding for women founders.
"Do you have an audience or do you have a channel where when you have a product, you can easily reach out to and convince them to use your product? When I started my community, I already had the audience. I already had the distribution channel. So all I had to do was send a few messages and within a month, I had already a hundred startups in my community. So that's when distribution comes to play, when you have the audience and the channels where you can distribute your product effectively.”
- Mariane Bekker
ABOUT FOUNDER’S BAYFounder’s Bay is a leading venture studio dedicated to empowering women-founded startups in Silicon Valley by providing them with the engineering resources to build their product.
Recognizing that only 1.9% of funding goes to women-led startups, they are committed to bridging this significant gender and funding gap in the tech industry. As part of this commitment, Founder’s Bay runs the largest and most active community of female founders in the Bay Area providing resources, mentorship, and support.
Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!
Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount
SHOW NOTES:Mariane’s founder origin story with Upward Recruiting (2:52)Transitioning from Upward Recruiting to Founders Bay & recent milestone events (5:09)Strategies for articulating your mission & avoiding common pitfalls (7:48)How knowing & communicating your “why” impacts early hiring decisions (11:13)Becoming good at hiring functions outside of engineering (13:12)Defining distribution & what this means for startups (16:13)Tactics for building your initial audience & testing what content works (18:04)Distribution’s impact on community, sales, marketing, etc. (22:44)Common networking / community building challenges while starting your own org (26:04)Mariane’s favorite networking questions & conversation topics (28:03)How Mariane’s technical background benefits community building activities (30:50)Tools for staying organized as you expand your network (32:55)What building an MVP in eight weeks typically looks like (35:15)Leveraging your distribution network to accelerate your MVP’s launch (37:01)How your distribution & community can provide access to traction capital (40:07)Rapid fire questions (41:46)LINKS AND RESOURCESHolly - Holly Gibney, one of Stephen King’s most compelling and ingeniously resourceful characters, returns in this thrilling novel to solve the gruesome truth behind multiple disappearances in a midwestern town.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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In this episode, we cover bootstrapping & transitioning from side gig to full-time, featuring Darian Shimy, Founder @ FutureFund. He shares the origin story of FutureFund and how his children’s school experience inspired the company’s mission & product goals. He shares valuable tips on dealing with anxiety, betting on yourself, setting expectations, and making decisions as a founder. We also dissect how to iterate on your core marketing message & test pricing strategies throughout the different phases of FutureFund. Plus, considerations for scaling, fractional work engagements, hiring, and organization structure.
ABOUT DARIAN SHIMYDarian Shimy is the visionary founder and CEO of FutureFund Technology, an innovative platform designed to streamline fundraising and sales for K-12 school groups. With a robust background of over 25 years in web technologies and engineering team management, Darian has held key leadership roles at notable companies including Square, Weebly, and eHarmony.com. He holds an MS in Computer Science from The University of Southern California and maintains a passion for coding in his free time. Outside of his tech career, he dedicates time to coaching youth sports, in both recreational and competitive teams.
"I feel like I'm doing an experiment and the experiment is this, what if you can get a fraction of time from the best people you've ever worked with in your entire life? Some could be 10 hours, some could be 30 hours, some could be 20, whatever it is, but like the best designer, the best product, the best engineer, the best salesperson, the best whomever, and pull them in to help out on a short amount of time. It has allowed us to grow at a pace that I think is sustainable for us and allows us to focus on quality.”
- Darian Shimy
ABOUT FUTUREFUNDFutureFund streamlines fundraising and selling for school groups! FutureFund is a digital platform that provides powerful tools for K-12 school groups and PTAs for fundraising, growing membership, financial reporting, and communicating with volunteers—all in one clean, user-friendly interface.
Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!
Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount
SHOW NOTES:Staying customer-focused while working toward the future @ Samsara (3:22)Merging forward-looking technology & customer-problem-focused product-building conversations (5:54)Defining customer success & working backwards from winning (8:38)How stage gates can confirm / assess feature accuracy & maturity (10:58)What the approval moment looks like while moving from stage to stage (15:29)Understanding what stages offer the greatest opportunity for risk / friction (17:11)Signals to watch for that allow you to move forward with confidence (19:30)Best practices for anticipating & preparing for future possibilities (21:13)Using smaller-scale projects to inform future direction of larger-scale products (23:12)Communication strategies for working with less technical stakeholders (25:22)Methods for effectively communicating complex, technical information (27:59)AI / ML team composition at Samsara (30:04)Frameworks for aligning & motivating folks to focus on customer needs (32:59)Strategies for introducing new technologies & scientific research into your teams (35:06)Introducing AI into mission-critical internal tools (36:34)Rapid fire questions (39:17)LINKS AND RESOURCESHolly - Holly Gibney, one of Stephen King’s most compelling and ingeniously resourceful characters, returns in this thrilling novel to solve the gruesome truth behind multiple disappearances in a midwestern town.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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Today, we’re talking about the intersection between the software eng & hardware eng communities with Jessie Frazelle, Co-founder & CEO @ Zoo. She shares her founder story with us, along with what the early days of building a hardware and hardware-adjacent company looked like. Jessie dissects the differences between building in software & hard tech and what those differences mean when it comes to VC fundraising, identifying building models, and more. Additionally, we speculate on what the future of this world looks like, tips for selling a product in a sector you’re unfamiliar with, and how to identify / address unexpected areas of toil for your customers.
ABOUT JESSIE FRAZELLEJessie Frazelle (@jessfraz) is the Co-Founder and CEO at Zoo, the world's only company to develop advanced tools for hardware design Frazelle acts as lead engineer and architect for the Zoo ecosystem alongside other co-founders Jordan Noone and Jenna Bryant.
With an impressive background including over ten years in the tech industry, Frazelle is also a software engineer and advisor to Embedded Ventures – a next-generation venture capital firm investing in early-stage deep tech startups. With a thesis that takes a commercial-first approach to investing in early-stage startups with applications that can serve the Department of Defense, Embedded has a first-of-its-kind partnership with the United States Space Force.
Previously, Frazelle was co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Oxide Computer Company and has also held roles at Google, Docker, and Microsoft, among others, and has spoken at many conferences including CERN, QCon, and LinuxConf AU.
"Chips today aren't optimized for a single-thread. They are optimized for multi-thread. So every time you upgrade your computer, you're going in the opposite direction. You want a computer from 30 years ago to run this thing. I was like, 'This is so messed up. If no one cleans this up, we will be stuck with the coolest technology in 10 years, but still these shitty old computers have to run CAD and it makes no sense.’”
- Jessie Frazelle
SHOW NOTES:Why Jessie made the transition from GitHub to Oxide (1:49)Experiences that prepared Jessie to start her first company (4:47)The origin story of Zoo & differences between building the two orgs (7:05)Strategies for deciding which pathway to pursue when you’re between options (8:55)Differences between building a company in software vs. hardware space (11:20)Building the first product at Zoo vs. Oxide (13:06)How to accelerate when you get stuck in the process during early dev stages (16:09)Addressing CADkernel from a first principles approach (17:07)Gaining conviction that they could build & ship a product on a faster timeline (20:46)Why Jessie wanted to begin with CADkernel as the first product area (22:44)Jessie’s perspective on business models in software vs. hardware (25:03)Lessons learned while building for / selling to a sector you’re less familiar with (26:55)Using the discovery process to identify unexpected areas of toil (30:29)Fundraising in the hardware & hardware-adjacent space (31:34)Key elements of a pitch to hardware VCs that result in a yes (33:47)Emerging opportunities at the intersection of hardware & software (35:50)Rapid fire questions (37:54)LINKS AND RESOURCESChip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology - Economic historian Chris Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life, how the U.S. became dominant in chip design, how its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power, and how China is catching up.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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Lee Edwards, General Partner @ Root Ventures, shares insights on identifying your competitive edge, recommendations for differentiation, and how to make sure your business is venture-aligned. He discusses his transition from eng leadership into the venture capital world, sharing advice on ideation for early-stage founders who are still developing their product & deciding which version of an idea to pursue. Lee also shares how to navigate risks as a founder, tips for expanding your product’s niches, how generative AI growth will impact DevTool development, and how to maintain conviction when faced with discouragement head on.
ABOUT LEE EDWARDSLee Edwards (@terronk) is an Olin College alum from the Class of '07 majoring in Engineering with a focus in Systems Design. After a brief role as a mechanical engineer at iRobot in Bedford, MA, Lee's career became focused on building software and team at startups - Pivotal, SideTour (which was acquired by Groupon), and Teespring. After a few years investing as part of Bloomberg Beta's Open Angels program, he joined Root Ventures as a partner, investing venture capital in early stage deep technology startups. Lee also co-founded Parcel B, a loose organization of Olin alumni who invest in Olin entrepreneurs and run programs for Olin students interested in learning more about the startup ecosystem.
"If you can create something with enough value where people are gonna start paying for it, that can de-risk in your mind like, 'Okay, I might be onto something…' but it doesn't always have to be revenue. It's not, 'Is someone willing to pay X dollars a month?' It's actually a higher bar than that. It's like, 'Is someone gonna switch from VS Code or Vim or Emacs or TextMate and use your editor a few hours a day?' That's a really high bar. You have to really love the product and watching that number go up. It's a really good indicator that what is being built is the right thing.”
- Lee Edwards
SHOW NOTES:What inspired Lee to transition from eng leadership to the world of venture (2:06)Factors that led to a successful transition from side project to full-time work (4:11)Recommendations for gaining conviction when facing discouragement (6:04)Considerations during pre-product phase conversations with founders (8:52)Questions to help founders begin testing which ideas are worth pursuing (12:46)Navigating risks as a founder & what qualities VCs are looking for (15:34)Insights for founders having to expand their niches right away (17:19)Questions to ask to define the context & identify GTM strategy (24:05)Business models that are inherently misaligned with venture (26:30)Identifying differentiation in the era of generative AI (29:14)How the DevTool landscape will evolve with the rise of AI (34:08)Lee’s perspective on how AI will impact programming & coding (35:50)Rapid fire questions (37:53)LINKS AND RESOURCES[Most Startups Should be Deer Hunters by Mark Suster](https://bothsidesofthetable.com/most-startups-should-be-deer-hunters-7fdecf58f4f6#:~:text=Deer are right-sized for,to your standard terms %26 conditions.))7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy - Drawing on his decades of experience as a business strategy advisor, active equity investor and Stanford University teacher, Hamilton Helmer develops from first principles a practical theory of Strategy rooted in the notion of Power, those conditions which create the potential for persistent differential returns. Using rich real-world examples, Helmer rigorously characterizes exactly what your business must achieve to create Power. And create Power it must, for without it your business is at risk.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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Vidya Raman, Partner @ Sorensen Ventures, shares her best practices for developing a strong enterprise GTM strategy & why this is such a challenging thing to do as a new founder. We also dive into blindspots that highly technical founders may possess, balancing the technical aspects of founding with the anthropological side, product considerations when building for enterprise, timing new product releases, developing & articulating your product roadmap. Plus how to identify and build your “wedge,” & avoid becoming simply a point solution. We also cover how to tackle a common founder concern – honing your sales skills – and when to know it’s time to bring in a non-technical co-founder.
ABOUT VIDYA RAMANVidya Raman joined Sorenson Ventures in 2019 from Cloudera, where she led the ML platform, the fastest-growing product line in the company’s history at the time. There, she was responsible for making ML at scale a reality for customers spanning industries such as autonomous driving, biotech, banking, and government. Before that, she led engineering and product teams at venture-backed enterprise startups, including eMeter (Sequoia-funded, acquired by Siemens) and Silver Spring Networks (Kleiner funded, IPO exit).
Throughout her career, Vidya has worked with teams that have taken more than a dozen products from mere ideas to many millions in revenue and eventually to product-market fit. She draws on her rich set of successes and failures, helping founders navigate the journey to product-market fit while at the same time being an eternal student in the constantly evolving world of go-to-market techniques.
Vidya is passionate about partnering with technical founders who think in first principles, dream big, and are keen to build businesses that stand the test of time. Vidya’s primary focus is on startups that build for the builders, i.e., tools used by engineers.
Working with companies in their earliest stages is her passion. She believes that the opportunity to have the most meaningful and direct impact is at that stage.
Outside of work, she loves spending time in nature and reading. Her favorite genre includes biographies (all-time favorite: Nelson Mandela), behavioral economics, and psychology (favorite: Thinking fast, slow). She is a die-hard Harry Potter fan, and her favorite spell is Wingardium Leviosa.
"There is something about selling to enterprises that goes beyond what's on the surface of what you offer as a product. To me, that became about how do you enable the people first and foremost and then the business. It's not actually the other way around. Oftentimes, I've seen that products which get embraced within enterprises have enabled someone to become a hero, oftentimes a superhero. That is how human doing business is actually. Even for very, very technical enterprise products.”
- Vidya Raman
SHOW NOTES:Vidya’s background & passion for the enterprise GTM world (2:54)Strategies for enabling people first, then the business (7:29)Vidya’s perspective on why GTM is challenging for first-time technical founders (10:06)Vital considerations for founders when building a product for enterprise (14:53)What to do (& not to do) when discussing your product roadmap to sell (18:23)What’s the wedge? Product / Platform / Timing considerations to get you in the door of enterprise companies (22:05)Optimizing locally vs. globally (23:42)Signs that indicate that the timing is right for expansion (25:27)Recommendations for founders to hone selling skills (27:33)Why good sellers have more than just an extroverted personality (29:33)Train your social & emotional antenna (30:53)Considerations for having a non-technical co-founder (32:37)Rapid fire questions (34:57)LINKS AND RESOURCESChurchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat - A gripping and vivid narrative of adventure and derring-do that is also, perhaps, the last great untold story of the Second World War.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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James Everingham, co-founder and former VP of Engineering @ Lightspark, joins our podcast to share his best tools for scaling yourself down – not up – as an engineering leader. He discusses his latest career move shifting down in scale and how that impacts your risk tolerance as a leader. We also cover some of James’ favorite leadership methods, including the Socratic method, principle-based decision-making, and creating narratives as a product / eng org goal-setting tool, plus how he’s employed those tools effectively throughout his career. We also address navigating the balance between process & anti-process, approaches to product planning & finding PMF, and adapting your communication style to work within a smaller vs. large org.
ABOUT JAMES EVERINGHAMJames Everingham (@jevering) is co-founder and former VP of Engineering at Lightspark. Lightspark is building core infrastructure on the Lightning Network. Most recently he was Vice President of Engineering for Novi (Meta) and co-creator of Diem. Previously, James was the Head of Engineering at Instagram. James has led many world-class engineering teams throughout his 35-year career as a manager, entrepreneur, and technology developer. At Yahoo, he was Vice President of Engineering for Yahoo media properties after acquiring Luminate, an interactive image technology company he founded. Other previous roles include CTO and founding team member of LiveOps, Senior Director of Engineering at Tellme (acquired by Microsoft), and Senior Director of Engineering at Netscape Communications, where he was responsible for the flagship Netscape browser. Before joining Netscape, James held engineering and management positions at Oracle and Borland International.
"We had a great story in our head of like if we can simply make money flow or value flow fast and free frictionlessly around the world like a lot of good is going to happen but then that's the ending. That's the happy ending. Like, what are the chapters that we're going to write in between to get there? The first one was, 'Well, we're going to build this new infrastructure. Let's start getting it out there and getting it quickened in an area where it's already accepted.' And that's what we did. You know, that was the first one and we worked backwards from that. They're trying to make the story happen. They're not trying to make a list of tasks happen and I think that's a really important distinction.”
- James Everingham
SHOW NOTES:James’ latest experience scaling down in his career (2:45)Increasing your risk tolerance as an eng leader (5:20)Surprising ways eng leaders operate in a smaller org vs. a larger org (7:21)Optimizing communicating patterns when scaling down as a leader (10:28)Strategies for creating high-impact conversations within teams at a small org (12:17)How to use the Socratic method effectively as an eng leader (14:09)James’ framework for anchoring decision-making principles (17:10)Why focusing on customer problems before business problems is a key principle (19:35)Layering the Socratic method approach & principle-based decision making (21:48)Tips for implementing these approaches early on & scaling them up (24:36)The trap of “process” & knowing when / where to introduce processes (25:46)Navigating the balance between complete process & anti-process (28:04)Deconstructing James’ approach to product planning & goal setting (29:55)How James introduced the product planning narrative @ Lightspark (34:19)Advice for newcomers looking to identify & share a product narrative (36:42)Rapid fire questions (38:35)LINKS AND RESOURCESHow to Scale Yourself Down — Not Up — as a Leader - An article outlining the narrative goal setting framework that James discusses in the episode.Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know - Adam Grant’s book about the benefit of doubt and how we can get better at embracing the unknown and the joy of being wrong.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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Scott Woody, co-founder and CTO @ Metronome, shares the story of how Metronome, a small startup, made the transition to quickly operate at a global scale while working with complex, public companies. He shares the origin story of Metronome and the roadmap of how they went from early-stage engineering to creating highly specialized teams & in-house experts. Additionally, we cover how to navigate the tension between infrastructure & product eng teams, creating a healthy relationship between finance & eng orgs, and recommendations for strategically considering pivoting business models.
ABOUT SCOTT WOODYScott (@l3amm) is currently co-founder and CTO of Metronome, the usage-based billing platform built to help software companies accelerate their revenue. Prior to Metronome, Scott was a Director of Engineering at Dropbox where he led the growth and monetization team. He previously co-founded Foundry Hiring, an ATS system, that was later acquired by Dropbox.
"When we were smaller, we had one giant engineering team. What we realized about nine months ago, especially as we started working with these more public companies, was that the needs of the specific personas were so specific that this concept of engineers being able to fit the entire product and need space in their head was impossible. We had to create those experts and decided to have PMs specialize and embed with these teams to become experts on the workflows.”
- Scott Woody
SHOW NOTES:The origin story of Metronome & Scott’s transition from Dropbox (3:00)How Metronome gained & maintained its first customers (5:22)Metronome’s two products / distinct user personas (7:44)Challenges from multiple complex stakeholders and users (10:03)The difficulty in solving & prioritizing user problems (12:10)Navigating the tension between product eng & infrastructure sides (15:26)How Metronome created experts in house & built a retainer of consultants (19:15)Roadmap for going from early-stage engineering to specialized teams (20:56)Processes for standardizing the knowledge base & communicating the info (23:02)Using brown bag talks to onboard new hires (26:02)Implications of a usage-based business model for eng leaders (28:12)Lessons learned when changing your business model (30:08)Making the shift to a consumption-based model (32:30)Strategies for rationalizing which pricing model to follow & knowing when to pivot (36:08)Developing & testing a value hypothesis (38:05)Lead with customer value in mind & communicate that value factor (40:44)Rapid fire questions (42:07)LINKS AND RESOURCESElon Musk - From Walter Isaacson, this is the astonishingly intimate story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter.Foundation - The first novel in Isaac Asimov's classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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Quinn Jacobson, Director of the Technical Entrepreneur Coaching Hub (TECH) @ Carnegie Mellon University, joins us to share best practices for implementing a successful execution strategy at deep tech startups. He draws from his own experience as a serial founder & former VPE, sharing strategies for building on technical expertise; driving product evolution from early concept results; finding your “ledge” & thinking of value creation in smaller, incremental steps. Plus we talk about the pitfalls new founders should avoid and the importance of listening! Quinn also shares how & why he transitioned into academia & why these recommendations will help new founders create disruptive, exciting products.
ABOUT QUINN JACOBSONQuinn Jacobson is a Professor of the Practice at the Information Networking Institute (INI) in Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering. He is based in CMU’s Silicon Valley campus and the Director for the new Technical Entrepreneur Coaching Hub (TECH) initiative. TECH is focused on preparing the next generation of technical founders and strengthening CMU’s engagement with the startup community. Quinn is also part of CMU’s Neuromorphic Computer Architecture Lab.
Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon University, Quinn led engineering efforts at several innovative startups, in high-performance distributed software systems and domain-specific hardware accelerators. Quinn cofounded Vibrado Technologies, a venture-backed CMU spinout that created the first truly smart apparel. Before discovering his passion for startups, Quinn worked on advanced technology development. He developed the world’s first commercially released soft core for FPGAs at Altera, architected the world’s first multi-core SPARC microprocessors at Sun Microsystems, and led the development of one of the first crowdsourced smartphone services at Nokia. Quinn received his PhD in ECE from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and holds over 70 granted U.S. patents. His work has been presented in many diverse forums, from GEOINT to Hot Chips to the NABC Convention at the NCAA Final Four.
"What will make you successful is if you can actually execute and deliver your technology from a concept to a product. If you're armed with a plan on how to do the execution, it's gonna be much easier to then go raise money. What we see is that there are a lot of great thoughts out there that people don't know how to turn that into a successful execution plan that they can realistically deliver on.”
- Quinn Jacobson
ABOUT THE TECHNICAL ENTREPRENEUR COACHING HUB (TECH) @ CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITYTechnical Entrepreneur Coaching Hub (TECH) is a program for mid-career engineers transitioning to a technical founder role. TECH’s curriculum prepares technical experts to launch and run an entrepreneurial (or intrapreneurial) endeavor around a technically innovative idea.
TECH is an entrepreneurship program designed for engineers, by engineers who have launched, led, and advised startups. The program focuses on how to successfully execute the development of a product in a startup environment.
Learn more here: https://www.cmu.edu/ini/tech/index.html
To stay updated on all of our events, content, and resources for engineering leaders - make sure you head to elc.communityBeing an ELC member is FREE and is the best way to stay updated on everything that’s going on!
Sign up today at elc.communitySHOW NOTES:Quinn’s transition into academia & his passion for entrepreneurship (3:14)Focusing on technical expertise & execution strategy (6:35)Frameworks for building an execution strategy & initial proof of concept (9:18)An example of using early concept results to drive product evolution (11:32)Incremental value creation for technically differentiated startups (15:55)Strategies for building a roadmap & demonstrating concrete value in early stages (18:59)Traps new founders / technical leaders should avoid (20:27)How listening can provide opportunities for discovery of the path forward (23:30)CMU’s TECH experience & how it supports early-stage deep tech founders (26:27)One of Quinn’s most memorable / favorite case studies (27:54)Rapid fire questions (30:00)LINKS AND RESOURCES*System Collapse* by Martha Wells - Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize, but there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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Jon Perl & Scott Wilson share the origin story of QA Wolf & deconstruct their best practices (and what to avoid) for early-stage cold outreach, how to add value to your cold email communications, and why experimenting with your cold outreach is important to early sales! We also dive into the story behind QA Wolf’s strategic move to incorporate services into their business strategy & tangible ways to add accountability measures that will help drive growth in the early days of your company.
ABOUT JON PERLJon Perl is the co-founder and CEO of QA Wolf, a startup building the QA solution every engineering leader wishes for. Prior to QA Wolf, Perl led engineering teams in the healthcare and home services space, where he learned firsthand how difficult automated regression testing can be — and how critical it is for teams to have. His interest in software engineering comes from an overarching desire to eliminate boring, repetitive tasks and give people their time back. He has a dog named Finn and enjoys hiking.
"Your goal is simply to book a meeting. You're not trying to close a deal through one email. It's like, 'How can I just get on the phone with somebody?' That's the goal.”
- Jon Perl
ABOUT SCOTT WILSONAs co-founder and head of growth at QA Wolf, Scott Wilson is trying to upend 20+ years of stagnation in the QA industry. Before this he launched the marketing efforts at Wyze and helped acquire 6 million paying customers. If he’s not working, you might find him backpacking with Frank the dog, or learning a new illusion.
"It's not referencing the weather in Seattle or that you got promoted. Personalization is being contextually relevant to the person. This is how your mind should be thinking. It's like, 'I saw you're a hundred person company with nine engineers on your team and no QA engineers. You're probably going through this and here's a solution for it.'”
- Scott Wilson
ABOUT QA WOLFQA Wolf is a hybrid platform & service that helps software teams ship better software faster by taking QA completely off their plate.
Interested in joining an ELC Peer Group?ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions, and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers.
Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups
SHOW NOTES:The origin story of QA Wolf & the desire to build an automated QA system (2:54)What got Scott excited about joining the QA Wolf founding team (8:01)Scott’s experience as the non-technical cofounder on the team (9:59)Learn enough to be dangerous & be willing to persist as a founder (11:35)The approach of paying people you can learn from & its impact on QA Wolf (14:58)Lessons learned about cold emailing & effective strategies to implement (17:59)Cold emailing strategies that don’t work (21:47)How to add value to email communication & incorporate experimentation (23:10)Why they shifted the focus from coding to sales / outreach / identifying solutions (27:09)Make accountability mechanisms a key component of early-stage teams (29:55)The false signal of free users & expanding product into services (31:31)Identifying a gap in the business & being open-minded to new ideas (34:07)What the initial testing for QA Wolf’s services approach looked like (36:09)Jon & Scott’s perspective on dealing w/ investors in the automated services space (39:17)Rapid fire questions (44:46)LINKS AND RESOURCES$100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying NoHow to Hire a Product-Led Sales Leader – at Every StageThis episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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Jorge Torres, CEO & Co-founder @ MindsDB, shares how his lifelong entrepreneurial spirit helped encourage him to pursue engineering & why an engineering background is an amazing asset for founders. He also shares valuable insights he has learned along the way, including why it’s important for founders to make plans in order to execute well, tips for creating alignment within your org, and strategically building a community approach within your product strategy.
ABOUT JORGE TORRESJorge Torres is CEO & Co-founder @ MindsDB. Jorge is a visiting scholar at the University of California Berkeley researching machine learning automation and explainability, an advocate for the open source community, and prior to MindsDB he worked with Aneesh Chopra (the first CTO in the US government) building data systems that analyze billions of patient’s records that led to savings for millions of patients.
"Truly there's a lot of things that you don't know when you're starting a company, maybe even things that you don't even know that you don't know, but at least the first steps of risk, which is, 'Can I get something off the ground by myself if I have to?' And that's a very, very, very attractive angle of being an engineer and you learn some skills and then the training of an engineer is how do you take tools are out there and build something?”
- Jorge Torres
ABOUT MINDSDBMindsDB is end-to-end AI platform for developers. It connects real-time data and AI/ML models, providing tools and automation that enable developers to build, launch, and maintain AI-powered applications efficiently. The company was founded in 2017 by Jorge Torres and Adam Carrigan and has raised more than $50M in funding from Mayfield, Nvidia's NVentures, Benchmark, YCombinator, and others.
Interested in joining an ELC Peer Group?ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers.
Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups
SHOW NOTES:Why Monday is Jorge’s favorite day of the week (1:55)Jorge’s approach to becoming a founder & starting MindsDB (2:32)Skills engineers can develop to prepare for being a founder (4:26)Benefits of having engineering skills & background as a founder/CEO (6:42)The story behind Jorge’s risk assessment strategy & deciding to found MindsDB (8:02)Questions to ask to help founders narrow their focus (10:15)Why everything founders try that isn’t well planned doesn’t work well (12:08)How this insight is leveraged within MindsDB’s open-source community (14:55)Building alignment as the team grows (18:08)The importance of letting go of things as you build your business (20:15)Using intuition in the early days of MindsDB’s product / business approach (23:08)The relationship between community & business (24:51)Inside Jorge’s approach to modular pieces that drive growth (27:56)What the next iteration looks like for the SF AI Collective community (29:45)Rapid fire questions (32:13)LINKS AND RESOURCESThe Broken Earth Trilogy - N. K. Jemisin’s captivating science fiction/fantasy series that follows the journey of a woman with the power to control earthquakes as she navigates a world on the brink of destruction.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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Gaurav Oberoi, CEO & Co-founder @ Lexion shares about the research / EIR path from the Allen Institute for AI to founding Lexion. We talk about finding ideas in areas with poor implementation, how to actually shape “cool tech” into products, and tactical actions you can use to measure progress. Plus how to go from idea to action & optimize for fast time to value. Gaurav also shares how he defines “done” for products, creating a culture of velocity and strategic thinking & why happy customers are engaged customers.
ABOUT GAURAV OBEROIGaurav Oberoi is the CEO and co-founder of Lexion. He started his career as an engineer at Amazon, before moving on to found and sell two startups (BillMonk, and Precision Polling), and build a $20M+ ARR business from $0 as a VP of Product at SurveyMonkey. Gaurav co-founded Lexion as the first EIR at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. He thrives on building products that customers love, with diverse teams that enjoy working together.
"We met with a team and when we asked them what intake forms they need, they had really long meetings and it slowed down the whole process and we're like, 'Gosh, we need to kill the intake form. You don't need an intake form.' Like, that shouldn't be a blocker to them getting value. That kind of narrow focus on "time to value needs to be really fast" is something that we've imbued across the whole company. So it's not just product and engineering, but it's also customer success. It's also sales. It's also our marketing materials right up front so that the value of the whole product ties in, all the way to pricing.”
- Gaurav Oberoi
ABOUT LEXIONLexion is a powerfully simple operations workflow and contracting platform that helps teams get deals done faster. Lexion streamlines and centralizes the end-to-end contract lifecycle with intuitive email-driven intake and workflows, simple no-code automation, best-in-class AI, and more. Lexion was one of the first AI companies to leverage LLMs in building production-quality applications. The company was founded in 2018 at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, is backed by an iconic Silicon Valley law firm, and recently raised a $20M Series B with support from top-tier VC firms. Learn more about the company at https://www.lexion.ai/
Interested in joining an ELC Peer Group?ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers.
Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups
SHOW NOTES:Gaurav’s experience @ the Allen Institute for AI & how it kickstarted his founder journey w/ Lexion (2:06)Research process strategies that helps founders identify business insights (5:50)The iterations that led to Lexion’s current product offering (8:23)What gave Gaurav the insight to say “no” to ideas (10:39)Lessons learned that Gaurav infused into the strategy for developing Lexion (12:56)Small, tactical actions to help founders measure progress (15:55)Navigating the transition to actually building an idea & taking action (16:48)Understand the accolades your product can help customers receive (19:24)Designing your org to think strategically & drive insights like a founder (23:59)Determining which features to build first in order to achieve PMF (26:20)Strategies for identifying / confirming the next big feature opportunity (29:33)How to synthesize your learnings & research (32:19)Implementing metric tools to analyze insights / confirm hypotheses (34:37)What it means for a product or feature to be “done” (36:33)Why a happy customer equals an engaged customer (39:24)Creating a culture of velocity within elements of your organization (42:32)Encourage empathy for customers within your org to fuel velocity (46:43)Rapid fire questions (48:45)LINKS AND RESOURCESOrganizing eng by strategic themes / complete units of value & consensus building to drive velocity w/ Emad Elwany #159 - Our episode with Gaurav’s co-founder Emad Elwany!goberoi.com - Gaurav Oberoi’s essays on technology and startups.The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein’s tale of the rebellion of a former penal colony on the Moon against its masters on the Earth.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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How do you know if you’re actually solving a problem or building a product people actually want? Varun Mohan, CEO & Co-Founder @ Codeium, joins us to share the journey behind Codeium. We talk about determining the right problem / product to pursue. He shares his best frameworks for decision making, determining if it’s time to pivot, and ultimately testing your hypotheses. He also discusses the three main types of risks founders face & strategies to compete on “execution-risk.” Plus Varun shares tips for building your product with the future in mind, even if the technological capabilities aren’t there yet.
ABOUT VARUN MOHANAfter graduating from MIT and working at companies like LinkedIn and Databricks, Varun became a Tech Lead Manager at Nuro leading AI Infrastructure before co-founding Exafunction to run large AI workloads. After hitting 7 figure ARR in the first year, Varun and team decided to drop everything and run their own AI platform with Codeium, first tackling the acceleration of Software Development.
"It's much better for us to invest in things that can give us compounding 10 percent wins. In other words, it gives us a win today, we work very hard and we work on things that can compound rather than them being one off features, we have like a good shot of doing something that that will succeed. We should be cognizant of where the technology is and only build things that build capabilities that we know will provide value today and if we continue doing that, we will be the fastest moving in the space.”
- Varun Mohan
ABOUT CODEIUMCodeium is the modern coding superpower, a code acceleration toolkit built on cutting edge AI technology. Get free forever access at codeium.com
SHOW NOTES:Varun’s leadership journey & founding Codeium (2:22)How to decide what to focus on next vs. moving forward with current focus (6:29)Determine what problem / product to pursue based on your team’s passions (8:39)Process for synthesizing insights to develop the rationale for moving forward (10:26)Varun’s assessment framework for making the decision to pivot (12:50)Traps to avoid when testing a hypothesis & addressing potential risks (14:10)How speed of execution sets a company up for success (17:35)Analyzing Varun’s differentiation moment & identifying next steps (21:16)Strategies for building / optimizing for an execution mode (25:28)Using data to capture user intent (27:42)Frameworks for identifying a product’s compounding elements (30:22)Determining what capabilities to invest in building early on (33:15)Building for future success when the technology isn’t there yet (35:19)Rapid fire questions (37:25)LINKS AND RESOURCESChip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology - Chris Miller’s epic account of the decades-long battle to control what has emerged as the world's most critical resource—microchip technology—with the United States and China increasingly in conflictThis episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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In this Engineering Founders episode, we sit down with James Campbell, CTO & Co-Founder @ Great Expectations, to discuss his founding journey, considerations for starting open source, making community-driven decisions, and navigating the tension between your product vision & product roadmap. We also cover the phases that Great Expectations has cycled through, balancing the role of personal biases when making product / business decisions, how making an open-source product impacts marketing decisions, and James’ best recommendations for building out the product function as a product-involved founder.
ABOUT JAMES CAMPBELLJames Campbell is the co-founder and CTO at Great Expectations, the leading open-source data quality product. Prior to his life at a startup, James spent nearly 15 years working across a variety of quantitative and qualitative analytic roles in the US intelligence community, ultimately serving as Chief Data Scientist at CIA. He studied Math and Philosophy at Yale, and international security at Georgetown. He is passionate about creating tools that help communicate uncertainty and build intuition about complex systems.
"We had different perspectives and then we found that there were, similarly for every three perspectives that the two of us had, there were three perspectives for every two other people in the community. The process becomes one of developing rigorous ways to capture and synthesize the insights that you're getting from yourself and the community. It means committing to capturing your own perspectives similarly to the way that you would capture those from your users, taking that time to do the analytic process of critically thinking through what that means is the right choice.”
- James Campbell
We’re hosting the first ELC Annual Watch Party on 11/8!We’re livestreaming the most popular sessions from the ELC Annual 2023 conference + hosting virtual roundtable discussions to connect you with eng leaders around the globe AND in your city.
Our first topic covers Generative AI & engineering leadership with Wade Chambers… no this isn’t about the tech - it’s about the leadership skills and competencies you need to evolve and adapt to lead in this next generation!
We have different events for Europe, East Coast & West Coast! To RSVP, find your location HERE:Europe
West Coast & MidWest
East Coast
SHOW NOTES:The origin story of Great Expectations & James’ founding journey (2:18)Pitching / validating your idea through community (5:14)Transitioning from federal government to co-founder of a company (8:11)Recommendations when considering the founder / collaboration path (10:20)James’ experience starting with open source & getting 10k stars on GitHub (12:05)Engaging with your audience to drive growth & share your product’s message (14:07)How open source impacts Great Expectations’ marketing / communication (15:49)Navigating the tension between product vision & product roadmap (18:11)Where that tension showed up in Great Expectations’ early days (21:01)Capturing & synthesizing insights from your users (22:44)Strategies for removing biases from product-related decisions (24:28)Finding the balance between your perspective & community insights (26:03)James’ perspective on different levels of product analysis (28:44)Lessons learned from Great Expectations’ phase changes (30:13)Takeaways from the org’s latest experience / transition (33:42)Defining the “Heilmeier Catechism” & how it impacts James’ leadership style (35:57)Rapid fire questions (39:30)LINKS AND RESOURCESCIA Guide to Analytic Tradecraft - Primer published by the CIA to assist analysts in dealing with the perennial problems of intelligence.American Prometheus - Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s definitive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war, and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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In this episode, Karan Talati (Co-founder & CEO @ First Resonance) joins us to discuss strategies for identifying a market opportunity and some of his favorite perspectives on product building. We cover what it’s like identifying something that may not be necessary now but will be in the future; how to assess / validate a hypothesis; frameworks for assessing emerging trends & pain points in order to develop a product; and navigating the balance between offering your customers breadth vs. depth with your product offering. Additionally, Karan shares how he approached building First Resonance’s product and recommendations for closing on customers who work in a mission-critical space.
ABOUT KARAN TALATIKaran Talati is Co-founder & CEO @ First Resonance. Previously he built data and automation systems to enable rocket reusability at SpaceX and engineering consumer electronics at Motorola. At First Resonance, they’re solving manufacturing’s biggest challenges. Organizations use their factory operating system, ION, to accelerate and optimize their production processes from prototyping to production.
"If people are going to be equally ambitious on the next generation of whatever needs to be solved in the world, let's say next generation satellites. Well, then how are they going to do it? The following our gut was like, 'Hey, what would the world have looked like or what would our experience have been like if the kind of that digital connectivity layer that we had to build was actually available for us? And what could it look like if we bring something out to market that does that? Does that actually allow for new types of hardware to be created, new types of companies to be formed, so on and so forth?'”
- Karan Talati
SHOW NOTES:Karan’s Friday & Sunday cadences as a founder (2:02)The origin story of Karan founding First Resonance (4:49)Karan’s time @ SpaceX & experiencing his first rocket launch / landing (8:14)How First Resonance celebrates its customers & successes (10:36)The moment when Karan saw a market opportunity for First Resonance (12:10)Understanding that something may not be necessary yet, but will be in the future (15:47)Questions that helped form Karan’s early hypotheses & how to validate a hypothesis (19:10)Strategies for assessing emerging trends & validating pain points (22:47)Ideating data / software solutions for the manufacturing space (25:48)Karan’s framework for first approaching the First Resonance product (28:15)Navigating the balance between offering 10x vertically vs. 10x breadth (30:35)An example of when Karan had to make an inclusion vs. exclusion decision (32:33)Customer relationship considerations & gaining your first customer (37:04)Recommendations for closing on the first customer in a mission-critical industry (39:54)Rapid fire questions (41:10)LINKS AND RESOURCESThe Qualified Sales Leader: Proven Lessons from a Five Time CRO - John McMahon provides enterprise software sales leaders and their sales reps proven methods to sell more by quantifying business value for the customer and selling major company solutions to C level executives. No tricks, no shortcuts, just simple ways in which sales leaders can help their sales reps sell more software by closing more deals.Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Esteemed presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s modern classic about the political genius of Abraham Lincoln, his unlikely presidency, and his cabinet of former political foes.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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Ramiro Berrelleza, Founder and CEO @ Okteto, shares how his company transitioned from an open-source project to a category-creating commercial product and repeatable sales model. He reveals the benefits & opportunities of open source and the potential for community buy-in. Plus strategies for creating a repeatable sales model, how open source projects can guide early-stage decisions, when to begin identifying / building customer personas, prioritization strategies for engineering resources, and recommendations for early-stage hiring, especially for your first marketing hire.
ABOUT RAMIRO BERRELLEZARamiro Berrelleza is the CEO and Co-founder of Okteto, the leading platform for Development Experience Automation. With over 20 years of experience in engineering, Ramiro is a seasoned professional with a passion for building developer tooling.
A visionary, Ramiro is always looking for ways to improve the software development process. He firmly believes that building modern applications is a team sport and understands the importance of removing friction from the development process. He is also a passionate advocate for building a more inclusive tech industry. With Ramiro at the helm, Okteto is well-positioned to continue to grow and shape the way companies architect development experience for their teams.
"Once you're building something commercial, the person that buys your product is not the same person that's gonna use your product and is not the same person that's gonna approve the purchase for your product. So that's already something that when it comes to distribution, when it comes to how you price it, when it comes to like how you talk about the product, that's one of the earliest things that you have to understand because if you don't understand this then you're going to start hitting all these walls.”
- Ramiro Berrelleza
SHOW NOTES:Ramiro’s founder journey & the origins of Okteto (1:49)Why Okteto’s founders started it as an open-source project (4:06)The benefits & opportunities of starting as Okteto open source project (6:19)Transitioning from open-source to commercial (8:39)Embrace the community aspect of open-source (11:30)How the open-source community can guide early-day founder decisions (13:17)Ramiro’s method for identifying Okteto’s personas & its impact on GTM strategy (16:08)Using personas to determine what your product is lacking & how to package it (19:04)Building a product with the developer persona in mind (21:32)Which stage of the founder journey is best for identifying personas (24:30)How to prioritize engineering resources in the org’s early days (27:08)The importance of shipping a complete experience (29:39)Ramiro’s thoughts on the sequence of early-stage hiring (31:58)Qualities to look for in your first marketing hire (34:46)Tips for hiring someone who is transitioning from big tech to a startup (37:15)Why it’s worth hiring folks who can pull their own weight (39:28)Rapid fire questions (41:59)LINKS AND RESOURCESThe Founders' Paradox - Aishwarya Khan Bhaduri’s book that shines a light on the illusion of progressiveness, the daunting challenges of exploitation, and the cutthroat competition that defines the start-up landscape.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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In this episode, Roni Dover, CTO @ Digma, shares the customer communication models and user interview tactics that can help shape your product, how to minimize biases from entering these conversations, the advantages of incorporating critical feedback alongside positive feedback, and how to leverage in-person conversations with your product’s audience. Roni also shares his experience as an introverted eng leader who needed to develop more extroverted traits as CTO and the frameworks that helped him find his voice. Additionally, we address how to grow your product for a specific audience, gaining more users, expanding your product, and more.
ABOUT RONI DOVERHolistic developer and builder with a passion for development processes and practices. Afflicted by an acute Product Manager/Developer split personality disorder that was never treated. Currently, CTO and co-founder of Digma (digma.ai), an IDE plugin for code runtime AI analysis to help accelerate development in complex codebases. A big believer in evidence-based development, and a proponent of Continuous Feedback in all aspects of Software Engineering.
"Get your first 10 users. That's the first thing you need to do. Why? Because if you don't have currently, right now, a user on your platform, you have no feedback. You don't know anything. You did your idea validation. You created a product. Until a user uses that product and tells you, 'Oh my God, this is crap.' or 'Oh my God, this is the best thing since sliced bread.', you don't have any real perspective on what you've done.
- Roni Dover
SHOW NOTES:The origin story of Digma AI & Roni’s journey as a developer (1:49)How Digma tackles a gap in the DevOps cycle (3:33)Approaches for introverted eng leaders who need to develop extroverted qualities (6:29)Roni’s process for finding his voice through writing (8:25)Tactics for communicating with your audience (10:52)What Roni’s customer conversation model looks like (13:29)Use an external party to minimize biases from entering conversations (16:25)Frameworks for overcoming biases / preconceptions about your product (18:32)The importance of balancing positive & critical feedback (21:06)Taking advantage of conferences for face-to-face conversations (23:04)Avoid making a product for a general audience & embrace specificity (26:04)Best practices for growing your user base & gathering initial feedback (30:17)Strategies for expanding your product & getting more users (32:54)How building community interacts with PLG strategy (36:09)Navigating good customer communication w/ the fear of being too pushy (38:43)Rapid fire questions (41:38)LINKS AND RESOURCESHow to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you. - Rob Fitzpatrick’s quick and easy handbook about how to get more learning and more sales out of your customer conversations. Even when everyone is lying to you.CI/CD/CF? — The Devops Toolchain’s “Missing-Link” - Roni’s blog post about continuous feedback.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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Paul Dix, Founder & CTO @ InfluxData, joins us to discuss how to handle the emotional aspects of the founding experience, strategies for engaging with developers & using community tools to build a dev-tool company, and recommendations for approaching open-source & licensable business strategies. Additionally, Paul shares advice based on his experience transitioning from the bootstrapping dream to seeking external funding.
ABOUT PAUL DIXPaul (@pauldix) is the creator of InfluxDB. He has helped build software for startups, large companies, and organizations like Microsoft, Google, McAfee, Thomson Reuters, and Air Force Space Command. He is the series editor for Addison Wesley’s Data & Analytics book and video series. In 2010 Paul wrote the book Service Oriented Design with Ruby and Rails. In 2009 he started the NYC Machine Learning Meetup. Paul holds a degree in computer science from Columbia University.
"Having resources, having capital to hire people and do things and iterate gives you time to potentially come to something that is valuable, right? If you don't actually get that time to iterate, you don't even get to play the game.”
- Paul Dix
Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical proven strategies.
Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco
For tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:Paul’s feelings about InfluxData’s 3.0 release (2:15)Strategies for handling the emotional aspects of the founding experience (4:38)InfluxData’s origin story & what went into Paul’s decision to start the company (8:44)Frameworks for navigating early-day founding / funding decisions (11:03)What gave Paul the conviction to seek greater funding (16:05)Comparing & contrasting the thought process behind Market IO and InfluxData (18:10)Perspectives on deciding what is a good idea (21:24)How deep technical motivation helps drive innovation as a founder (23:45)Gaining interest from developers as your target market (26:17)Use community tools as a strategy for building dev-tool specific companies (28:51)Lessons learned when designing InfluxData's open-source & licensable approach (32:02)InfluxData’s 2016 inflection point (35:34)Paul’s advice for deciding on open source or not & how to structure eng teams (39:20)Rapid fire questions (44:11)LINKS AND RESOURCESI Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World - Rachel Love Nuwer tells the unlikely story of how the psychedelic drug MDMA emerged from the shadows to the forefront of a medical revolution -- and the potential it may hold to help us thrive.Giannis Antetokounmpo post-game interviewThis episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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In this episode, Jessica McKellar, CTO & Founder @ Pilot, shares her story as a serial founder and the lessons that can help you become a more impactful, strategic business contributor & eng leader. She reveals strategies for identifying your company’s ideal end state & the steps needed to achieve product-market fit, daily practices that help measure important metrics, business-building disciplines that need to be prioritized long term, and steps for creating positive collaboration between product, eng & design teams.
ABOUT JESSICA MCKELLARJessica McKellar (@jessicamckellar) is a repeat founder and the CTO of fintech unicorn Pilot, an accounting firm powered by software.
Previously, she was a founder and the VP of Engineering for Zulip, a real-time collaboration startup acquired by Dropbox, where she then served as a Director of Engineering. Before that, she was a computer nerd at MIT who joined her friends at Ksplice, a company building a service for rebootless kernel updates on Linux that was acquired by Oracle.
Jessica is a former Director for the Python Software Foundation and PyCon North America Diversity Outreach Chair. For her outreach efforts in the Python community, she was awarded the O'Reilly Open Source Award.
Open source meets criminal justice reform in Jessica’s work with The Last Mile, a job training and re-entry program that has implemented the first computer programming curriculum inside US prisons. She teaches Python at San Quentin State Prison in California, hires formerly incarcerated software engineers, and uses that bridge between the tech industry and prisons to get people activated and acting for decarceration.
"You need to be able to think about the business in a way where you have ideas that inflect the business. What is a gap in the product that needs to be addressed? What's an idea for a way to achieve a step function improvement in margin? How can we save the company money that it is spending via an engineering investment?
- Jessica McKellar
Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.
Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco
For tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:Jessica’s founder story @ Pilot (3:04)How founding Pilot is different from past experiences w/ Zulip & Ksplice (4:07)The story behind Pilot’s “power team” of founders (6:44)Distinctions between Jessica’s focus as CTO / founder & eng roles (11:14)How eng functions can help the exec team hit important metrics (14:18)Daily actions that help optimize & monitor metrics like margin (16:11)Frameworks for identifying business trajectory (19:24)What parts of business-building discipline need to be prioritized long-term (21:07)Use market fit & size of market to determine your company’s goal end state (22:26)Past lessons the founding team applied while starting Pilot (24:23)Things Jessica thinks she & her co-founders do right (25:01)Recommendations for exploring potential paths & aligning on the final decision (28:58)Steps for becoming a more impactful, strategic business contributor (30:33)How eng leaders can identify ideal end state & achieve product-market fit (35:15)Create collaboration between product, eng & design teams (37:06)Rapid fire questions (39:00)LINKS AND RESOURCESCool People Who Did Cool Stuff - This weekly podcast dives into history to drag up the wildest rebels, the most beautiful revolts, and all the people who long to be—and fight to be—free. It explores complex stories of resistance that offer lessons and inspiration for us today, focusing on the ensemble casts that make up each act of history.And Away… - Bob Mortimer’s life was trundling along happily until suddenly in 2015 he was diagnosed with a heart condition that required immediate surgery and forced him to cancel an upcoming tour. The episode unnerved him, but forced him to reflect on his life so far. This is the framework for his hilarious and moving memoir, And Away…This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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