Harvard in Tech Seattle Podcast

Kevin Liu Huang is an MBA student at Stanford. He's also an officer in the Marine Corps reserves and aspires to entrepreneurship. He graduated Harvard College in 2013 with a joint concentration in Statistics and Government, and he runs a newsletter called Chiral Defense.

Fatou Fall is a STEM advocate and an entrepreneur from Senegal. She's currently building a hydroponics startup called Goodness Green for the Sahel region. Prior to that, she co-founded a US-based negotiation company for high-achieving scientists and engineers, got featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 List, and was on the founding team of African Leadership University. Fatou graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Applied Mathematics.

Ziad Ismail is the Chief Product Officer of Convoy. Before Convoy, Ziad was the Chief Product Officer of Marchex, Chief Executive Officer of CitiKey, and served in other leadership roles at Microsoft. Ziad earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. The key takeaways from the podcast are: key insights into the logistics in the transportation industry, how work ethic and curiosity is underrated.

Spencer Rascoff is the CEO of Pacaso. He was previously the CEO of Zillow for over 13 years as well as co-founding and/or being board members of many other companies e.g. dot.LA, Palantir, 75 & Sunny, etc. He graduated from Harvard College in 1997. A few takeaways from this interview are: the most important, overlooked skill is writing. How and what to choose to say yes to. Managing and communicating to a few to thousands of employees implement similar strategies. Mentorship can be perceived in more than one way.

Aran Khanna is co-founder and CEO of Reserved.ai. He graduated from Harvard College in 2016. He discovered Facebook could track any user’s location, down to within 1 meter. He showcased this through his app, Marauder’s map. He has previously worked at several startups, one of which was acquired by Amazon Web Services (AWS). He noticed how some clients were spending time to track and make purchases that would take hours out of the day. He created a solution that would automate this process through his company, Reserved.ai. He hopes to help future clients in navigating not only AWS but other services like Azure and Google Cloud. One of the principles he follows and explains in this episode is extreme ownership.

Laura Butler is cofounder and CEO/CTO of Uplift Group. Laura grew up in Connecticut with little money so she often tinkered. She accidentally interviewed for a Microsoft internship, loved it then dropped out of Harvard. She first quit Microsoft to travel for six years before going back and quitting two more times. One of many key important lessons: accept who you are and be the best version of yourself you can be.

Episode 3 - Bridget Frey Bridget is the CTO of Redfin. She has been interested in tech because of her father. Her experience at Harvard helped think differently, deeply and collaboratively about computer science and theater. She shares her thoughts on Operating Systems. Bridget says the biggest challenge now is scaling. She has advice for women in tech or women who want to be in tech, "Go for it!"

Episode 2: My Le Goel My Le is the CEO of FlightLive. She was not in tech before her startup and has had to learn each aspect from scratch. Her advice and lessons are based on personal experience from her business. One of the many important lessons she tells is to surround yourself with an experienced board.

Episode 1: Steven Maheshwary - Steven started off being interested in tech at a young age. Harvard opened him up to a wide variety of experiences. His current work as Director for Washington State is new, impactful and challenging. Key lessons: Take risks and experiment in your career when you can and contribute your skills and time to your community.