Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots

Noelle Acosta is Founder and CEO of Noula Health, a data-driven platform that uses personalized hormonal health data to deliver tailored care. Victoria talks to Noelle about helping patients with uteruses to better understand their bodies by providing them with hormonal health data that's unique to them and providing them with individualized care they deserve at their fingertips through a virtual app. Noula Follow Noula on LinkedIn or Twitter. Follow Noelle Acosta on LinkedIn or Twitter. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Noelle Acosta, Founder and CEO of Noula Health, a data-driven platform that uses personalized hormonal health data to deliver tailored care. Noelle, thank you for joining me. NOELLE: Thank you so much for having me, Victoria. It's a pleasure to be here. VICTORIA: Wonderful. I'm excited to learn more about your product today that you're building. Can you just tell me a little bit more about it? NOELLE: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I feel like, [chuckles] one, you could work here. You did a phenomenal job of sharing what Noula is. But here at Noula, we are a virtual care platform that really empowers women and patients with uteruses to better understand their bodies by providing them with hormonal health data that's unique to them. Based on that information, we're able to provide them with the individualized, tailored care that they deserve at their fingertips through a virtual app. VICTORIA: Wonderful. And I'm wondering what led you to think I need to make this company. What happened in your life where you decided this needs to exist in the world? NOELLE: Really it stems from my own personal brush with an undiagnosed chronic condition where I truly was the one in five women who felt dismissed, denied, and ignored in the traditional healthcare settings. And that is really something that's actually unified us all as a team here at Noula. We have the shared frustration in terms of the gaps that we experienced overall; not one, two of our health journeys looked alike. And so during this time, I found myself really just kind of banging my head against a wall where I had these ongoing symptoms that disrupted every aspect of my life, not just my physical health, but it became really very much an emotional roller coaster as well. Because despite having access to care and wonderful employer-sponsored health insurance, I was finding that my doctors were essentially brushing me off, attributing it to stress. And it really led to me kind of just having this inner monologue and questioning myself as, like, is this in my head? Maybe it is stress-related. This doesn't feel normal. Should this be normal? And so I, just like 70% of millennials, turned to Google as my medical companion. I lost trust in healthcare settings and just turned to do research around what could be possibly causing the symptoms in my overall health. And I just refused to believe that this was my sense of normalcy. And through my own research, I started finding things like my ethnicity and my environment could have an impact in the symptoms that I was experiencing. I was dealing with chronic pelvic pain, irregular periods to the point where I was actually menstruating for seven months straight. I had horrible migraines. And so I just really turned to these medical journals to try to figure out and uncover what my body was telling me. And so, based on that research, I finally went back to the doctor demanding an ultrasound, where they ended up finding over 40 abnormal follicles and cysts on my ovaries. And even at that point, my treatment plan was a Band-Aid fix. And so, ultimately, I really felt like the system fundamentally failed me. This Band-Aid fix was essentially, hey, we'll put back your former birth control method and call us when you're ready to have a baby, and we'll figure it out then. And so, to this day, I actually haven't received any additional care, guidance from any clinician despite being in and out of the doctor's office with the symptoms. And so I ended up being diagnosed with a condition called PCOS. Again, from my own research, I learned that Mexican women with PCOS, so yours truly, we have the most severe phenotype that puts us at the highest risk for other complications that are beyond just reproductive health. It increases my risk for diabetes. It increases my risk for hypertension. And these are ultimately very costly to my health. And I was just frustrated. I thought, why am I learning about this through my own research versus the doctor's office, where it really felt like a one size fits all approach to care? And so, based on my experience, I started talking to more and more women. And I found that

Neal Bloom is a Managing Partner at Interlock Capital, a community of founders, investors, and subject matter experts. Victoria talks to Neal about what he finds attractive about startups and companies he's excited about, out of all the pitches he receives, how many he gets to say yes to, and when working with a team, what he uses to manage information and contacts for investors. Interlock Capital Follow Interlock Capital on LinkedIn, or Twitter. Follow Neal Bloom on LinkedIn or Twitter. Check out his website and blog! Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Neal Bloom, Managing Partner at Interlock Capital, a community of founders, investors, and subject matter experts. Neal, thank you for joining us. NEAL: Hey, thanks for having me. It's so great to be here with you. VICTORIA: Fantastic. I'm excited to finally get a chance to talk with you. I met you at an investor hike that you organize once a month. NEAL: A founders' hike, yeah. I get up nice and early on the first Wednesday of each month in Torrey Pines in San Diego. And we hike up and down the hill with ocean views. It's not a bad day. VICTORIA: It's a great way to start the morning, I think, and to meet other people, other builders of products in technology. So tell me more about your work at Interlock Capital. NEAL: Sure. It really kind of organically happened that I became an investor, but not planned at all. I have an aerospace background then built my own edtech and talent tech marketplace. I call it the LinkedIn for students is really what we built as our first startup called Portfolium. We sold it, and I got really into startup communities, especially because of some people who helped me with my first startup. I want to be a part of building an even better ecosystem for others. And that turned into a podcast, a blog, an event series. And once I had the capital from my exit, turned into angel investing as well, too, and really just found that as I got to know people over time, the more and more I got to know them, the more certain ones stood out that said, wow, I don't just want to help them for the good of it. I also just want to be along for the ride. And I started writing checks to other founders. So that was the beginning of my investor journey about five years ago. And over COVID, a whole bunch of other later-stage experience operators, either founder-level or executives at tech companies, said, "I want to learn to do this. Can I do it alongside you?" And we created Interlock Capital as an investment syndicate. A group of us can share and utilize our brainpower, our time, and our capital to help companies. It's kind of our focus. So that's why we call it a community because it's not just kind of a one-way pitch us, and we'll write you a check. It's very much get to know the people, find the exact right domain experts who have subject matter expertise, who've been there and done that before. If they like the company and they want to personally invest, then we go to the greater group and say, "Hey, everyone, who wants to join this deal specifically?" So 18 investments later from Interlock Capital, we now also have an investment fund. So now we write two checks into every company. We do our syndicated style, pass the hat, if you will, "Hey, everyone, anyone want to invest in just this deal?" And then match it from our fund. And we're writing between $300,000 to $500,000 checks into early-stage software or/and software plus hardware companies. VICTORIA: What an incredible journey. And I love that it's led you to creating a community as part of what you do as an investment capital group. What do you find interesting about these startups and these companies that you want to be interested in? NEAL: Part of it is how much you learn about yourself, to be honest. I get to meet three to five new founders a day in a variety of ways, whether it's straight Zoom and pitch, or grab a coffee, or see them on a hike. We're kind of constantly introducing ourselves to each other. There's a bit of learning about how to size someone up to a certain regard. So you're kind of building this inner algorithm of how to top-prank people and their ideas. That's one interesting way that I never thought I would be doing professionally. There's a lot that we say versus what we do, and that's a data point that I have to keep track of because I get pitched amazing ideas that will literally change the world for so much better. And you get really excited about it, and you get invested in it. And I call it founder love. You fall in love with these founders specifically and almost say, "I don't even care w

Brian Feretic is the Founder of Blossm, a community marketplace to buy, sell, and trade plants. Victoria talks to Brian about how coming up with the concept happened, getting started in a very scrappy way and then filling in gaps, and opening up the app to have full marketplace functionality with buying, selling, and trading capabilities. Blossm Follow Blossm on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or TikTok. Follow Brian Feretic on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido or Tori. And with me today is Brian Feretic, Founder of Blossm, a community marketplace to buy, sell, and trade plants. Brian, thank you for joining us. BRIAN: Hey, it's great to be here, Tori. VICTORIA: Great. I'm excited to hear more about Blossm. Why don't you just tell me a little bit more about the concept? BRIAN: The concept actually happened at the end of 2019, and I'd already been a plant enthusiast for a couple of years. I was actually just going on my way to surf in my town of Ocean Beach, San Diego, and I stopped by this garage sale. And when I came back to pay my neighbor, I brought this rubber plant that are propagated just as a neighborly gift. She flipped out. She was ecstatic. She's like, "Oh my God, I'm such a huge plant person. Thank you so much. Why don't you come into my backyard, and I'll give you a plant tour, and you can pick something out." And what was cool about this was it wasn't just like a simple exchange. It was like this hour-long interaction with someone that lived four blocks from me that happened to be this big plant nerd like me. And I got her whole story. She went through all these different species I didn't know about. And then, she helped me pick one out, which I still have to this day. It's this crassula succulent. When I was walking home with my new plant, I was like, oh wow, I got to go download the app for this. I would have never known this person that lives four houses away was a big plant person like me. And when I got home, I searched the App Store. I did a Google search. I just couldn't find what I was looking for, which was basically this plant-swapping plant-connecting platform where I could find fellow plant nerds in my neighborhood. And so that kind of set me off on this path. I did some more research and decided...I was like, you know what? I'm going to commit to this and make this happen for myself and for my community. VICTORIA: Well, what do you think makes someone a plant person [laughs] or like a...how did you describe yourself? A plant nerd? What sets that user apart? BRIAN: We'll say it's like on a spectrum where people can shift along the spectrum. But I'd say when people start treating their plants more than objects and more what they are. They are these living things. They're beautiful. They bring people joy. I find it therapeutic to take care of them. And then the beautiful thing about it is that these plants grow, and you can propagate them and share them with your friends. And I think that is a critical aspect of this whole plant person thing. VICTORIA: So the plants have become a little more like pets, and you can grow them in a way that creates a community around your friendship and your local area. BRIAN: Yeah, exactly. That was actually the early signal about this whole plant world is that I saw people creating plant-dedicated Instagram accounts as if it was your dog or cat. And that was something that I realized this is a different type of person. This is a very passionate person willing to, like, they're so proud of their plant babies, we call them. [laughter] VICTORIA: Right. And it's funny, you say, plant babies. When I think of people I know who I would consider plant people, they do talk to their plants like their babies. They're like, "Oh, it's so cute." [laughs] Or they're like, "Oh, he's not feeling so well." So I think that's great. And so you started to do some research into this community, into this group. What surprised you about your early findings? BRIAN: This was actually something that I didn't realize until I dug deeper was that I thought that it was only going to be a local thing. People wanted to experience what I did with Sondra, who's the neighbor I swapped with, this in-person connection, swapping, checking each other's gardens out and houseplants. But I learned very quickly that people ship plants to each other not only within your own state but across the country, and this is global. And I was just like, how do people ship plants? Turns out I do it all the time, almost weekly now, for years. That aspect was critical to realize, all right; this plant community doesn't

Etienne de Bruin is Founder of 7CTOs and Author of CTO Excellence in 100 Days. Victoria talks to Etienne about his book, founding 7CTOs, and keeping your technology sustainable by inspiring and motivating technology teams and people to work together and build complex systems. CTO Excellence in 100 Days 7CTOs Follow 7CTOs on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube. Follow Etienne de Bruin on LinkedIn or Twitter. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Etienne de Bruin, Founder of 7CTOs and Author of CTO Excellence in 100 Days. Etienne, thank you for joining me. ETIENNE: My pleasure, Victoria. Thanks for having me. VICTORIA: You're welcome. I'm excited to talk with you today. I hear that you recently published your book. Is it today actually the day it came out? ETIENNE: Today is the day. The book was finished about; I would say, three months ago. So I have had great anticipation now for many, many months. And you caught me on the day, so I feel like today is my birthday. VICTORIA: [laughs] Well, I feel honored that you chose us as your first stop [laughs] in your marketing push for your book. So tell me, what in your experience led you to begin writing this? ETIENNE: Well, as you mentioned, I founded 7CTOs. I think it's about ten years ago now. I myself am a CTO type. I've had a career of basically being born to code in South Africa, which took me to Stellenbosch University in South Africa. I then joined a startup that took me to Germany and then landed in the U.S. in San Diego. And my whole journey has been a progression from individual contributor and really having great coding skills through the messiness and the intricacies of building startups, contributing to startups, and ultimately being in the role of CTO in startups. And what led me to founding 7CTOs was just a realization that I didn't have the support I needed. I felt like I was going to many meetups, which was mostly oriented towards coding and sort of different new technology stacks and frameworks, or I was going to cocktail hours with vendors who were trying to sell you something. And I really felt the need to just be with my people so that I could, in a safe, and consistent, and accountable way, share the challenges that I was experiencing. It was really from this place of founding 7CTOs, talking to hundreds of...I've probably spoken to thousands of CTOs by now. I've also placed people. I've connected people. I've seen people join companies because of connections I've made. And one of the things I saw that really bothered me was finding a great company in search of a CTO reaching out to me, talking to me about the role, me finding or through my network connecting them with a great CTO, only to find that a few months later either the relationship fizzles or even worse, the person did not succeed at the new company. And I just felt like you can have two people, a great founder, and great CTO, individually wonderful people, ostensibly well-suited to work with each other, but then make some basic mistakes that then lead towards not the desired outcome. And so I was really torn whether I should put some thoughts into a book or into some blog posts about what I think the first 100 days should look like in a fledgling relationship. And that's ultimately how the book was born. So long, long, long, long answer, Victoria. But that's where it all started. VICTORIA: No, that's great. I try to ask deep questions that get full answers back. [laughs] ETIENNE: You nailed it. VICTORIA: So I appreciate that context, yeah. So you talk about how to be successful in those first 100 days, which is critical to joining a new leadership team. What are some common mistakes that you mention that a CTO might make? And on the reverse side, what are some wins you could do early on to build trust? ETIENNE: I think a common mistake that I see is a bit of an identity issue. The CTO joins an organization and is eager to deliver value, and I think that that value is oftentimes misplaced. And what I mean by that is you hit the ground running thinking that there's all this stuff that you have to deliver in order to prove that you can make an impact, to prove that you were the right choice. And I think there's an innate desire to impress your new employer, which I don't think is limited to the role of CTO. But I think for the CTO, this looks like some technical achievements and impact, problem-solving. And I think what I like to see is the first 100 days being used to slow down a little bit, to listen, to be curious, to be open to building relationships, to have a longer view on what exactly is the system that you're joining. And I think to a fault; sometimes peo

Dominic Holt is CEO of harpoon, a drag-and-drop Kubernetes tool for deploying any software in seconds. Victoria talks to Dominic about commoditizing DevOps as a capability, coming up with the idea for drag and drop just thinking through how he could do these things in a visual and intuitive way, and using Kubernetes as a base for Harpoon. Harpoon Follow Harpoon on Facebook, or LinkedIn. Follow Dominic Holt on LinkedIn or Twitter. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Dominic Holt, CEO of harpoon, a drag-and-drop Kubernetes tool for deploying any software in seconds. Dominic, thank you for joining me. DOMINIC: Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me, Victoria. VICTORIA: Yes, I'm really excited to talk all about what Kubernetes is. And I have Joe Ferris, the CTO of thoughtbot, here with me as well to help me in that process. JOE: Hello. VICTORIA: Excellent. Okay, so, Dominic, why don't you just tell me how it all got started? What led you to start harpoon? DOMINIC: I got into the DevOps space fairly early. It was, I don't know, probably 2012 timeframe, which sounds like not that long ago. But, I mean, DevOps is also still a baby. So I have a software background. And I was starting to figure out how to do the continuous; I guess, automated way of standing up cloud infrastructure for Lockheed Martin at the time because people didn't know how to do that. There weren't a lot of tools available, and nobody knew what DevOps was. And if you said it to somebody, they would have slapped you. VICTORIA: Aggressive. [laughs] DOMINIC: [laughs] Maybe not, maybe not. Maybe they'd be nicer about it. But anyway, nobody knew what DevOps was because it wasn't coined yet. And I started realizing that this was not some system administration voodoo. It was just common sense from a software development standpoint. And I ended up leaving Lockheed shortly thereafter and going and working for a small business here in San Diego. And I said, I have no idea what any of this stuff is, but we're going to do it because, in a few years, everybody's going to be doing it because it's common sense. So we did. We grew quite a large practice in consulting and DevOps, among other things. And predominantly, I was working with the U.S. Navy at the time, and they needed a standardized way to deploy software to aircraft carriers and destroyers, the ships out there in the ocean. And so, I came up with a design for them that used Kubernetes. And we built a pipeline, a CI/CD pipeline, to automatically deploy software from the cloud to Navy ships out in the ocean on top of Kubernetes. And everything worked great. And it was there, and we tested it. But at the end of the day, handing over the maintenance, what we call day two ops, proved to be troubling. And it never quite made it onto the ships in the way that we wanted. So after that, I did a bunch of consulting with other groups in the Navy, and the Air Force, and Space Force, and all kinds of different groups across the government. And I also started consulting in commercial, fortune 500, startups, everything. And I just saw that this problem was really pervasive, handling the day two operations. You get everything up and running, but then maintaining it after that was just complicated for people because all of the DevOps implementations are snowflakes. So if you go from Company A to Company B, they look nothing alike. And they may have a lot to do with somebody named Jim or Frank or Bob and how they thought was the best way to do it. And so, running a DevOps consultancy myself, I just knew how hard it was to find the talent, and how expensive they were, and how hard it was to keep them because everyone else was trying to hire my talent all the time. And I just thought to myself, all of this is completely untenable. Somebody is going to commoditize DevOps as a capability. And what would that look like? VICTORIA: Right. I'm familiar with the demand for people who know how to build the infrastructure and systems for deploying and running software. [laughs] And I like how you first talked about DevOps, just it being common sense. And I remember feeling that way when I went to my first DevOps DC meetup. I was like, oh, this is how you're supposed to build teams and organizations in a way to run things efficiently and apply those principles from building software to managing your infrastructure. DOMINIC: Yeah. Well, I had lived the life of an enterprise software developer for quite a while before then. And I had gone through that whole process they talk about in all of DevOps bibles about why it is we're doing this, where the software development team would have their nice, fancy dev laptops. And the opera

Jennifer Goldsack is CEO of Digital Medicine Society (DiMe), the professional home for digital medicine. It is a global nonprofit with a mission to advance the ethical, effective, equitable, and safe use of digital technology to redefine healthcare and improve lives. Victoria talks to Jennifer about using new products and solutions to solve some of the most pressing and persistent challenges in healthcare, measuring success by how well they are caring for people every day and not by how good their products or how many they use on any given day, and how DiME can improve the way that we identify, manage, cure, and support people in a lifetime journey of health and disease. Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) Follow Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) on LinkedIn or Twitter. Follow Jennifer Goldsack on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Jennifer Goldsack, CEO of Digital Medicine Society, the professional home for digital medicine. Jennifer, thank you for joining me. JENNIFER: Thank you so much for having me; excited for our conversation today. VICTORIA: Wonderful, me too. And we have our Program Manager for DEI Geronda with us today. Hello. GERONDA: Hey, how's it going? I'm super excited to be on here as well. VICTORIA: Yes, me too. It's going to be a great conversation. So, Jennifer, why don't you just tell me a little bit more about the Digital Medicine Society? JENNIFER: Happy to, one of my favorite topics, Victoria. So the Digital Medicine Society, or as we affectionately refer to it as DiMe, is a global nonprofit, and our mission is to advance the ethical, effective, equitable, and safe use of digital technology to redefine healthcare and improve lives. And I think one point I'd like to make right off the bat is while we are tech and digital enthusiasts here at DiMe, we are not tech determinists. What we think about is how can we harness the promise of these new digital tools in the toolbox, these new products, these new solutions, and how can we use them to solve some of the most pressing and persistent challenges in healthcare, an industry that exists to care for people? That's what we think about all day. That's our measure of success: how well are we caring for people every day, not how good are our products or how many products can we use on any given day. VICTORIA: Right. So what did you see in the digital health space that led you to believe that something like DiMe needed to exist in the world? JENNIFER: So it's interesting. When we take a step back and think about all the experts that need to be at the table to ensure that we build a field of digital health that is worthy of our trust, in our opinion here at DiMe, we think this is the most interdisciplinary field you can imagine, and that's a bold claim. But let me play it out for you. And maybe we can think about some other interdisciplinary fields during the course of our discussion. For digital medicine to work, we need citizen scientists and cyber security experts. We need physicists, engineers, product folks, data scientists, clinical scientists, clinical care providers, healthcare executives, regulators, payors, investors, funders all to sit at the table together, all to speak a common unifying language, all to have a shared idea of what our North Star is. What are we trying to do here as we digitize healthcare, and what does good look like and for whom as we do it? And so that's the gap that the Digital Medicine Society was introduced to fill. That water cooler, if you like, where the leaders in our field can share their expertise and where we can very intentionally build a much better future for healthcare using the new digital tools in our toolbox. VICTORIA: Interesting. And I like how you pointed out for whom. [laughs] And I see digital equity is a big topic that you're focused on with the organization. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? JENNIFER: I'm happy to, and in our opinion here at DiMe, equity has to be front and center of everything we do. I think too many times we look across and considerations around diversity, equity, and inclusion; they're part of a rubric. They're a vertical. That's not what we think here at DiMe. We have to think about diversity, equity, and inclusion in everything that we do as we work to digitize healthcare. We know that there are pressing, persistent, and absolutely inexcusable inequities that exist across the burden of disease, across access to care, across the quality of care you're able to access, the care that you can afford. We know that all of those things introduce a long-standing history of inequities in health and healthcare. As we digitize the healthcare industry

Cavan Klinsky is Co-Founder and CTO of Healthie, a scheduling engagement and Electronic Medical Records (EMR) platform used by healthtech organizations who seek to build long-term relationships with their clients. Will talks to Cavan about providing an underlying infrastructure that other digital healthcare companies use to be able to focus on patient care and not reinventing the technology wheel by providing a scheduling platform, an electronic medical record, and a patient engagement solution–all available via API, via an API-first design as well as through fully branded interfaces. Healthie lets companies get to market faster, scale with less headaches, and provides effective patient care much cheaper than if they tried to build everything themselves. Healthie Follow Healthie on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter. Follow Cavan Klinsky on LinkedIn or Twitter. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: WILL: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Will Larry. And with me today is Cavan Klinsky, who is a part of Healthie, a scheduling engagement and EMR platform used by healthtech organizations who seek to build long-term relationships with their clients. Cavan, thank you for joining me. CAVAN: Thanks for having me on. WILL: Yeah, I'm excited about this. Healthcare is always an exciting topic to talk about, so let's start there. For the people who may not know, tell us about Healthie and what's in store for 2023. CAVAN: Healthie, as you mentioned, provides underlying infrastructure that other digital healthcare companies use to be able to focus on patient care and not kind of reinventing the technology wheel. So we do that by providing a scheduling platform, an electronic medical record, and a patient engagement solution. That's all available via API, via an API-first design as well as through fully branded interfaces. So we let companies get to market faster, scale with less headaches, and provide really, really powerful patient care much more cheaply than if they tried to build everything themselves. WILL: Oh, sweet. Okay, so who is your main audience? Is it the patient, or is it the healthcare provider? CAVAN: Healthie is a B2B company. So we sell basically the software to the digital healthcare organizations that are looking to deliver care, but there's a patient side of the platform. So they're able to onboard their patients. It allows patients to video chat with their provider, message, track goals, view care plans, et cetera. But our customers are the businesses. So before Healthie, people would basically either try to cobble together like eight or nine different solutions to provide the experience they wanted, or they would spend millions and millions of dollars building in-house trying to piece together. But when you look at these different healthcare organizations, 90% of the functionality they're using ends up really being the same. But people were trapped in this build versus buy decision where they were really concerned that they wouldn't be able to have a platform flashy enough for them. But the downside of that was just the cost of building that in-house. So Healthie really changes it from a build versus buy decision to a build and buy. So our customers buy the platform. They are able to launch very quickly. But because we're API-first, they are able to extend the pieces that are most unique to them. WILL: That's really neat. Yeah, one of the most frustrating things I find, especially when it comes to visiting a doctor, is having to call in to schedule an appointment. And I'm like; I just need an appointment; just show me the available times. I want to select it and be a part of that. And so research shows your software takes care of that, correct? CAVAN: Yeah, that's exactly right. And patients really, really love self-scheduling capabilities. When you talk to healthcare providers, if you ask a doctor, hey, why have they not embraced it? It's because they really want this fine-grained control over their calendar. A lot of them are used to calling the receptionist who's worked there for a decade and understands their preferences and how they want things sequenced. And they want this type of appointment able to be scheduled back to back but not this other type. That's kind of really what we enable is we have this almost eye-wateringly long settings page where you can go in there checkboxes, configure things. And what you end up is just this really nice middle ground where patients are able to get that easy, self-schedule experience, not calling anybody, not waiting on hold. But doctors and other medical professionals aren't giving up control over their calendar. So it allows our customers to be able to do a lot of optimization, making sure their providers are ful

Dr. Stephanie Smith is Clinical Psychologist and Founder of the Finding Center app, the first intuitive eating classes app. Victoria, along with surprise co-host thoughtbot's Director of Product Strategy, Jordyn Bonds talks to Dr. Stephanie about creating the Finding Center app to give people who are struggling with their bodies and their relationship with food a way to follow a plan, understand a path forward, and be able to see themselves getting healthier. Finding Center app Intuitive Eating by RDN Evelyn Tribole, MS and RDN Elyse Resch, MS The Body Is Not an Apology, Second Edition: The Power of Radical Self-Love Follow Dr. Stephanie Smith on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Dr. Stephanie Smith, Clinical Psychologist and Founder of the Finding Center app, the first intuitive eating classes app. Thank you for joining me. DR. SMITH: Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. It's nice to see you. VICTORIA: Nice to see you too. And we also have Jordyn, our Director of Product Strategy at thoughtbot. Hi, Jordyn. JORDYN: Hello. VICTORIA: So let's just kick this off. And Dr. Smith, tell me a little bit more about your Finding Center app. DR. SMITH: So I created the Finding Center app really a little bit selfishly because I wanted to create what didn't exist for me 10 or 15 years ago when I was really struggling with food and my body. And I'm very by the book, you know, tell me what to do, and I'll follow that. And there just wasn't something like that at that time of my life. And so I created the Finding Center app to give people who are struggling with their bodies and their relationship with food a way to follow a plan, a way to understand a path forward, and to be able to see themselves getting through this, you know, getting to a healthier tomorrow. And that's what I really wanted for myself, and that's what I hope to build here. VICTORIA: Well, I love that it came out of a personal issue you were having. And what was the gap between that type of content versus what already existed in the market? DR. SMITH: Back at that time, you know, this is probably dating all of us here a little bit. But at that time, [chuckles] apps were a little bit newer; technology was, of course, you know, things are growing so quickly. And there were things like books, so you could read something on your own. Or you might be able to go see a therapist or a counselor, but they may not specialize in this kind of thing. And so there really was sort of this DIY, like piece things together, figure it out, try a book, try a workbook, maybe they'll go together, maybe they won't. Or go see a provider, and they may or may not specialize. But there really wasn't something that was going to be a direct guide for these issues. And certainly, at that time, and still exists today, there's this huge lack of available things that are respectful to body diversity and size diversity. And so, really looking for something that wasn't going to be further stigmatizing, it was and still is an extremely huge challenge in this marketplace. VICTORIA: Great. And tell me more about, you know, you've mentioned intuitive eating. And how is that different from a diet or from your regular food tracking apps? DR. SMITH: That's such a great question. So intuitive eating is really the most old school [laughs] kind of style of eating because it's what we're all born doing. If you've spent any time around toddlers, you know that they'll have a couple of bites of a sandwich, a little bit of apple, half a cookie, and then they'll go run and play. Kids are natural intuitive eaters, and that starts to fade as we get older. And we start to have this morality around food and morality around body and this pressure to change and have things different. And we kind of lose that intuitive ability to have half a cookie and go play because I'm done right now, and maybe I'll come back to it, maybe I won't. Intuitive eating really is about this recognition that that's what you were born with. That's what your birthright is, and you still have that. And it's really kind of pulling away these kinds of stigmas and biases that culture puts on top of our relationships with food and our relationships with our bodies. And when we can pull that back, there's this beautiful natural ability to eat what we want and to find a balanced way of nourishing ourselves. And that's really what intuitive eating is about is getting back to that. VICTORIA: I love that. And how did you go about taking what seems like even though it's a basic, like, at its most [laughs] basic concept, but it's thi

Michele Veldsman is Director of Neuroscience R&D at Cambridge Cognition and Founder and CEO of Playroom, an invitation-only secure social network for families. Victoria talks to Michele about the premise of Playroom and its goal of giving parents a network, a safe social community where parents are able to know and easily communicate with people associated with their children and also provide specific options to maintain boundaries when it comes to their privacy and safety, the challenges families face in raising kids and maintaining a career, and new features she wants the app to include, such as finding nearby restrooms while out and about. Playroom Follow Playroom on LinkedIn or Twitter. Follow Michele Veldsman on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Michele Veldsman, Director of Neuroscience R&D at Cambridge Cognition and Founder and CEO of playroom, an invitation-only secure social network for your family. Michele, thank you for joining me. MICHELE: Thank you for having me. VICTORIA: Tell me a little bit about your journey. How did all of this get started? MICHELE: I had some kids, and I realized quite quickly that raising children is really difficult. I don't have family close by to support me. They are a couple of hours away. But trying to manage being a professional working in a fairly intense job, looking after my kids, making sure they have everything that they need and that they can socialize, and that I have a support network around me turned out to be really difficult. And so I wanted to find a way to solve that essentially. VICTORIA: Right. So you identified a problem from your own life in trying to manage your career, and you're raising your children without that close, immediate support. MICHELE: Yeah, exactly, yeah. And I realized this is a problem for a lot of people that increasingly, we don't live in these sort of small communities where we're surrounded by friends and family. Increasingly, people are moving to different cities, different countries. And that support network isn't there, but there are still all of the challenges of raising kids and trying to have a career at the same time. VICTORIA: Right. And like we were talking before we recorded, I just got back from visiting my family in Virginia, and I live in California now. So I'm familiar with some of the challenges my brother and sister-in-law are facing with childcare. Can you tell us some of the things that specifically you found really difficult in this situation? MICHELE: A lot of the time in my working life, I found there were loads and loads of tech to kind of try and make things easier to organize things. There's just a lot out there just for my working life but not much to support my family life, of which there are actually many, many more challenges because I'm kind of trying to juggle. I'm making sure that my kids their healthcare is all right, that they're getting their vaccinations on time, that I'm applying to school places on time, that I'm making sure that they're meeting other kids their age, and they're having play dates, and organizing birthday parties, all of those things. And then to try and fit that all into the wider day-to-day life, I found this really difficult. I spoke to other parents, and they also found it really difficult. In fact, I did some research with over 120 parents, and 70% of them found parenting really difficult or extremely difficult. VICTORIA: That's a lot of cognitive load on a person to manage all of these different things like school, and medical, and all the things you need to buy, [laughs] and what brands are the best. MICHELE: [laughs] Yeah, exactly. And actually, just trying to build this community around yourself is more difficult than you anticipate. So, for example, my kids went to nursery. And this is the time that they're starting to socialize and making these important connections that are really important to their development. And so as a parent, you're hearing from your three-year-old, oh, they've got this new best friend, but you have no idea how to connect to the parents of that child. And the nurseries daycare can't give out that information because, of course, there are privacy issues. So it's really difficult to make connections to other parents to be able to do these things like play dates. Organizing a birthday party, I found what you have to do is just take an invitation, give it to the nursery or the daycare center. Hopefully, they put it in the bags of the children that are friends with your kids, and then you kind of hope that they've got it and the right people are coming. You don't know who's coming

Eric Liaw and Zack Willis are part of IVP, a leading venture firm with a 43-year history of partnering with entrepreneurs who are undaunted on the path to innovation. Will talks to Eric and Zack about what has made IVP so long-lasting in the Venture Capital industry, how they help companies' portfolios, and the accomplishments they are most proud of. Follow Eric on LinkedIn or Twitter. Follow Zack on LinkedIn or Twitter. IVP Follow IVP on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. Follow Aarish Shah on LinkedIn or Twitter. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: WILL: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Will Larry. And with me today is Eric Liaw and Zack Willis, who are part of IVP, a leading venture firm with a 43-year history of partnering with entrepreneurs who are undaunted on the path to innovation. Zack, Eric, thank you for joining me. ERIC: Thanks, Will. It's great to be here, really appreciate it. And I got to say, as the Giant Robot Podcast, as a kid growing up, Transformers were my favorite toys. So this may be the closest I ever get to being a Transformer by being part of Giant Robots, so thank you for the opportunity. [laughter] WILL: Love it. We love robots here, so it's perfect. All right, let's start here. For folks who may not know, tell us about IVP and what's on deck for 2023. ERIC: Well, you gave a great intro, so let me just add to that a little bit. You know, we're really proud of our history and our firm. We've been around since 1980. So we're one of the sort of original Silicon Valley venture firms. But when I speak about the firm in that context, I don't think it does justice to how the firm has expanded over the years and how our investment activity now encompasses not only the Bay Area but major U.S. markets like New York and LA. We have investments in Canada, Australia, and a number in Western and Central Europe as well. And the common theme for us is that we're focused on working with entrepreneurs who, as you pointed out, are undaunted as they innovate and are pursuing dreams to create companies that will become recognizable in households and companies across the world, not just today but tomorrow as well. So that's really what IVP is all about. And it's what we're looking forward to in 2023 despite obviously the fact that the world is a little more challenging these days, a little bit more uncertain in, particular in the venture category. But we're really excited about the things that we're working on. We invested a lot in our team over a number of years. And, believe it or not, despite what you might read in headlines around venture activity, we are very much open for business in 2023 because we think that great entrepreneurs and great ideas come together at all times, regardless of whether the stock market is up or down. And our job is to find them, work with them, and become partners for three, four, or five, six, seven years, sometimes longer than that. So really, there's no bad time to start a company and get to know venture investors like us. WILL: Yeah, definitely. Your company has been around for 43 years. Can you kind of tell me what has made you last that long, for 43 years? That's a long time to be in the venture capitalist world, especially before it was popular and fun. ERIC: You know, it's a great question. I've been at the firm for 11 years now. So a lot of the credit goes to people that...our founder, Reid Dennis, who started the firm. He's in his 90s now, so he has since retired, but a lot of credit goes to people that came before me and before Zack. And I think that's a common theme for any kind of organization or institution, no pun intended, because that's what the I in IVP stands for. But it goes to that sort of common thread. You have to evolve, especially in technology. The technology markets that were successful for IVP in the early '80s that's not really cutting-edge venture anymore. As an example, Seagate was one of our first investments ever when people weren't sure that personal hard drive technology would actually work or whether or not they're getting market demand. I mean, who would actually want storage themselves carried around with them at all times? And now, think about how much storage you have in your pocket. It's pretty gnarly to think about how much technology has advanced. But if you kept only thinking about, okay, I'm going to invest in the next hard drive, you would have really gotten stuck after that. And obviously, the things that have come since out of the minds of technology entrepreneurs have far exceeded what people at the time of the founding of IVP would have thought was possible. So I think that evolution is really important, staying fresh; technology trends e

Aarish Shah is the Founder of EmergeOne and Projected.ai and host of Off Balance and Nothing Ventured Podcast. Will talks to Aarish about having the venture capitalist money idea and having that "aha!" moment that it could work, what drives him and having a purpose of helping others, and using his podcast to teach lessons that he's learned along the way. EmergeOne Projected.ai Off Balance and Nothing Ventured Podcast Follow EmergeOne on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter. Follow Aarish Shah on LinkedIn or Twitter. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: WILL: This is The Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Will Larry. And with me today is Aarish Shah, Founder of EmergeOne and Projected.ai and host of Off Balance and Nothing Ventured Podcast. Aarish, thank you for joining me. AARISH: It's great to be here, Will. Really happy to be talking to you today. WILL: Yeah, I'm excited. I can't wait to dive in and learn more about you. Tell me about your journey, how it all started. AARISH: Wow, it's a bit of a long run. I'll try and condense it. But I am 44 years old at the moment. About 20 years ago, I came out of uni with a degree in languages which I found was sort of useful but not essential. So I ended up for a few years doing kind of the normal corporate thing. I worked with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Nortel Networks, and then Deutsche Bank. And I qualified as an accountant along the way, so I'm effectively what you guys would consider a CPA over in the U.S. I then kind of up sticks, and I spent the next ten years of my life running a group of manufacturing and trading businesses alongside a property portfolio out in Papua New Guinea, which is a very, very interesting place to be, definitely one of the hardest environments to be building and running businesses for many reasons. I've had everything from people coming into one of my offices with guns. I had one of my factories burned to the ground and everything in between. So really, really great learning experience and certainly amazing to learn about physical products, you know, the manufacturing and distribution and sales and so on of actual physical products. And then, in 2015, I came back to the UK. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And so I had a bunch of coffees with people and ended up as founding CFO in an EdTech venture, which was a joint venture between Eton College, which is one of the premier schools here in the UK where famously all of our Prime Ministers seem to come from, and Founders Factory which is an accelerator that was founded by Brent Hoberman of lastminute.com fame. So that was really exciting. I was straight off the boat from Papua New Guinea, sitting 10 feet away from Brent Hoberman, learning everything that there was to learn about the tech sector here in the UK and beyond. And had a really great couple of years working in that business and learning really everything there was to know about the VCA ecosystem, the early stage ecosystem, how to build products, how to finance them, how to sell into new territories (We were operating in China at the time.) and all sorts of other things. And then, in 2017, I decided it was time to move on. And I became what you guys would probably call a fractional CFO. So I worked across C through Series C businesses, everything from EdTech to FinTech, D2C, B2B marketplaces, beauty tech, you name it, kind of been there, seen it, and done it. And in 2019 and 2020, started getting approached by FDs and CFOs that wanted to work with me. And I really doubled down at that stage and decided to build EmergeOne into what it is today, which is a consultancy providing CFO services to venture-backed tech startups and scaleups. So we work with a huge bunch of businesses here in the UK that are backed by VCs, some of the big names here like Hoxton Ventures, Stride, Octopus, Outlier, Founders Factory, and others. And I'm really, really passionate about helping founders build their businesses in a scalable and sensible way, I guess, especially in the current environment. And so we're really lucky that we're trusted by these VCs and the founders that we work with to deliver really great services to them. And then, a couple of years ago, because I've been working kind of in the tech sector for so long, I started noodling around with a couple of ideas of projects that I wanted to move forward with. I raised a really small kind of pre-seed back in 2021 and started building a product, which is today Projected.ai, which we have just launched. We're in the process of launching at the moment. And what that is is effectively an email newsletter, if you can believe it, providing internal and external data to our client businesses. So effectively, it's like a flash report of your financials along

Nadia Odunayo is the Founder and CEO of The StoryGraph, a new website and app for avid book readers because life's too short for a book you're not in the mood for. The StoryGraph helps you track your reading and choose your next book based on your mood, favorite topics, and themes. Victoria talks to Nadia about coming up with a product based on the concept of mood, what you're in the mood for to read, i.e., this book made me feel this way. How do I find a book that makes me feel similar? They also talk about keeping yourself open to feedback, the ability to flow and change direction, and developing a reviewing system that keeps biases in check. StoryGraph Follow StoryGraph on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter. Follow Nadia Odunayo on LinkedIn or Twitter. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is The Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Nadia Odunayo, Founder and CEO of StoryGraph, a new website and app for avid book readers because life's too short for a book you're not in the mood for. StoryGraph helps you track your reading and choose your next book based on your mood and your favorite topics and themes. Nadia, thank you for joining me. NADIA: Thank you for having me. VICTORIA: And you are a repeat guest at Giant Robots. But for those who missed that episode, tell me a little bit about your journey. And how did this all get started? NADIA: Okay. Yeah, so that first time was in 2015, and that was not too long after I had just got into tech. I did a bootcamp in London in 2014, Makers Academy, and that's where I learned to code. My degree was in philosophy, politics, and economics, so rather different. I worked at Pivotal for about a year and a half after I graduated from Makers Academy. And during my time at Pivotal, I got into conference speaking, and my first talk was around game theory. So I took my favorite topic in economics, game theory, and I combined that with distributed systems because that's what I was working on at the time in Pivotal on their Cloud Foundry PaaS. I think I gave it at RailsConf, and I think someone there recommended me to Giant Robots. And so Ben Orenstein interviewed me, and it was all about different types of conference talks and that kind of thing. So after Pivotal, I left and started a hybrid kind of consultancy/product company with a colleague, did that for about a year, left that, worked for about a year with my friend, Saron Yitbarek, on her company CodeNewbie. And then, when that partnership ended, I essentially had five years of runway from money that I got from the company that I started after Pivotal because we did some consulting with a bank. I'd always been entrepreneurial. I'd been doing various entrepreneurial things since secondary school, actually, high school. It was time for me to just have time on my side projects. And so I started hacking away on one of my side projects at the beginning of 2019 in January, and I haven't stopped since. That's what the StoryGraph has developed into. VICTORIA: Wonderful. And yes, I saw that the very early stages of StoryGraph started as a creative writing e-publication. Is that right? NADIA: So what happened was when I was at university, I started a creative writing e-publication, came up with the name The StoryGraph. Because we had won or we were going for some grant funding or something like that, I set up a corporate entity. And when I stopped working on that e-publication, I remember my mom saying to me, "Don't shut down the entity. I really like the name. I feel like you'll use it for something," that was in 2012. And so fast forward to 2019, and the side project that I was working on was called Read Lists. And it was very specifically focused on tracking and sharing progress through reading lists on a dashboard. But when I was doing customer research, and the scope of the project grew, Read Lists didn't fit anymore. And that's when I realized, oh, I can use The StoryGraph thing again. And so it's basically had two different lives or two different forms, the StoryGraph company. VICTORIA: That's wonderful. And I'm reading about StoryGraph and how it's an Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads. Can you talk a little bit more about the product and why people would want to use it? NADIA: So, as I said, it started life as a very specific focused side project. And I just had so much fun working on it and working in the book space. I'd always been a reader since I was a kid such that I said to myself, I need to find a way to make me building a books product a full-time thing. And so that's when customer research came in because the only way that you're going to make sure that you don't build something that people don't wan

Dr. Aadeel Akhtar is the Founder and CEO of PSYONIC, a company whose mission is to develop advanced prostheses that are affordable for everyone. Victoria talks to Dr. Akhtar about the gaps in the market he saw in current prosthetic ability, advancements PSYONIC has been able to make since commercialization, and essential principles and values that were important to him when building out the PSYONIC team. PSYONIC Follow PSYONIC on LinkedIn or Twitter. Follow Dr. Aadeel Akhtar on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is The Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host Victoria Guido. And with me today is Dr. Aadeel Akhtar, Founder and CEO of PSYONIC, a company whose mission is to develop advanced prostheses that are affordable for everyone. Aadeel, thank you for joining me. DR. AADEEL: Thank you for having me, Victoria. This is fun. VICTORIA: Yes, I'm excited to meet you. So I actually ran into you earlier this week at a San Diego tech meetup. And I'm curious just to hear more about your company PSYONIC. DR. AADEEL: So, as you mentioned, we develop advanced bionic limbs that are affordable and accessible. And this is actually something I've wanted to do my whole life ever since I was seven years old. My parents are from Pakistan. I was born in the Chicago suburbs. But I was visiting, and that was the first time I met someone missing a limb; and she was my age missing her right leg, using a tree branch as a crutch, living in poverty. And that's kind of what inspired me to go into this field. VICTORIA: Wonderful. And maybe you can start with what gaps in the market did you see in current prosthetic ability? DR. AADEEL: When we first started making these prosthetic devices, we were 3D printing them. And we thought that the biggest issue with prosthetic devices was that they were way too expensive and saw that with 3D printing, we'd be able to reduce the prices on them. And that's true; it was actually one of the biggest issues, but it wasn't the biggest issue. After talking with hundreds of patients and clinicians, the number one thing that we found that patients and clinicians would raise issue with was that their super expensive bionic hands were breaking all the time. And these were made with injection molded plastics and custom-machined steel. And they weren't doing anything crazy with it. They would accidentally hit the hand against the side of a table, but because they were made out of rigid components, they would end up snapping up those joints. And a natural hand, for example, if you bang a natural hand against a table or a rigid object, then it flexes out of the way. It has compliance in it, and that's why it's able to survive those types of hits and impacts a little bit more. It forced us to think outside the box of how can we still leverage the low-cost manufacturing of 3D printing but make this hand more robust than anything out there? And that's when I started looking into soft robotics. And with soft robotics, instead of making rigid links in your robot, so instead of having rigid joints and components, you'd use soft materials like silicone that are more akin to your skin and your own biological tissues that are more flexible and compliant. So we started making the fingers out of rubber and silicone. And now we've been able to do things like punch through flaming boards, and I dropped it from the roof of my house 30 feet up in the air, and it survived. We put it in a dryer for 10 minutes, and it survived tumbling around in a dryer. I've arm wrestled against the para-triathlete national champion and lost. So this thing was built to survive a lot more than just hitting your hand against the side of a table. VICTORIA: Wow, that sounds incredible. And I love that you started with a premise, and then you got feedback from your users and found a completely different problem, even though that same problem still existed [laughs] about the low cost. DR. AADEEL: Absolutely. VICTORIA: Wow. So taking it back a little bit more to the beginning, so you knew you always wanted to do prosthetics since you grew up in Pakistan and saw people without their limbs. Take me a little bit more from the beginning of the journey. When did you decide to start the company officially? DR. AADEEL: And just to clarify, I was just visiting Pakistan for the summer, but I grew up and was raised here in the U.S. So I went to Loyola University Chicago for undergrad, and I got a bachelor's degree in biology there, followed by a master's in computer science. And the original plan was to actually become an MD working with patients with amputations and developing prosthetics for them. But while I was an undergraduate student at Loyola, I took my first computer science class, and I absolutely loved it.

Irfan Alam is the CEO of Frontrow Health, a startup with a mission to finally put Americans in the front row of their own healthcare. Will and Victoria talk to Irfan about his background in business strategy and development for healthcare companies, how he went about searching for and building the perfect team, and how he started the culture of Frontrow Health on a level where there is balance and people want to join because it has a good culture. Frontrow Health Follow Frontrow Health LinkedIn. Follow Irfan Alam on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: WILL: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Will Larry. VICTORIA: And I'm your other host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Irfan Alam, Founder, and CEO at Frontrow Health, a startup with a mission to finally put Americans in the front row of their own healthcare. WILL: Hi, Irfan. Thank you for joining us. IRFAN: Thanks for having me; super excited to chat more about the whole process of building and launching Frontrow Health. VICTORIA: Yes, we're super excited. Of course, I know you as a client of thoughtbot, and I'm excited to hear your story. And you have this background in business strategy and development for healthcare companies. But what led you to decide to start your own platform? IRFAN: I think it was a combination of two things; one was a lived experience being inspired by the power of entrepreneurship with my family and then working at Everlywell. And then two, it was discovering and being reminded of a critical problem that I saw in the industry that I then became excited about solving. So growing up, I was raised by my two parents and my grandparents. My grandfather was an entrepreneur himself and also an immigrant and kind of brought our whole legacy of my family into the U.S. from Southeast Asia. He has always motivated me to take risks and to build something great for the world, and that's what he's always wanted for me. And so I joined Everlywell, a small digital health startup, back in 2019 because I was excited to get my feet wet in the world of startups. It was just within a number of months after that I had joined where COVID-19 hit, and Everlywell, a home lab testing company based out of Austin, got swept up into the storm of COVID and, in a lot of ways, threw ourselves into the center of the storm when we ended up launching the first home COVID-19 test. And it was that summer of 2020 when I probably had the most profound personal and professional growing experience of my life, just trying to handle this chaos and confusing world that we were all living in. But then also simultaneously watching how a small team could make an outsized impact in the world during a time of need. And that really led me to want to pursue my own startup ambitions. So I started thinking about business school. The founder and CEO, Julia Cheek, went to Harvard Business School in 2009 and publicly talks about it being sort of this magical moment in time where people were flooding in from the downturn economy, excited about solving new problems. And her class of graduates is sort of like a famous class of entrepreneurs. And so I brought it up with her, and she was super supportive. And I went through the process and got super lucky. And I decided to take the summer off in 2021 before coming to HBS and moving back to Boston. And it was during that summer where I started thinking about the problems that companies like Everlywell and direct-to-consumer health brands faced that I realized was not just at the fault of their own but because the industry didn't have the right digital tools necessary to succeed. That's sort of the origin of how Frontrow Health came to be. WILL: Sweet. So perfect segue; tell us more about the mission of Frontrow Health. IRFAN: We're on a mission to put people on the front row of their own healthcare. And we really just want to reimagine how people shop for their healthcare online. What I learned at Everlywell was that this boom of consumer health which means people who are taking charge of their own health and are able to do that directly through these digital health companies was a form of healthcare that could create a tremendous amount of value in people's lives. But that was only really accessible to a small niche audience. And it didn't feel like it was equitably accessible to the average American. And so some of those barriers that I realized as a part of my work at Everlywell for why the average American wasn't engaging with consumer health, this otherwise really powerful form of taking charge of your own health and wellness, was because of these three blockers that we're trying to address at Frontrow Health. The first being that people just don't know about what kinds of solutions are out there th

Kasha Stewart is the Director of Growth Engagement at Adobe Express. Victoria talks to Kasha about finding advocates that encourage her to chase problems, getting more women into product development and why it's essential to bring different perspectives into this area, and ways to bring connection between the end users and customers, engineering teams, and the rest of the organization to the business. Adobe Express Follow Adobe LinkedIn or Twitter. Follow Kasha Stewart on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido and with us today is Kasha Stewart, Director of Growth Engagement at Adobe Express. Kasha, thank you for joining us. KASHA: Well, thank you for having me. VICTORIA: Well, I thought I'd start off by asking you to tell me a little bit more about your background and how you found your way to product from starting out in film and video production. KASHA: I originally started...I have a fine arts background and did a lot of digital story narrative, post-production. Back in the day (I'm going to date myself.), you had to do...it was a very manual process of chroma keying and removing backgrounds, or refining someone's skin, or some type of background. That was where I kind of...it was my bread and butter. I really loved it. It was creative. Then in 2008, 2009, the housing market crashed, and the recession happened. And I thought, you know, I'm not a homeowner. What does it have to do with me? I'm taking these freelance jobs. I had just finished my grad program. And then all the jobs kind of disappeared. And I was thinking; here I was; I had gone to grad school. I had a really specific skill set. And then everything just poofed overnight, disappeared. And I thought, okay, well, what's more stable? Like, what could I do to secure a little bit more stability in my job, career? So I started applying for jobs in all these very different tech, like, they wanted people to be what we used to call a preditor, like, a producer and editor, someone that knew how to do this but also knew how to like FTP massive asset files and also knew how to flag something for when things were going wrong. And so I thought, okay, well, let me just apply for one of these. I have some of the skills. I tick the box on some of the requirements. And there was a job...it was actually on Craigslist. I actually didn't even know if it was a real job or if it was a scam situation, but I applied. It had a very unusual title; I think it was content distribution editor. And I thought, okay, well, this is interesting. And it was for abc.com. And this is about 2010. I applied. They called me. I thought, okay, why is ABC on Craigslist? But never mind, it was a legitimate job. And I got into what we call content distribution, so understanding content management systems. And I would be the last person that would actually process the content that would then be delivered to Hulu platforms, abc.com, many different affiliates. There were also Verizon mobile deals at this time, where the cell phone carriers had their own television networks that they tried to stand up. In that process, I started to really learn about licensing, how content is distributed, meta-tagging, and then also the architecture of a CMS. And I just for the life of me couldn't understand why this was built this way. It was a very cumbersome tool. And like clockwork, around 11:00 p.m. at night, it would crash. And if you hadn't saved your metadata on a notepad or in a spreadsheet, you're basically starting over from scratch. And I remember asking all these questions, and they were like, "Well, it's proprietary software, and it was built in Seattle." And I was like, "Yeah, but did they ever talk to the, you know..." I didn't know the terminology like end user at the time. But they never talked to any of us that were part of this small team that had this really pivotal role of publishing the content. And I remember asking all these questions. I had a supervisor at the time. And he jokingly said, "Well, you should go into product management since you love to ask questions." I didn't even know what product management was. I was like, well, I'm on a producer's track; that's my goal. I have this film and narrative background. And a role came up internally, and it was for a product specialist. I would say I needed a little bit of convincing to apply. I had some advocates in HR that saw this role and thought I would be perfect for it. And I was like, I don't know, it has all this data analytics. And what does this have to do with people and storytelling? And they were like, "We think you should apply for it." And I made the transition, which is r

Lauren Makler is Co-Founder, and CEO of Cofertility, a human-first fertility ecosystem rewriting the egg freezing and egg donation experience. Victoria talks to Lauren about tackling the access issues around egg freezing and donation and hoping to bring down the cost, leaving a company like Uber and starting her own business, and figuring out a go-to-market approach and what that strategy should look like. Cofertility Follow Cofertility on LinkedIn or Twitter. Follow Lauren Makler on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is The Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Lauren Makler, Co-Founder, and CEO of Cofertility, a human-first fertility ecosystem rewriting the egg freezing and egg donation experience. Lauren, thank you for joining me. LAUREN: Thanks for having me. I'm so excited for this. VICTORIA: Me too. I want to hear all about Cofertility. Can you tell me a little bit more about the platform that you built? LAUREN: Absolutely. Cofertility is really like you said; we're a fertility ecosystem. And at our core, we're enabling women to freeze their eggs for free when they donate half of the eggs retrieved to a family that can't otherwise conceive, providing support and education for everyone involved along the way. You know, we're serving two very different audiences. One side of our business, our Freeze by Co, is targeted at women between the ages of 21 and 40 who might be interested in preserving their fertility. We know that really the best time to freeze your eggs, unfortunately, is when you can least afford it. And so we've really taken on this access issue and hoping to bring down the cost on that front. And then our Family by Co business is for intended parents who need the help of an egg donor to have a child, so that could be anyone from people who struggle with infertility, or gay dads, cancer survivors, et cetera. There are a lot of people that really rely on third-party reproduction to have a family, and we think it's time to really move that industry forward, and we're doing that in a lot of ways. So that's at a high level; happy to dig in more on any part of that. But we launched in October, and things have been going well ever since. VICTORIA: Wonderful. Yeah, I want to ask you more about...you mentioned the problem that you identified with when people who are most ready to freeze their eggs probably can't afford it. [laughs] But how did you really identify that problem and think I should start a company around this? LAUREN: Yeah, so it's a two-part problem. I think we see a big problem on the egg-freezing side, which is truly cost. I think we know that women are starting families later than ever. For the first time in U.S. history, the average age of women giving birth now is 30, which is the highest on record. And the experimental label from egg freezing was removed in 2012, and so it's become much more mainstream for women to do it. However, the cost to do it in the U.S. is between; I want to say, $12,000-20,000 to do it, plus yearly storage fees. And there are some women who have access to doing it through their large employer, but for the majority of people, that's just not the case. And so, for women who are really trying to prioritize their career or their education or maybe haven't found a partner yet, egg freezing can be a great option. And certainly, it's not an insurance policy by any means, and it's not a guarantee. But studies show that if you experience infertility later in life and you did freeze your eggs, you're much more likely to have a child than not. And so we see it as a great backup option. But again, cost is just truly a huge problem. And then, on the egg donation side, there are tons of families that rely on egg donation to have a baby. And I'm someone...I should mention, too, personally, years ago...I'll make a very long story very short here. Years ago, I was diagnosed with an incredibly rare abdominal disease that put into question my ability to have a biological child someday. And so, I started to look into what my options might be, and egg donation came up. And when I looked at what was happening in the space, I just couldn't believe how antiquated it was. And truly, for lack of a better word, how icky it felt. It seemed really transactional and impersonal for everyone involved. And what I realized was that it was really rooted in the stigma around egg donation that comes from cash compensation for donors. So traditionally, a donor is paid anywhere from $8,000 to $100,000 for her eggs, depending on, unfortunately, her pedigree or sometimes her heritage. Something that might be, you know, a donor that's harder to find might require more co

Shaila Sahai is the Founder of We Take Part, an investment crowdfunding platform that connects eco-conscious investors and green tech entrepreneurs throughout Europe, including European overseas territories. Victoria talks to Shaila about focusing on clean tech and climate tech solutions exclusively, goals of contributing to the acceleration of the process of decarbonization, and how the idea of a crowd-investing platform that targets only green tech is welcome from the fintech ecosystem and potential investors. Follow We Take Part on LinkedIn. Follow Shaila Sahai on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Shaila Sahai, Founder of We Take Part, an investment crowdfunding platform that connects eco-conscious investors and green tech entrepreneurs throughout Europe, including European overseas territories. Shaila, thank you for joining me. SHAILA: Thank you for having me. VICTORIA: So, can you start off just telling me a little bit more about We Take Part? SHAILA: We Take part is a crowdinvesting platform based in France. We will be connecting eco-conscious investors, who could be individuals but also institutions, with startups from the green tech ecosystem in France and in Europe. We're going to use projects such as equities. It could be also bonds, green bonds. So basically, it will be investing in a company in exchange of shares in those startups. VICTORIA: Great. And you have a background in financial services. What led you to get the idea to start this platform? SHAILA: Yes. So I come from the financial services world professionally, so I worked in equity services. So basically, my job was to make sure that trades were correctly made and settled in the stock exchange markets. Then I also went to work in the financial management corporate side in banking. I had, after some years, a global vision of finance management that led me to after some time, I quit my job and started working for myself as a financial management consultant. So basically, it was financial consulting. And after some time, I specialized in working with small companies and startups, helping them in financial optimization and also in financial development strategies. And I wanted to do more for those companies after some time, so more than consulting and helping them internally. I wanted to develop tools for them to find more financing solutions than just going to a bank asking for a loan, for example. Most of the time, I could see them feeling blocked when they could not, for example, get a loan from the bank. That led me to develop a crowdfunding solution for them to help them. Also, the fact that we chose to target only green tech startups comes from a personal conviction of mine that we should really focus on and prioritize climate change solutions right now. And we should, as a society but also in the economy, focus on sustainable solutions to help and contribute actively to the decarbonization of the economy in general. VICTORIA: That makes a lot of sense. And can you give me an example of a type of green tech that is being crowdfunded, or you want to be crowdfunded on this platform fund? SHAILA: We want to focus on clean tech and climate tech solutions exclusively. A lot of competitors and investors right now focus on renewable energy, and, of course, this is a very important problem. We want to give access to other startups that develop solutions to clean, for example, the atmosphere or oceans and also the earth for agriculture matters. We want to give them access to investments too. Also, to include people in the investment process because the subjects such as, for example, agriculture, or transportation, construction solutions also are a priority, and they really interest people directly. Some matters, such as renewable energy some people understand those matters, but most of them don't feel really connected to those problems because they seem like far from their daily preoccupations. So we want to focus on solutions that will directly help people in their...affect and impact people in their daily solutions. VICTORIA: Right. So not only are you democratizing this investment into green energy and green tech, but you're also expanding the idea of what does that mean? What types of projects are we doing besides just alternative fuels, right? SHAILA: Exactly. It is true that fossil fuels and all those high carbon emissions energy industries represent three-quarters of the carbon emissions globally. There still is one quarter that we need to transform that needs to be totally, yes, changed. So we need to go further than that, and we need to take part. And that's also the reason for the name of the company. We need to take part in the whole action change pl

Laura Maguire is a Researcher at Jeli.io, the first dedicated incident analysis platform that combines more comprehensive data to deliver more proactive solutions and identify problems. Victoria talks to Laura about incident management, giving companies a powerful tool to learn from their incidents, and what types of customers are ideal for taking on a platform like Jeli.io. Jeli.io Follow Jeli.io on Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow Laura Maguire on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Laura Maguire, Researcher at Jeli, the first dedicated instant analysis platform that combines more comprehensive data to deliver more proactive solutions and identify problems. Laura, thank you for joining me. LAURA: Thanks for having me, Victoria. VICTORIA: This might be a very introductory level question but just right off the bat, what is an incident? LAURA: What we find is a lot of companies define this very differently across the space, but typically, it's where they are seeing an impact, either a customer impact or a degradation of their service. This can be either formally, it kind of impacts their SLOs or their SLAs, or informally it's something that someone on the team notices or someone, you know, one of their users notice as being degraded performance or something not working as intended. VICTORIA: Gotcha. From my background being in IT operations, I'm familiar with incidents, and it's been a practice in IT for a long time. But what brought you to be a part of building this platform and creating a product around incidents? LAURA: I am a, let's say, recovering safety professional. VICTORIA: [chuckles] LAURA: I started my career in the safety and risk management realm within natural resource industries in the physical world. And so I worked with people who were at the sharp end in high-risk, high-consequence type work. And they were really navigating risk and navigating safety in the real world. And as I was working in this domain, I noticed that there was a delta between what was being said, created safety, and helped risk management and what I was actually seeing with the people that I was working with on the front lines. And so I started to pull the thread on this, and I thought, is work as done really the same as work as written or work as prescribed? And what I found was a whole field of research, a whole field of practice around thinking about safety and risk management in the world of cognitive work. And so this is how people think about risk, how they manage risk, and how do they interpret change and events in the world around them. And so as I started to do my master's degree in human factors and system safety and then later my Ph.D. in cognitive systems engineering, I realized that whether you are on the frontlines of a wildland fire or you're on the frontlines of responding to an incident in the software realm, the ways in which people detect, diagnose, and repair the issues that they're facing are quite similar in terms of the cognitive work. And so when I was starting my Ph.D. work, I was working with Dr. David Woods at the Cognitive Systems Engineering Lab at The Ohio State University. And I came into it, and I was thinking I'm going to work with astronauts, or with fighter pilots, or emergency room doctors, these really exciting domains. And he was like, "We're going to have you work with software engineers." And at first, I really failed to see the connection there, but as I started to learn more about site reliability engineering, about DevOps, about the continuous deployment, continuous integration world, I realized software engineers are really at the forefront of managing critical digital infrastructure. They're keeping up the systems that run society, both for recreation and pleasure in the sense of Netflix, for example, as well as the critical functions within society like our 911 call routing systems, our financial markets. And so the ability to study how software engineers detect outages, manage outages, and work together collaboratively across the team was really giving us a way to study this kind of work that could actually feed back into other types of domains like emergency response, like emergency rooms, and even back to the fighter pilots and astronauts. VICTORIA: Wow, that's so interesting. And so is your research that went into your Ph.D. did that help you help define the product strategy and kind of market fit for what you've been building at Jeli? LAURA: Yeah, absolutely. So Nora Jones, who is the founder and CEO of Jeli, reached out to me at a conference and told me a little bit about what she was thinking about, about how she wanted to supp

Dr. Anne Latz is Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer at Hello Inside, a company that specializes in scientific self-care. Will talks to Dr. Latz about why glucose?, being a business-person first and what drove her to become a medical doctor, and where she sees wearable technology going in the in the next 5-10 years. Hello Inside Follow Hello Inside on Instagram or LinkedIn. Follow Dr. Anne Latz on LinkedIn. Check out her Linktree! Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: WILL: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Will Larry. And with us today is Dr. Anne Latz, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer at Hello Inside, a company that specializes in scientific self-care. Anne, thank you for joining us. DR. LATZ: Thank you for hosting me today, Will. WILL: Yeah, I'm excited to talk about Hello Inside. And let's start there; give us a quick summary about Hello Inside. DR. LATZ: So we are a German-Austrian startup, so we are based all over Europe, actually, all over the world, I have to say. And we help people by means of technology to understand their bodies best so to really become an expert of their bodies. And the technology we use is not only a smartphone app that shows data but a sensor that's called continuous glucose monitoring sensor that's like a little window you put on your arm that shows you in real-time your glucose data. And we at Hello Inside have then an app and the service around that that really helps you to understand your data and become an expert of your body because this data really gives you immediate feedback on what you do in the sense of eating, moving, but also how well you slept, how stressed you are. WILL: Wow, that's really neat. You said you had the continuous glucose monitor. The body is so complex, and there are so many ways that you probably could measure activity of the body. Why the glucose portion? Why are you doing glucose? DR. LATZ: I think that there are two, maybe even three, reasons to that. The first one is we do not have so many tools like biosensors or technology on the market, which enable us to give really continuous data on different biofluids or markers in the body. So the first one is just that the market here is quite mature because we usually know glucose from the context of diabetes patients, and the technology has been developed years and years ago for those people. And that's why we have really, really good technology, really good sensors, which have high accuracy. The prices get lower and lower, so more and more people can really access this technology. And we just know already a lot about glucose management. The second is it's a super, super potent marker. So I'm a medical doctor from my background. And I do not know so many markers in the body; maybe it's the heart rate variability or pulse that give us really immediate feedback to so many lifestyle pillars. So I think eating is quite intuitive that it does something to our blood glucose, but also movement does, also sleep and stress. And all these pillars immediately affect us, and we often know that. But this marker really gives us a take on how we can really visualize in the moment and then create a change from that. And the third is probably that it's just a really hot topic, the glucose monitoring, currently, and that's actually not a good thing. But we have really not only an obesity epidemic but really a metabolic health crisis. So a lot of people have problems with their glucose levels, not aware of it. A lot of people have, in general, problems with managing; yeah, I would say, their metabolism and have an energy crisis in their body. You could put it like that. And that's why we are really interested in glucose because if you manage glucose in the sense that you stabilize it, you can really improve your health in the short term and how much energy you have, midterm in the sense of what your weight is, and of course, long term to prevent diseases like diabetes or heart disease. WILL: Yeah, definitely. I think you're correct; you know, glucose is the one thing, especially for me, it's diabetes, and I know it in that direction. But also that after lunch drag that you hit, the wall that you hit whenever your glucose spikes and then it comes down and spikes, I mean, then crashes. I think that's the other direction people understand glucose from. DR. LATZ: Yeah, for sure. I mean, you bring up a great example, like the food coma after lunch. Everybody knows that, like, this energy and fatigue in the afternoon. But, I mean, you seem to be a little bit familiar with the technology, but a lot of people do not even connect the dots. They cannot really bring together what they eat and their behavior, for example, at lunchtime, how it really impacts them hours later. And what we love s

Stacy Kehren Idema is the Founder and Managing Director of Global Collective, which is revolutionizing how men and women do business. Chad talks to Stacy about the work Global Collective does, starting a company based in the U.K, and the differences between doing business in the U.S. and the U.K. The Global Collective Follow The Global Collective on LinkedIn. Follow Stacy on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Stacy Kehren Idema, the Founder and Managing Director of Global Collective, which is revolutionizing how men and women do business. Stacy, thank you for joining me. STACY: Chad, it is a pleasure. How are you today? CHAD: I'm well. I'm well. [laughs] I wasn't going to bring it up, but since you asked, I feel like whenever someone asks that question, I feel like I need to give an honest answer. STACY: Of course. CHAD: Because I think, so often, we don't answer honestly. We just sort of...so what's going on in my life right now is, unfortunately, even though we got our fourth boosters three weeks ago, my wife tested positive for COVID yesterday. STACY: Oh no. CHAD: And so she feels fine. She feels mostly fine. But we have kids and everything, so it throws a huge wrench into life right now. We're very fortunate that we've got vaccines, and it'll be mild and everything, but it is a big wrench in our life. STACY: It is. CHAD: Today, tomorrow, for the next week, so... STACY: I'm sorry. CHAD: Yeah, so she's in a different part of the house, quarantining away from all of us, and we're hoping for the best. STACY: Me too. CHAD: We could probably do a whole hour around how life is for all of us right now, coming in this different stage of the pandemic. I hesitate now to ask you, how are you today? [laughs] STACY: I'm here in London, so, for me, it's the end of my day. And fortunately, I haven't had COVID in a few months. But I know that experience and being even alone was enough to put a wrench in everything. So I get it. CHAD: Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's get back to Global Collective. I gave just a brief snippet. But can you tell people a little bit more about what it is you're actually doing? STACY: Yes, I would be honored. So the mission of The Global Collective is to revolutionize really how investment companies invest in female-founded and led businesses, and there are three key areas of that. It's really about changing gender perceptions by actually connecting the unique strengths of each gender. And if you were to even remove the gender piece, it's really talking about the core masculine and the feminine energies of how and what resides in all of us. How can we bring more of the flow and the creativity into business? The mission is also designed to eliminate the diversity gap. How can we make things better, more equitable, easier both for the men and the women, you know, going back to the genders? And something that's very near and dear to my heart is really about increasing the financial benefit and, frankly, the mental well-being in business because one thing that we don't talk enough about is the impact that mental health can have not only on our personal life but on business and vice versa. And I think it's starting to come out more and more. But with founders, with entrepreneurs, and with executives, that mental illness journey has actually increased, and there are some really interesting statistics on it. So, how can we make it a non-shaming conversation? And how can we actually help each other in this area? So the mission is really about transforming business into something different that I think we're all feeling the need for. And how it actually came about was from my 50 years of business and personal experience. I was born into business owners, into a family of business basically. My first husband was a generational business owner and had the hard position to be in, and he had to choose family over business. And then I, in my corporate career, had a really long tenured corporate career. I worked 26 years in companies as small as 40 as well as at Fortune 7 companies where we even did new initiatives, new businesses, startups within those. And modestly, most of my time was actually spent with male executives. And I'm a woman in business. I've been in business a really long time. So that's a little bit about the mission and how The Global Collective came about. CHAD: You're not the first guest we've had on the show that's talked about these issues. But I'm curious because it is more of a conversation right now. It's something that we've been talking about on the show. Is there something that people in that environm

John Ridd is the Co-Founder and CEO of Greenpixie, which is building solutions to reveal and reduce cloud emissions. Chad and Will talk to John about giving a clearer view of AWS emissions down to the service level, why cloud emissions are a much bigger sustainability issue than most people realize, and how this will be the next big issue of the climate crisis. Greenpixie Follow Greenpixie on Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Follow John on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. WILL: And I'm your other host, Will Larry. And with us today is John Ridd, the Co-Founder, and CEO of Greenpixie, which is building solutions to reveal and reduce the emissions of the cloud. CHAD: John, thank you so much for joining us. I have to admit that as a developer, this is something that I've been thinking a lot about recently. We practice test-driven development. We run continuous integration, even the things that we have running in the cloud in terms of the websites that we run and that kind of thing. I'm also just really becoming aware of when I make a new branch in everything that I run, and I'm making a code change and pushing that up to GitHub; it then kicks off a build every single time any team member is doing that. And I can just see the impact that even just a single software product can have potentially on our environment. And I've started to become more and more guilty about that. So I'm excited to talk to you about how [laughs] we might be able to fix that problem. JOHN: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the big reasons that we've really seen the opportunity in the cloud emissions space is this disconnect really between how developers are incentivized to think, and rightfully so. They need to build and innovate at all costs; that's what drives the innovation in any tech company or any company. But the sustainability way of thinking and thinking, what am I building? What servers am I using and turning on? Just hasn't been in the conversation with developers. And they're the ones who are making these decisions using cloud providers to build out the products that the company needs. So it's great to hear that you're now aware of this impending issue from development. CHAD: So I'm excited to dig more into the product. But I'm curious, you were doing digital marketing before starting Greenpixie, right? JOHN: Yeah, I ran my own marketing consultancy, worked with a number of companies, big and small. And where I found my knack was sort of demand generation; really, starting off projects from nothing is what I've always done. It's clear now that...so Greenpixie was a bootstrap startup. Really using that ability to at least come up with an idea and take it from zero to one, bring demand to an issue, that's how Greenpixie started. And it actually started with the head of engineering, Chris, who I met at my co-working space, and really we traded ideas through a hackathon on the weekend. And I had this idea when it came to website emissions and just knew that there was a software and a product play there. And what we do is connect into Google Analytics, put it through some carbon algorithms, and give them the ability to see how much digital carbon the website is producing. And from my marketing background, we've developed our own marketing, internal marketing software, which is a combination of we've built our own email servers with a high inbox. And we do semantic web scraping to find relevant prospects in the sustainability space. So we built the MVP and put this idea for Greenpixie out to the world, and the overwhelming response that we got was people being shocked at the idea of digital carbon and how their digital operations do have a sustainability impact. It really gave us the confidence to think there's demand for this idea of emissions. And since then, we've now moved into carbon emissions down the carbon rabbit hole. But my marketing experience explains how it started in the first place. CHAD: So how does...sometimes when faced with, I think, all kinds of climate issues, people can feel overwhelmed or helpless or feeling like what do I do as an individual to have an impact? So what does Greenpixie and Cloud NetZero enable an individual, team, or company, or developer to actually see and do? JOHN: Cloud NetZero connects into the leading cloud providers. So at this stage, we can give a clearer view of your AWS emissions down to the service level. And this is a key first step. So we take a you can't affect what you can't measure philosophy. And that was a big, big step for us. And by cutting into the cost and usage reports and putting it through our carbon algorithms, we can then get visibility to

Jade Kearney is the Co-Founder and CEO of She Matters, a digital health platform designed to improve postpartum comorbidities for Black women through community, culturally competent healthcare providers, and culturally relevant resources. Victoria and Will talk to Jade about why postpartum depression is so dangerous for women, her experience as a mother and why she founded She Matters, and what culturally competent care looks like for Black women. SHEMATTERS Follow SHEMATTERS on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, or YouTube. Follow Jade on [LinkedIn](https-//www.linkedin.com/in/jadekearney/). Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: WILL: This is the Giant Robot Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Will Larry. VICTORIA: And I'm your other host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Jade Kearney, the Co-Founder, and CEO of She Matters, a digital health platform designed to improve postpartum comorbidities for Black women through community, culturally competent healthcare providers, and culturally relevant resources. WILL: Jade, thank you for joining us. JADE: Thank you for having me. WILL: So I want to start off the podcast and really talk about the issues that you're working to solve because, to be honest, before I was a dad, I had no idea about any of the things that you're trying to solve, but now that I am a dad, I am very well aware of it. So, can you explain to our audience exactly what you're working to solve? JADE: No problem. What we're working to solve is we're trying to decrease the incidence of Black maternal morbidity and what that means is how Black women are treated in the delivery room and postpartum. I'm not sure if anybody is aware, so I always try to give the statistics upfront: Black women are four times more likely to die during pregnancy and after pregnancy than White counterparts. And here in the state of New York, we're 12 times more likely to die. So what we're doing as a company is we're looking to decrease postpartum comorbidities through culturally relevant resources, community, and culturally competent healthcare providers that we supply through our She Matters app. WILL: Those stats are so devastating to hear. You hear the stats and postpartum and things like that. Why is postpartum so dangerous? JADE: Postpartum is dangerous because postpartum starts the moment you have a child. And when you first have a child as any type of woman, Black, White, Asian, your focus is on the child, and you're not paying attention to the signs of your body. Also, postpartum is not talked about that much. After you have a baby, the focus is on the baby, and a lot of women don't understand what they're experiencing when they're experiencing it. So there may be some very, very alarming signs that are happening that are going off in your body or mind because we're talking about mental health and physical health that a woman doesn't resonate with because no one's talked to her about it. So there's no information. So a woman is experiencing...has an out-of-body experience having postpartum anxiety and depression and doesn't know what's going on because there's been no information given about it. It can be a silent killer, really, when you think about eclampsia, and you think about HELLP syndrome, which is like high blood pressure during and postpartum. These are the top killers of all women. And if you don't know the signs of that, if you don't know what to look for, you may very well think it's a part of postpartum when you're actually in danger. VICTORIA: And that sounds so important to increase awareness in the education and community around these issues. Can you tell me more about what culturally competent care actually looks like for Black women? JADE: So culturally competent care means that you are receiving care from a health provider that understands the stuff that I'm conversing with you guys about. They understand Black maternal morbidity; they understand it is due to systemic racism. They understand that cultural competence is the first step toward communication and trust. So they're meeting Black women where they are. For instance, culturally, a Black person may say, a Black mother, in particular, may say, "God told me this wasn't normal." Some people may see that as psychosis, so the person may be having terrible mental health issues. In our culture, that's something that we may just say. So to be culturally competent, you have to be aware that, oh, that's a colloquialism used in the Black community, and so I really should be focused on how this mom is feeling instead of maybe she needs to go to the psych ward. There are little differences and nuances like that that cultural competency changes the trust barrier, and it cha

Jordyn Bonds is the Director of Product Strategy at thoughtbot. Jordyn helps companies validate new product opportunities and reach that first key milestone, from validating an early adopter market to creating a pitch deck to building a prototype, proof of concept, or an MVP launch. Chad talks to Jordyn about what a Director of Product Strategy does, how Jordyn's career has evolved (She got to build madonna.com for the Confessions on the Dance Floor release and tour!!), and finding practices that keep you motivated and inspired to be working towards long-term, large goals. Follow Jordyn on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Jordyn Bonds, the Director of Product Strategy at thoughtbot. Jordyn helps companies validate new product opportunities and reach that first key milestone, from validating an early adopter market to creating a pitch deck to building a prototype, proof of concept, or an MVP launch. Jordyn, thank you for joining me not only on this podcast but at thoughtbot. JORDYN: Thank you. It's wonderful to be here. CHAD: You joined us in September of this year. And it's been really fun to watch...well, let me say it's always fun to watch people come into the company and begin to digest everything that's there, begin to, like, okay, I can see how this is working, and then to start to make your mark on things. And so thank you for everything you've done so far. And I look forward to seeing everything in the future too. JORDYN: I look forward to it too. It's been a super interesting experience. I think thoughtbot has a really unique culture, and it's been really fun to get on-boarded into it. CHAD: Cool. I'd love to talk a little bit more about that in a bit. But you have joined us as the Director of Product Strategy, which is actually a new position for us in the Ignite team, which is the team that focuses on those early-stage ideas, products, companies. Obviously, if we added the position, we thought it was important. We don't take those things lightly. What led you and made you perfect for that position? JORDYN: [laughs] I think taking something from a nascent notion, whatever that is, an idea for a product or newly identified market opportunity to that first concrete thing out in the world is a really special phase of the work of new product launches. And it is, over the course of my career, just the thing I have really zeroed in on professionally over time. That's kind of my wheelhouse. And so I think that's thing number one. But what makes it special is that I like to think of it like it's almost like the first few seconds of the existence of the universe after the Big Bang... CHAD: [laughs] JORDYN: where you are inventing the ground rules of the thing you are building as you are building it. And that is a very...it's just a really special time. And some people love it, and some people despise it. There's a lot of chaos and uncertainty, and you have to move forward despite all of that chaos and uncertainty. And some of us love the; I don't know, there's just this feeling that anything is possible, a sort of sense of newness and really paving the road while you're hacking through the jungle, and I just love that. And I feel like I want to help other companies love that phase too. [laughs] It's like a weird thing to say. I'm almost like an evangelist for that time. But I'm an evangelist for it because I feel like it's really important to make sure that you're tying the mission and vision of the business; you're weaving it into what it is you're doing in the product ASAP. Do it early. Make sure you're thinking about this stuff from the jump. And if I can be an evangelist for that kind of thinking and the processes that make it possible, it's just a really exciting thing for me to be able to do. CHAD: That's really cool. You saying that made me think about this sense that I have that oftentimes when you're faced with that period of time where everything is possible, and you're literally defining what the product and the business is going to be, maybe there are more than two buckets. But I think, generally, people fall into one of two buckets. There are the people who look at that and say, "Okay, here's what we're not going to do." And they're really good at saying no to things and narrowing down from that. Another group of people who maybe even really struggle with all of the possibility, and their reaction is to say "Yes," to everything. JORDYN: Right. Yep. CHAD: And you can probably say judged by the way that I introduced the concept which one I think is better. JORDYN: [laughs] CHAD

Heather Maio-Smith is the Co-Founder, President, and Chief Visionary Officer at StoryFile, bringing global audiences an interactive ecosystem that records and preserves human conversations in a way that removes the traditional boundaries of time and space. Victoria talks to Heather about why this product needed to exist in the world, supporting human connection and storytelling, and the journey to get funding, expand, and plan what's next for StoryFile. StoryFile Follow StoryFile on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, or TikTok. Follow Heather on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is The Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Heather Maio-Smith, Co-Founder, President, and Chief Visionary Officer at StoryFile, bringing global audiences an interactive ecosystem that records and preserves human conversations in a way that removes the traditional boundaries of time and space. Heather, thank you for joining us. HEATHER: Thank you for having me, Victoria. I'm excited to have a conversation with you. VICTORIA: Yes, I am really excited to learn about StoryFile and your product Conversa. Tell me a little bit about it. HEATHER: You did a great job on the introduction; thank you. The one thing that I would add is that it's very important that people know that this is video. And this is the differentiator between us and maybe a traditional chatbot, for example. We are video-based. That could mean an actual human being creates the content. The video content is always preferable. [laughs] But you can also do it in some sneaky other ways too [laughs], so it's very interesting. VICTORIA: Right. So as I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, you can record a video of a conversation and then use Conversa to turn that into an interactive video where a user has the freedom to ask their own questions. HEATHER: Correct. Essentially, what you do is you answer whatever questions that you like. You're in charge of the storyline script. You create all the questions. The interviewee answers all of the questions via video record, and then all of those video clips are put into a database. Anyone can ask you basically any conversation. Most of them are open-ended conversations. If there are shorter, like, let's say you've only [inaudible 02:03] questions, and it's kind of a focus, you have a point, and it's a focused line of questioning, then that's obviously going to be you can't ask anything. But we usually have the individual introduce it and say, "For example, this is my bio. I've answered a few questions about my life and my career and me personally, so feel free to ask me anything about my career or my life." Then the individuals will know what the parameters are for that conversation. And you could just ask anything, learn anything anytime you want. So it's in real-time for you. No going on Google and searching through 20 pages to get an answer anymore. You should be able to talk the ideas. You should be able to talk to someone who's lived that experience or has that knowledge, ask them a question, and find out the information that you want to find out, or get to know somebody that you would never have the opportunity to talk to. VICTORIA: What an interesting idea. And what led you to think that this was a product that needed to exist in the world? HEATHER: Well, they say that necessity is the mother of invention. I happened to be in Holocaust education back in the early 2000s. And one of the main things that the entire field was concerned about is what are we going to do when the Holocaust survivors are no longer alive? They had spent over 60 years in the public telling their story, talking to students, for example the public. They've done documentaries; they've done books; they've done interviews. The Shoah Foundation at USC has 55,000 narrative interviews. So it's very well-documented. But the one thing that we weren't able to replicate yet, and this is what we were worried about, was they couldn't make that personal connection. And how do they make that personal connection? It's through people asking their own questions and actually engaging with those individuals that that's when the real magic happened. I mean, that's when people felt connected to these individuals and that story, that history. That was what I didn't want to lose after they had passed away. And so I thought to myself, there's got to be a way to replicate the Q&A, you know, the question and answer conversation where I can ask my own question, which leads me to learn deeper than if I was passively watching a video or even listening to a lecture. So I went to the Shoah Foundation, and I said, "There's go

Will Larry, Software Developer at thoughtbot, joins Giant Robots as host! 🎉 Will talks about how he got into tech, how everything is going so far at thoughtbot, interviewing at thoughtbot previously, but not getting the job, and why he decided to interview again (and snagged the job!) Follow Will on Twitter and LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. VICTORIA: I'm your other host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is our brand new third co-host, Will Larry. Will is a React and React Native developer at thoughtbot. And we're so excited to have him join us as a co-host of the show. CHAD: Will, thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations and welcome. Woo-hoo. [applause] WILL: Thank you for having me. I'm excited. CHAD: Will, I was so excited when I put out the call for people to join as co-hosts, and Victoria raised her hand, and then you did as well. You were on parental leave when all that started to happen. And so congratulations again on your new family member, and I'm glad we could finally have you join us. WILL: Yeah, I was excited about it. When I thought about joining, there are two things that came about: the excitement of joining and just the fear of it. CHAD: [laughs] WILL: And I was like, I need to do this. I need to do this because it will make me better. So I'm excited to be here. VICTORIA: That's a lot of change to navigate in one year, Will. [laughs] How's that got going for you, and how's everything so far in your first time here at thoughtbot? WILL: Yes, change, change, change, that's what has been this year. I changed and started working at thoughtbot, our third kid. This year, we moved to Florida, just a lot of change. But I've learned along the way that change is life, and so we just embraced it. And I'm hoping that we're kind of settling out a little bit, but it's been good. It's been great for our kids. I think they're ready for some consistency and just the same thing over and over for a little bit. But it's been good. And we made it through. We're on the other side. CHAD: Was there a grand plan to all the change? Like, did you have everything planned out in advance? Or did it all sort of just happen one thing after the other? WILL: Yes. If you know anything about me, I'm a very big planner. My wife, my spouse she is the one that pushes me to be more spontaneous, but this was too big to be spontaneous, so it was definitely planned. It actually got changed. We were supposed to move in September, but with the birth of my son, we decided to move it up and move sooner. VICTORIA: Right. I'm going to ask you the same question but about your career. So you made a big change from operations into mobile development, and was that part of a grand plan, or did you happen upon it? How did you make that change? WILL: That change was kind of out of desperation. I was in operations working for a nonprofit; I loved it. My spouse was working at the same company, and I was a promotion ahead of her. It was an amazing opportunity. But the teams are so small that we couldn't be on the same team. So they had multiple locations throughout the country. And you don't have to step off the team, but if she's going to take this promotion, you have to step off the team. There potentially is a way that, down the road, you can come back. And Katie is my spouse. She has been so supportive of everything that I've ever done. And I just felt this was a time, a great time for me to show that I support her in everything she did. But it was probably one of the toughest times in my life. I didn't have a job. I thought that I can easily jump back into it and find a job. I ended up working at a clothing store, which is not my strong suit. I really struggled working there. I think I worked there a month, and I was like, I can't do this. And then, I went to work at a different company, a travel insurance company, and so I would process the data. I was miserable, and that's an understatement. I was so miserable. One day my spouse came in, and she said, "Hey, we got to change this. You're not doing well. Let's dream a little bit." And normally, that's not my personality. Normally I'm like Xs and Os. I know what's coming. And I was so out of it. I was like, let's do this. And she asked me a couple of questions. And one of the questions was, "If you could do anything, what would you do?" I thought about it. And I came from a small town in Louisiana. And I never had the opportunity to work with computers. It was just the resources weren't there. And so that was one of the things I said, "Hey, I want to work with computers in any way that I ca

Leonard S. Johnson is the Founder and CEO of AIEDC, a 5G Cloud Mobile App Maker and Service Provider with Machine Learning to help small and midsize businesses create their own iOS and Android mobile apps with no-code or low-code so they can engage and service their customer base, as well as provide front and back office digitization services for small businesses. Victoria talks to Leonard about using artificial intelligence for good, bringing the power of AI to local economics, and truly democratizing AI. The Artificial Intelligence Economic Development Corporation (AIEDC) Follow AIEDC on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Follow Leonard on Twitter and LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is The Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Leonard S. Johnson or LS, Founder and CEO AIEDC, a 5G Cloud Mobile App Maker and Service Provider with Machine Learning to help small and midsize businesses create their own iOS and Android mobile apps with no-code or low-code so they can engage and service their customer base, as well as provide front and back office digitization services for small businesses. Leonard, thanks for being with us today. LEONARD: Thank you for having me, Victoria. VICTORIA: I should say LS, thank you for being with us today. LEONARD: It's okay. It's fine. VICTORIA: Great. So tell us a little more about AIEDC. LEONARD: Well, AIEDC stands for Artificial Intelligence Economic Development Corporation. And the original premise that I founded it for...I founded it after completing my postgraduate work at Stanford, and that was 2016. And it was to use AI for economic development, and therefore use AI for good versus just hearing about artificial intelligence and some of the different movies that either take over the world, and Skynet, and watch data privacy, and these other things which are true, and it's very evident, they exist, and they're out there. But at the end of the day, I've always looked at life as a growth strategy and the improvement of what we could do and focusing on what we could do practically. You do it tactically, then you do it strategically over time, and you're able to implement things. That's why I think we keep building collectively as humanity, no matter what part of the world you're in. VICTORIA: Right. So you went to Stanford, and you're from South Central LA. And what about that background led you to pursue AI for good in particular? LEONARD: So growing up in the inner city of Los Angeles, you know, that South Central area, Compton area, it taught me a lot. And then after that, after I completed high school...and not in South Central because I moved around a lot. I grew up with a single mother, never knew my real father, and then my home life with my single mother wasn't good because of just circumstances all the time. And so I just started understanding that even as a young kid, you put your brain...you utilize something because you had two choices. It's very simple or binary, you know, A or B. A, you do something with yourself, or B, you go out and be social in a certain neighborhood. And I'm African American, so high probability that you'll end up dead, or in a gang, or in crime because that's what it was at that time. It's just that's just a situation. Or you're able to challenge those energies and put them toward a use that's productive and positive for yourself, and that's what I did, which is utilizing a way to learn. I could always pick up things when I was very young. And a lot of teachers, my younger teachers, were like, "You're very, very bright," or "You're very smart." And there weren't many programs because I'm older than 42. So there weren't as many programs as there are today. So I really like all of the programs. So I want to clarify the context. Today there's a lot more engagement and identification of kids that might be sharper, smarter, whatever their personal issues are, good or bad. And it's a way to sort of separate them. So you're not just teaching the whole group as a whole and putting them all in one basket, but back then, there was not. And so I just used to go home a lot, do a lot of reading, do a lot of studying, and just knick-knack with things in tech. And then I just started understanding that even as a young kid in the inner city, you see economics very early, but they don't understand that's really what they're studying. They see economics. They can see inflation because making two ends meet is very difficult. They may see gang violence and drugs or whatever it might end up being. And a lot of that, in my opinion, is always an underlining economic foundation. And so people would

Neil Macqueen is a leading industrial designer with 78 patents to his name, having previously spent ten years at Dyson and is now the Head of Design at Gembah, the world's first global marketplace for product development. Chad talks to Neil about being focused on industrial design or actual physical products as opposed to interfaces and digital products, working designers and developers, and design to manufacture as a process. Gembah Follow Gembah on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, or YouTube. Follow Neil on Twitter and LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Neil Macqueen, a leading industrial designer with 78 patents to his name, having previously spent ten years at Dyson and who is now the Head of Design at Gembah, the world's first global marketplace for product development. Neil, thank you so much for joining me. NEIL: Oh, it's great to be here with you today, Chad. Thank you for having me. CHAD: One distinction I feel like we always need to make, and this is one of the things we struggle with at thoughtbot; people want to put themselves out in the community and say, "Here's what I do," and people use the word product design. And there's actually a pretty big, you know, some designers are, or product developers are industrial design physical products and others are digital. What do you do at Gembah? NEIL: For me, myself, what I do at Gembah explicitly is far more focused around industrial design or actual physical products as opposed to interfaces and digital products. CHAD: And as the world's, you know, the self-described first global marketplace for product development, what does that actually mean? NEIL: What it means is that Gembah provides a platform in which anybody with an idea or an aspiration to even have an idea has a single source by which you can tap into all the resources you need to get your product to market. So I think a good metaphor for it would be that it's very easy for myself, yourself, any of the listeners today to become a seller. Like, I can set myself up with an eBay or an Amazon account this afternoon and start selling a product. There are very low barriers to doing that. Whereas if you want to become a product creator, that is a very disjointed process. And what you'll see from large companies like my experience at Dyson and other companies is that they have a vertically integrated business. They own each part of that product creation, development, engineering, production, logistics. It is all very integrated. And what we try and do and provide to creators is that single integrated structure by which you can have an idea, work with a designer, develop that in conjunction with a manufacturer, and then very seamlessly move over into your production and logistics. CHAD: You mentioned Dyson, and you spent ten years there and moved through various design roles. I definitely want to touch on that in a little bit. But what attracted you to Gembah? NEIL: I think, as with all people who are interested in ideas, whether digital or physical, it's the process of creating something that really attracted me, has attracted me to all my roles in the past, and certainly to Gembah. In as much as what I just described previously, it is a world first, like, it is a category-defining company. So I think what really attracted me to Gembah was the fact that what we're doing here is not only building lots of very interesting products and helping entrepreneurs, and product creators, and businesses, but what we're doing is developing a platform which is entirely unique and one of its kind. CHAD: I have to admit, I did a little bit of research on you, as I always do. And I looked at your Twitter, and I saw that a lot of your tweets were, I think, back from 2016, where you yourself designed...how would you describe it? A coffee press stand? NEIL: Exactly. And AeroPress stand. CHAD: Having been through that process and launching it on Kickstarter, is that part of what...you said I want to help other people do this. NEIL: Absolutely. And it is probably a very congregating experience in terms of people who go through crowdfunding campaigns and then try and do it yourself. And certainly, my experience, you know, Kickstarter is a wonderful platform. But everything thereafter for me as a creator doing something in my spare time and my evenings outside of my normal nine to five was incredibly challenging, you know, dealing with factories who had very broken English or really struggled to communicate both my idea and their complications accurately. And just how that unfolded into trying to get a product to market without somebody to help and guide me through that process, doing it entirely by yo

Chloe Sweden is the Founder and CEO of Plants and Perks, a service for rewarding employees with sustainable perks. Chad talks to Chloe about supporting employees on plant-based sustainability journies by gifting free samples and high-value prizes, choosing a co-founder, and being strategic with the types of businesses they've approached. Plants and Perks Follow Plants and Perks on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Follow Chloe on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Chloe Sweden, the Founder, and CEO of Plants and Perks, a service for rewarding employees with sustainable perks. Chloe, thank you so much for joining me. CHLOE: Thank you for having me. CHAD: So you officially started Plants and Perks, at least according to your LinkedIn, in July of 2020. But I'm sure, like many entrepreneurs, you incubated the idea. The idea was in your head for longer than that. So, where does the idea from Plants and Perks come from? And when did you start to noodle it? CHLOE: It's a really, really good question. I also think that the LinkedIn algorithm isn't 100% correct. CHAD: [laughs] CHLOE: And it always seems to add time. I always get this sort of like, "Oh my God, you've been doing this for like two years?" I'm like, "No, I'm sure it can't be. It must be shorter than that." So Plants and Perks, Plants and Perks originally started out life as the Green Shoot Institute, which, I think, if you Google us, still there's remnants of the Green Shoot Institute that exists. That is still our company holding name. And that was kind of, I guess, the first thought of the idea. I was at the time heading up commercial relationships at a large parenting platform in the UK. And we had started to go on our own plant-based journey, so thinking about cutting back on meat and dairy consumption. I guess that was sort of my own personal journey that started to make me, as a parent, and as a consumer, and as a senior leader within business to, start to think about things outside of myself, and my family, and my business. And really, that was kind of the spark of thinking about how we, as employers, don't really do much to support employees on the plant-based sustainability journey. That was the sort of the embryo of the idea. And that came from the fact that I had spent 20 years of my life in advertising, marketing, and then ten years within that in talent as a former head of talent and culture really thinking about how we embed talent and how we help employees, and how culture is so important to businesses, and how we get employees really to be the face of our brands. But we don't really do much to invest in people beyond the kind of traditional benefits that exist but also in terms of training and things like that. That was kind of where things were coming together, sort of thinking about the future of work and thinking about how people go through these huge life moments and how the businesses really support them. So that was kind of the start. I won't give the whole game away, but that was, I guess, the beginning of a kind of, hmm, there's something there. And I didn't really know what it was at the time. But yeah, I guess it wasn't so much before I actually incorporated the company. I incorporated in September 2020. That's what it says on my Company's House printout that I have on the wall just to remind me of when that momentous day happened. But pretty quickly, from coming up with an idea, I incorporated the business and just went, this is something I have to do. CHAD: Yeah, the feeling of this is something I have to do is something that I've felt myself and that I hear from a lot of entrepreneurs and guests of the show. You were working at Mumsnet at the time. How did you start while also having another job? CHLOE: Not just having another job, running a large sales team, and homeschooling two children during a pandemic. CHAD: Oh, homeschooling. Okay, yeah. CHLOE: And my son was definitely diagnosed with having additional needs at the time as well. I guess it was all of those things that kind of came together that made me realize, I mean, I had joined Mumsnet actually to head up Mumsnet's talent function, which was all about creating a flexible working product platform for parents and those looking for flexible jobs to bring them together in a marketplace. But Mumsnet wasn't going to actually continue to invest in that product, and I moved to a more commercial role. But I moved there to build a product. And that's what really triggered it for me. I realized in that moment when I'm homeschooling, and I'm running a large sales team, and I'm doing all of these things, t

Shawn Young is the CEO and Co-Founder of Classcraft, an innovative platform that motivates students using the culture and mechanics of games. Victoria talks to Shawn about edtech, behavior intervention, and the challenges he's faced with going from a homegrown tool to something big and out there in the world. Classcraft Follow Classcraft on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn. Follow Shawn on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Shawn Young, the CEO, and Co-Founder at Classcraft, an innovative platform that motivates students using the culture and mechanics of games. Shawn, thank you for joining us. SHAWN: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Victoria. I'm happy to be here. VICTORIA: Wonderful, yes. So just tell me a little bit about yourself and maybe what brought you to start out as a teacher initially. SHAWN: [laughs] I have an interesting journey. I was originally a physicist, a physics major. Although I loved physics because it really gives you a deep understanding of the world, I realized that physics research in a basement with machines just on your own [laughs] wasn't for me, so that's when I started substitute teaching. I really wasn't going to go into education at all. It was just there was availability, lack of teachers. And it's kind of ironic. I really did not enjoy school. High school, in particular, was just a really challenging time for me, mostly because I just didn't see the point of it. I didn't have any problems in school. I had great grades, but I just was bored out of my mind. And so, as a teacher, I became really, really obsessed with making school meaningful for the students that were there, and because so many kids, so many learners just don't see the point. And so I did a lot of really cool project-based learning type of stuff. So that's where instead of lecturing the kids, you get them doing things and learning by doing. And so I was teaching physics, obviously. And so we were building hot air balloons and cannons and all kinds of stuff to study Newtonian physics. And kids were super happy to come to the class because we were doing some cool stuff. But I realized as that was happening that another part of meaning generation for kids and learners is the community and the social aspects. And so, I started thinking about how I can build community in the classroom, make the social experience of school relevant for them? And that's how Classcraft was born, really. I kind of put together my interest in motivating and building community with kids. I was a developer at the time as well, so I was able to develop a platform. And, of course, I'm a gamer, so I kind of put all those things together and built this platform in my classroom. VICTORIA: That's great. I was going to ask what skills or experiences from your teaching background translated to being a founder. SHAWN: That's interesting because clearly in the product...Classcraft was never meant to be a company. I already had a company. [laughs] I was freelancing as a developer for pretty large clients in New York. I was working with my brother, who's a creative director there. And we worked for Chanel for three years building apps and websites, and that was probably our biggest client. I wasn't looking to make a company. I just built it for me. It was my quest to make school meaningful and relevant. And after three years of just tinkering around with it with my students, I realized it was having a massive impact on their outlook, on the way they collaborated together, on their motivation. And because Classcraft is a platform that basically gamifies education, so kids level up and they earn points. They're on teams. They have a character class. All the things you would see in an RPG are translating to how teachers are running a school. And so I made a website just to talk about it after three years of this garage project I had going on. And the day that website went online, 130,000 people came to the website. It just started trending on Reddit gaming. And overnight, a lot of people were asking, "How do I download this?" I'm like, "You can't. There's no company." [laughter] So that's how the company started. Teaching is an interesting profession. I think that teaching is a job that requires you to, A, motivate and manage a whole bunch of people, so there's a lot similarility there to management. It's a group of humans that you want to work together to get to their full potential, just like your team should be. But then there's also independent planning. As a teacher, you have a set amount of time to get through X amount of curriculum. So yo

Hello UK Giant Robots listeners! Our next event allows you to hear from and connect with both Founders and Investors on all things Fundraising. The event will be 1 part panel discussion and 1 part breakout sessions. We hope you can make it! Register today at: tbot.io/fundraising-uk Daniëlle Keeven is VP of Finance at Paddle, the only complete payments infrastructure provider for SaaS companies. Victoria talks to Daniëlle about helping companies with taxes while assuming the liability and risks associated with global tax compliance, financial literacy, and taking proactive measures and steps to manage cost effectively before it is required. Paddle Follow Paddle on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn. Follow Daniëlle on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: Hello, United Kingdom Giant Robots listeners! Our next event allows you to hear from and connect with both founders and investors on all things fundraising. The event will be one part panel discussion and one-part breakout sessions. We hope you can make it. Register today at tbot.io/fundraising-uk. VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Daniëlle Keeven, VP of Finance at Paddle, the only complete payments infrastructure provider for SaaS companies. Daniëlle, thank you for joining us. DANIËLLE: Hi, Victoria. Thank you for having me. Super excited to be here. VICTORIA: Wonderful. Yes, I'm excited to have you here and to hear a little bit about your background. I was curious how it was different going from a finance role in a large corporation like Marriott to the startup world and to Paddle. DANIËLLE: Well, Victoria, I was actually quite fortunate because even in the Marriotts and the Hyatts that I've been in in hospitality, I've been exposed to a lot of in the trench type of accounting and finance. Being in the Caribbean and just a Latam market, you learn to look at situations differently and make sure you work towards compliance. So I think that's really groomed me for stepping into the tech space as well, where I think following the money is the first directive of any finance professional walking into a scale-up or startup. So I think it's groomed me for the move. Booking was a little bit easier because it was also a little bit of leisure and travel. When I stepped into a telecom for MessageBird and then Paddle as a payments end-to-end provider of infrastructure, there was a little bit of a challenge there. But I love being part of a company now that's completely a finance product which has really given finance roles a partnership with product and engineering to partner in the way forward and design of the product. VICTORIA: Yes, that's exciting for us as well. And tell us a little bit about Paddle, actually. DANIËLLE: So Paddle is an end-to-end platform. We strive not to just help software companies; we strive to do the work for them to be able to roll out globally. So basically, Paddle is the only end-to-end infrastructure that will enable you to invoice your customers and get payments support, offering different payment methods, as well as make sure you're globally compliant and file your taxes so that you don't have to. I think what sets Paddle apart from a lot of other companies that are helping companies with tax is that we actually do it for you. In addition to that, we assume the full liability and risks associated to global tax compliance. VICTORIA: Right. Yes. And I saw a product that you all have or information that you shared called the Sales Tax Agony Index. Can you tell me a little bit about that? DANIËLLE: Well, I think, in general, tax is painful. [laughs] I think personal tax is painful. Anything that has to do with business tax is amplified significantly. And I think for software companies, often, you build a great product, and you want to bring it up to market. But then you're limited and slowed down from really expanding globally. I mean, that is where we come in to really take up the tax burden for software creators to be able to look at it as a stepping stone instead of a roadblock if that makes sense. VICTORIA: I think that makes a lot of sense. And it's interesting where we are right now with the current climate and economics that companies may be focusing on their finances to reduce cost but also to identify new areas to invest in, right? DANIËLLE: Yeah, right. And I think that's super interesting to me, which I keep saying I'm not sure why not all of the software world is on Paddle. Because I think if you look out there in the market, there's such a piecemeal solution to everything. So you have to, for example, if you're going to not build your own billing, you have to outsource buying software for your billing. You have to go find a

Hello UK Giant Robots listeners! Our next event allows you to hear from and connect with both Founders and Investors on all things Fundraising. The event will be 1 part panel discussion and 1 part breakout sessions. We hope you can make it! Register today at: tbot.io/fundraising-uk Göran Sandahl is Director of Growth at Airbrake LogicMonitor, frictionless error monitoring and performance insights for your entire app stack. Victoria talks to Göran about having a product-led growth engine, how Airbrake can help developers identify and solve errors and bugs in applications, and developing a product geared towards a specific segment of the market. Airbrake Follow Airbrake on Twitter, GitHub, Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn. Follow Göran on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is The Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Göran Sandahl, Director of Growth at Airbrake LogicMonitor, frictionless error monitoring and performance insights for your entire app stack. Göran, thank you for joining us. GÖRAN: Thanks for having me. VICTORIA: Wonderful. So just tell me a little bit more about Airbrake and how it all got started. GÖRAN: So Airbrake is, as you said, an error and performance monitoring tool. It was actually, funnily enough, started as a side-project within thoughtbot. So it's a little bit full circle here joining this podcast here. But I'm a recent addition to Airbrake, so I don't know the details of the time when they started over ten years ago. So talking about Airbrake and the journey since then, lots of things have happened with Airbrake. It has gone through multiple acquisitions since then, both from industry players on the infrastructure side to various venture capital investors buying the company. And now Airbrake is owned by LogicMonitor, who bought Airbrake somewhat like a year ago. And it focuses exclusively on the developer audience for LogicMonitor. And I lead growth, so I work with our growth team. We have a product-led growth engine. So we don't do a lot of traditional sales or anything like that, so a lot of it is word of mouth. And this is something that drew me to Airbrake was its strong kind of grassroots movement in Ruby and other web and application languages. So that's what I know about Airbrake's early days, which isn't a lot. VICTORIA: Right. It was the very first exception monitoring service in the world. And we grew it to have three people working full time on it. And then, like what you said, it was sold to someone else who went on to continue to grow it. And it has been through several acquisitions. And from your perspective today, where is this service originally called Hoptoad [laughs], and then now it's Airbrake? And what kind of scale are you seeing? What are your customers like today? GÖRAN: Obviously, I don't know exactly how the product looked like back then. But a lot of it, I think, has stayed the same. It focuses on simple error monitoring, simple performance monitoring, and simple deployment tracking. So it's pretty much the same focus I believe in the product. This is what makes it stand out still today. We can talk about observability, and happy to do that. This is my third company that I've been working for as a monitoring company, so I know fairly a bit about it. Airbrake today is heavily focused on...we focus on what we call lean dev teams. We focus on the teams that try to move a little bit quicker, maybe than what they may, doesn't necessarily have the backup of an ops team or a DevOps team. So we really focus on building a product that is fully self-service that you can get started within a minute on your own. So that implies good UX, good documentation, and also that we can meet our users where they are. So we're focusing today on things like community building and those things for supporting our users. So we have lots of customers, really good brand names. First and foremost, super interesting stories from many of our customers who navigate that art of building product quickly. VICTORIA: That's great. I like that you phrased it as your user experience, which is your development teams, right? And do you have more of a perspective around the developer experience and how to capture that and really create something that's useful when you're delivering in those high-velocity environments? GÖRAN: As I said, I've been working for three monitoring companies. The first one I founded was 12 years ago. We built a product that we tried to coin the market called algorithmic monitoring, that later turned into something called AIOps. Yeah, there are a lot of buzzwords around that, applying AI to identifying problems in software. We were really early on that. One thing that we learne

Guillaume Kendall is the Founder of Zedosh and Attention Exchange, which is working to build a safe place for advertisers, publishers, and consumers to all benefit from fair access to human attention. Chad talks with Guillaume about open banking, changing up who the beneficiaries of consumer attention and data are, and giving companies opportunities to advertise without interrupting consumers with ads. Zedosh The Attention Exchange Follow The Attention Exchange on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow Guillaume on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is The Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Guillaume Kendall, the Founder of Zedosh and the Attention Exchange, which is working to build a safe place for advertisers, publishers, and consumers to all benefit from fair access to human attention. Guillaume, thank you for joining me. GUILLAUME: Thank you so much for having me. It's a real privilege. CHAD: If I'm not mistaken, you and I first met in person for lunch one time in London when I was visiting London in; I think it was...I went back and looked at my calendar. It was March 10th, 2020, if I'm not mistaken, either that or it was that Friday of that week. GUILLAUME: It must have been one of the last weeks pre-pandemic. CHAD: It was. I literally woke up on Saturday morning for my flight to come back to the U.S. to the headlines that all flights from Europe were being shut down. [laughs] And I almost dropped my phone until I realized, oh, that's the headline, but the real detail is I can get back. It's all the rest of Europe, not the UK, yet. That was the following week. I made it home, and then the world changed. GUILLAUME: I sure did, didn't it? [laughs] It's funny, isn't it? Because the two-year period in between seems to have flown by. It feels like just yesterday. I remember I think, even what I ate. CHAD: [laughs] And at the time, you were working on a new application, and we were talking about that. But I want to fast forward a little bit to today. Tell me more about Attention Exchange, and then we're going to rewind a bit to how you've arrived. GUILLAUME: So the Attention Exchange...by way of background, I come from the fintech space rather than adtech. And it really, ultimately, the Attention Exchange is a matching engine, using financial terms, that matches the right video content to the right consumer based on their spending data rather than their browsing data. So it's a matching engine. And it looks at rules that ultimately we're able to derive, or actually, I better use the phrase, we can bridge the gap between attention and intention based on our audience's spending patterns. And the reason we can access those is because they give us explicit permission. We have something called open banking here in the UK. It's actually across most of Europe now. But it enables the consumer to own their data and share it outside the bank if they so wish to with other regulated third parties. So we're such a regulated third party, and they share that data with us, as I said, to be matched with video content from brands that are relevant to their spending instead of their browsing. What it ultimately means is we're very well-positioned in this apparent post-cookie world that seems to be heading our way eventually because we don't rely on any other tracking technology to spy on our audience. They voluntarily give it to us. And I guess the kicker which is...people are probably asking themselves, why would they do that? That's because they get paid. So we put cash directly into the bank account or one of the bank accounts they've connected to our platform in exchange for their immutably valuable attention to that content. CHAD: So correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like open banking has had a significant impact not only on the data sharing that you're describing but just on the banking ecosystem in general in the United Kingdom and now Europe. GUILLAUME: So I think if you were to speak to the purveyors of open banking, it hasn't had as big an impact as they felt it would have had. I think we reached earlier this year only to fact-check this, but about 6 million people in the UK now utilize open banking in one form or another. But I think what was very interesting is that the ecosystem that sprung up around it was mostly around changing the user experience for the end consumer to have a better handle on their financial health, which is a really important topic. And the reason that is is that before, it wasn't really in the bank's interests to tell you if you're about to hit your overdraft or go over your overdraft because they'd charge you an extra 20 pounds for an unplanned loan, and then you'd have to pa

Alice Loy is a Founding Partner at DaVinci Ventures and the Co-Founder and CEO of Creative Startups, the leading global startup accelerator and company builder for design, food, immersive, and creative companies. Victoria and Chad talk with Alice about what she means by creative companies, how much judgment she must pass as an investor with a love for the "weird and wonderful," and some of the challenges faced in bringing diversity to the rest of the accelerator world. DaVinci Ventures Creative Startups Follow Creative Startups on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Substack, YouTube, or LinkedIn. Follow Alice on Twitter or LinkedIn. Alice's Blog Etkie Embodied Labs Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. VICTORIA: And I'm your other host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Alice Loy, Founding Partner at DaVinci Ventures and the Co-Founder and CEO of Creative Startups, the leading global startup accelerator and company builder for design, food, immersive, and creative companies. CHAD: Alice, thank you so much for joining us. ALICE: Thanks for having me. CHAD: Can you tell us a little bit more about Creative Startups in general but also what you mean by creative companies specifically? Like, isn't every company creative? [laughs] ALICE: Yeah, it's so funny. That's often the first question. And sometimes people I can feel their sense of indignation in thinking maybe I think they're not creative. CHAD: [laughs] ALICE: First of all, the creative industries are pretty well defined globally by the World Bank and entities like that. I'll come back to that. Yes, all human beings are creative. I like to joke that that's what got us out of caves in the first place. But more importantly, all entrepreneurs are very creative regardless of what sector you're operating in. So when we're talking about creative, we're just referencing the set of industries that are measured as the quote, "creative industries." They include film, our museums, design certainly is a core element of that. Increasingly, we're seeing more and more people move toward the creative industries as mechanized labor takes over things like building cars or even running data analysis. CHAD: Has getting support and funding and that kind of thing traditionally been easy in the creative space or hard? ALICE: No. I know you know the answer to that question because you're a designer. [laughs] CHAD: I usually don't ask questions that I don't know the answers to, so... [laughs] ALICE: But it's a great question because actually what it uncovers, you guys, is that it has changed dramatically for people who I call creatives or creators in the last two or three years. It's a little tough to measure with the pandemic, but we know at least $2 billion have gone into platforms that support creators, businesses led by creators. The creative industry has really turned a corner. So when we started this work 15-16 years ago, I co-founded the organization with a gentleman named Tom, who is now in his 80s. But he had come out of what's called the cultural economy, which was the precursor to the creative economy. And, of course, now we're all living in the creator economy. So like every other industry, it evolves. And one turn in this evolution is that creatives are now understood as economic drivers, not just people who add nice flourishes to things at the end. When you're building new products, people think about engineers, but it's really a creative process. And people increasingly bring in creatives from the outset to think about how the design process can be more humanized, can be more effective to solve people's problems so that your products really delight customers instead of just get the job done. CHAD: Is there something you can point to that triggered or pushed along that turning point? ALICE: Well, not to be overly philosophical, but I would say the general sense in the U.S. and increasingly in other countries where we work is that human beings don't want to be cogs in a wheel. They don't want to just be bit parts in a system. When you talk to Gen Zers, they understand that they are complete human beings. And somehow, I think older generations bought into the idea that you have the same job for 40 years. You go to work at 8:00; you come home at 5:00. You repeat the next day. I think the sense in the economy is that people want to be fulfilled. If they're going to give that much time to a job, they want it to be meaningful and valuable. And they want it to solve some of the big problems. Frankly, big tech is not approaching the world in that way these days. And so I think younger people are looking for values-aligned opportunities

Joe Barb is Executive Director and Founder of LGBTQ+ Family Connections Center. They have a mission to strengthen and empower all youth, however they identify, to overcome obstacles by providing housing, supportive counseling, community education, and advocacy. Victoria and Chad talk with Joe about identifying needs for the center, his own lived experience and connection to the LGBTQ+ community, and deciding what services to provide and evaluating which are most impactful. LGBTQ+ Family Connections Center Follow the LGBTQ+ Family Connections Center on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Follow Joe on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is The Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. VICTORIA: And I'm your other host, Victoria Guido. And with us today is Joe Barb, Executive Director and Founder of LGBTQ+ Family Connections Center, with a mission to strengthen and empower all youth however they identify to overcome obstacles by providing housing, supportive counseling, community education, and advocacy. Joe, thank you for joining us. JOE: Thank you. I appreciate it. VICTORIA: Wonderful. So you started the center over two years ago. If you could go back in time and give yourself advice to when you were first starting out, what would you tell yourself? JOE: Wow, very similar to for-profit companies, having the tenacity to keep knocking on doors, never accepting no for an answer, and understanding that tenacity is everything. Nothing happens without continuing the fight every day. VICTORIA: Great. And how did you first identify that need for the center? JOE: A million years ago, when I was a late teenager, my parents had a pastor in their church suggest to them that in order to bring me back to God and back to their church, that they should cut me off financially, you know, I was a young freshman in college prod me in that direction. So my parents took the advice, and I found myself in my second semester of college with no funding. The check for the second semester had been canceled from my family, and I didn't know what to do. So I called a friend in South Dakota that we had met on vacation. And she said, "You know what? I have an apartment building here. I just had an apartment become vacant. Why don't you move to South Dakota, and then we'll work on everything else?" So that lived experience kind of proded the whole thing. And then meeting the youth who had been displaced from home for being a trans youth caused the rest. CHAD: Well, I'm really sorry for that personal experience that you had. But it's pretty powerful and that you've gone on to help others in similar situations is really admirable. JOE: Yeah, it's been quite a journey. And my lived experience, honestly, I was with stability within 24 hours. The more I became comfortable and complacent in my life and then met somebody who wasn't; it brought me back to that. And then just looking at statistics, looking at how youth end up in a houseless situation created something in me that I had to address. VICTORIA: So you had your own lived experience and that connection to your community which helped you identify that need and start out on the center. Did you find there were a lot of resources for building nonprofits? JOE: There isn't. And it's really something that when you go into it, you believe that when you create a nonprofit and you finish that application, you send it into the IRS, and you get approval, that you put a great idea out there and that the community will respond and that everyone will immediately jump on it and say, "You know what? You're right. This is needed. We need housing. We need to make sure that youth are safe." And that's not the way it works. It doesn't work that way at all. It's a lot of connections and community and getting involved and putting the statistics and the numbers out there so that people are aware of it. But it's mostly connecting the stories. The more youth that I've met and worked with and connected them to a story and told their story, the more people respond. VICTORIA: Right. And so, what have you found to be the most impactful in sharing that story and in managing that content to get to the right people who can help you with this need? JOE: The most impactful part is people just aren't aware. We all know that there's a homeless population. No matter where you live, there's a homeless population, and it impacts communities. But what we aren't aware of is we all typically believe that the government is funding these things and it's being taken care of and that maybe those people just chose homelessness and don't realize that the resources are very limited. Until those resources are able to show a data of ne

Lucy Hall is the Co-Founder of LOANHOOD, an online fashion rental platform and community that allows users to loan inclusive, diverse, and creative styles for an affordable price. Chad talks with Lucy about being a peer-to-peer fashion rental app, building a community, and reducing the impacts of the fashion industry on the planet and people by helping to create a sustainable future. LOANHOOD Follow LOANHOOD on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, or LinkedIn. Follow Lucy on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Lucy Hall, the Co-Founder of LOANHOOD, who are changing the face of fashion. Lucy, thank you so much for joining me. LUCY: Thank you so much for having me, Chad. CHAD: How are some of the ways that LOANHOOD is changing the face of fashion? LUCY: So we're starting off with a peer-to-peer fashion rental app, which we just launched ten days ago now. CHAD: Congratulations on the launch. LUCY: It's been a long time in the making. And, like I said, we're starting with a fashion rental app. But there are so many different ways that we want to change the face of fashion. It definitely needs a facelift. CHAD: What caused you to start with the rental platform? LUCY: It was something that we were really passionate about. So my co-founders and I actually worked in the fashion industry for the majority of our careers. So we could see first-hand how it was changing, how it's developing. And sustainability started coming into our lives, and we could see that things had to change. And we know that the fashion industry is quite archaic. Big fashion businesses are like these huge ships. It's so hard for them to change their course and to actually implement sustainability into their supply chains or their values. And we knew that we could do it quicker and better and faster than them. So we started testing the idea of circular fashion by doing clothes swaps which is a kind of an entry-level way to circulate fashion for free or relatively cheaply. And we started getting this amazing feedback from people like, "Oh, we would love to do this again. And have you thought about monetizing it?" And, of course, that was our...to get to scale, we knew that we had to monetize this sharing of clothes. And that's how our peer-to-peer fashion rental app grew and was born. CHAD: That's great. So you have two co-founders. LUCY: I do. CHAD: Jade and Jen. Were the three of you working together at the time? LUCY: Funny story, Jade and I are actually best friends. And Jade was my model back in the day. So Jade has been a fashion model for 12-plus years. And she was on Britain's Next Top Model. And I was a model agent. She came into my agency as one of the runner-uppers, and we forged a lifelong friendship from there. And we've both been passionate about fashion. And then, as I said, our career paths, we could see the detrimental effect of the planet. And Jade decided to go back to university and start studying. She did her master's in fashion futures at London College of Fashion. And that's where she started seeing sustainability. And the idea of a peer-to-peer rental came from that course. She was studying the future of fashion, and she knew that this was the only way we can move forward. And Jen was a friend of Jade and is a graphic designer by trade and is an amazing brand builder and amazing designer. So we were asking her for some advice. And she came on as a co-founder at the beginning because she just knew this was the right path for her. CHAD: You started with these swaps. Were you doing the swaps as friends because you felt it was the right thing to do? Or did you have an eye towards this could be something more? LUCY: Well, we knew from the beginning that we wanted to do something big. We knew we'd got to a certain point in our careers where we were like, right, let's use our skills to really make a change. But we were also working, and we all had jobs, so we were kind of doing it as a side hustle, just testing the idea and going, "Oh yeah, we'll do this." And then it started picking up, and we got a contract with a local council. And we were like, wow, people are really interested in this. Let's keep going, and then the pandemic hit. CHAD: How did the pandemic affect you? LUCY: [chuckles] Well, as you can imagine, people weren't really doing clothes swaps or renting or even thinking about those things at the beginning of the pandemic anyhow. So we kind of just put it on hold and did what everyone did in the pandemic, hunkered down. And we started learning as much as we could about the circular economy, about sharing economy, trust economy, marketing, product, really teaching ourse

Lenore Champagne Beirne is Founder and Managing Partner at Bright Ventures, a groundbreaking space for transformation in people, companies, and industries with coaching, capital, and community. Chad talks with Lenore about being at the intersection of all three of those services, providing support for diverse entrepreneurs, and staying intentional about the kind of company and culture they're creating. Bright Ventures Follow Bright Ventures on Twitter, Instagram, Medium, or LinkedIn. Follow Lenore on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Lenore Champagne Beirne, Founder and Managing Partner at Bright Ventures, a groundbreaking space for transformation in people, companies, and industries with coaching, capital, and community. Lenore, thank you so much for joining me. LENORE: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Chad. CHAD: Bright Ventures, I love the three things: coaching, capital, and community. Would you say at the core you are a venture capital firm? Or is it really the intersection of all three of those services? LENORE: It is truly the intersection of all three of those services. In fact, I started Bright Ventures because of a gap that I saw in the capital markets. But the first thing that we came to market with was coaching. And we learned so much from coaching diverse entrepreneurs and investors, and operators that we saw ways to add value to those groups and ultimately built the accelerator and venture capital fund and a number of other programs. CHAD: Like most companies, I think what you have is relatively unique. Most companies are a coaching company or a venture capital fund. Do you get pushback, or are there concerns about doing too much? LENORE: We've heard that question, although I don't know that the same question would be posed, at least in the same way, to a man, especially if it were a White man. But that aside, the reason we get the question is because I personally have led the launch of each new phase of the company. And what has really given our investors and also our partners comfort is that as we've expanded, we've also massively expanded the leadership and the skill set of the Bright Ventures team. So I would say at our heart, we are a transformation company. We make inclusive innovation possible. We define that as building a future that works for all of us together. We make that possible. And we know that because that's a huge, gnarly, complex, nuanced issue, you have to have a multipronged solution. And so, for us, the combination of individual and systems transformation through coaching, community where we can practice and learn, and capital that actually shifts how businesses can operate is the right set of interventions. CHAD: So one of the things venture capitalists often give feedback to their clients about is either doing too much or mixing business models. So like, oh, you shouldn't do consulting because what you have is a product company. They are different revenue streams, and different ways of working, and different ways of generating money. How do you balance those different business models that are within your organization? LENORE: Well, I think, as I mentioned, the business models that we have inside of Bright Ventures are intended to solve the same really big problem in different ways through different angles. So what we have found is that there are a lot of early-stage ventures that would benefit from the kind of coaching that we offer. But coaching is typically a really high-dollar item, only available to kind of an exclusive few. And so, it became clear to us that building a community with more scalable programs could meet the need of the stakeholder that we're interested in. And that has driven, time and time again, the business models that drive and organize our work at Bright Ventures. CHAD: Yeah, I realize part of what's on my mind is say you're working with a founder and you invest in that founder or a founding team and a founding company, do they no longer become a coaching client that's actually paying you money for coaching? Or do they get it for free? LENORE: Mm-hmm. So founders in our venture portfolio have access to the full suite of our services. And obviously, it's in the Bright Ventures entities' best interest to see those companies win and to give them all the resources and support that they need. You're asking these questions about business models. One thing I should clarify is that we don't have just a single business operating entity at Bright Ventures. The venture fund entity is a traditional GP LP structure that exists to invest in, yes, maybe some of the companies that we serve through our services business, but also a broad swath o

Sarabeth Jaffe is CTO and Co-Founder at HelloPrenup, the digital prenup platform designed to get couples on the same page. Chad talks with Sarabeth about dogfooding her own product, completely starting over from a technical perspective using Bubble, a low-code/no-code platform, and appearing on the ABC hit series Shark Tank. Hello Prenup Follow Hello Prenup on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, or LinkedIn. Follow Sarabeth on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Sarabeth Jaffe, CTO, and Co-Founder at HelloPrenup, the digital prenup platform designed to get couples on the same page. Sarabeth, thank you so much for joining me. SARABETH: Thank you so much for having me. CHAD: I can't say that I was aware of your...or that I wanted to think about prenups and seeking out a product around prenups. But it's super interesting to me. And I'm sure that that's part of both the challenge and opportunity with HelloPrenup. So, tell us a little bit about the product. SARABETH: So, as you mentioned, HelloPrenup is really the first of its kind. It's a digital platform that allows couples to create a prenuptial agreement that they're both happy with completely online and for a fraction of the cost of going to an attorney. So why is that interesting for folks these days? Really it's because couples are talking about their finances a lot more before they go into marriage. People are getting married later in life, so they have more assets to protect, or in many couples' cases, they have a lot of existing student loans or other liabilities that they can actually protect their partner from. So I think a lot of couples are becoming more open to prenuptial agreements as a way to kind of start off their marriage with a clean slate. And I can actually speak to our customers because I actually built HelloPrenup after I got engaged. And I was looking into getting a prenup. My fiancé and I we've been together for over seven years; we've known each other for over ten years. And we've always been really transparent about everything and especially our finances. And I love being financially savvy, looking at my investment portfolio, and being really frugal and everything. So to me, getting a prenup was always just the smart move. Being kind of a realistic person whose parents are actually divorced now, I view marriage as a partnership that, if it's working, when it's working, that's amazing. But if things don't work out, I think there should be a different path that you're able to take seamlessly. So when we did get engaged, I started looking into how to get a prenup, and it was a really confusing process. If you want to get a prenup without using HelloPrenup, you have to contact a divorce attorney before you're even married, which kind of starts the precedent of your marital journey off kind of a little weird. And also, hiring a divorce attorney for your prenup can cost a lot of money. The average cost is like $300 an hour. So it kind of depends on how complex your prenup is. But if you're planning your wedding, buying an engagement ring, maybe trying to buy a house soon, you're going to put a prenup on the back burner because of the costs, even though it's a really important financial planning tool. So that's why I came up with the idea. I'm a software engineer. This is something that I think I could build is a platform for couples who want to get a prenup done really conveniently and for a fraction of the cost. So I started working on HelloPrenup on my own in February of 2021, so a little bit over a year ago. And of course, I quickly found out that I don't know all the laws required, [chuckles] and I don't know how to write a good prenup contract. So I need either a legal advisor or an attorney to really help me figure these things out, especially because the law per state actually is different. CHAD: Just so I understand the timeline, did you start it before you got married? Or did you end up doing a prenup through an attorney for yourself? SARABETH: Ah, yes. So actually, we're getting married this Saturday. CHAD: Wow. Okay. Congratulations. SARABETH: Thank you so much. And we are HelloPrenup users. CHAD: Okay, wow. SARABETH: So we did our prenup with our platform. CHAD: So you managed to get the product done before you got married so that you could use it? SARABETH: Yes, yes. I wasn't going to get married without the prenup and going through an attorney. [laughs] I gotta...what is the expression? Like, reap what you sow or something like that. CHAD: Yeah, or eat your own dog food is another one. SARABETH: Yes. Dogfooding our own product has been amazingly benefic

Victoria Guido is the new Associate Director of Business Development and DevOps Strategy at thoughtbot, and is joining Chad as co-host of the show! Chad talks with Victoria about getting involved in DevOps work, transitioning to agile, moving away from her old community which was based on geography, and tips for people onboarding into a new role. Follow Victoria on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Victoria Guido, the new Associate Director of Business Development and DevOps Strategy at thoughtbot, and wait for it, the new co-host of this very podcast with me. Victoria, thank you for joining me on the show for this episode, for joining me at thoughtbot, and now for joining me as the co-host of the show. VICTORIA: You're welcome. Thank you for having me. CHAD: You do all of those things, right? [laughs] VICTORIA: Yes, yes. CHAD: So I'm hoping that we can introduce folks to you. I'm excited to have you on the show and for the audience to get to know you. Let's start with your role at thoughtbot. I think maybe you have the esteem of having the longest title at thoughtbot right now. [chuckles] VICTORIA: Yes, I love it, Associate Director of Business Development and DevOps Strategy. So I'm not only doing business development but also planning our DevOps services and how we do that at thoughtbot. CHAD: And you're on the Mission Control team, which for folks who follow along or want to go back and listen, we had Joe, who is the CTO of thoughtbot and the interim Managing Director of the Mission Control team, which is our new DevOps team and Site Reliability Engineering team, that's Episode 403. So I will link that in the show notes, but it's at giantrobots.fm/403 as well. So, how did you get involved in DevOps work? VICTORIA: Right. So I first went to my first DevOps meetup in 2017 when I was living in Washington, D.C. I had been working in IT and operations for about 5 or 10 years at that point. And I went to a DevOps meetup and met some really nice guys, and they were very...what I liked about it was that it was both the technology side and about culture. And it was about how do we break down silos between different groups, and then bring in the automation and start to do next level type of operations? So that's how I started to get involved. And I started attending the meetups regularly and then became an organizer for the meetup and for the conference series. And that's when I became like the biggest DevOps person in D.C. probably. [laughs] CHAD: Did you end up moving from the general IT work that you were doing into more DevOps focus work along that way? VICTORIA: Yeah, at that time, that was when as a federal contractor, you know, agile had been around for quite a while. And I had been through several agile transformations with large program teams. And now DevOps was becoming more of a thing. And the project that I was on at the time was managing a large set of federal websites and was managing the build pipeline and process for how they got their code into the public's view and how they managed the servers and all the other back-end services that supported those applications. So DevOps was both top of mind for the government. [laughs] They were trying to now be able to deploy as frequently as they were able to build new features. And it was part of the work that I was performing as well. CHAD: You mentioned you were doing government work at the time. What was that like? What kind of work was it? VICTORIA: Yeah, actually, my first job after college, my first full-time job, was at Citizenship and Immigration Services. And it was about a 200-person program. Some of the applications were actually written in Siebel. And so we had just a variety of different applications from Siebel to Java. And they had just transitioned to agile. And so that was taking a team that was managing Oracle releases and bringing them into a kanban style workflow and figuring out how do we be agile when we're in maintenance mode, and bring the team along with me? And I worked my way up from a process engineer to project management and did a little bit of testing and a little bit of development in between. So it was interesting because it was a major transformational shift for that agency and still getting steeped in ITIL processes and how to do unit testing, acceptance testing, and all of those other kinds of critical processes for building applications. It was good. CHAD: What does transitioning to agile mean when you talk about groups that size? You're talking about unit tests and that kind of thing, which can be part of agile, but I assume isn't the only aspect of it. VICTORIA: Yeah, I think for that group, it

Adam Kenney is Chief Product Officer at Numerated, which helps banks and credit unions transform how they lend to businesses. Chad talks with Adam about what institutional banks and credit unions are like as a market and customers and what sales cycles look like, going from 17 to more than 130 customers quickly, and the scaling challenges they faced, and how the pandemic affected them as a company. Numerated Follow Numerated on Twitter, YouTube, or LinkedIn. Follow Adam on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel, and with me, today is Adam Kenney, Chief Product Officer at Numerated, which helps banks and credit unions transform how they lend to businesses. Adam, thanks so much for joining me. ADAM: Thank you, Chad. Thanks for having me. CHAD: Let's dive into Numerated a little bit more. How do you help banks and credit unions lend to businesses? ADAM: I think we're in the middle of what is a pretty meaningful transformation in terms of how businesses are expecting to get access to credit. Really what they want is something that is fast, easy, convenient, largely driven off of the change that has happened in the retail space over the last 10 to 15 years. And in many ways, business lending is still catching up to that, and so our focus is doing that. It's helping the banks and credit unions really change how they interact with their business customers. We use a combination of data and great experiences to make that process as seamless as possible. We've been noted to, using the combination of data and technology, help banks increase the number of loans that they can do with their existing staff by as much as fourfold. We are also noted for inventing what we like to refer to as the three-minute business loan. It's one of the things we were written up on in the Wall Street Journal back in our days in Eastern Labs, where we've been able to get businesses from the point of application all the way to a funded loan in less than three minutes. And that's a process that historically has taken as long as three weeks. And so really excited by the ways that we're able to really help change how banks themselves can look at their operations. But more than anything, it's how banks are able to rethink and change how they interact with businesses and help the businesses in your communities grow and get access to the credit that they need. CHAD: So from a digital product perspective, there's a piece of a product there that banks are actually taking on and white-labeling that provides a lending experience for their clients, right? ADAM: That's correct. I mean, we're a cloud-based SaaS system. But you're right; they branded as their own. And so if you're going to Eastern Bank's website and clicking through and ultimately going through the application process with us, it's going to look and feel like it's just Eastern's website. And all of the interactions that you have with Eastern or any of our customers are going to feel that way as well. So yes, it is a white-label solution that we sell to the banks, and they provide to their customers. CHAD: The actual banking industry is not one that I've had a lot of experience in. And so I'm curious what institutional banks, credit unions, that kind of thing what they're like as a market or as customers and what the sales cycle looks like and those kinds of things. ADAM: It's about as varied as an industry can get, I'll tell you that. [laughs] You have to remember that banks and credit unions can be as small as having a few hundred million dollars in assets, maybe as small as 100 million. And in some of our customers' cases, they're de novo banks, and they're just getting started. And they range up to multiple billions of dollars in assets. And so, these are organizations that scale dramatically. Each of them have their own problems. They're also going to be made up of very different tech-minded individuals. You're going to have some smaller institutions that are basically managing a book of business that's been a book of business for close to a century and are interested in how technology can make them more efficient. But they are not the technologists that you and I would be used to working with on a day-to-day basis. And then, of course, you have people like ourselves who are really trying to, from inside the bank, change what banking is to their customers. And so, it's a very diverse industry in terms of what they're looking to accomplish. We've even come up with recently this framework around how we think about and really talk to our customers about how they transform and the levels of transformation that they can g

Susanna Twarog is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of SOS, which is transforming wellness on the go through a network of smart vending machines that deliver just-in-time necessities where and when you need the most. Chad talks with Susanna about wellness on the go, the unique business that they're building and what SOS can offer brands, and the biggest hurdles to overcome to get 10,000 machines up and running. SOS Follow SOS on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram or LinkedIn. Follow Susanna on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Susanna Twarog, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of SOS, which is transforming wellness on the go through a network of smart vending machines that deliver just-in-time necessities where and when you need the most. Susanna, thank you for joining me. SUSANNA: Thank you, Chad. It's great to be here. CHAD: So, what makes the vending machines from SOS smart? SUSANNA: So what makes our vending machines smart? Well, I think smart and vending are typically not words that go together. And I think when we founded the company, the machines that we were looking at were outdated and old and out of stock. And to be honest, first and foremost, payment methods that are accepted by most vending machines are completely not in line with the modern consumer. So we were looking at vending machines that take quarters and cash. And as two working women on the trading floor, nobody has quarters or coins or even cash anymore. So first and foremost, we are a cashless, modern vending machine that accepts contactless and modern forms of payment. CHAD: Let's level-set a little bit about wellness on the go, what that means. What I hear when I look at...which I took a look at the product on the website, which I encourage people to do, and it's worldofsos.com. I think it gives a much better sense of this. But correct me if I'm wrong that what we're talking about here is the vending machines that might typically be in a men's or women's restroom. Is that right? SUSANNA: Absolutely. So the problem that we are in a mission to solve is to transform outdated, completely broken, ugly hardware that's existed to distribute wellness essentials like menstrual care and other wellness products in public spaces. So those old machines that look like steel box drops [chuckles] that is the business or the distribution channel that we're looking to disrupt. And so, by introducing beautiful design-first tech-enabled hardware into this space, we're completely transforming a distribution channel that has not worked or served anyone for decades at this point. CHAD: I don't even use those vending machines. But it seems to me like they're often broken, dirty, not even stocked. Is there market reasons why that's the case? SUSANNA: So, to be quite honest, I think Robina and I, when we founded the company, started to explore why hasn't this problem been solved? And the fact of the matter is the built world, and a lot of commercial real estate is designed and developed by a group of people who don't necessarily menstruate or need these products that are everyday health and wellness essentials for actually what is over half of the world's population. But the folks who design and plan these spaces are not necessarily coming at the design with a perspective of these needs. And so, honestly, Robina and I set out on a mission to say when we think about inclusive space and the world that we want to live in, we want to live in a world where not just among certain people but all people have access to health and wellness products that they need when they're not at home. So you may have everything that you need and want from the brands that you love and the ingredients that you trust in your own cabinet. But when you're on the go, and you're at work or you're traveling or entertaining, or spending time in other physical spaces that aren't your home, typically, those products aren't available, and they're very hard to access. So it's a major area for us to innovate and introduce a world that we want to live in where you can access the products you need from brands you already know and love or want to discover and try. CHAD: So building really any hardware, and I have a lot of guests who have done hardware in the past, can be a challenge, especially starting out. What you talk about in the startup industry is often like starting out small, figuring out the minimum viable product, bringing that to market to early customers, and then learning and refining. And that can be difficult to do when you're shipping something physical. So how did you approach that? SUSANNA: Robina and I approached this with a lot of intention and a lo

Anna Spearman is the Founder of Techie Staffing, which connects high-quality technology talent with high-caliber clients. Chad talks with Anna about founding and growing the company, immediately after graduating college, during a pandemic, reputation building, and facing skepticism around her lack of track record in recruiting, and finding and providing talent for clients as a white-glove service. Techie Staffing Follow Techie Staffing on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn. Follow Anna on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Anna Spearman, the Founder of Techie Staffing, which connects high-quality technology talent with high-caliber clients. Anna, thanks so much for joining me. ANNA: Thank you so much for inviting me, Chad. CHAD: In theory, at the surface level, Techie Staffing is probably fairly straightforward in terms of what you do. But I'm curious how you got started. ANNA: Yes, of course. So I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's been two years. Two years ago, I was, during that time, attending the University of Virginia, where I was majoring in computer science with a minor in entrepreneurship. And in the spring of 2020, I was planning on coming back home to...I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and I was planning to come back home for spring break. And I was finishing out my second semester of senior year. So I was planning my [chuckles] victory lap of going back home, taking a little bit of a rest time, and then coming back to UVA to finish my degree, graduate, and move on to a new job in Los Angeles. But unfortunately, as my plane was landing in Los Angeles, we kept hearing about COVID. And so the pandemic hit in the middle of my spring break. And during that time, I had to finish my second semester of senior year remote. It was very stressful, but when I finished the degree, I was so fulfilled. But unfortunately, there was a rapid dwindling of entry-level tech and product roles. I initially either wanted to be a software engineer or a product manager or be a software engineer that transitioned into a technical product manager. But unfortunately, once the pandemic hit, companies weren't willing to ramp up entry-level talent. Companies didn't really know what was going to happen in the future, and everybody was remote. So it was just a really confusing time. But while I was searching through different job boards trying to find new opportunities, especially entry-level opportunities, I found just a wealth of senior tech jobs, specifically with companies that were thriving due to the pandemic. During that time, companies like Peloton, Discord, Zoom, they were all soaring due to the pandemic. So I had heard about contingent recruiting in the past. My biggest dream for a new opportunity for myself graduating out of college was just to learn something new every day because I've always had a very much an interdisciplinary background. I've never been able to stay in one area. I've always loved to try different things. So with a little bit of a background recruiting at a past summer internship as well as wanting to utilize my entrepreneurship minor...I'm actually a fourth-generation woman entrepreneur. So definitely, growing up, creating my own business was my dream. So really, that was my main goal. I thought I was going to transition from a current role into entrepreneurship, but I had my back against the wall. So I just thought, why not start now? So I created Techie Staffing, a technology staffing agency specializing in direct hire placements nationwide. I basically had my virtual graduation; then I took a week. And then, I got started creating the website, establishing the business paperwork, as well as developing strategic partnerships with senior technical recruiters that had full candidate pipelines to fill incoming job requisitions. And I basically started off with nothing. I had no contacts, no network, just nothing at all. And I was really starting just fresh. So I really had to really spend a lot of time networking and developing relationships as well as just learning and mastering full lifecycle recruiting, especially with engineering since there's such a supply and demand issue for software engineers. So you're just consistently following up and contacting people that could potentially be interested in your companies. But it really blew up. As I was establishing everything in 2020 from summer to the end of 2020, it was 2021 when it really blew up where I contacted this founder during the time they had raised a Series B 50 million, which was amazing, and they were going through a hiring sprint. So we got connected fairly quickly. And with just great team synergy, we were actually

Chelinde Edouard is Co-Founder and CEO of MustWatch, which connects people through television. Chad talks with Che about creating a social and user engagement platform that allows people to come back and constantly use an app without interrupting TV-watching experiences, how they use data to improve user experience, and fundraising and giving investors opportunities to help build out the app, increase marketing, and potentially build an Android version. MustWatch Follow MustWatch on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow Che on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel, and with me today is Che Edouard, Co-Founder and CEO of MustWatch, which connects people through television. Che, thank you for joining me. CHELINDE: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. CHAD: So astute listeners of the show will note maybe that name sounds familiar. And that's because you and MustWatch were mentioned on Episode 419, which was about the GK Fund with Michael Benezra. And I asked him for examples of the kinds of companies that he was excited about that they had given their grants to. And you're the one he called out, and so that jumped out at me. And thanks for joining the show. CHELINDE: Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it. And I definitely want to shout out the GK Fund. They've definitely been a huge support to us since giving us the grant. And they're definitely leading the charge in this new avenue of racial inequality and helping startups in that fashion in Boston. CHAD: So I'm curious; before we get too far down the road of where you're at today and how you got there, let's take a step back and just remind people what MustWatch is. CHELINDE: Absolutely. MustWatch is an app that's on the App Store now. So even if you have an iPhone, you can download it. And it's an app that's revolving around TV. So it allows you to see what shows your friends watch, chat with them about them, and send recommendations all in one place. So we think of it as like a social hub for all of your TV needs. CHAD: I think people who hear this might be like, oh, does this exist already? That kind of thing. And there are a couple of things a little bit like this, but it doesn't seem like there's really anything that's quite like this, right? CHELINDE: Exactly. So a lot of the social TV apps and other services today focus on one feature, for example, chat or recommendations, or giving reviews about shows, or having a list of them. But our app, we do all of it in one place. So on our app, it can show which shows you like. You can also share with your friends directly; hey, you should go watch this show because I think you should like it. We also have this feature called watchlist, which is our natural social recommendations of here are all the shows that your friends are watching that you don't watch. And so it's a way to give people a way to find new shows without getting the same recommendations from Netflix and Hulu that are not really accurate today. CHAD: How did you hit upon this idea? CHELINDE: Actually, one of my high school friends, we were all brainstorming and coming up with ideas for companies. And then one day, he was at work, and he was trying to talk about Game of Thrones, but his boss wouldn't let him because he wasn't caught up on the season. He wasn't there. CHAD: [laughs] CHELINDE: So he was like, how do I find someone or talk to someone who's caught up to where I'm at so I can actually have a conversation? And so we brainstormed, and we tried to solve the problem of let's just create a spoiler-free chat kind of solution that would allow people to talk about shows that they're caught up on. And then that we've iterated and evolved, and that's kind of led to where we're at today. CHAD: And when was that? CHELINDE: That was, I want to say, 2014. That was when I graduated from BU. So in the summer of 2014, that's when we first had the idea. And then from there, we just brainstormed, had a bunch of meetings, and then just took a year in stealth mode trying to figure out how we wanted to create a business plan. And then, from there, we hit the ground running. CHAD: You and your friend, what were your sort of core competencies, the two of you? CHELINDE: I'm the tech background, so to speak, because, as I mentioned, I went to BU. My degree is in management information systems, which is basically business IT. So I was trying to leverage all my technology skills there and also my business skills to say how do we, one, build the app and two, create a business that can actually support it for the long term? And he had more of the idea on the customer side of how can we create an experience or a user engag

Geronda Wollack-Spiller is the DEI Program Manager at thoughtbot. Chad talks with Geronda about implementing a successful Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion program at the company by providing a culture of belonging, the challenges, in particular, the tech industry faces, and acknowledging that many of us work in spaces where when we're bringing someone onto a team who has underrepresented identities, they might be the only one. How do we create a space that's as inclusive as possible? Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at thoughtbot Follow Geronda on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Geronda Wollack-Spiller, the DEI Program Manager at thoughtbot. Geronda, thank you so much for joining me. GERONDA: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. CHAD: In honor of Pride Month, we're doing something extra special for this episode in addition to just having you as an extra special guest. We're recording live in front of thoughtbot remotely. We've got a whole bunch of people watching. I can hear them cheering off in the distance for you as you make your debut on the podcast. GERONDA: [laughs] CHAD: Thanks for joining me. GERONDA: Thank you. Nice. [laughs] CHAD: So you joined thoughtbot as our first ever DEI program manager back...when was it? GERONDA: Oh, April, yeah, April fourth. CHAD: It's been a whirlwind few months. Thank you already for all of the contributions that you've made to the company already. GERONDA: Oh, thank you. No problem. CHAD: Tell us a little bit about your role. And then I can provide some fill-in terms of what we were thinking when we added this. But let's start with sharing a little bit about your role. GERONDA: A lot of my role is about...so it's a lot of understanding the processes that we have, people operations processes, and really thinking about how do we provide more of a...or improve our ability to provide a culture of belonging. And so a lot of what I do is I will partner across with people operations, and I'll look at things like promotions, and who are we promoting? Who are we hiring? Improvements to performance management processes. How are we giving feedback? Who are our managers? And a lot of what I'll do, too, is execute against the goals that were set by our DEI Council before I had joined, which the council is great. And I'll look to see are there different ways that we should be looking at goals? So one of the things that I'm doing right now is I'm building out a multi-year roadmap for DEI. And I'm incorporating a lot of the goals that the council has already put together, which has been super great. And I want to create a space that feels like a safer or brave space for anyone to come to me with concerns, questions, suggestions. And I partner a lot with different groups to be able to understand their needs and make sure that we are voicing and amplifying historically marginalized groups but also providing a lot of the education around what DEI means and how we can do that in our everyday jobs. So I am co-chair of the DEI Council. I support that council to take on different projects, build out task force, work with everyone across the company to contribute, and infuse diversity, equity, and inclusion within the company. So that's a lot of what I do. [laughs] Other things involved, but that gives you kind of a high level of my role. CHAD: Yeah, that's great. I've talked before on the show about the DEI Council in a few different episodes, mostly in passing. And overall, when we started on...the concept of a council came from some consultants that we had worked with previously to do an audit. They provided us with a few different suggestions about how we could continue on from that audit and take action. And one of the things, especially with our geographic studios, the way that we used to be organized the idea of one person from each of those studios coming together on a council to work together and then bring the work back to their studios for action really resonated with us as a structure that could work pretty well for us given the structure. We've obviously since gone completely remote. And the council is no longer specifically tied to those individual teams or those offices that we no longer have. But the council is still that, a group of people from a wide array across the company who come together and focus on and organize our work around diversity, equity, and inclusion. And we saw the opportunity in your role to have someone provide continuity and organization and experience to the council to help make it even more effective at thoughtbot. And I think we're just getting started with that. But I think it's been very pos

Panos Siozos is Co-Founder and CEO of LearnWorlds, an online course platform for creating, selling, and promoting online courses. Chad talks with Panos about building e-learning platforms dating back to 1999, providing rich feature sets and catering to customers located in lots of different places, and deciding to stop bootstrapping and take investor money. LearnWorlds Follow LearnWorlds on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn. Follow Panos on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giants Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel and with me today is Panos Siozos, Co-Founder and CEO of LearnWorlds, an online course platform for creating, selling, and promoting online courses. Panos, thank you so much for joining me. PANOS: Hi, Chad, and thanks for hosting me. CHAD: You have been working on LearnWorlds for a while now. Where did the idea come from? PANOS: I guess this has been brewing in our minds, mine and my co-founder's, for many years. We built our very first e-learning platform back in 1999, right after completing our studies in computer science. And we started postgraduate studies in educational technology. So in an academic setting, though, we had built many, many e-learning products, platforms, and authoring tools. And we were always exploring the state of the art. And we always had it in the back of our minds the possibility and our obligation, I guess, to create a commercial product at some point and try to get the state of the art of e-learning that we were exploring in the academia and put it at the hands of actual trainers, and teachers, and give them the tools to create the best possible online courses that they could. That was always at the back of our minds. And after completing our Ph.D. studies, after working in different jobs and different roles, we got back together at some point in 2012. And at that point, the conditions for e-learning were very, very mature. It was like bandwidth was in abundance. It was easy to create videos. It was easy to distribute videos. Cloud computing made it even easier to create software as a service platforms. And we understood that it was the perfect moment to come together, take our expertise, and try to put it in an amazing product that would be commercial and help all those people out there that wanted to create online courses. CHAD: So I think you launched in 2014. PANOS: Yes, we spent a couple of years. We started building the platform in 2012 in stealth mode. We were, I guess, traditional engineers. We had this build it, and they will come mentality. CHAD: [chuckles] PANOS: We had done almost like in the first year almost zero research on customer development and business development. We just had in mind to create the best possible platform that we could, and then obviously, people would just buy it because it's the best. Obviously, things don't always work that way. So we created the platform then we started talking with potential customers. We launched commercially in 2014. And this is when we had our very first customers, people who had the online courses. They had the online content. They had audiences, but they didn't have a platform. It seemed a huge burden and a huge task to create an actual platform to deliver and sell their courses. And this is where we came in and started providing our tool as a software as a service solution. CHAD: So in 2014, I'm sure that there were other competing products on the market. Today, there are probably even more. What makes LearnWorlds different from all of those or better from those? PANOS: In 2014, it was very early, I guess, in online courses. Most people were going to marketplaces like Udemy or Coursera. It was very difficult back then to create your own online school, to own the website. We had people who were either using traditional clunky Jurassic; I would say, learning management systems. CHAD: [chuckles] PANOS: And they were trying to adapt them for e-commerce and all the stuff, and it was always very difficult to do. Others were trying to duct tape together WordPress sites and plugins and custom codes. And that was something that wasn't scaling very gracefully. I would say after a couple of 100 users, it was almost impossible to maintain sites like that. Others were trying to create their own platforms, write code internally or hire a couple of developers. And then a few months or a couple of years and after having spent a couple hundred thousand dollars, they were realizing that this is very difficult to develop a tool like that unless you've done that in the past and you know what you're doing. So it was very timely to bring to the market a product like that. What differentiated us from the others and what still differentiates us is that we have an obsessive

Tarush Aggarwal is the Founder and CEO of 5X, the modern data stack as a managed service that enables companies to answer business questions without having to worry about building data infrastructure or bringing in the right data engineering team. Chad talks with Tarush about the modern data stack movement, choosing things that make sense on behalf of their customers, and building a team culture at a company with a fairly large time zone distribution. 5x Follow 5x on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn. Follow Tarush on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Tarush Aggarwal, the Founder and CEO of 5X, the modern data stack as a managed service that enables companies to answer business questions without having to worry about building data infrastructure or bringing in the right data engineering team. Tarush, thank you for joining me. TARUSH: Chad, thank you so much for having me on the show. Really looking forward to being here and hopefully adding some value for your listeners. CHAD: Yes, I'm sure that they will. I think many companies are either thinking about how they build their data infrastructure or thinking about how they leverage data for their business now. So 5X provides a path for them to do that, and I'd love to dive in. How does 5X, like I said in the intro, enable companies to get started without having to worry about building this infrastructure themselves or this team themselves? TARUSH: Yeah, totally. It's a great question. Just to kind of zoom out for a quick second, the data space has been really hot for a few years now, and there's this area often called the modern data stack, which is really led by a few vendors mainly around this concept of the data warehouse, reporting tools, and modeling, and ingestion. And this is really a new area for the data space, which has really become popular. So you also have, you know, ten years ago, you had Hadoop and Spark, and all of these different data tools, which in general have become less popular, and the modern data stack movement is one of the big movements happening. So at a macro level, we have this new movement. If you zoom in, this movement happens to be one of the most fragmented movements. So what that means is for each different layer, you have different vendors. And so, even if you want to do something today as simple as building dashboards, you have to first ingest this data. In your average company, you've got [inaudible] at different sources. You need to put it in. You need to then store it, you need to model it, and then you can build a dashboard. CHAD: You also need to make all the different choices about which ones you're going to choose at every level. TARUSH: Exactly. At each of these levels, you have multiple billion-dollar companies today competing. So the thing about fragmentation of the space and, you know, I think data along with maybe DevOps and security are probably the most fragmented spaces. The thing about fragmented spaces is that they are great for extremely savvy customers; think of large tech companies who have 100% data teams. But for 90% of businesses, if you want to get value from data, it makes it much harder because you have to sign multiple contracts with these vendors, architecture, set up security. So what 5X very, very fundamentally is doing is we're business-focused. We allow you, you know, in a month or two, you better go to 5x.co and add your credit card, and you will have business analytics out of the box. And we can help you make some of these decisions as to what are the best vendors for your price points, for your use cases and give you an end-to-end platform so that you aren't worrying about signing these bills and sort of setting it up. You're focused on your business outcome and your business use cases. CHAD: Where did...I happen to know, but because I did my research for the episode. [laughs] But you were at WeWork leading data at WeWork, right? TARUSH: Yes. CHAD: So I imagine you faced this problem and saw this problem firsthand, right? TARUSH: You know, I've been fortunate that I've spent my career in the data space. So back in the day at Salesforce and now and most recently at WeWork. And companies like this, in general, are aggressively hiring and aggressively growing these teams. So at WeWork, we had 50 people working on stitching together the platform and finding the best vendors, and being involved in that. So at WeWork, we were really focused on building our own version of the platform. I think what's interesting is ever since I left and especially over the last 24 months, where the sort of startup space has become so active, I'm still getting pinged on LinkedI

Deborah Levine is the Director of LGBT YouthLink at CenterLink, which supports, strengthens, and connects LGBT centers. Chad talks with Deborah about working on something new called imi: a free digital research-backed mental health tool intended to support and help LGBTQ+ teens explore and affirm their identity and learn practical ways to cope with their sexual and gender minority stress, founding Q Chat Space, a digital LGBTQ+ center where teens join live-chat, professionally facilitated, online support groups, and how over the time that she's been doing work in LGBTQ+ spaces products and online interaction have changed and evolved. CenterLink Follow CenterLink on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn. LGBT YouthLink Q Chat Space HopeLab Follow Deborah on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel, and with me, today is Deborah Levine, Director of LGBT YouthLink at CenterLink, which supports, strengthens, and connects LGBT centers. Deborah, thank you so much for joining me. DEBORAH: Thanks, Chad. I appreciate you inviting me. CHAD: So I was first introduced to you and to CenterLink through the Q Chat Space product. And that's still going, right? DEBORAH: Yeah. CHAD: But you're working on something new called imi. DEBORAH: Mm-hmm. We actually just launched imi on June 1st. CHAD: Congratulations on the launch. DEBORAH: Thank you. Yes, it went pretty smoothly. [laughs] CHAD: That's good. So, what is imi? DEBORAH: So imi is a free digital research-backed mental health tool. It was developed by Hopelab in partnership with CenterLink, and the It Gets Better Project, as well as hundreds of LGBTQ+ young people across the U.S. It's a little hard to describe, to be perfectly honest. It really is intended to support and help LGBTQ+ teens explore and affirm their identity and learn practical ways to cope with their sexual and gender minority stress. And we really hope that the tool is helpful, relevant, inclusive, and joyful. It is a web app, but it operates...it's not a lot of reading. It's listening, and doing, and thinking, and really giving youth an opportunity to explore and consider ways that they might help support themselves. CHAD: That's great. And I suppose it's even a compliment to your prior work at CenterLink and with Q Chat Space, which is an online support community. DEBORAH: Yes. CHAD: People can use both. DEBORAH: Exactly. We actually engaged in a partnership with Hopelab because we recognize that though youths were really excited about and engaged in the support groups that Q Chat Space provides, those are synchronous, and they happen once or twice a day. They last for an hour and a half, but that's all there is. So if you come to the website when a chat isn't happening, then there's not much to do. And we wanted to be able to provide youth with something else, and imi really fills that gap. CHAD: So when it comes to the product itself, how long was it in development for? DEBORAH: Great question. Of course, there was the pandemic, so there were some delays related to that. But it was about two and a half years from when Hopelab first approached CenterLink until the actual launch date. CHAD: That's a fairly significant amount of time. DEBORAH: It is for when you're working, I think if we were only tech firms, but both Hopelab and CenterLink are nonprofits. And the process included a lot of steps. So we actually had a prototype pretty early. But because we wanted to make sure that we did put something out into the world that actually had the impact we were seeking, we did a randomized controlled trial. We had 270 youth, half of them using a similar-looking website with just resources and the other half using imi. And we did that randomized controlled trial as well as a test of marketing. Those were both pieces that extended our timeline. And then ultimately, we also wanted to launch during Pride Month, so we timed it for that. CHAD: This idea of a randomized control trial is pretty incredible to me. A lot of product people wouldn't necessarily do that; maybe certain companies do. Why do you think you went in that direction? DEBORAH: So our goal is not to make money. And ultimately, if that was the goal, then we put something out, we see if people are using it and using it at the rate and the ways...I'm a social worker, so my business lingo is going to be limited. [chuckles] But that's the way to test it. And if youths use it but don't have any impact or potentially even harms them, which is not the case usually; it's just neutral, but if it doesn't have any impact, it's not worth our time. And so, a randomized controlled trial really allows us to see whether or not it's worki

Johanna Mikkola is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wyncode Academy, recently acquired by BrainStation, whose project-based programs have helped over 100,000 professionals launch new careers in the tech industry. Chad talks with Johanna about creating a digital skills training bootcamp, the hiring and training market and challenges, and prioritizing inclusion and diversity in the student population. BrainStation Follow BrainStation on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Follow Johanna on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. And with me today is Jo Mikkola, the Co-Founder, and CEO of Wyncode Academy, recently acquired by BrainStation, whose project-based programs have helped over 100,000 professionals launch new careers in the tech industry. Jo, thank you for joining me. JOHANNA: So excited to be here. Thank you. CHAD: I actually think that the weather we're calling from today might not be so different. It's very warm and sunny, and everything in Boston. So I'm pretty happy today. How are things where you are? JOHANNA: That's great. We're coming to you live from the 305 in Miami, and it's turning into summertime here, which means it's pretty hot and sticky. But I'm originally from Finland, so I can't complain. CHAD: [laughs] JOHANNA: The novelty after eight years of living here has not worn off on me. I do enjoy the sunshine and the palm trees. CHAD: That's great. So we'll definitely circle back and talk about Miami and the tech industry there and everything. But before we do that, I'm curious; you have recently been acquired by BrainStation. Let's rewind a little bit to getting started with Wyncode and what brought you to creating a digital skills training bootcamp. JOHANNA: It's been quite the journey. It all started back in 2013, and at the time living in Toronto. I, at that point, had been working at the National Hockey League in Toronto for eight years and had just joined the management there on the hockey operations officiating team, which was an amazing chapter of my professional journey, and I love all the individuals that I worked with there. But I got to a point in that career where I didn't quite know what the next step would be professionally, and I was looking at getting an MBA. But at the same time, while I was working at the NHL, I was helping lead an internal software build project. And it kept coming to the forefront for me that wow, hockey is being disrupted by technology or technology is being very integrated into something I thought, you know, I didn't think I would see that happen. And at the same time, my co-founder, who's also my husband, we're both from Finland. His name is Juha. He was an entrepreneur in the e-commerce sporting goods space, and he actually had joined a coding bootcamp in Toronto, an early one. And as he was going through the process, we were both kind of at this inflection point professionally about what we were going to do. And so everything he was learning, the transformation of individuals he was witnessing first-hand, him experiencing that himself, and me being a non-technical business person leading a technical project at the NHL, we were like, wow, we're on the cusp of some serious change in the world, and we want to be part of that wave. So we were like, where can we go and be first to market to provide this life-changing, career-changing education and, in turn, really dive into not only education but also the technology space? And ultimately, we landed on Miami. We had actually looked at Austin, Texas, and Los Angeles as options as well. But we arrived here in Miami, and it was very like a Hollywood thing. We were sitting at the coolest cafe in Miami at the time. We were here on Christmas holiday. And we, on a napkin, started writing ideas and brainstorming. You know, founders get very excited about logos and brainstorming names, or at least I do. CHAD: [laughs] JOHANNA: And it all came together really quickly. That was December 2013. We attended a startup meet-up here. We met four key players in this ecosystem, some of which are major drivers today, like the Knight Foundation and Endeavor. We heard their vision, and what they were doing, and how much funding was being put at the time into building a tech ecosystem in Miami. And we were like, wow, we want in. So we went from concept to launch in three months’ time. And it was a pretty exciting ride. I mean, so much happened in that time [laughs], and obviously, the acquisition came early last year. And so we've kind of seen it go full circle. And for me professionally, I went from being a startup founder working very regionally, being somewhat nationally known but being a strong regional player, to being a global pl

Jeni Barcelos is the Co-Founder and CEO of Marvelous, the world's most beautiful all-in-one teaching platform. Chad talks with Jeni about what makes Marvelous different from other teaching platforms out there, the importance of elevating women to leadership positions, and why applying for and getting accepted into an accelerator program was the right path for the company. Marvelous Follow Marvelous on YouTube, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Follow Jeni on LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Jeni Barcelos, the Co-Founder, and CEO of Marvelous, the world's most beautiful all-in-one teaching platform. Jeni, thank you so much for joining me. JENI: Thank you for having me, Chad. I'm excited to be here and excited for our conversation. CHAD: So I'm really excited to dig into more about Marvelous as well. So why don't we start there? What makes Marvelous different than other teaching platforms that are out there? JENI: Marvelous is different in that we prioritize design, I would say more than any other competitive platform. And we also prioritize live events in a way that I think is pretty unique. So we started in the wellness space. We primarily are serving wellness creators, although all kinds of other creators use our tool as well. So we specifically built Marvelous with the goal of serving their unique needs, which involves a lot of teaching live classes and having a really great community space where students and clients can build relationships with each other. And then, because our audience has a particular design aesthetic and is non-technical, we've created the tool in a way that makes it really easy to make something look beautiful very quickly and simply. CHAD: So what caused you to differentiate yourself based on design? JENI: I think just personal preference and aesthetic, to be honest. As we were building the platform, I realized very quickly that people were choosing us...one of the big reasons people were choosing us was because of the simple nature of the user interface and because of the design that it produced. And so we decided really early to prioritize that. And I would say it's also just I care deeply about design, and I don't like the idea of using tools that make that an afterthought. And so I thought if I'm going to use it, and I do, I mean, we definitely dogfood our own platform and teach our own courses, we run our own communities there, I want it to look beautiful. [laughs] I want it to be a place that people enjoy spending time. We all spend more time, I think, than we want looking at screens. And so when you are going to engage in that practice and engage with other people on the internet, I think it's really nice to do it in a space that feels welcoming, and gentle, and beautiful. CHAD: So you have a co-founder, Sandy. Are either of you designers or have a background in design? JENI: Nope, not at all. Although I was one course away from minoring in art history in school. [laughter] No, I'm a lawyer. So I'm the opposite of a designer, although I think there's a part of me that thinks of myself as an artist. I wish that were my identity. CHAD: So, given the importance of design that you discovered, how did you go about executing on that? JENI: Hiring really great people, I would say, and having a really critical eye. And so, there's a tremendous amount of feedback that goes into our process. And now we have a head of brand in our company, and she can hold space for that design across both marketing and within product. So that hire, I think, has been critical for us to be able to maintain that as a priority. CHAD: Where were you in the product life-cycle and business stage where you were able to hire really great people? JENI: I would say within the last two years. So we are one of these startups that was in the right place at the right time when COVID hit. So luckily and unluckily, maybe we grew really fast in the wake of the pandemic, the beginning of the pandemic. And so that positioned us to hire pretty rapidly over the last two years. And that's when we really had the resources and the capacity to bring in that level of talent. I'll say our creative director was working with us for many years before that but just in a part-time capacity so, you know, running her own agency. And we were hiring her out as we could because we were bootstrapped. And so it wasn't until we reached a certain level of growth where we could bring her on as a permanent fixture in the company. CHAD: Yeah, that's often a way that I hear from founders to help get things off the grounds, particularly if you know of someone and would love to work with them and you know what they can produce, b

Owen McGab Enaohwo is the CEO and Co-Founder of SweetProcess, a business process management software that helps management teams and employees easily document procedures, implement processes, and manage tasks. Chad talks with Owen about taking specific root issues and building software around them, overcoming resistance to the core idea of documenting processes, and the importance of having the freedom and ability to be empowered to make changes to organizational documents that outline how you do your work. SweetProcess Follow SweetProcess on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. 52 Sample Standard Operating Procedure Templates Follow Owen on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel and with me today is Owen McGab Enaohwo, the CEO and Co-Founder of SweetProcess, a business process management software that helps management teams as well as employees easily document procedures, implement processes, and manage tasks. Owen, thank you so much for joining me. OWEN: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate you inviting me as a guest on here. CHAD: I could only return the favor as I recently went on one of the podcasts that you run over at the SweetProcess. I'm happy to have you on the show. OWEN: Great, great. CHAD: Let's dive in a little bit to SweetProcess. You know, it's a tool for documenting process. And I'm curious what led you to founding SweetProcess and creating this product? OWEN: That's a great question. So what happened was SweetProcess was actually founded in, I think, the fourth quarter of 2013. And before then, I had an agency where I would provide entrepreneurs in the U.S., so small to medium-sized business owners, with back-office support, basically, people in the Philippines doing back-office support for them here in the U.S. And so people had read these books that were very popular at that time, The 4-Hour Workweek, or the World Is Flat. And then suddenly they realize that being able to hire people abroad and outsource work was not limited to only the larger companies like the telecoms and all that that would go and hire like 150 or more people in these countries working at their phone support 24/7 and all that. So these books exposed small business owners to the idea that even they themselves can do it on a smaller scale and outsource a lot of their work. And so that's what I was doing. But the issues that I ran into was that first of all; they were coming to me with this idea that the moment they hire that immediately the person will hit the ground running and start doing the work magically, not realizing that for that to happen, there needs to have been documentation in place. Because first of all, the person you're hiring is in a different country, different culture and all that. There's that that you have going against you. But then also, they're not even with you physically where you can say you can teach them by talking to them while they're next to you. So they're in a whole different location. So the more clear your instructions are in terms of having standard operating procedures in front of them, the more easier and quickly they're going to deliver the results you want, and so that was the first thing. The second thing was they were very busy wearing so many hats. They didn't have time to document these procedures that we needed to do the work for them. So we came up with this strategy where we would meet with our clients at the time online on Zoom, not Zoom; Zoom wasn't the thing at the time. It was...what was it called? Skype. CHAD: Skype. OWEN: Yeah. So we would meet with them online, and we'd have recorded sessions with them where they would walk us through what they were doing then record those conversations. And then, someone else on my team would take this conversation and document standard operating procedure step by step from what they told us. Now, on the backend, the issue we had was to do this documentation and have tools in place so that people can actually have one place where they could go and find all these documents for our clients. It was either we were using enterprise-level tools that were first of all hard to use for my team talk less of the clients. So these tools were not even built for small to medium-sized businesses. Or we were basically hacking to get a bunch of free tools to achieve that purpose of documentation and having one place where people can go find stuff. So in the back of my mind, I was like, man, there has to be a better tool that does this. And so fast forward, I was invited as a guest on to Mixergy. It's another very popular podcast for tech startups. I don't know if you know of him. His name is Andrew Warner. And so, he has two versions of t

Matt Danna is the Co-Founder and CEO of Boulevard, which powers next-gen salons and spas. Its mission is to modernize the technology while improving the daily lives of professionals and the clients they serve. Chad talks with Matt about discovering a problem and then making the jump to working on it, overcoming hurdles in terms of continued growth, and deciding to invest in building their own hardware by creating Boulevard Duo: a point of sale credit card reader. Boulevard Boulevard Duo Follow Boulevard on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube. Follow Matt on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow thoughtbot on Twitter or LinkedIn. Become a Sponsor of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Matt Danna, the Co-Founder and CEO of Boulevard, which powers next-gen salons and spas. Matt, thank you so much for joining me. MATT: Thanks so much for having me, Chad. Great to be here. CHAD: One of the things that I was interested in learning about Boulevard is it's a large product that does a lot for salons and spas. And so, I'm interested in talking with you about the process of getting to where you are today. But why don't we get started by giving folks an overview of everything that Boulevard does for salons and spas? MATT: Yeah, absolutely. So Boulevard offers what we think is the first and really only business management platform that's really focused around the client experience. We work with businesses that help all of us look and feel our best. And it's a really special industry to be powering where there's a really close sense of that human touch and that human element. We try to use technology to help automate and relieve the day-to-day operations as much as we can for these businesses so that they can focus on providing that world-class client experience and deepening relationships with their clients. CHAD: And tactically, that's online booking, scheduling, payments, schedule management, all that kind of stuff that goes into running. MATT: Yeah, absolutely. So it goes all the way from, like you said, scheduling to we are a fully integrated payments solution to even have time clock kind of commission reporting. And so it really goes from managing everything front of house all the way through back of house. And happy to share more about how we ended up building such a wide and deep product because it's definitely an interesting story. CHAD: So you were not in the salon industry prior to Boulevard, is that right? MATT: That's correct. CHAD: So, how did you end up getting brought into this industry? MATT: So the founding story...so my background is in software engineering, but I ended up turning much more into a designer over time. So I've been naturally drawn to building technology for creative individuals. And so, at my last startup, which was called Fullscreen, it was a startup here in LA. We were helping YouTube creators make better content online, helping them monetize on YouTube, understand their audience. And this was in the days where YouTubers couldn't monetize directly. They needed to go through a network. And so, we created this proprietary technology offering that really helped them understand how to build their audience and further monetize. So the original founding story was that I met my co-founder of Boulevard at Fullscreen. His name is Sean Stavropoulos. And I was the VP of Product. He was the VP of Engineering. And the kind of inception moment was that there was this week where Sean's hair was a complete disaster. CHAD: [chuckles] MATT: And as a great colleague, I was making fun of him [laughs] and telling him like, "Dude, you need to go get a haircut." And he said to me that he kept forgetting to call his salon during the day to make an appointment, and at night when he remembered to do those types of things, the salon is obviously closed. And we were just thinking how much friction there was as a client of these businesses in the booking process and that we didn't understand why you had to do basically so much work in order to be a client. It just was incongruent with what was going on in other industries and kind of restaurants and everything going through this digital transformation. Our hypothesis was that they must still be on pen and paper; they haven't adopted technology yet, and that's why you need to call to make an appointment. And we started thinking a lot about this problem and started obsessing over it. [laughs] And there was a weekend that we were hanging out, and we ended up walking into a few different salons and spas in a neighborhood that we were hanging out. And we did a bunch of research and asked them a lot of questions. We said we were UCLA students working on a research project. CHAD: [laughs] MATT: Which was a prett