Anastasis Germanidis is the Co-Founder & CTO at Runway, an applied AI research company shaping the next era of art, entertainment, and human creativity. Runway has raised $237m and was one of Time Magazine’s “100 most influential companies” in 2023. Runway has been a persistent viral sensation in recent years, and is behind many of the most famous AI demos online. — In today’s episode we discuss: The origins of Runway The limitations of being “customer-driven” when building in AI How Runway bala...
Nov 09, 2023•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast Guillermo Rauch is the CEO of Vercel, a frontend-as-a-service product that was valued at $2.5b in 2021. Vercel serves customers like Uber, Notion and Zapier, and their React framework - Next.js - is used by over 500,000 developers and designers worldwide. Guillermo started his first company at age 11 in Buenos Aires and moved to San Francisco at age 18. In 2013, he sold his company Cloudup to Automattic (the company behind WordPress), and in 2015 he founded Vercel. — In today’s episode we discus...
Nov 02, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ashley Kramer is the CMO and CSO at GitLab, a publicly listed DevSecOps platform. Ashley took a unique path into her CMO role. She started out in software engineering before becoming a product leader, and eventually, a marketer. Most recently, Ashley was the CPO and CMO at Sisense, a data analytics company last valued at over $1b. — In today’s episode we discuss: How GitLab layered a commercial model on top of open source roots GitLab’s main marketing metrics Examples, benefits, and downsides of...
Oct 26, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Colin Zima is the co-founder and CEO of Omni, a business intelligence tool that has raised over $26.9m. Prior to starting Omni, Colin was Chief Analytics Officer and VP of Product at Looker, which was acquired by Google for $2.6b. Colin was an early employee at Looker, and stood up its high-touch customer support arm, which turned into a cornerstone competitive advantage for the company. — In today’s episode we discuss: Lessons from Looker When, why and how to invest in white-glove customer supp...
Oct 12, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Wade Foster is the Co-founder & CEO at Zapier, a platform for building workflow automations without a developer. Zapier was started during 2011 in Columbia, Missouri, and by 2021, it was valued at $5b, having only raised $1.3m. Prior to founding Zapier, Wade had just two professional jobs, and had never managed or hired anyone. He worked as a PM on a web app used by 20k students, and as an Email Marketing Manager at Veterans United - a role that had a significant influence on Zapier’s eventual s...
Oct 05, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Laura Behrens Wu is the Founder & CEO at Shippo, a company that has raised $100m+ and was last valued at $1b in 2021. Shippo provides an API and dashboard that makes shipping easy for e-commerce businesses, marketplaces, and platforms. Prior to starting Shippo, Laura graduated from Harvard University, and was heavily influenced by a short internship at LendUp, which exposed her to Silicon Valley and startup culture. In today’s episode we discuss: Shippo’s pivot-stricken origin story Finding prod...
Sep 28, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dan Siroker is the co-founder and CEO at Rewind AI, a personalized AI powered by everything you’ve seen, said, or heard. Dan launched Rewind to an emphatic response on Twitter, and used a public pitch video to fundraise at a $350m valuation. Prior to starting Rewind, Dan co-founded Optimizely, which reached $120m ARR before being acquired by Episerver, a content management company. Dan was also the Director of Analytics for Obama’s first presidential campaign. In today’s episode, we discuss: Rew...
Sep 14, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sprig is an AI-powered user insights platform that has raised over $88m. Today’s discussion features two key individuals in Sprig’s journey so far: Ryan Glasgow, Sprig’s CEO and founder; and Kevin Mandich, Sprig’s Head of Machine Learning. Before Sprig, Ryan was an early PM at GraphScience, Vurb, and Weeby (all of which were acquired), and Kevin was an ML Engineer at Incubit, and a Post-Doctoral Researcher at UC San Diego. In today’s episode, we discuss: Key lessons from the Sprig founding story...
Sep 07, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Saumil Mehta is the GM of Square’s flagship point-of-sale business, as well as CRM, Square Staff, and Square Online. Before Square, Saumil was the Founder and CEO of LocBox, which raised over $5.1M, and helped offline/local businesses run multi-channel marketing campaigns, all from one universal dashboard. Saumil has now been a leader at Square for 8+ years, and has overseen many complex re-orgs. These experiences have shaped Saumil into an all-round org-design expert. In today’s episode we disc...
Aug 31, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Ep 103•Transcript available on Metacast Kellan Elliott-McCrea is a Head of Engineering at Adobe, overseeing Frame.io, a newly acquired video review and collaboration platform. He is known for his experience and expertise as an engineering leader. He was previously a VPE at Dropbox, and CTO at Etsy where he built and led a team of 300 people, from tech and platform reboot through to IPO. Kellan also built and scaled teams at Flickr, and has a coaching and advising practice for companies looking to supercharge their engineering teams. I...
Aug 17, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Ep 102•Transcript available on Metacast Alex Kracov is the CEO and Co-Founder at Dock, and the former VP of Marketing at Lattice. Alex joined Lattice as the first marketer and third employee, and he helped to grow the business from seed to 1850+ customers. Prior to Lattice, Alex was a consultant at Blue State Digital — the team that elected President Obama and orchestrated projects at Google. Since leaving Lattice in 2021, Alex co-founded Dock, a B2B platform that has streamlined the customer buying experience for clients like Loom, O...
Aug 10, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Anique Drumright is the COO at Loom, a video communication tool for streamlining workflows. Loom has raised over $200M, and was last valued at $1.5B. Anique has a proven track record across product development, executive leadership, and building high-performing organizations. Before joining Loom, Anique was the VP of Product at TripActions, where she scaled the team over 8x globally, and she has also held multiple roles at Uber. In today's episode, we discuss: Best-practice product management Ho...
Aug 03, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast Noah Desai Weiss is the Chief Product Officer of Slack, and has an accomplished track record inside and outside of the company. He started Slack’s Search, Learning, and Intelligence division, led the Self-Service (SMB) Business, and led the Expansion and Virtual HQ product areas (responsible for Huddles, Clips, and more). Before joining Slack, Noah was the SVP of Product Management at Foursquare (raised over $390m), and was a Product Manager at Google. In today's episode, we discuss: When to use...
Jul 13, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jack Altman is the co-founder and CEO of Lattice, a people success platform for building engaged, high-performing teams. Lattice has raised over $330M, and was last valued at $3B. He is an expert in building company culture, and wrote a book on the topic, titled: “People Strategy”. In today's episode, we discuss: The importance of self-awareness and how to develop it The value of difficult conversations and advice for having them Common mistakes when scaling a company How to approach firing deci...
Jul 06, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tara Seshan is the Head of Product at Watershed, a climate platform that companies use to measure, report, and reduce their carbon emissions. Before joining Watershed, Tara was Head of Product at Stripe throughout the launch of Stripe Billing and Stripe Treasury. As a Thiel Fellow and experienced multi-product builder, Tara brings a wealth of experience with 0-1 SaaS products. In today's episode, we discuss: The different types of multi-product strategies. Stories from Stripe’s multi-product suc...
Jun 22, 2023•56 min•Ep 97•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest today is Melissa Tan, GM of Self-Service and Head of Growth at Webflow and formerly Head of Growth and Monetization for Dropbox Business. In today’s conversation, she unpacks the nuances between the two PLG businesses and how growth strategy changes for a more complex product like Webflow, including: Designing and structuring a growth org The right way to tackle goal-setting How Webflow’s pricing and packaging has evolved How to calibrate pricing feedback You can email us questions dir...
Jun 08, 2023•1 hr•Ep 91•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest today is Marcel Weekes, VP of Product Engineering at Figma and former VP of Engineering at Slack. In today’s conversation, he unpacks why most startups get it wrong when they uplevel someone from IC engineer to eng manager and unfurls what stellar engineering management looks like at high-growth companies, including: Setting appropriate expectations and goals Turbocharging the team’s effectiveness Delivering high-impact feedback Going from a peer to a manager What leaders risk when the...
May 25, 2023•1 hr•Ep 95•Transcript available on Metacast Todd Jackson is back on the mic to guest host another product-focused episode. This time, he chats with Kesava Kirupa Dinakaran, co-founder and CEO of Luminai, a B2B software tool that helps automate any manual process down to just one click. Dinakaran’s personal and professional story is one that you do not want to miss. A former Rubik’s Cube champion and back-to-back Hackathon winner, Dinakaran’s foray into the world of building software products is anything but conventional. The founders stum...
May 18, 2023•59 min•Ep 94•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest today is Douglas Hanna, Chief Operating Officer at Grafana Labs. Grafana Labs is an observability stack built around Grafana, a leading open-source technology for dashboards and visualization. Douglas is a seasoned revenue leader, previously leading operations and GTM strategy at Zendesk. At Grafana Labs, Douglas has been instrumental in scaling GTM at the open-source company — building up both team headcount and its revenue model. In our conversation today, Douglas dives deep into the...
May 11, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Ep 93•Transcript available on Metacast Today’s conversation is with Jessica McKellar, co-founder and CTO of Pilot, which is the largest accounting firm for startups. She’s been working on Pilot for the last 6 years with her two co-founders, Waseem Daher and Jeff Arnold. But what makes this founding trio super unique is that they’ve stuck together in not just one, but three different startups. As repeat founders, the Pilot team has learned a ton from their first two ventures, K Splice and Zulip, and both netted some positive outcomes....
May 04, 2023•56 min•Ep 92•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest today is Artem Kroupenev, VP of Strategy at Augury. Augury is a leader in a category they helped to define known as “machine health.” The company sells products that combine hardware, AI, and SaaS within industrial manufacturing. Artem joined the team at the very beginning of its journey and helped shape strategies for how the team measured product-market fit, go-to-market, and eventually, a strategy for designing a brand new market category they could compete in. In our conversation t...
Apr 27, 2023•55 min•Ep 91•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest today is Jeanette Mellinger, Head of UX Research at BetterUp and our User Research Expert in Residence at First Round. In today’s conversation, Jeanette unspools her tested playbook for high-quality customer interviews, with particular advice for founders in the very early days of validating an idea, including: The three-step framework for a thorough user-research process The biggest mistakes she’s noticed after working with dozens of early-stage companies Specific advice for structuri...
Apr 20, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep 88•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest today is Claire Hughes Johnson, former COO of Stripe and author of the new book, “Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building.” Claire joined Stripe as its COO back in 2014 and, over the course of her nearly seven years in the company’s executive suite, she oversaw rapid growth as Stripe scaled from under 200 employees to over 7,000. Prior to Stripe, she spent 10 years at Google leading various high-impact business teams. In today’s conversation, In today’s conversation...
Apr 13, 2023•1 hr 16 min•Ep 89•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest today is Rachel Hepworth, Head of Marketing at Notion. Rachel currently runs growth marketing at Notion, and sees her job as bringing process and control to all of Notion’s different marketing channels. Before joining Notion, Rachel launched the first growth marketing team at Slack, laying down the tracks for a well-oiled go-to-market strategy that could be measured easily. Much like Slack, Notion has made a name for itself largely through customer love and a powerful word-of-mouth rec...
Apr 06, 2023•54 min•Ep 86•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest today is Nadia Singer, Chief People Officer at Figma. Nadia joined Figma in 2020 and has seen explosive growth in her own career alongside the collaborative design platform’s. Before Figma, Singer was a talent expert who has hired hundreds of talented folks at places like Quora, Facebook and Google. In our conversation today, we dive deep into what makes someone a terrific talent evaluator. Nadia opens up her own recruiter playbook and shares: Her personal recruiting trick, which is to...
Mar 30, 2023•49 min•Ep 87•Transcript available on Metacast Todd Jackson is back on the mic to guest host another product-focused episode this week with Christina Cacioppo, the co-founder and CEO of Vanta. Vanta is the leading automated security and compliance platform, with thousands of businesses relying on the product to get compliant (and to stay that way). After toying with some initial ideas, like a voice assistant for biologists, Christina started building Vanta to solve a problem that didn’t really exist at the time. The company started out in 20...
Mar 23, 2023•47 min•Ep 86•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest today is Ben Lang, Head of Community at Notion. Since joining the company in 2019, Ben has had his hand in several high-impact projects at Notion that has grown its tight-knit community of passionate Notion evangelists into millions of users today. But before he was doing this as a full-time job, Ben was already spreading his love for Notion in his free time as a voracious product user. After discovering the tool on Product Hunt, he became obsessed. He got on the company’s radar after ...
Mar 16, 2023•44 min•Ep 85•Transcript available on Metacast Todd Jackson is back on the mic to guest host another product-focused episode this week. He chats with Bryant Chou, co-founder and founding CTO of Webflow, a no-code visual web design platform built with freelance designers and developers in mind. Today, Webflow is valued at over $4 billion and has millions of users all over the world. More than 200,000 freelancers, agencies, small businesses and enterprises use Webflow to help design and power their websites at businesses large and small. But W...
Mar 09, 2023•56 min•Ep 84•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest today is Don Faul, CEO of CrossFit. Don has a fascinating background where he’s been able to find success in environments as different as a combat zone and a corporate board room. After spending 8 years as a platoon commander in the U.S. Marine Corps, Don had stints at some of the most vaunted companies in tech, including Google, Facebook and Pinterest, the latter of which he served as the Head of Operations. It’s a really unique set of leadership experiences spanning very different cu...
Feb 23, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Ep 83•Transcript available on Metacast Our guest today is Brie Wolfson. Brie spent nearly 5 years at Stripe, where she worked on bizops and launched Stripe Press, followed by a stint at Figma where she worked on education. She then started her consultancy, named The Kool-Aid Factory, to share her lessons on building team cultures. And now she’s operating as a first-time founder building Constellate, a new productivity and communications tool for teams. In today’s conversation, we’re focused on company culture. A decade or so ago, com...
Feb 09, 2023•54 min•Ep 82•Transcript available on Metacast 
