Episodes

  • Leveraging distribution & community to accelerate your startup w/ Mariane Bekker @ Founders Bay

    Leveraging distribution & community to accelerate your startup w/ Mariane Bekker @ Founders Bay
    Jun 13 2024
    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% discountSHOW 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-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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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    44 mins
  • Building a mission-driven, bootstrapped business & transitioning from side-gig to full-time: w/ Darian Shimy @ FutureFund

    Building a mission-driven, bootstrapped business & transitioning from side-gig to full-time: w/ Darian Shimy @ FutureFund
    May 30 2024
    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% discountSHOW 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-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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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    1 hr and 10 mins
  • Exploring the differences of hardware & software startups w/ Jessie Frazelle @ Zoo

    Exploring the differences of hardware & software startups w/ Jessie Frazelle @ Zoo
    May 16 2024

    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 FRAZELLE

    Jessie 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 RESOURCES
    • Chip 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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    41 mins
  • Testing venture-scale ideas, identifying your competitive edge & devtool trends w/ Lee Edwards @ Root Ventures

    Testing venture-scale ideas, identifying your competitive edge & devtool trends w/ Lee Edwards @ Root Ventures
    Apr 18 2024
    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-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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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    42 mins
  • Finding your wedge: enterprise go-to-market & product building strategy w/ Vidya Raman

    Finding your wedge: enterprise go-to-market & product building strategy w/ Vidya Raman
    Apr 4 2024
    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-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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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    40 mins
  • Scaling yourself ‘down’ as an engineering leader w/ James Everingham @ Lightspark

    Scaling yourself ‘down’ as an engineering leader w/ James Everingham @ Lightspark
    Mar 21 2024
    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-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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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    44 mins
  • Rapidly operating early-stage engineering at global scale, mapping eng workflows to personas & pivoting pricing / business models w/ Scott Woody

    Rapidly operating early-stage engineering at global scale, mapping eng workflows to personas & pivoting pricing / business models w/ Scott Woody
    Feb 29 2024

    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 WOODY

    Scott (@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 RESOURCES
    • Elon 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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    48 mins
  • Execution strategy, proof of concepts & intermediate value-creation steps at deep tech startups w/ Quinn Jacobson

    Execution strategy, proof of concepts & intermediate value-creation steps at deep tech startups w/ Quinn Jacobson
    Feb 15 2024
    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.htmlTo 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 ...
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    35 mins