Engineering Founders

ABOUT TONY DONG [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonydong3/] Tony is the Founder & CEO of Propel, an AI engineering agent that integrates into your team’s workflows to automate engineering tasks and elevate developer productivity. Before Propel [https://propelcode.ai/], Tony served as the VP of Engineering at Rippling, where he led the development of the company's Platform and HR products. As a seasoned entrepreneur, Tony was also the founder and CTO of a YC-backed startup and held key engineering roles at Periscope, TellApart, and Twitter.   THIS EPISODE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY SIDE [https://side.inc/] – DELIVERING AWARD-WINNING QA, LOCALIZATION, PLAYER SUPPORT, AND TECH SERVICES FOR THE WORLD’S LEADING GAMES AND TECHNOLOGY BRANDS. For over 30 years, Side has helped create unforgettable user experiences—from indies to AAA blockbusters like Silent Hill 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3. LEARN MORE ABOUT SIDE’S GLOBAL SOLUTIONS AT SIDE.INC. [https://side.inc/]   SHOW NOTES: * Tony’s journey transitioning from eng leader to founder (2:29) * Lessons learned from founding Pershop & working @ Rippling (3:47) * The origin of Propel & turning frustration into a startup idea (5:58) * Recognizing the right moment to pivot your product (7:55) * Incorporating competitive advantage analysis into strategic decision making (10:29) * Accelerating user research & establishing credibility in your product area (12:32) * The process of pivoting / solving highly valuable problems (14:15) * Examples of how a product can quickly prove its value to customers (16:35) * Strategies for proving value quickly during the early product building stages (17:51) * Dynamics of being a solo founder & early team building (19:30) * Pitching Propel as a solo founder / building support systems (21:13) * How Tony hired a team of eight within one month, using relationships and public storytelling (23:32) * How hiring contractors & sharing publicly helped drive early team building (25:19) * Frameworks for attracting talent as a competitive advantage (27:44) * Assessing hiring candidates: using every available AI tool, real projects & hands-on collaboration (31:09) * Tony’s current stack & AI tools enhancing team productivity and innovation (33:49) * The impact of AI on early-stage company building (35:39) * Tony’s thoughts on capturing a broad market @ Propel (37:03) * Understanding today's fundraising landscape (39:00) * Rapid fire questions (40:48)   LINKS AND RESOURCES * Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60018618-unreasonable-hospitality] - Today, every business can choose to be a hospitality business—and we can all transform ordinary transactions into extraordinary experiences. Featuring sparkling stories of his journey through restaurants, with the industry’s most famous players like Daniel Boulud and Danny Meyer, Will Guidara urges us all to find the magic in what we do—for ourselves, the people we work with, and the people we serve. * The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50548165-the-secret-life-of-groceries?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_22] - In this exposé, author Benjamin Lorr pulls back the curtain on this highly secretive industry. Combining deep sourcing and immersive reporting, Lorr leads a wild investigation in which we learn the secrets of Trader Joe's success from Trader Joe himself, why truckers call their job "sharecropping on wheels," what it takes for a product to earn certification labels like "organic" and "fair trade," the struggles entrepreneurs face as they fight for shelf space, including essential tips, tricks, and traps for any new food business, the truth behind the alarming slave trade in the shrimp industry and much more. * CAFEC Pour-Over Flower Dripper DEEP 27 [https://www.amazon.com/CAFEC-Pour-Over-Flower-Dripper-FDD-27CB/dp/B0CLXSNRRH] - Tony’s favorite coffee dripper!   THIS EPISODE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE HELP OF OUR INCREDIBLE PRODUCTION TEAM: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/] Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ [https://www.bnd3d.com/] Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ [https://elliecoggins.com/about/]

ABOUT AISWARYA SANKAR [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sankaraiswarya/] Aiswarya Sankar is the co-founder of Entelligence.AI [http://Entelligence.AI], an AI-powered engineering intelligence platform that streamlines development, enhances collaboration, and accelerates engineering productivity. Previously, Aiswarya has held roles at Intel, Google, and Uber. She has a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.   THIS EPISODE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY SIDE [https://side.inc/] – DELIVERING AWARD-WINNING QA, LOCALIZATION, PLAYER SUPPORT, AND TECH SERVICES FOR THE WORLD’S LEADING GAMES AND TECHNOLOGY BRANDS. For over 30 years, Side has helped create unforgettable user experiences—from indies to AAA blockbusters like Silent Hill 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3. LEARN MORE ABOUT SIDE’S GLOBAL SOLUTIONS AT SIDE.INC. [https://side.inc/]   SHOW NOTES: * Aiswarya’s eng leadership background & founder journey (3:22) * The early “mini search engine” project that ignited Entelligence.AI [http://Entelligence.AI] (6:23) * Behind the decision to start with code search and what it unlocked (7:44) * From Uber to full-time founder: the leap into AI entrepreneurship (9:03) * What Entelligence.AI [http://Entelligence.AI] does & who it serves (10:12) * Deconstructing engineering pain points into product strategy (12:04) * Insights from engineering users that informed the product’s direction (13:52) * Building customizable, context-aware intelligence for teams (16:47) * Lessons learned on balancing proactive feedback and team culture (19:24) * Use sprints & rituals to surface hidden team contributions (21:05) * Emerging trends in how software is being built and how teams are measured (23:45) * Key principles for designing AI-based systems to align with evolving workflows (26:49) * Strategies for measuring qualitative & quantitative impact (29:27) * Frameworks for humanizing AI & creating enjoyable AI experiences (31:42) * Identifying the psychological needs / drivers of your users (33:14) * Rapid fire questions (36:47) THIS EPISODE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE HELP OF OUR INCREDIBLE PRODUCTION TEAM: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/] Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ [https://www.bnd3d.com/] Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ [https://elliecoggins.com/about/]

ABOUT CRAIG MCLUCKIE [https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigmcluckie/] Craig is the CEO and co-founder of Stacklok, where his team is working to tip AI code generation on its side, from vertical, closed solutions to horizontal, aligned systems. Craig was previously CEO and co-founder of Heptio, which was acquired by VMware in 2018; he has also led product and engineering teams at Google and Microsoft. Craig is a co-creator of Kubernetes and he bootstrapped and chaired the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. ABOUT STACKLOK [https://stacklok.com/] Stacklok is working to tip AI code generation on its side — transforming vertically integrated (and closed) solutions into horizontal, open systems. Their CodeGate.ai [http://CodeGate.ai] project is an important step in this direction; it's a bridge between AI assistants and LLMs that gives developers control of their privacy and delivers richer results. BUILD AI VOICE AGENTS WITH ELEVENLABS [http://elevenlabs.io/elc] ElevenLabs [http://elevenlabs.io/elc] is the leading Voice AI platform for developers with thousands of ultra-realistic, human-like voices across 32 languages. Developers use ElevenLabs [http://elevenlabs.io/elc] to build life-like, conversational AI voice agents to handle customer support queries, appointment scheduling, and even offer personalized 1-1 tutoring. GET STARTED FOR FREE AT ELEVENLABS.IO/ELC [http://elevenlabs.io/elc] SHOW NOTES: * Why this moment is “the epoch of the startup” (2:03) * How AI shifts startup economics: from cost structures to value capture (4:18) * Why incumbents struggle during disruption—and how startups can win (8:17) * The origin story behind Stacklok & lessons from Craig’s pivot (11:04) * Frameworks for identifying asymmetric advantages as a founder (14:48) * How to map your unique asymmetric advantages to new opportunities and secure stakeholder buy-in (16:34) * Rethinking defensibility & value capture in the AI era (16:29) * How Craig applied cost, GTM & product perspectives to strategic pivots @ Stacklok (18:07) * Building investment theses: Aligning cultural strengths & asymmetric advantages with evolving opportunities (20:05) * Determining your startup’s investment themes (22:53) * Structuring experiments & validating opportunities (24:15) * Defensibility & building community-driven moats in early ideation phases (26:54) * Signals of early community-product alignment (31:24) * Conversation frameworks to assess asymmetric advantages (32:22) * Societal implications of AI disruption & the “startup epoch” (35:14) * Rapid fire questions (38:12) THIS EPISODE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE HELP OF OUR INCREDIBLE PRODUCTION TEAM: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/] Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ [https://www.bnd3d.com/] Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ [https://elliecoggins.com/about/]

ABOUT ELIOT HOROWITZ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliothorowitz/] Eliot Horowitz is the Founder and CEO of Viam, an engineering platform unlocking AI, automation, and data for devices in the physical world. With a deep commitment to advancing technology, Eliot leads Viam in helping companies build solutions across robotics, food and beverage, climate, marine, industrial manufacturing, and more. A career software developer and technology leader, Eliot co-founded MongoDB in 2007, writing the core code base for the pioneering database and leading the engineering and product teams for 13 years as CTO. MongoDB, which went public in 2017, has since reached a market cap of over $20 billion. Before MongoDB, he co-founded the ecommerce company ShopWiki and served as CTO, and he began his career in software development in the R&D group of adtech firm DoubleClick. Eliot is passionate about using technology to address pressing societal issues, including working with WAVS to protect marine life in the North Atlantic and supporting Billion Oyster Project’s work to help restore New York Harbor’s ecosystem. SHOW NOTES: * The origin story of founding Viam (2:07) * How Viam can be a game-changing platform, accelerating robotics software & hardware 10x to 100x (3:43) * The ideation journey behind Viam: Building a platform that simplifies the integration of hardware and software development (5:22) * Solving challenges with seamless APIs, a modular system, the right abstraction layers, and a comprehensive platform (9:04) * Key questions for identifying the right abstraction layers at Viam (10:42) * Optimizing your platform for flexibility and ease of use (12:42) * The evolution of product building, from first-hand experience to customer-driven (15:43) * How Eliot’s MongoDB Experience shaped Viam’s user-centric approach, open-source strategy, business model & ecosystem approach (17:58) * Cultivating developer communities & leveraging community insights at MongoDB & Viam (22:11) * Frameworks for deciding on your business model & pricing (24:02) * Eliot’s approach to building developer tools & products used by engineers (25:34) * Aligning your eng team & stakeholders on the product vision (29:01) * What it means to deeply understand engineers and how they interact with your product (30:20) * Strategies for eng leaders to better connect with customers (33:48) * Viam’s real-world applications & what’s next (35:41) * Rapid fire questions (38:31) LINKS AND RESOURCES * Viam [https://www.viam.com/] - At Viam, we believe in the power of technology to make our world smarter, happier, and more sustainable. We're building a revolutionary engineering platform for problem-solving in the physical world, so that innovators from all disciplines can address humanity's most complex challenges with practical solutions. Together with our partners, we're committed to making a lasting positive impact on industries, communities, and the planet. THIS EPISODE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE HELP OF OUR INCREDIBLE PRODUCTION TEAM: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/] Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ [https://www.bnd3d.com/] Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ [https://elliecoggins.com/about/]

Jon Hyman (Co-Founder and CTO @ Braze) shares the pivotal moments that shaped the company - from being the only person on call in the early years to identifying (and pivoting) product-market fit. Jon discusses how they navigated early-stage failure modes, carved out areas of product ownership, and made the shift to enterprise customers. Plus how leadership priorities evolve pre- vs. post-IPO and the next evolution of Jon’s leadership growth after almost 14 years at Braze. ABOUT JON HYMAN [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-hyman/] Jon Hyman is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Braze, the customer engagement platform that delivers messaging experiences across push, email, in-app, and more. He leads the charge for building the platform’s technical systems and infrastructure as well as overseeing the company’s technical operations and engineering team. Prior to Braze, Jon served as lead engineer for the Core Technology group at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund. There, he managed a team that maintained 80+ software assets and was responsible for the security and stability of critical trading systems. Jon met cofounder Bill Magnuson during his time at Bridgewater, and together they won the 2011 TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon. Jon is a recipient of the SmartCEO Executive Management Award in the CIO/CTO Category for New York. Jon holds a B.A. from Harvard University in Computer Science. ABOUT BRAZE [https://www.braze.com/] Braze is the leading customer engagement platform that empowers brands to Be Absolutely Engaging.™ Braze allows any marketer to collect and take action on any amount of data from any source, so they can creatively engage with customers in real time, across channels from one platform. From cross-channel messaging and journey orchestration to Al-powered experimentation and optimization, Braze enables companies to build and maintain absolutely engaging relationships with their customers that foster growth and loyalty. The company has been recognized as a 2024 U.S. News & World Report Best Companies to Work For, 2024 Best Small & Medium Workplaces in Europe by Great Place to Work®, 2024 Fortune Best Workplaces for Women™ by Great Place to Work® and was named a Leader by Gartner® in the 2024 Magic Quadrant™ for Multichannel Marketing Hubs and a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™: Email Marketing Service Providers, Q3 2024.  Braze is headquartered in New York with 15 offices across North America, Europe, and APAC. Learn more at braze.com [http://braze.com/]. THIS EPISODE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY CLIPBOARD HEALTH [http://clipboardhealth.com/engineering] Clipboard Health [http://clipboardhealth.com/engineering] is looking for the next generation of exceptional software engineering leaders, not just managers. They’re a profitable unicorn, backed by top-tier investors, and they take the craft of engineering management seriously. Clipboard Health matches highly qualified healthcare workers with nearby facilities to fulfill millions of shifts a year - revolutionizing healthcare staffing with a fast, flexible, and user-friendly platform. Learn more & browse their open roles at clipboardhealth.com/engineering [https://www.clipboardhealth.com/engineering?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio] SHOW NOTES: * What Jon learned from being the only person on call for his company’s first four years (2:18) * Knowing when it’s time to get help managing your servers, ops, scaling, etc. (5:05) * Establishing areas of product ownership & other scaling lessons from the early days (8:48) * Frameworks for conversations on splitting of products across teams (11:22) * The challenges, complexities & strategies behind assigning ownership in the early days (14:02) * Founding Braze (17:23) * Why Braze? The story & insights behind the original vision for Braze (19:30) * Identifying Braze’s product market fit (21:56) * Early-stage PMF challenges faced by Jon & his co-founders (25:03) * Pivoting to focus on enterprise customers (27:10) * “Let’s integrate the SDK right now” - founder-led sales ideas to validate your product (28:45) * Behind the decision to hire a chief revenue officer for the first time (33:25) * The evolution of enterprise & its impact on Braze’s product offering (36:04) * Growing out of your early-stage failure modes (38:22) * Why it’s important to make personnel decisions quickly (40:44) * Setting & maintaining a vision pre IPO vs. post IPO (43:43) * Jon’s next leadership evolution & growth areas he is focusing on (49:13) * Rapid fire questions (50:44) LINKS AND RESOURCES * When We Cease to Understand the World [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62069739-when-we-cease-to-understand-the-world] - Benjamín Labatut’s fictional examination of the lives of real-life scientists and thinkers whose discoveries resulted in moral consequences beyond their imagining. At a breakneck pace and with a wealth of disturbing detail, Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to tell the stories of Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger, the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible. THIS EPISODE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE HELP OF OUR INCREDIBLE PRODUCTION TEAM: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/] Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ [https://www.bnd3d.com/] Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ [https://elliecoggins.com/about/]