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Nabeel Qureshi is an entrepreneur, writer, researcher, and visiting scholar of AI policy at the Mercatus Center (alongside Tyler Cowen). Previously, he spent nearly eight years at Palantir, working as a forward-deployed engineer. His work at Palantir ranged from accelerating the Covid-19 response to applying AI to drug discovery to optimizing aircraft manufacturing at Airbus. Nabeel was also a founding employee and VP of business development at GoCardless, a leading European fintech unicorn.What you'll learn:• Why almost a third of all Palantir's PMs go on to start companies• How the “forward-deployed engineer” model works and why it creates exceptional product leaders• How Palantir transformed from a “sparkling Accenture” into a $200 billion data/software platform company with more than 80% margins• The unconventional hiring approach that screens for independent-minded, intellectually curious, and highly competitive people• Why the company intentionally avoids traditional titles and career ladders—and what they do instead• Why they built an ontology-first data platform that LLMs love• How Palantir's controversial “bat signal” recruiting strategy filtered for specific talent types• The moral case for working at a company like Palantir—Brought to you by:• WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs• Attio—The powerful, flexible CRM for fast-growing startups• OneSchema—Import CSV data 10x faster—Where to find Nabeel S. Qureshi:• X: https://x.com/nabeelqu• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nabeelqu/• Website: https://nabeelqu.co/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Nabeel S. Qureshi(05:10) Palantir's unique culture and hiring(13:29) What Palantir looks for in people(16:14) Why they don't have titles(19:11) Forward-deployed engineers at Palantir(25:23) Key principles of Palantir's success(30:00) Gotham and Foundry(36:58) The ontology concept(38:02) Life as a forward-deployed engineer(41:36) Balancing custom solutions and product vision(46:36) Advice on how to implement forward-deployed engineers(50:41) The current state of forward-deployed engineers at Palantir(53:15) The power of ingesting, cleaning and analyzing data(59:25) Hiring for mission-driven startups(01:05:30) What makes Palantir PMs different(01:10:00) The moral question of Palantir(01:16:03) Advice for new startups(01:21:12) AI corner(01:24:00) Contrarian corner(01:25:42) Lightning round and final thoughts—Referenced:• Reflections on Palantir: https://nabeelqu.co/reflections-on-palantir• Palantir: https://www.palantir.com/• Intercom: https://www.intercom.com/• Which companies produce the best product managers: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/which-companies-produce-the-best• Gotham: https://www.palantir.com/platforms/gotham/• Foundry: https://www.palantir.com/platforms/foundry/• Peter Thiel on X: https://x.com/peterthiel• Alex Karp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Karp• Stephen Cohen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Cohen_(entrepreneur)• Joe Lonsdale on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtlonsdale/• Tyler Cowen's website: https://tylercowen.com/• This Scandinavian City Just Won the Internet With Its Hilarious New Tourism Ad: https://www.afar.com/magazine/oslos-new-tourism-ad-becomes-viral-hit• Safe Superintelligence: https://ssi.inc/• Mira Murati on X: https://x.com/miramurati• Stripe: https://stripe.com/• Building product at Stripe: craft, metrics, and customer obsession | Jeff Weinstein (Product lead): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-product-at-stripe-jeff-weinstein• Airbus: https://www.airbus.com/en• NIH: https://www.nih.gov/• Jupyter Notebooks: https://jupyter.org/• Shyam Sankar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shyamsankar/• Palantir Gotham for Defense Decision Making: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxKghrZU5w8• Foundry 2022 Operating System Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF-GSj-Exms• SQL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL• Airbus A350: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A350• SAP: https://www.sap.com/index.html• Barry McCardel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrymccardel/• Understanding ‘Forward Deployed Engineering' and Why Your Company Probably Shouldn't Do It: https://www.barry.ooo/posts/fde-culture• David Hsu on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dvdhsu/• Retool's Path to Product-Market Fit—Lessons for Getting to 100 Happy Customers, Faster: https://review.firstround.com/retools-path-to-product-market-fit-lessons-for-getting-to-100-happy-customers-faster/• How to foster innovation and big thinking | Eeke de Milliano (Retool, Stripe): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-foster-innovation-and-big• Looker: https://cloud.google.com/looker• Sorry, that isn't an FDE: https://tedmabrey.substack.com/p/sorry-that-isnt-an-fde• Glean: https://www.glean.com/• Limited Engagement: Is Tech Becoming More Diverse?: https://www.bkmag.com/2017/01/31/limited-engagement-creating-diversity-in-the-tech-industry/• Operation Warp Speed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed• Mark Zuckerberg testifies: https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-testifies-congress-libra-cryptocurrency-2019-10• Anduril: https://www.anduril.com/• SpaceX: https://www.spacex.com/• Principles: https://nabeelqu.co/principles• Wispr Flow: https://wisprflow.ai/• Claude code: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/agents-and-tools/claude-code/overview• Gemini Pro 2.5: https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini/pro/• DeepMind: https://deepmind.google/• Latent Space newsletter: https://www.latent.space/• Swyx on x: https://x.com/swyx• Neural networks in chess programs: https://www.chessprogramming.org/Neural_Networks• AlphaZero: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero• The top chess players in the world: https://www.chess.com/players• Decision to Leave: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12477480/• Oldboy: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364569/• Christopher Alexander: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander—Recommended books:• The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West: https://www.amazon.com/Technological-Republic-Power-Belief-Future/dp/0593798694• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future: https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296• Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre: https://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-Johnstone/dp/0878301178/• William Shakespeare: Histories: https://www.amazon.com/Histories-Everymans-Library-William-Shakespeare/dp/0679433120/• High Output Management: https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884• Anna Karenina: https://www.amazon.com/Anna-Karenina-Leo-Tolstoy/dp/0143035002—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Wes Kao is an entrepreneur, coach, and advisor. She co-founded the live learning platform Maven, backed by First Round and a16z. Before Maven, Wes co-created the altMBA with best-selling author Seth Godin. Today, Wes teaches a popular course on executive communication and influence. Through her course and one-on-one coaching, she's helped thousands of operators, founders, and product leaders master the art of influence through clear, compelling communication. Known for her surgical writing style and no-BS frameworks, Wes returns to the pod to deliver a tactical master class on becoming a sharper, more persuasive communicator—at work, in meetings, and across your career.What you'll learn:1. The #1 communication mistake leaders make—and Wes's proven fix to instantly gain buy-in2. Wes's MOO (Most Obvious Objection) framework to consistently anticipate and overcome pushback in meetings3. How to master concise communication—including Wes's tactical approach for brevity without losing meaning4. The art of executive presence: actionable strategies for conveying confidence and clarity, even under pressure5. The “sales, then logistics” framework—and why your ideas keep getting ignored without it6. The power of “signposting”—and why executives skim your docs without it7. Exactly how to give feedback that works—Wes's “strategy, not self-expression” principle to drive behavior change without friction8. Practical ways to instantly improve your writing, emails, and Slack messages—simple techniques Wes teaches executives9. Managing up like a pro: Wes's clear, practical advice on earning trust, building credibility, and aligning with senior leaders10. Career accelerators: specific habits and tactics from Wes for growing your influence, advancing your career, and standing out11. Real-world communication examples—Wes breaks down real scenarios she's solved, providing step-by-step solutions you can copy today—Brought to you by:• WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs• Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security• Coda—The all-in-one collaborative workspace—Where to find Wes Kao:• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/weskao/• Website: https://www.weskao.com/• Maven course: https://maven.com/wes-kao/executive-communication-influence—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Wes Kao(05:34) Working with Wes(06:58) The importance of communication(10:44) Sales before logistics(18:20) Being concise(24:31) Books to help you become a better writer(27:30) Signposting and formatting(32:05) How to develop and practice your communication skills(40:41) Slack communication(42:23) Confidence in communication(50:17) The MOO framework(54:00) Staying calm in high-stakes conversations(57:36) Which tactic to start with(58:53) Effective tactics for managing up(01:04:53) Giving constructive feedback: strategy, not self-expression(01:09:39) Delegating effectively while maintaining high standards(01:16:36) The swipe file: collecting inspiration for better communication(01:19:59) Leveraging AI for better communication(01:22:01) Lightning round—Referenced:• Persuasive communication and managing up | Wes Kao (Maven, Seth Godin, Section4): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/persuasive-communication-wes-kao• Making Meta | Andrew ‘Boz' Bosworth (CTO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/making-meta-andrew-boz-bosworth-cto• Communication is the job: https://boz.com/articles/communication-is-the-job• Maven: https://maven.com/• Sales, not logistics: https://newsletter.weskao.com/p/sales-not-logistics• How to be more concise: https://newsletter.weskao.com/p/how-to-be-concise• Signposting: How to reduce cognitive load for your reader: https://newsletter.weskao.com/p/sign-posting-how-to-reduce-cognitive• Airbnb's Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/impact-impact-impact-vlad-loktev• Tone and words: Use accurate language: https://newsletter.weskao.com/p/tone-and-words-use-accurate-language• Quote by Joan Didion: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/264509-i-don-t-know-what-i-think-until-i-write-it• Strategy, not self-expression: How to decide what to say when giving feedback: https://newsletter.weskao.com/p/strategy-not-self-expression• Tobi Lütke's leadership playbook: Playing infinite games, operating from first principles, and maximizing human potential (founder and CEO of Shopify): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/tobi-lutkes-leadership-playbook• The CEDAF framework: Delegating gets easier when you get better at explaining your ideas: https://newsletter.weskao.com/p/delegating-and-explaining• Swipe file: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swipe_file• Apple Notes: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/notes/id1110145109• Claude: https://claude.ai/new• ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/• Arianna Huffington's phone bed charging station (Oak): https://www.amazon.com/Arianna-Huffingtons-Phone-Charging-Station/dp/B079C5DBF4?th=1• The Harlan Coben Collection on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/81180221• Oral-B Pro 1000 rechargeable electric toothbrush: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003UKM9CO/• The Best Electric Toothbrush: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-electric-toothbrush/• Glengarry Glen Ross on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/Glengarry-Glen-Ross-James-Foley/dp/B002NN5F7A• 1,000,000: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/1000000—Recommended books:• On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction: https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548/• Stein on Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies: https://www.amazon.com/Stein-Writing-Successful-Techniques-Strategies/dp/0312254210/• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Memoir-Craft-Stephen-King/dp/1982159375• Several Short Sentences About Writing: https://www.amazon.com/Several-Short-Sentences-About-Writing/dp/0307279413/• High Output Management: https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884• Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long: https://www.amazon.com/Your-Brain-Work-Revised-Updated/dp/0063003155/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
In this episode, we sit down with Nathan Walter, CEO and co-founder of BriefPoint, live TLTF. Nathan's unique story combines the passion of a founder, the skills of a technologist, and the determination to solve one of litigation's most pressing challenges: the inefficiency and cost of document preparation. Whether you're a legal professional or an aspiring entrepreneur, this conversation is packed with insights and inspiration. What You'll Hear in This Episode: The Origin of BriefPoint: Learn how Nathan's frustration as a litigator led to creating a tool that automates discovery responses and requests, saving attorneys countless hours and leveling the playing field in litigation. Legal Aid Impact: Hear how organizations like the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles are using BriefPoint to enhance efficiency and focus on impactful legal work. Founders' Journey: Nathan shares how he met his co-founder, Chris Maffin, while playing online video games and how they've built a nimble, high-performing team of four that's solving real-world problems. Inspiration and Resources: Nathan's top book recommendations for founders include: High Output Management by Andrew Grove Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore Comedy Writing Secrets by Mark Shatz Why Listen? Nathan's passion for innovation and his unique perspective as both a litigator and tech entrepreneur make this episode a must-listen for anyone interested in legal technology, entrepreneurship, or the intersection of tech and law. Connect with Nathan: Website: BriefPoint LinkedIn: Nathan Walter If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to like, share, and subscribe. Let's take your career from now to next. Never eat alone.
Show Notes for "The Silicon Valley Podcast" – Dave House Interview Guest: David House, American Engineer and Computer Designer Bio: David House, also known as Dave House, is a distinguished American engineer and computer designer renowned for his significant contributions to Intel, where he was pivotal in developing the company's microprocessor product line. He is widely recognized for coining the slogan “Intel Inside,” a marketing campaign that transformed Intel into a household name. Career Highlights: BSEE from Michigan Technological University (1965) MSEE from Northeastern University (1969) Early career at Raytheon and Honeywell, focusing on computer design and communications systems Joined Intel in 1974, eventually becoming the General Manager of the Microcomputer Components Division Led Intel's transition towards a marketing-driven approach, launching the “Intel Inside” campaign Grew Intel's microprocessor division from $40 million to $4 billion annually Served as President and CEO of Bay Systems and later CEO of startup Allegro Current Chairman of the House Family Foundation and Chair of the Board at the Computer History Museum Developed a theory related to Moore's Law, identifying an 18-month period for the doubling of transistor capacity on integrated circuits Interview Topics: Leadership Decision Making Managing for Results Conflict Resolution Meetings Vision and Mission: Integral to leadership and decision-making with culture being a fundamental aspect, often summarized as “Culture is the rules for when there are no rules.” Key Interview Questions: Introduction: Dave, it's a pleasure to have an industry legend like yourself here. To get us started, could you give our audience a quick 30-second overview of your impressive career? Mentorship: During those early years, who were some of your mentors, and how did they shape your path? Management Focus: Can we talk about some of the lessons learned? For starters, should a manager focus on managing people or outcomes? And how can they best achieve the desired results? Overspecifying Results: Can you elaborate on what you mean by overspecifying results? Decision-Making Process: You've talked about the importance of socializing the decision-making process. Can you explain what that means and why it's beneficial? Constructive Confrontation: You've advocated for a more constructive approach to confrontation in business meetings. Can you share why and suggest alternative strategies for addressing disagreements? Roles of a CEO: For aspiring leaders, what do you see as the two most critical roles of a CEO? Career Reflections: Looking back, which career choices are you most proud of, and what life lessons can our audience glean from those experiences? . Key resources referenced: - The book "High Output Management."
FROM ARCHIVE With WordPress powering a third of the internet, Alex Denning offers a look at his journey and the innovative strategies his agency employs to support WordPress businesses. From his early days at Miniclip to founding WP Shout and ultimately Ellipsis, Alex's story is a testament to the power of passion and persistence.Curious about the steps of building a successful remote team? Alex opens up about the challenges he faced transitioning from a solo freelancer to managing a diverse team. Drawing from the principles in "High Output Management," he emphasizes the importance of delegation and trust. You'll find out how Alex leverages his network within the WordPress community and the strategic roles within his team to propel Ellipsis Marketing forward. Learn why autonomy and progress are crucial for a thriving team dynamic.Struggling with remote work productivity? This episode covers mastering the art of "deep work." Alex shares practical tips on using tools like Basecamp for asynchronous communication and timers for focused work periods. Whether you're trying to balance homeschooling or seeking ways to maintain your energy levels, this conversation offers tips to optimize your remote work environment.Refer a Remote Work Expert As a Guest On The ShowClick here remoteworklife.io to subscribe to my free newsletter Connect on LinkedIn
For our seventh episode of Working Smarter we're talking to Drew Houston, the co-founder and CEO of Dropbox. If you've been online long enough, it's likely Dropbox was your introduction to the cloud. The goal is still more or less the same—give you one organized place for all your stuff—but it's no longer just about storing and syncing files. A hundred files on your desktop is now a hundred tabs in your browser, and Houston believes AI is what will finally bring calm to the chaos that's been created by the tools of modern work.For Houston, AI's potential is so great that its arrival feels like a civilization shift. It's also not just a professional preoccupation; AI is a personal interest too. A few years ago he decided to teach himself machine learning in his spare time—and some of the AI tools Houston now uses to run Dropbox are ones he built himself. Hear Houston discuss why it's gotten so hard to find the information you need to do your job, the types of tasks we'll increasingly offload to our silicon brains, and what Dropbox is doing to help make modern work more meaningful and fulfilling.Show notes:To learn more about Dropbox Dash and try Dash for free, visit dropbox.com/dashThe two books Houston mentions are “High Output Management” by Andy Grove and “The Effective Executive” by Peter Drucker~ ~ ~Working Smarter is a new podcast from Dropbox about how AI is changing the way we work and get stuff done.You can listen to more episodes of Working Smarter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. To read more stories and past interviews, visit workingsmarter.aiThis show would not be possible without the talented team at Cosmic Standard, namely: our producers Samiah Adams and Aja Simpson, technical director Jacob Winik, and executive producer Eliza Smith. Special thanks to Benjy Baptiste for production assistance, our marketing and PR consultant Meggan Ellingboe, and our illustrators, Fanny Luor and Justin Tran. Our theme song was created by Doug Stuart. Working Smarter is hosted by Matthew Braga.
Welcome to Growthmates. This is Kate Syuma, Growth advisor, previously Head of Growth Design at Miro. I'm building Growthmates as a place to connect with inspiring leaders to help you grow yourself and your product. Here you can learn how companies like Dropbox, Adobe, Canva, Loom and many more are building excellent products and growth culture. Get all episodes and a free playbook for Growth teams on our brand-new website — growthamtes.club, and press follow to support us on your favorite platforms. Thanks for reading Kate's Syuma Newsletter & Growthmates! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Listen now and subscribe on your favorite platforms — Apple, Spotify, or watch on YouTube (new!).In this episode, I met Bruno Berger — a VP of Design and Product Management who worked in companies like Google, Metabase, and now he's teaching “Design for PMs” on Reforge. We discuss Bruno's career journey, the integration of design and product management, and best practices for improving collaboration between designers and PMs. We also explored Bruno's strategies for combining design and product management to enhance team collaboration and project success.By the end of this episode, you can learn how to make your PM and Design collaboration better by adjusting the ways of working, building trust, and how to align faster to make it the most rewarding thinking partnership.This episode is supported by Appcues — the platform that helps you design, deploy, and test captivating onboarding experiences.Appcues created the Product Adoption Academy to help you level up your product adoption for free. Check out the template that I created to help companies uncover meaningful improvements. Find an example of Dropbox Onboarding inside and apply it to review any growth flows: appcues.com/growthmatesKey highlights from this episode that you can implement right away
Jeff Weinstein is a product lead at Stripe, where he helped grow their payment APIs to hundreds of billions in volume and transformed the way founders start companies into a few simple clicks with Atlas. Prior to Stripe, Jeff led several startups and sold companies to Groupon and Box. He's known for his customer obsession, craft, quality, and building beloved products businesses rely on. In our conversation, we discuss:• The power of customer obsession and how to operationalize it in the product development process• How to pick the right metrics and use them to drive impact• Techniques for getting things done at big companies• A group practice Jeff started to uplevel product craft, called Study Group• The story behind Stripe Atlas and its mission to increase entrepreneurship globally• Lessons from working with the founders of Stripe—Brought to you by:• Pendo—The all-in-one platform for product-led companies building breakthrough digital experiences• Cycle—Your feedback hub, on autopilot• Anvil—The fastest way to build software for documents—Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/creating-a-culture-of-excellence—Where to find Jeff Weinstein:• X: https://x.com/jeff_weinstein• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffwweinstein/• Email: jweinstein@gmail.com—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Jeff's background (10:16) The “go, go, go ASAP + optimistic, long-term compounding” approach(15:38) The importance of craft and quality(24:15) Effective customer communication strategies(28:57) The importance of speed in customer interactions (33:19) Narrowing your focus(36:53) Why you should pay attention only to paying-customer feedback(40:24) Practicing silence when communicating (45:33) The role of metrics in product success(54:08) Empowering teams with a single metric(58:23) Picking the right metric for your audience(01:05:10) The importance of metric hygiene(01:11:33) How Stripe uses “study groups” for product improvement(01:37:20) Stripe's Atlas: simplifying company formation(01:50:38) Automation and operational efficiency(01:55:13) Diversity and team building(02:03:09) Building new products within a large company(02:21:10) Lightning round—Referenced:• Atlas: https://stripe.com/atlas• Stripe: https://stripe.com/• SQL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL• GitHub: https://github.com/• Linear: https://linear.app/• Figma: https://www.figma.com/• Jeff's tweet about Stripe's bug-finder program: https://x.com/jeff_weinstein/status/1777487507934040300• The “Collison installation”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18400504• How we use friction logs to improve products at Stripe: https://dev.to/stripe/how-we-use-friction-logs-to-improve-products-at-stripe-i6p• Fidelity: https://www.fidelity.com/• 83(b) election: https://docs.stripe.com/atlas/83b-election• Jeff's tweet about Atlas's NPS score: https://x.com/jeff_weinstein/status/1788644576330469638• What is a Delaware corporation? Here's what makes this state so attractive to businesses: https://stripe.com/resources/more/what-is-a-delaware-corporation• Incorporating in Delaware explained: Why it's such a popular option for businesses: https://stripe.com/resources/more/incorporating-in-delaware-explained• 7 of Pixar's Best Storyboard Examples and the Stories Behind Them: https://boords.com/blog/7-of-pixars-best-storyboard-examples-and-the-stories-behind-them• Alex Kehayias on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexkehayias/• Patrick McKenzie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickmckenzie/• AngelList: https://www.angellist.com/• Dan Hightower on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danhighto/• Stripe Atlas perks partners: https://support.stripe.com/questions/stripe-atlas-perks-partners• Vision, conviction, and hype: How to build 0 to 1 inside a company | Mihika Kapoor (Product at Figma): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/vision-conviction-hype-mihika-kapoor• High Output Management: https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884• Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace: https://www.amazon.com/Orbiting-Giant-Hairball-Corporate-Surviving/dp/0670879835• 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy: https://www.amazon.com/7-Powers-Foundations-Business-Strategy/dp/0998116319• Business strategy with Hamilton Helmer (author of 7 Powers): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/business-strategy-with-hamilton-helmer• Box: https://www.box.com/• Patrick Collison on X: https://x.com/patrickc• How to with John Wilson on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/how-to-with-john-wilson• The Quiet Girl on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/movie/the-quiet-girl-b50a4b8e-d3ff-4635-b806-5e7dbd292ca4• Raycast: https://www.raycast.com/• Quicksilver: https://qsapp.com/• Alfred: https://www.alfredapp.com/help/workflows/automations/• CleanShot: https://cleanshot.com/• John Collison on X: https://x.com/collision—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
In this episode of Grow a Small Business, host Troy Trewin interviews Nima Gardideh, founder of Pearmill, about his journey scaling the company from 3 to 35 team members. Nima shares valuable insights on leveraging AI for operational efficiency, maintaining work-life balance, and achieving phenomenal revenue growth. Join us as we delve into Nima's strategies for success in the tech industry. Why would you wait any longer to start living the lifestyle you signed up for? Balance your health, wealth, relationships and business growth. And focus your time and energy and make the most of this year. Let's get into it by clicking here. Troy delves into our guest's startup journey, their perception of success, industry reconsideration, and the pivotal stress point during business expansion. They discuss the joys of small business growth, vital entrepreneurial habits, and strategies for team building, encompassing wins, blunders, and invaluable advice. And a snapshot of the final five Grow A Small Business Questions: What do you think is the hardest thing in growing a small business? Nima Gardideh believes that one of the toughest challenges in growing a small business is acquiring customers and maintaining revenue. This struggle highlights the ongoing effort required to sustain and expand a customer base, a crucial aspect of business growth. What's your favourite business book that has helped you the most? Nima Gardideh's favorite business book, which has been most helpful to him, is "High Output Management" by Andy Grove. He finds the book's insights and principles valuable for his work and business endeavors. Are there any great podcasts or online learning resources you'd recommend to help grow a small business? Nima Gardideh recommends "The Bartlett Show" and "All In" podcasts for tech-related insights, given his background in the tech industry. He also enjoys podcasts by thinkers like Sam Harris and Steven Pinker, as they often feature entrepreneurs and scientists whose perspectives expand his thinking and excite his mind. What tool or resource would you recommend to grow a small business? Nima Gardideh recommends using AI tools like Chat GPT or similar AI tools that can consume vast amounts of information on the internet. These tools can provide valuable insights and help automate tasks like writing press releases or copywriting, allowing business owners to focus more on sales and growth. What advice would you give yourself on day one of starting out in business? On day one of starting out in business, Nima Gardideh advises focusing on establishing a rhythm and building rituals for introspection earlier in the journey. This approach can enhance personal productivity and facilitate better decision-making throughout the entrepreneurial endeavor. Book a 20-minute Growth Chat with Troy Trewin to see if you qualify for our upcoming course. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your small business to new heights! Enjoyed the podcast? Please leave a review on iTunes or your preferred platform. Your feedback helps more small business owners discover our podcast and embark on their business growth journey. Quotable quotes from our special Grow A Small Business podcast guest: Building a successful business is about creating momentum through rhythm and empowering your team to do the same – Nima Gardideh Creating the right incentives for your team and clients is crucial for sustainable growth – Nima Gardideh Professional development isn't just about business; it's about becoming a better person in all aspects of life – Nima Gardideh
Kiera reviews May's DAT Book Club selection, High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove and why her takeaways are complicated. A few of her favorite ideas from the book: delegation is not abdication; allow time to connect; and why less is more when it comes to performance reviews. Find the full book club rundown here! Episode resources: Reach out to Kiera Virtual Consulting Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Become Dental A-Team Platinum! Review the podcast
"Tips from the former chairman and CEO of Intel"
Hablando con Tech Leaders: Explorando el Liderazgo en la TecnologÃa
Entrevista a Ramón Medrano - Senior Staff Site Reliability Engineer en Google Bienvenidos a un nuevo episodio de "Hablando con Tech Leaders", esta vez nos adentramos en los intrincados mundos del Big Tech, en concreto Google de la mano de nuestro invitado con 10 años en la empresa nos comparte muchos temas, la inteligencia artificial, la gestión de equipos de infraestructura y el desarrollo profesional con un invitado de lujo: Ramon Medrano Llamas. Ramon Medrano, un profesional que sorprendentemente en un sector donde suele haber mucha movilidad, ha desarrollado prácticamente toda su carrera y ha crecido dentro del mismo equipo en Google. Desde el impacto de la inteligencia artificial, su regulación, hasta las particularidades de dirigir equipos de infraestructura con respecto al desarrollo, Medrano ofrece una visión clara y profunda. Además, hemos hablado un poco del desarrollo del sector tecnológico en España y junto con Andrés y como buenos asturianos, como no, hemos hablado también de Asturias en concreto y del estado del sector, y su potencial en la región. No te lo pierdas!! Como siempre hablamos de materiales que nos pudiera recomendar que le hayan ayudado en su carrera como líder de equipos y nos ha mencionado dos: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/324750.High_Output_Management de Andrew S. Grove (donde se habla por primera vez de OKRs) https://www.radicalcandor.com/ Timestamps: (00:02:34) - 10 años en la misma empresa y en el mismo equipo! como se explica? (00:15:47) - Formación en liderazgo en Google (00:47:31) - Ecosistema empresarial en Asturias (01:08:44) - ¿Que consejo le darías a alguien que este empezando como Manager? Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rmedranollamas/ Debate sobre permanecer en la misma empresa o cambiar: https://twitter.com/PabloGrueso/status/1771060439075471733 Pedro Pardal ¿Sabrías justificar por qué tu salario es el que es? - https://twitter.com/ppardalj/status/1767566753217839429 Project Oxygen: https://mutomorro.com/project-oxygen/ y como Google prepara a sus ingenieros para ser managers: https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-management
Why aren't your employees doing their job? Let's find out. Phil shares some management and leadership gems from High Output Management by Andrew Grove in this episode. Grab some gear at GoLeadEverything.com/gear ________________________ Subscribe to the Phil Swanson YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@philswanson Rate and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/go-lead-everything-gle-with-phil-swanson/id1507270810 https://open.spotify.com/show/2xzibFAsAQ86l0famNIufr?si=c77d176ee4d34d48 Follow Phil Swanson on Social Media: GoLeadEverything.com ______________________________ Visit GoLeadEverything.com to find me on social or YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate, review, and share... you know the drill. Soundtrack Credit: Hot Coffee – Patrick Patrikios
Michael Cieri is the Chief Product Officer at Gusto, an HR and payroll platform used by more than 300,000 businesses. With a decade of experience, he has led successful SMB product development and scaled high-performing orgs. Before Gusto, Michael was also the Head of Product at Square, where he led a team of 15+ PMs responsible for $600m in annual revenue. Michael was also the VP of Product Management at Opendoor. — In today's episode, we discuss: Key product strategies used by Square and Gusto The pros and cons of building for SMBs How to build horizontal after creating a wedge The catch with building vertical SaaS How product teams can move faster Developing product sense and intuition — Referenced: Alyssa Henry: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyssa-henry-0905692/ Copilot: https://copilot.microsoft.com/ Gokul Rajaram: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gokulrajaram1/ Gusto: https://gusto.com/ High Output Management: https://amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884 Marty Cagan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cagan/ Opendoor: https://www.opendoor.com/ Silicon Valley Product Group: https://www.svpg.com/ Square: https://squareup.com/ The Three Horizons Model: https://www.mckinsey.com/enduring-ideas-the-three-horizons-of-growth Toast: https://pos.toasttab.com/ — Where to find Michael Cieri: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcieri/ — Where to find Brett Berson: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson — Where to find First Round Capital: Website: https://firstround.com/ First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstround YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast — Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (02:41) Why SMBs require unique software solutions (05:58) The level of specificity required when building for SMBs (08:47) Finding Square's form-fitting solution (11:48) Building vertical versus horizontal SaaS (14:34) Inside Square and Gusto's decision making framework (16:15) How to build horizontally from a wedge product (23:00) Using the Three Horizons Model (25:29) How to craft a compelling vision for products (28:51) How to assess Horizon 3 bets (32:08) How to give employees the freedom to try things (34:24) Creating a risk-taking culture (37:27) Essential advice for new PMs (40:27) Common thread with bad product pitches (42:29) Applying the Horizon framework at Gusto (44:46) Developing good product sense (47:43) 5 signs of great product sense (49:03) Why product sense is like athletic ability (51:43) How to ship faster without increasing headcount (56:10) People who had an outsized impact on Michael
Today, we're talking about the hidden languages of business. Imagine it like navigating a foreign land. The first crucial language is accounting. Learn to read those financial statements and protect yourself. Next up, psychology. Understand what drives people...your employees and customers. Dive into books like "Influence" and "Thinking, Fast and Slow" for insights. Lastly, systems and processes. They're your growth backbone. Check out "The Goal" and "High Output Management" for the scoop. I won't spill all the secrets here, so tune in for the full rundown.LEAVE A REVIEW if you liked this episode!! Let's Connect On Social Media! youtube.com/anthonyvicino twitter.com/anthonyvicino instagram.com/theanthonyvicino https://anthonyvicino.com Join an exclusive community of peak performers at Beyond the Apex University learning how to build a business, invest in real estate, and develop hyperfocus. www.beyondtheapex.com Learn More About Investing With Anthony Invictus Capital: www.invictusmultifamily.com Multifamily Investing Made Simple Podcast Passive Investing Made Simple Book: www.thepassiveinvestingbook.com
Phoenix Project author, Gene Kim, is back on Troubleshooting Agile to discuss the groundbreaking theories of organizational management described in his new book, Wiring the Winning Organization. In this episode (part three of three), Gene discusses how and why you should be "simplifying” and “amplifying" in your DevOps team. Links: - Wiring the Winning Organization: https://itrevolution.com/product/wiring-the-winning-organization/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/RealGeneKim - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realgenekim/ - Steve Yegge Amazon Platform Rant: https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 - Investments Unlimited: https://itrevolution.com/product/investments-unlimited/ - Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist–Shannon_sampling_theorem - High Output Management: https://bookshop.org/p/books/high-output-management-andrew-s-grove/6730629 - Ratio (cookbook) https://bookshop.org/p/books/ratio-the-simple-codes-behind-the-craft-of-everyday-cooking-michael-ruhlman/8881759 -------------------------------------------------- About Our Guest Gene Kim is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, researcher, and multiple award-winning CTO. He has been studying high-performing technology organizations since 1999 and was the founder and CTO of Tripwire for 13 years. He is the author of six books, The Unicorn Project (2019), and co-author of the Shingo Publication Award winning Accelerate (2018), The DevOps Handbook (2016), and The Phoenix Project (2013). Since 2014, he has been the founder and organizer of DevOps Enterprise Summit, studying the technology transformations of large, complex organizations. -------------------------------------------------- Order your copy of our book, Agile Conversations at agileconversations.com Plus, get access to a free mini training video about the technique of Coherence Building when you join our mailing list. We'd love to hear any thoughts, ideas, or feedback you have about the show. Email us at info@agileconversations.com -------------------------------------------------- About Your Hosts Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick first met while working together at TIM group in 2013. A decade later, they remain united in their passion for growing organisations through better conversations. Squirrel is an advisor, author, keynote speaker, coach, and consultant, helping companies of all sizes make huge, profitable improvements in their culture, skills, and processes. You can find out more about his work here: https://douglassquirrel.com/index.html Jeffrey is Vice President of Engineering at ION Analytics, Organiser at CITCON, the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference, author and speaker. You can connect with him here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jfredrick/
Chapter 1 To understand High Output ManagementHigh Output Management is a book written by Andrew S. Grove, the former CEO of Intel. Published in 1983, it is a management guide that focuses on increasing productivity and efficiency in organizations.The book details various management principles and practices that can be applied to different industries. Grove introduces the concept of leverage, which means using the highest-leverage activities to achieve maximum results. He emphasizes the importance of setting clear goals, organizing tasks efficiently, and continuously improving processes.Grove also discusses the role of managers in achieving high output, including how they should handle meetings, make decisions, and provide feedback to their employees. He highlights the need for effective communication and reducing bureaucracy in order to improve productivity.Throughout the book, Grove shares his own experiences and provides practical examples to illustrate the concepts he presents. High Output Management has become a seminal work in the field of management and is renowned for its straightforward and actionable advice on how to manage and lead teams effectively.Chapter 2 Is High Output Management worth the investment?Yes, High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove is widely regarded as a good book. It is highly recommended for anyone in a managerial or leadership role. Grove, a former CEO of Intel, shares valuable insights and practical strategies for improving productivity, managing teams, and making effective business decisions. The book is praised for its clear and concise writing style, use of real-world examples, and the practical advice it offers to help readers become better managers.Chapter 3 Introduction to High Output Management"High Output Management" is a management guidebook written by Andrew S. Grove, the former CEO and Chairman of Intel Corporation. The book provides practical advice and insights on effective management techniques to improve productivity and achieve high output within organizations.The central theme of the book revolves around the concept of leverage, which Grove defines as the concept of achieving outsized results with the same or fewer resources. He asserts that managers should focus on identifying leverage points within their organizations to maximize output.Grove emphasizes the importance of optimizing workflows and processes, stating that good management should be focused on increasing the yield of productive work. He provides valuable insights on various managerial techniques, such as setting objectives, defining key results, and establishing performance indicators. Grove also advises managers to cultivate a results-oriented culture within their teams.The book covers a wide range of topics, including time management, effective meetings, decision-making, and team building. Grove emphasizes the importance of clear communication and provides strategies for effective communication within organizations.Furthermore, Grove emphasizes the need for managers to be proactive and address potential problems before they become major issues. He advocates for a hands-on approach to management, encouraging managers to actively monitor and analyze key performance indicators.Throughout the book, Grove uses real-life examples and anecdotes to illustrate his points, making the concepts more relatable and tangible for readers. He also shares personal experiences from his time at Intel, offering valuable insights from his own journey as a manager and leader.In summary, "High Output Management" provides a comprehensive guide to
In today's episode of Category Visionaries, we speak with Ravi Parikh, CEO and Co-Founder of Airplane, a developer platform for internal tooling that's raised over $40 Million in funding, about why an increasingly differentiated digital economy needs a more agile toolkit for developing solutions to specific tasks. Enabling their clients to develop internal UIs with just a few lines of code, coordinate tasks and introduce custom tools across a whole range of third-party platforms, Airplane transforms basic scripts into production grade apps. We speak to the CEO and Co-Founder about his background as a software engineer and the companies he founded before Airplane, the real world experience that inspired him to focus on internal developer tools, staying competitive in a crowded marketplace, and why Airplane decided against going ‘no-code.' Topics Discussed: Ravi's background in software engineering and analytics, and his record of founding tech-centered companies The personal experience with a real-world pain point that led Ravi to develop the Airplane platform The challenge of developing a complex platform prior to establishing product market fit The importance of clear competitive advantage to convince engineers that there's a better solution than writing code themselves Why Airplane rejected the ‘no code' buzzword to provide a unique offering in a crowded marketplace Favorite book: High Output Management
A message came in that asked for a document only I had. While walking, I found the file on my phone (a 42-page document), attached it to a teams message, and hit send. Please take a moment. That is some Jetson's level stuff. It's incredible, and there is a man that, in many ways, made it possible. Andy Grove, a first-generation immigrant, arrived in the US in his early 20s. In his memoir, he described his early life this way, By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis' “Final Solution,” the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint.Grove would join Intel corporation as the 3rd employee, become the first COO, and eventually CEO. In 1997, Time magazine chose him as Person of the Year, “the person most responsible for the amazing growth in the power and innovative potential of microchips.”In addition to his work at Intel, he published seven books, including High Output Management - a personal favorite. Grove is considered the father of the OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) used by many organizations, including mine. High Output Management is chock full of management and leadership wisdom, and I wanted to share a bit with you today. Here are a few of my favorites. 1. How you handle your time is the most important aspect of being a role model and leader.The only genuinely non-renewable resource we have is time. We can likely make anything else. You have to be aggressive about your time, and it's hard. It's hard to say no to people, projects and not be in the room when you have an opinion. This is from Andy, “To use your calendar as a production-planning tool, you must accept responsibility for two things: 1. You should move toward the active use of your calendar, taking the initiative to fill the holes between the time-critical events with non-time-critical though necessary activities. 2. You should say “no” at the outset to work beyond your capacity to handle.”Move to active use of your calendar. Use it as a tool. Don't let it just fill up. Think about what didn't happen because you were too busy saying yes. Productivity is not being busy. Productivity is creating value. The most important part about what Andy is saying is that you are a role model. How you spend your time will trickle. You are being watched, and your behaviors become team culture. Andy also says, “Strategy starts with your calendar.” Think about how you can apply that to your life. Best case, you only have 4,000 weeks. Choose wisely. 2. The task of a manager is to elicit peak performance from his subordinates. A manager has two ways to tackle the issue: through training and motivation.Teams exist to do what individuals cannot. Most of what happens in the world occurs through the work of teams. Even those that seem like individual contributors to society, I think about artists, have teams. The leader's job is to maximize team performance.I challenge Andy's use of motivation here as I'm not sure it's possible to motivate someone. It is possible to remind someone what motivates them, whether money, ideology, compensation, or ego (MICE). People can be inspired to be a part of something bigger than themselves or be more than they thought they could be. That's where leaders come in. Sprinkle their days with inspiration, and you will see the flywheel of performance pick up speed. 3. Training is one of the highest-leverage activities a manager can perform.Leaders should find the activities that provide the most leverage. Training is usually top of that list. Don't delegate it. Don't outsource it. Do it yourself. Face to face, I care about you, and we are in it together, training. Be clear on what excellence looks like. And don't ever forget that before you can hold someone accountable, you owe them clear expectations. Deliver that through world-class training. 4. A manager's output = the output of their organization + the output of the neighboring organizations under their influence.Yes, your job is to maximize team performance. Here's the kicker of what Andy is saying. You are also responsible for the output of neighboring teams. Silos of excellence will kill an organization. When leaders embrace that they are also responsible for the adjacent performance, silos get torn down. 5. You need to plan the way a fire department plans. It cannot anticipate where the next fire will be, so it has to shape an energetic and efficient team that is capable of responding to the unanticipated as well as to any ordinary event.Teams get frustrated when their work is interrupted by fire drills created by the customer, the market, or meddling managers. Fire drills are part of your job, and you should plan accordingly. To not prepare for the inevitable is a dereliction of duty. 6. Decision-making is not a spectator sport, because onlookers get in the way of what needs to be done.Andy goes on, “Remember that a meeting called to make a specific decision is hard to keep moving if more than six or seven people attend. Eight people should be the absolute cutoff.”The Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is real. If you are leading, cut down on the attendees. If you are trying to attend, ask yourself if you need to attend to help or if you are attending because of your ego or insecurity. Again, think about your time and its best use.I was recently introduced to the Joy of Missing Out (JOMO). There is some joy in letting go and spending time on what you are uniquely qualified to do for the team. Let it go. You don't have to be in the room. 7. The key to survival is to learn to add more valueHumility allows us to realize everyone is our teacher. We are in a cycle of living and learning to get better. Whether you are an individual contributor, a leader, or an organization, you are compensated to add value. Stop adding value, or worse yet, remove value, and you don't survive. It's that simple. If you want to thrive, keep learning, changing, and adding value to the lives of others. Let's get it, friend. NEXT: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kellyvohs.substack.com
Clay Finck chats with Jesse Mecham all about budget, whether budgets are for everyone or not, looking at an investor's overall financial situation when assessing their strategy, and much more!Jesse is the founder of You Need A Budget or YNAB, and is also a personal finance expert and business leader. He is deeply passionate about teaching individuals, families, and business owners YNAB's four rules to help them gain total control of their money, which Jesse will be covering for us a little bit later.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN:00:00 - Intro02:34 - What led Jesse to start his business in 2004 while he was still in college?06:13 - The story on when Jesse knew it was time to quit his full-time accounting career to go all in on his business.14:59 - What is, and what is not a budget?27:34 - YNAB's four money rules.43:39 - What Jesse's personal portfolio looks like.46:33 - What some of Jesse's favorite books are.And much, much more!*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.BOOKS AND RESOURCESCheck out You Need a Budget.Check out YNAB's YouTube channel.Books mentioned in the episode: Traction, High Output Management, The Hard Thing about Hard Things, Your Money or Your Life, The Richest Man in Babylon, Antifragile, & Four Thousand Weeks.Related Episode: Listen to MI080: To Be A Successful Investor, You Need A Budget w/ Jesse Mecham, or watch the video.NEW TO THE SHOW?Check out our Millennial Investing Starter Packs.Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here.Try Robert's favorite tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance.Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services.Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets.Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts.P.S The Investor's Podcast Network is excited to launch a subreddit devoted to our fans in discussing financial markets, stock picks, questions for our hosts, and much more! Join our subreddit r/TheInvestorsPodcast today!SPONSORSGet a FREE audiobook from Audible.Instead of trying to time the market or pick single stocks, automate your investments and invest in a variety of companies with Betterment.Apply for the Employee Retention Credit easily, no matter how busy you are, with Innovation Refunds.Partner with a specialized agency focused on making insurance as easy as possible for real estate investors. Take advantage of monthly reporting, monthly billing, and coverage for all phases of occupancy with National Real Estate Insurance Group.Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors.Connect with Jesse: Website | Twitter | Instagram Connect with Clay: TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Host Jenny Herald's guest on this episode of Dreams With Deadlines has traveled a fascinating road – one that culminated in the founding The Chief Excellence Officer™️ Academy. Mukom Tamon's unique platform advocates for frontlines managers by providing them key change management tools and the resources to ensure excellence. He shares his perspectives on the interplay between various methodologies, highlights the power and nuance behind OKRs and deconstructs his hybrid coaching framework – a blend of strategies to turn vision into execution.Key Things Discussed: Mukom's evolution in understanding how business systems build both efficiency and effectiveness – and books that opened his eyes along the way. The interplay between 4DX, OKRs and their impacts on workplace cultures. How his SIPPR Canvas enables Mukom's clients to adopt OKRs seamlessly based on clarity around how teams create, deliver, capture, and measure value. Initiating week-by-week forecasts that assess and ultimately activate resources, skills, budget, and tools to reach desired OKR outcomes. The difference between exploiting and exploring and how systems thinking can create an essential bridge between the two. Show Notes [00:00:49] OKR Origin Story: Personal Efficiency. How Mukom went from being an individual network engineer to developing credibility and excellence through efficiencies. [00:03:02] OKR Origin Story Pt II: Team Efficiency. Coming to understand that management success depends on processes that manage other people's outcomes. [00:05:10] OKR Origin Story Pt III: Building Effectiveness. Establishing a framework to move from strategy to execution with the help of an epiphany after reading "The Four Disciplines of Execution," by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, Jim Huling. It was Mukom's bridge to OKRs! [00:07:30] From 4DX to OKRs: In response to teams who felt overworked and underappreciated, Mukom led his team co-create a "No Asshole, No Bullshit" OKR to support a healthier, stonger team. [00:11:31] The Role of Trust: How psychological safety and its impacts can be measured through behavioral indicators. [00:14:40] Elevators of Excellence: Why processes are to teams what habits are to individuals and how they can be leveraged to build trust and improve weaknesses. [00:16:44] About OKRs with a Strategy: Why workplace cultures are integral to sustained, successful outcomes. [00:18:44] Exploit Versus Explore: Balancing the elements of 4DX and OKRs in the context of immediate needs and long-term workplace cultural development. [00:22:50] About Mukom's SIPPR Canvas: Why silos don't have to be a given and can be broken down with basic tools of communication and transparency. [00:26:30] Expanding an Application: How Mukom's SIPPR Canvas adapts the Business Model Canvas to encompass team context, purpose and value propositions. [00:30:24] OKR Advantage: How having a clearly defined SIPPR canvas sets companies up to implement and adopt OKRs more quickly based on clarity around how teams create, deliver, capture, and measure value. [00:32:00] Real-Time Example: Mukom demonstrates his SIPPR canvas by applying inputs and outputs to the Dreams With Deadlines podcast's goals and operations: Processes and projects. Short-, medium, and long-term benefits. Sources. Customer success management. Results metrics (such as leads, production, efficiency). Measurable, quantifiable OKRs based on data. [00:38:03] Using the SIPPR canvas framework both to exploit current capabilities and explore (and develop prototypes for) future outcomes. [00:39:22] About Mukom's OKR Activation Canvas: How to define narrow objectives (important!) and deploy a quality matrix to measure key results. [00:41:40] Cultivating PET: Why it's critical that managers be judicious and create systems that support Passion, Engagement, Time (and trust) among teams. [00:44:25] Key Indicators: About putting in place week-by-week check-ins to forecast (and ultimately activate) resources, skills, budget and tools to reach desired outcomes. [00:47:15] An Agile Element: How Mukom's framework injects systems thinking, enabling fluid processes that adapt to cultural challenges and predict OKR success. [00:48:44] Freedom Through Accountability: How Mukom rolled out OKRs to capture, measure and deliver value in the context of a huge telecommunications concern. [00:50:48] Strength Out of Failure: Why Mukom is always proud to share his documented failures – the foundation on which he builds demonstrable, repeatable processes, and success! [00:53:13] Going Wide: How Mukom documents clear, quantifiable results to bring leadership along when it comes time to expand OKR mandates across the organization. [00:55:33] Finding the Nuance: Why it's so important to align OKR goals with internal systems and cultures, distinguishing between leadership strategy and team execution. [00:59:00] OKRs Are Not Strategy: Strategy defines where to play and how to win. OKRs clarify the recipe and build the culture to get you there. [01:01:47] Quick-Fire Questions for Mukom: What's your Dream With a Deadline: To enable 10,000 frontline managers to achieve excellence in the next five years, using tools like his OKR Deployment Accelerator. What has been your most significant strategy failure to date? Failing to prioritize OKRs, believing they were applicable to everyone, everywhere all the time. Where do you think OKRs are headed? A period of backlash to their popularity and failures in the way they are executed that only gets better with time and education about best practices. Relevant links: "The Four Disciplines of Execution," by Chris McChesney, Jim Huling, Sean Covey Measure What Matters," by John Doerr Learn what Peter Drucker actually said about "culture eating strategy for breakfast." "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change," by Stephen R. Covey About "The 13 Behaviors of Trust." "High Output Management ," by Andrew Grove Understanding Mukom's SIPPR Canvas James Clear's observation that "You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems." About "The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization," by Peter M. Senge "The OKRs Field Book: A Step-by-Step Guide for Objectives and Key Results Coaches," by Ben Lamorte About Our Guest:Mukom Tamon is the founder of The Chief Excellence Officer™️ Academy, a platform that teaches frontline managers how to design and built an infrastructure of team excellence. He has over 13 years of experience in global workplace cultures and is an OKR visionary.Follow Our Guest:Twitter | LinkedIn | WebsiteFollow Dreams With Deadlines:Host | Company Website | Blog | Instagram | Twitter
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Brought to you by Mixpanel—Product analytics that everyone can trust, use, and afford | Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments | Braintrust—For when you needed talent, yesterday—David Singleton is Chief Technology Officer at Stripe, where he oversees engineering and design teams. Since joining Stripe, David has helped grow the technology org across the U.S. and developed new engineering hubs in Singapore and Dublin as well as Stripe's fifth hub, remote engineering, across the globe. Before Stripe, he spent 11 years at Google, where he was VP of Engineering, leading product development and coordinating more than 15 different hardware partnerships. In today's episode, we cover:• Hiring secrets that set Stripe employees apart• How to build a product-minded engineering team• How to operationalize meticulousness• Strategies for maintaining developer productivity at scale• The process of “friction logging” used to make better products• How AI is changing the way engineers work• Insights for planning and prioritizing at scale—Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/building-a-culture-of-excellence-david-singleton-cto-of-stripe/#transcript—Where to find David Singleton:• Twitter: https://twitter.com/dps• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidpsingleton/• Website: https://blog.singleton.io/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) David's background(04:22) How Stripe's unique hiring process has helped them build an incredible team(12:27) An example of a relentlessly curious and passionate employee(14:11) Structured hiring loops at Stripe(16:39) How Stripe built a product-minded engineering culture(21:56) Stripe's operating principles (25:39) How Stripe uses “friction logging” to build a meticulous product culture (32:22) How to operationalize friction logging(35:02) How to set PMs up for success(36:53) Stripe's collaborative approach to product evaluation(41:17) Advice for presenting to CTOs (42:58) How to get better at building products(45:28) Stripe's “engineerications” and the importance of getting into the weeds as a leader(52:03) Auto-testing and other strategies to improve shipping speeds(59:29) Improving developer productivity(1:00:54) How AI has impacted the way Stripe builds product (1:07:03) Why David is excited about Copilot(1:09:24) Lessons from managing people(1:14:30) Planning and prioritization based on first-principles thinking(1:18:23) Lenny's feedback from using Stripe(1:19:14) What's next for Stripe(1:22:10) Lightning round—Referenced:• Stripe: https://stripe.com/• Jeff Weinstein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffwweinstein/• How we use friction logs to improve products at Stripe: https://dev.to/stripe/how-we-use-friction-logs-to-improve-products-at-stripe-i6p• GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot• High Output Management by Andrew Grove: https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884• Build by Tony Fadell: https://www.amazon.com/Build/dp/1787634116/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0• Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building by Claire Hughes Johnson: https://www.amazon.com/Scaling-People-Tactics-Management-Building/dp/1953953212/• Andrej Karpathy on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AndrejKarpathy• Midjourney: https://www.midjourney.com/home/• Emily Sands: https://www.linkedin.com/in/egsands/• Michelle Bu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellebu/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Обговорюємо новини з телеграм каналу https://t.me/automation_remarks_bot Підписуйтесь на наш новий подкаст "Не баг, а фіча": YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVUL5WIvKRoFaiBE3pgpW7g Anchor: https://anchor.fm/notabugpodcast Apple: https://apple.co/3Av6iPv Google: https://bit.ly/3wGEian 00:00:00 - Початок 00:02:02 - Книга "High Output Management" (https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884) 00:10:57 - трішки про новий Amazon Kindle Scribe 00:13:26 - Європа вимагає публікувати вилку ЗП у вакансіях (https://www.businesspost.ie/politics/companies-will-have-to-publish-salary-ranges-in-job-adverts-under-new-eu-transparency-rules/) 00:18:13 - Черговий реліз Playwright який заступає на територію Cypress (https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/releases/tag/v1.32.0) 00:28:07 - Про Selenium Conf і WebDriver Manager (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRdSclUtJDYXDEsWI0vwBmJxW17NgsaAk) 00:47:58 - Top 5 Agile QA Metrics (https://www.testrail.com/blog/agile-qa-metrics/) 01:16:04 - Про вразливості ChatGPT (https://systemweakness.com/new-prompt-injection-attack-on-chatgpt-web-version-ef717492c5c2) 01:33:38 - Називайте свої тести з "Should" (https://paperless.blog/start-test-names-with-should) 01:38:15 - Коротко про тестінг GPT Based Apps (https://jarbon.medium.com/testing-gpt-based-apps-5546449faab2) 01:44:03 - 10 Changes that improves our tests (https://medium.com/@tom_at_undo/10-changes-that-improved-our-tests-fefc253da201) 01:59:46 - Книга "Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love" (https://www.amazon.com/INSPIRED-Create-Tech-Products-Customers/dp/1119387507) 02:05:54 - Фінал і анонси
1 on 1 を実践されている方も多いと思いますが、同時に難しさを感じている方も多いのではないでしょうか。 歴史や定義、その難しさの原因、良い 1 on 1 とは何か、などを実践例も交えながら話しました。1 on 1 に悩まれている方の参考になれば幸いです。 ■ Memo Bing (https://www.bing.com/) HIGH OUTPUT MANAGEMENT (https://bookplus.nikkei.com/atcl/catalog/17/P55010/) esa (https://esa.io/)
In today's episode of Category Visionaries, we speak with Sebastian Schüller, Co-founder of HiPeople, a hiring intelligence platform that's raised over $7 Million in funding, about why decisions driven by data are such an important part of contemporary business, and how HiPeople are bringing the power of analytics to the recruitment and hiring process of firms all over the world. With a twin offering of automated candidate screening tools to make sure every business makes the right choice, and critical post-hiring analytics to provide insights on how those new hires are doing, HiPeople promises better outcomes for the people at the very heart of good business. We also speak about the current state of the Berlin startup economy, Sebastian's career in tech and how it led him to put people at the heart of his startup, how humans got left behind in the data revolution and why it's time they caught up, and how a relatively unknown startup like HiPeople managed to land a major name brand right out of the gate. Topics Discussed: Sebastian's career in tech, and how he gradually became aware of the challenges with hiring people in the modern economy Why surfacing and objectifying data has always been a central part of what Sebastian does How the hiring process got left behind by the data revolution transforming how we do business, and what HiPeople plans to do about it The twin offering of pre- and post- hiring analytics to drive better business outcomes for everyone The current state of the Berlin startup space, and how it's changed since the pandemic Why HiPeople has always been a global company, offering what businesses need to whoever needs it Favorite book: High Output Management
In today's episode of Category Visionaries, we speak with Michel Tricot, CEO of Airbyte, an open source data integration platform that's raised over $180 Million in funding, about how their open source, future-proof solution is helping businesses everywhere extract tangible value from the data they are all now producing. Developed over several years alongside an open source community of engineers, Airbyte have made sure they address real pain points for their partners by learning as much as possible about the problem space from those working right at the coal-face. We also speak about why Michel believes the demise of the Bay Area startup sector has been greatly exaggerated, how his lifelong passion for data has carried through to all his big business decisions, why data now determines success for most businesses in the modern economy, and how building trust with customers in your industry is a great investment in future growth. Topics Discussed: Michel's lifelong love of data, and how toys translated into cutting-edge software solutions Moving to San Francisco, and why the ups-and-downs of investment cycles don't change the fundamental innovation present in the Bay Area Why collecting data is ultimately about getting a big-picture view of what's going on, regardless of what sector you operate in How Airbyte went about learning as much as possible about the problem space they were getting into before making any big decisions Why Airbyte went with PLG, and managed to successfully leverage their community for great market growth How the open-source success of Airbyte provides a model for other budding tech businesses to facilitate organic innovation both within and without Favorite book: High Output Management
In today's episode of Category Visionaries, we speak with Derric Gilling, CEO of Mosief, an API analytics platform that's raised over $15 Million in funding, about why the deluge of data that most companies are dealing with hasn't yet been utilized to anything near its full potential, and how a better integrated, more effective API analytics framework can capture significant value for partners and clients across the entire startup sector. By providing critical insight into exactly how API solutions are performing and where they can be improved, Mosief helps their customers hone in on the metrics that really matter, and make meaningful changes based on the best possible data. We also spoke about how Derric's time at intel provided him with critical lessons to take with him into the startup space, why you should never over-promise on a critical feature, what makes a targeted customer persona so important when creating a new category, and why sometimes it pays to take your time before taking a product to market. Topics Discussed: Derric's time at Intel and the critical lessons it gave him when it came to building his own startup business. Why API matters, how it's still falling short of its real potential, and how adequate analytics can really be the missing link in the value chain Why Derric believes its best never to over-promise, and why bugs and fixes should be part of every tech companies budgetary planning Why Moesif decided to pivot from API development to analytics, and how it feels to be moving in a blue market economy How Moesif and their customers are building stronger networks together, and the power of the 1+1=3 relationship The importance of really zeroing in on your customer persona when you decide to create a new category, and exactly who is making the purchases Favorite book: High Output Management
Brought to you by Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security: https://vanta.com/lenny | Amplitude—Build better products: https://amplitude.com/ | Dovetail—Bring your customer into every decision: https://dovetailapp.com/lenny—Patrick Campbell is the founder and CEO of ProfitWell, which he bootstrapped and sold for over $200 million. In this special episode, we explore 10 big ideas from Patrick, including tips for hiring employees who align with your company values, creating winning pricing and retention strategies, determining the right time to raise money, and more. Whether you're just starting out or looking to scale your SaaS business, this must-listen episode offers practical and actionable advice that will help you avoid missteps and think differently.Find the transcript for this episode and all past episodes at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/10-lessons-on-bootstrapping-a-200m-business-patrick-campbell-profitwell/#transcriptWhere to find Patrick Campbell:• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Patticus• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickccampbell/• Email: pc@patticus.comWhere to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/Referenced:• Douglas Atkin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doatkin/• Patrick Campbell's guest post on Lenny's Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/saas-pricing-strategy/comments• ProfitWell: https://www.profitwell.com/• The Cadence: How to Operate a SaaS Startup: https://medium.com/craft-ventures/the-cadence-how-to-operate-a-saas-startup-436aa8099e8• Edward Snowden on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Snowden• The Flywheel: https://www.hubspot.com/flywheel• High Output Management: https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884• Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Bets-Making-Smarter-Decisions/dp/0735216355• Powerful: https://www.amazon.com/Powerful/dp/1939714206/r• The West Wing on HBOMax: https://www.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GX5nwgQDNJZ6aoQEAAAHJ• Notion: https://www.notion.so/• Descript: https://www.descript.com/• Coda: https://coda.io/• KTool: https://ktool.io/• Tweet Hunter: https://tweethunter.io/• Apple Watch Ultra: https://www.apple.com/apple-watch-ultra/• Loom: https://www.loom.com/In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Patrick's background(05:12) Building a team(07:38) How ProfitWell handled a conflict using their guiding principle, the most charitable interpretation(10:41) Why new hires need to fit in with the company culture(12:19) The bootstrapping vs. funding debate(13:38) When founders should think about raising funds (18:08) When and how companies should make pricing changes to their products or services(23:46) Strategic retention and tactical retention, and why the latter is often missed (28:48) Why people don't want to pay for a SaaS analytics tool(29:56) The importance of mission metrics for shipping(34:42) First-principle thinking, the “5 whys,” and Patrick's alternative approach(40:21) The importance of frequent customer research(43:15) Simple strategies for doing customer research(46:13) Understanding your competitors(51:06) Why veterans make great hires (54:08) Why local strategies are more effective for some companies(59:21) Why the middle of the funnel is the biggest opportunity (1:04:54) Lightning roundProduction and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career ✓ Claim Podcast Notes Key Takeaways Check out Lenny's Podcast Episode Page & Show NotesRead the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgMatt Mochary, CEO of Mochary Method, is a full-time executive coach who has worked with some of the biggest names in tech and finance, including investor Naval Ravikant and the CEOs of Notion, OpenAI, Coinbase, Reddit, and many others. In today's podcast, we talk about the skill of firing people, why it's so important, and Matt's framework for approaching layoffs. We go deep on recognizing emotions like anger and fear, and what to pay attention to when you feel angry or fearful. He also shares how to build new products within a larger company, important tips on how to make sure everyone in the organization feels valued and heard, carving out time for your top goal, and how an energy audit can help you eliminate tasks that are draining your energy.—Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/how-to-fire-people-with-grace-work-through-fear-and-nurture-innovation-matt-mochary-ceo-coach/#transcript—Where to find Matt Mochary:• Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattmochary• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-mochary-34bb4/• Website: http://www.mochary.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:• AssemblyAI: https://www.assemblyai.com/?utm_source=lennyspodcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=nov10• Lemon.io: https://lemon.io/lenny• Vanta: https://vanta.com/lenny—Referenced:• The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building: https://www.amazon.com/Great-CEO-Within-Tactical-Building-ebook/dp/B07ZLGQZYC• Mochary Method: https://mocharymethod.org/• Leo Polovets on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lpolovets• High Output Management: https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business when There Are No Easy Answers: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205• Andrej Karpathy on Lex Fridman's podcast: https://lexfridman.com/andrej-karpathy/• Wei Deng on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dengwei/• Free Solo: https://films.nationalgeographic.com/free-solo• Ryan Hoover on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rrhoover• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less: https://gregmckeown.com/books/essentialism/• Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day: https://www.amazon.com/Make-Time-Focus-Matters-Every/dp/0525572422• Centered app: https://www.centered.app/• Diana Chapman at Conscious Leadership Group: https://conscious.is/team/diana-chapman• The Mochary Method curriculum doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18FiJbYn53fTtPmphfdCKT2TMWH-8Y2L-MLqDk-MFV4s/edit—In this episode, we cover:(04:43) Matt's background(07:39) Areas where even very successful founders struggle(12:24) How to address people to minimize defensiveness(13:24) The destructive nature of anger and how to feel your feelings so you don't hurt others(15:02) Which books led Matt to his coaching journey and software platform(19:03) When and how to let an employee go(31:47) How to make people feel heard(38:05) How Matt's coaching has evolved to include psychological obstacles to success(39:41) What is “top goal,” and how can it help you make massive gains?(41:25) Why Matt has an accountability partner for his top goal time(43:44) How to approach mass layoffs humanely(53:21) Matt's thoughts on the Twitter layoffs(54:10) How to innovate within a large company(1:01:53) How to do an energy audit—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career ✓ Claim Podcast Notes Key Takeaways Check out Lenny's Podcast Episode Page & Show NotesRead the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgMatt Mochary, CEO of Mochary Method, is a full-time executive coach who has worked with some of the biggest names in tech and finance, including investor Naval Ravikant and the CEOs of Notion, OpenAI, Coinbase, Reddit, and many others. In today's podcast, we talk about the skill of firing people, why it's so important, and Matt's framework for approaching layoffs. We go deep on recognizing emotions like anger and fear, and what to pay attention to when you feel angry or fearful. He also shares how to build new products within a larger company, important tips on how to make sure everyone in the organization feels valued and heard, carving out time for your top goal, and how an energy audit can help you eliminate tasks that are draining your energy.—Find the full transcript here: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/how-to-fire-people-with-grace-work-through-fear-and-nurture-innovation-matt-mochary-ceo-coach/#transcript—Where to find Matt Mochary:• Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattmochary• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-mochary-34bb4/• Website: http://www.mochary.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:• AssemblyAI: https://www.assemblyai.com/?utm_source=lennyspodcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=nov10• Lemon.io: https://lemon.io/lenny• Vanta: https://vanta.com/lenny—Referenced:• The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building: https://www.amazon.com/Great-CEO-Within-Tactical-Building-ebook/dp/B07ZLGQZYC• Mochary Method: https://mocharymethod.org/• Leo Polovets on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lpolovets• High Output Management: https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business when There Are No Easy Answers: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205• Andrej Karpathy on Lex Fridman's podcast: https://lexfridman.com/andrej-karpathy/• Wei Deng on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dengwei/• Free Solo: https://films.nationalgeographic.com/free-solo• Ryan Hoover on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rrhoover• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less: https://gregmckeown.com/books/essentialism/• Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day: https://www.amazon.com/Make-Time-Focus-Matters-Every/dp/0525572422• Centered app: https://www.centered.app/• Diana Chapman at Conscious Leadership Group: https://conscious.is/team/diana-chapman• The Mochary Method curriculum doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18FiJbYn53fTtPmphfdCKT2TMWH-8Y2L-MLqDk-MFV4s/edit—In this episode, we cover:(04:43) Matt's background(07:39) Areas where even very successful founders struggle(12:24) How to address people to minimize defensiveness(13:24) The destructive nature of anger and how to feel your feelings so you don't hurt others(15:02) Which books led Matt to his coaching journey and software platform(19:03) When and how to let an employee go(31:47) How to make people feel heard(38:05) How Matt's coaching has evolved to include psychological obstacles to success(39:41) What is “top goal,” and how can it help you make massive gains?(41:25) Why Matt has an accountability partner for his top goal time(43:44) How to approach mass layoffs humanely(53:21) Matt's thoughts on the Twitter layoffs(54:10) How to innovate within a large company(1:01:53) How to do an energy audit—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Matt Mochary, CEO of Mochary Method, is a full-time executive coach who has worked with some of the biggest names in tech and finance, including investor Naval Ravikant and the CEOs of Notion, OpenAI, Coinbase, Reddit, and many others. In today's podcast, we talk about the skill of firing people, why it's so important, and Matt's framework for approaching layoffs. We go deep on recognizing emotions like anger and fear, and what to pay attention to when you feel angry or fearful. He also shares how to build new products within a larger company, important tips on how to make sure everyone in the organization feels valued and heard, carving out time for your top goal, and how an energy audit can help you eliminate tasks that are draining your energy.—Find the full transcript here: how-to-fire-people-with-grace-work-through-fear-and-nurture-innovation-matt-mochary-ceo-coach/#transcript—Where to find Matt Mochary:• Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattmochary• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-mochary-34bb4/• Website: http://www.mochary.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:• AssemblyAI: https://www.assemblyai.com/?utm_source=lennyspodcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=nov10• Lemon.io: https://lemon.io/lenny• Vanta: https://vanta.com/lenny—Referenced:• The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building: https://www.amazon.com/Great-CEO-Within-Tactical-Building-ebook/dp/B07ZLGQZYC• Mochary Method: https://mocharymethod.org/• Leo Polovets on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lpolovets• High Output Management: https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business when There Are No Easy Answers: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205• Andrej Karpathy on Lex Fridman's podcast: https://lexfridman.com/andrej-karpathy/• Wei Deng on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dengwei/• Free Solo: https://films.nationalgeographic.com/free-solo• Ryan Hoover on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rrhoover• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less: https://gregmckeown.com/books/essentialism/• Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day: https://www.amazon.com/Make-Time-Focus-Matters-Every/dp/0525572422• Centered app: https://www.centered.app/• Diana Chapman at Conscious Leadership Group: https://conscious.is/team/diana-chapman• The Mochary Method curriculum doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18FiJbYn53fTtPmphfdCKT2TMWH-8Y2L-MLqDk-MFV4s/edit—In this episode, we cover:(04:43) Matt's background(07:39) Areas where even very successful founders struggle(12:24) How to address people to minimize defensiveness(13:24) The destructive nature of anger and how to feel your feelings so you don't hurt others(15:02) Which books led Matt to his coaching journey and software platform(19:03) When and how to let an employee go(31:47) How to make people feel heard(38:05) How Matt's coaching has evolved to include psychological obstacles to success(39:41) What is “top goal,” and how can it help you make massive gains?(41:25) Why Matt has an accountability partner for his top goal time(43:44) How to approach mass layoffs humanely(53:21) Matt's thoughts on the Twitter layoffs(54:10) How to innovate within a large company(1:01:53) How to do an energy audit—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Key Things Discussed The crucial mindset shift that must occur in shifting to a new model. Three components necessary to set teams up for long-term success. Data analytics, education and why OKRs depend on bringing teams along. Common organizational problems that OKRs quickly uncover and highlight. Elements to develop and instill for better (not more) management. The pitfalls of a cascading management style. Setting the stage for successful OKR implementation. Show Notes [00:02:44] A quick hello to this episode's guest, OKR expert Felipe Castro. [00:03:59] Why OKR? Customers give lots of reasons – ranging from weak (the boss read a book or everyone's doing it) to borderline vague (accountability or transparency). [00:04:36] The Tinkerbell Approach: The common misperception (or delusion!) that a little bit of fairy dust is all it takes to take a traditional enterprise to Google-level OKR success. [00:05:34] Adopting OKR is not a goal in and of itself. It's a transformational tool to help organizations be more competitive, adaptive and normative in the 21st century. [00:06:19] Successful OKR implementations require that organizations do three key things: Demonstrate commitment and consistency over time. Learn how to execute the system in practice. Accept that old models and experience will have to be unlearned. [00:07:36] Three components necessary to set teams up for success: Access to the data (liberate it from the silos!). Clarity about the core business metrics and strategy. Knowledge of data analytics and statistics. [00:09:44] Felipe shares some of the common organizational problems that OKRs quickly uncover and highlight: Lack of clarity about goals. Lack of grounding in the strategy behind projects. Managers who don't provide clear context. [00:11:04] Elements to develop and instill for better (not more) management: Leadership (based on new rather than old business models) Problem-solving skills. An ability to both offer and communicate trust. Permission to get inspired and inspire others. [00:14:32] Felipe explains why part of the beauty in OKRs is that they don't take a one-size-fits all approach. Rather, it's a flexible philosophy that can be tailored and tweaked based on a huge range of factors across industries and organizational cultures. [00:18:44] OKRs may vary, but there remain common foundational building blocks. [00:19:44] Felipe shares his take on cascading management: 100% top-down. Lacks agility. Creates silos. Discourages inter-departmental collaboration. Fails to provide clearly defined, measurable goals. [00:24:44] It's a journey! Felipe explains the (necessarily imperfect) process of establishing OKRs and bringing everyone along. [00:27:52] Stumbling Blocks: Felipe shares one OKR scenario that commonly occurs at large companies (overattachment to a business case or spreadsheet) and another that often besets smaller companies (data availability bias). [00:31:02] Better tools create better outcomes. But not without a holistic approach that includes a commitment to educating and enabling teams. [00:33:44] Don't leave talent on the table! Give teams the tools they need! [00:35:06] Elements that set the stage for successful OKR implementation: Ensure that teams understand the metrics and data fundamentals. Establish weekly one-to-ones for continuous feedback. Ongoing coaching and development. Adoption of advanced engineering technologies to improve processes. Regular customer feedback interviews. Established systems to test, experiment and collect data for nimble decision-making. [00:39:30] Felipe shares his evolving thoughts on what capabilities are critical to successful OKR implementation at traditional organizations, including the need for a bridge between old and new business models (in spite of inevitable hiccups and cultural challenges). [00:43:30] The Finer Points of Performance: Standards for evaluation are as variable as team and individual roles, responsibilities and contributions. Beware tying bonus structures and compensation to measures that are inefficient, inaccurate or illogical. [00:49:59] Why individual goals can be a huge liability and disincentive. [00:51:22] Defining calibration and how it level sets performance reviews. [00:52:44] Quick Fire Questions for Felipe: What do you appreciate most about your team? Passion and commitment. What is your greatest dream and its associated deadline? To facilitate a second edition (with new contributions/examples) of the classic John Doerr book, "Measure What Matters: The revolutionary movement behind the explosive growth of Intel, Google, Amazon and Uber." No deadline since it's up to the author! Can you describe an experience or situation that made you proud? It's a feeling that arises whenever organizations adopt, evangelize for and continue to use OKR tools in the long term – which fortunately for Felipe has been a common occurrence! What's the most important word of advice you can give people who want to try OKRs but feel wary? They are not a “to do” list. It's about the outcomes you want to achieve and creating data-driven, measurable benefits for your customers, your company and your employees. Relevant links "Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility," by Patty McCord, former head of people at Netflix. Simon Senek's Website Felipe's Interview with Itamar Gilad. Intuit Founder Scott Cook @Khan Academy. "High Output Management," by Andy Grove, former CEO at Intel. YouTube: Tom Chi on "Rapid Prototyping and Product Management." "Measure What Matters: The revolutionary movement behind the explosive growth of Intel, Google, Amazon and Uber," by John Doerr. About Our Guest:Felipe Castro is an OKR Trainer. He helps organizations transform how they use goals by adopting OKR, the Silicon Valley framework for goal setting. He created the OKR Cycle, a simple method to avoid OKR's most common pitfalls.Follow Our Guest:Website | LinkedIn Follow Dreams With Deadlines:Host | Company Website | Blog | Instagram | Twitter
In this episode, I interview Krish Ramineni, Co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai based in San Francisco, United States. Krish set up his business to help people facilitate their work. From working as a Product Manager at Microsoft, Krish decided to leave and pursue bigger opportunities. Fireflies.ai was established in 2016 and has been running for over 6 years. Became a global startup based in 11 countries across 41 cities with over 100 FTEs. Krish has said that growing a small business requires knowledge and consistency and he thinks it's one of the hardest things in growing a small business. However, he also said that being consistent can help maintain and improve the quality of your service. So he says, “It's not just about being smart. It's about showing up.” This Cast Covers: An AI assistant that helps people take notes, transcribe meetings, search back, and remember conversations. Participates in different video conferencing platforms, like Zoom, Google meet, Skype, and WebEx. Branching out as a whole suite platform. Helping entrepreneurs to focus on the conversation of the meetings. Dedicated to being a product-first product lead company. From attending 100 meetings weekly, now into 10s of millions of meetings. Learning how to do advertising without the need to do marketing on it. Sharing the benefits of hiring knowledgeable people. Teaching on how to enable your teammates to do well. Learning how to be progressive in business through focusing on quality over quantity. Additional Resources: Fireflies.ai High Output Management by Andrew Grove ——————————— Quotes: “Success is always an evolving metric.” —Krish Ramineni “Your expectations and projections may not always pan out the way you want them to.” —Krish Ramineni “There are times when you have to push and times when you have to pull back and let people solve things.” —Krish Ramineni “Be continuously customer-centric.” —Krish Ramineni “Bring on people that are aligned with a vision that is taking the chance.” —Krish Ramineni ——————————— Music from https://filmmusic.io “Cold Funk” by Kevin MacLeod https://incompetech.com. License: CC by http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
当投资人问初创企业,你达到了 product-market fit (PMF)没,投资人到底是在关心什么问题?对不少人来说,PMF 可能都一个非常模糊的概念。关于如何定义 PMF,每个行业和每个周期会不会出现差异,每个投资人和创业者都可以给出不同的解读,然而 PMF 却是衡量初创企业在早期能否取得成功的重要标志。PMF 的老祖宗,传奇投资人和硅谷创业者 Andy Rachleff, 在解释这个概念时强调,创业者和投资人需要思考的最高优先级,应该是市场的需求。在思考一家初创企业的未来时,不能光看增长,还要关注它的价值,即它是否填补市场的真实需求。然而对 PMF 理论知识精专如 Andy Rachleff,在创立智能投顾公司 Wealthfront 的路上也并非一帆风顺。 本集节目是「科技早知道」主播 Howie 与「OnBoard!」的主播 Monica 合作串台的下半部分。在上集探讨本轮科技企业危机之下的 SaaS 生态后,本集的 Howie 和 Monica 从实践出发,围绕着企业如何理解并找到 PMF, 做了信息密度极大的分享。一个 SaaS 行业在初期要实现成功的关键步骤是什么?创业者如何才能听到客户最真实的意见?SaaS 行业的产品与销售逻辑与 ToC 行业有哪些本质区别?什么样的 SaaS 产品才叫解决了客户的痛点?国内的SaaS 行业为什么总需要考虑一揽子服务的能力,而海外的同行却不需要?技术出身的创始人走到 IPO 这一步后,又必须得做哪些高风险的选择? 本期人物 Howie,硅谷人工智能创投家,「科技早知道」主播,推特账号(@H0wie_Xu),公众号(硅谷云) Monica,经纬创投投资人,公众号:M小姐研习录,播客「OnBoard!」 主理人 主要话题 [01:17] 什么算实现 product-market fit(PMF)?错误的信号有哪些? [10:15] ToB 厂商可以创造需求吗?客户说的最前面的三件事就是最大的痛点? [24:27] 怎么识别公司是不是能收到钱?PMF 实现前的销售更多是 problem solver ? [39:04] 空降高管如何做?不完美的 CEO 如何成长?不应该指望投资人解决大部分的创业中问题? [48:23] IPO 前后为什么迭代团队?冒险也是实现自我突破的一部分? 延伸阅读 - 串台播客:OnBoard! 的小宇宙链接 (https://www.xiaoyuzhoufm.com/podcast/61cbaac48bb4cd867fcabe22?s=eyJ1IjogIjYwYjVhNzYxZTBmNWU3MjNiYjU4ZmNlYSJ9) - Howie 在最后推荐的书籍:High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/324750.High_Output_Management) - 更多关于 Howie 如何解读 PMF 的信息:Twitter账号:@H0wie_Xu (https://twitter.com/h0wie_xu) - 更多关于 Howie 在自己公众号上所分享的 SaaS 商业模式:独角兽泡沫分析及未来走向(第一集) (https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/KoI8RjCI631e1hF_AoCofg) - Howie 在 2019 年所分享的 SaaS 商业模式:Howie Xu, Zscaler | CUBEconversation, May 2019 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpuVNuHlRfc&t=933s) - Monica 在 2017年对 PMF 的分享:一场关于融资的激辩,竟无意解锁了创投圈的核心命门(上) (https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzUzNTEyNjc0OA==&mid=2247483715&idx=1&sn=273556c615cbdd1d40a50f003ca37b36&chksm=fa8b76f0cdfcffe64120620126dc5a918b340ad097d4ebc1108b33ee185b373921d6bfc57639&scene=126&&sessionid=1654937551#rd) - Andy Rachleff 在 2012 年关于企业如何获得成功的分享:Andy Rachleff: What Do Entrepreneurs Need to Succeed? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G9Cb6sCjL8) - A16Z 的 Marc Andreessen 关于 PMF 的解读:On product/market fit for startups (https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html) - Zoom 创始人 Eric Yuan 在 2022 年与 Greylock 的 Sarah 对谈视频:Zoom CEO Eric Yuan on the Full Screen Ahead (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1UzOCID7SY) - 关于 Frank Slootman 的创业故事:SNOWFLAKE APPOINTS FRANK SLOOTMAN AS CHAIRMAN AND CEO (https://www.snowflake.com/news/snowflake-appoints-frank-slootman-as-chairman-and-ceo/) - 「Techcrunch」关于 Greylock 投资 Docker 的新闻:Docker Raises $15M For Its Open-Source Platform That Helps Developers Build Apps In The Cloud (https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/21/docker-raises-15m-for-popular-open-source-platform-designed-for-developers-to-build-apps-in-the-cloud/) 使用音乐 Deliverance-Epidemic Sound That Rabbit Again!-David Celeste 幕后制作 监制:刘灿 后期:Luke 运营:Yao 封面设计:饭团 声动活泼年度新节目「跳进兔子洞」上线啦! 这档「声音特稿」节目将带你去探索那些被商业科技浪潮淹没的个体故事,期待你的关注和订阅!点击这里 (https://sourl.cn/BMFMVk)了解更多本期节目信息。 #声动游乐场实习生计划第二期# 在公号「声动活泼」后台回复 实习 可查看更多详情。 五类岗位:节目监制、声动早咖啡、声音后期制作、媒体运营、商业发展 实习亮点:更丰富的实习模块,更成熟的培养计划,更多的留任机会。 投递方式(3 选 1 ): 方式一:投递简历至邮箱 hr@shengfm.cn,邮件名称注明「姓名+岗位+声动游乐场实习生计划」 方式二:点击链接 (https://wenjuan.feishu.cn/m?t=suoqoSKeHUxi-sq0t) 直接投递 方式三:扫描下方二维码一键投递 internwanted https://files.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads/images/4/4931937e-0184-4c61-a658-6b03c254754d/k3ddTvSE.png 关于节目 原「硅谷早知道」,全新改版后为「What's Next|科技早知道」。放眼全球,聚焦科技发展,关注商业格局变化。 关于我们 声动活泼的宗旨是「用声音碰撞世界」,致力于为人们提供源源不断的思考养料。 - 我们还有这些播客:声东击西 (https://etw.fm/episodes)、声动早咖啡 (https://sheng-espresso.fireside.fm/)、反潮流俱乐部 (https://fanchaoliuclub.fireside.fm/)、泡腾 VC (https://popvc.fireside.fm/)、商业WHY酱 (https://msbussinesswhy.fireside.fm/)、跳进兔子洞 (https://therabbithole.fireside.fm) - 欢迎在即刻 (https://okjk.co/Qd43ia)、微博等社交媒体上与我们互动,搜索 声动活泼 即可找到我们 - 期待你给我们写邮件,邮箱地址是:ting@sheng.fm - 如果你喜欢我们的节目,欢迎 打赏 (https://afdian.net/@shengfm)支持或把我们的节目推荐给一两位朋友 欢迎加入声动胡同小社区! 也许你知道「声动活泼」办公室在北京二环内的胡同里,事实上我们也有一个线上的「声动胡同小社区」。成为社区会员,你可以收到一周不少于三次的来自「声动小邮筒」的邮件,同时还可以参加我们各种各样的线上和线下活动,或者是一些有趣的游戏。 点击这里 (https://shengpodcasts.notion.site/a977c74222484894a9fe6245bc0f4dba)即可了解社区氛围。我们期待你加入这个虚拟胡同社区来支持我们,并和我们一起亲近交流,和有趣的人进行「碰撞」,收获新知、友谊并看见更大的世界。 国内用户(年付):加入声动胡同小社区 (https://sourl.cn/G4B2Wt) 海外用户(月付):加入声动胡同小社区 (https://sdhp.memberful.com/join) 期待你的加入! Special Guest: Monica.
A inovação do setor elétrico passa pela geração de energias limpas e renováveis e também pela descentralização da venda. Processos que estão sendo acelerados com parcerias entre gigantes como a Equatorial e startups mapeadas pelo hub Energy Future._____LINKS DO EPISÓDIOO livro “Hacking Growth”, de Sean Ellis e Morgan BrownO livro “Organizações exponenciais”, de Michael S. Malone e Salim IsmailO livro “High Output Management”, do Andrew S. Grove O livro “Smart Money”, do João KeplerO livro “Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future”, de Saul GriffithE o filme “Ron Bugado”, no Disney + _____FALE CONOSCOEmail: theshift@b9.com.br_____ASSINE A THE SHIFTwww.theshift.info
Vinicius Roveda passou por várias dificuldades nos seus primeiros anos como empreendedor, tentando emplacar sua ideia de negócio. Mas ele já tinha decidido que essa ideia seria não apenas bem-sucedida, mas também levantaria outros empreendedores no caminho. A ideia se tornou a Conta Azul. Em dez anos, o sistema de gestão já economizou 350 mil horas de empreendedores e contadores. Apenas em 2021, faturou mais de 100 milhões de reais. Hoje, a Conta Azul atende cerca de 100 mil clientes e 10 mil escritórios de contabilidade. Neste episódio, Roveda fala sobre a sua trajetória, incluindo seus erros e acertos durante a primeira década da startup que ele cofundou. Também fala sobre os próximos passos da Conta Azul, e sobre a concorrência crescente entre sistemas de gestão empresarial.Desconto Nuvemshop: https://www.nuvemshop.com.br/partners/do-zero-ao-topo-podcastInscreva-se na nossa newsletter: https://www.infomoney.com.br/newsletters/do-zero-ao-topo/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dozeroaotopo_oficial/Episódio em vídeo: https://youtu.be/bJSMggVA0-YLivros recomendados por Vinicius Roveda:O lado difícil das situações difíceis (The Hard Thing About Hard Things): https://amzn.to/3ucZcfrGestão de alta performance (High Output Management): https://amzn.to/3ufsASeMauá: empresário do Império: https://amzn.to/3Nbz78W
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN: 02:34 - What led Jesse to start his business in 2004 while he was still in college.06:13 - The story on when Jesse knew it was time to quit his full-time accounting career to go all in on his business.18:59 - What is, and what is not a budget.27:34 - YNAB's four money rules.44:15 - What Jesse's personal portfolio looks like.46:33 - What some of Jesse's favorite books are.And much, much more!*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.EPISODE RESOURCESEnter the Millennial Investing Giveaway here.Robert and Clay's tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance.Check out You Need a Budget.Check out YNAB's YouTube channel.Books mentioned in the episode: Traction, High Output Management, The Hard Thing about Hard Things, Your Money or Your Life, The Richest Man in Babylon, Antifragile, & Four Thousand Weeks.Related Episode: To Be A Successful Investor, You Need A Budget W/ Jesse Mecham.Check out our Investing Starter Packs about business and finance.Are you a looking to start investing? Check out our article on How to Invest in Stocks: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners.Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors. Yieldstreet allows you to invest beyond the stock market with an evolving marketplace of alternative investments. Create your account today.Keep your own money in your pocket without leaving benefits on the table with Lendtable. Sign up today with with promo code TIP for an extra $50 added to your Lendtable balance to start securing your financial future now.Eat clean 24/7, with fresh—never frozen—prepared meals that are so delicious with Factor. Use code wsb120 to get $120 off over your first 5 weeks of meals.If you're a sales professional, get every real time advantage you can get with Sales Navigator. Enjoy 60 days of free trial today.Join Commonstock's community of engaged investors to access exclusive financial data, follow and chat with fellow investors, get alerts when friends buy or sell, and make trades directly through the platform.Now, not only the wealthy can afford collectibles! Enter Otis, an investment platform that makes it possible for almost anyone to invest in shares of cultural assets. Sign up now at withotis.com/TIP to get your first share for FREE!See the all-new 2022 Lexus NX and discover everything it was designed to do for you. Welcome to the next level.Be part of the solution by investing in companies that are actively engaged in integrating ESG practices with Desjardins.Get insights on how to plan for your financial goals with The Globe and Mail. Listeners get a special digital subscription rate for unrestricted access to everything.Canada's #1 employee benefits plan for small businesses! The Chambers Plan evolves with the way you work and live while keeping the rates stable. Opt for the simple, stable, and smart choice for your business.Find Pros & Fair Pricing for Any Home Project for Free with Angi.Read this episode's transcript and full show notes on our website.Connect with Jesse: Website | Twitter | Instagram Connect with Clay: Twitter See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Engineering Manager oder Team-Lead: Eine Position die sehr motivierend, aber auch abschreckend wirken kann.Was erwartet einen? Was ist die Aufgabe einer Engineering Managerin? Wie verändert sich der Arbeitsalltag? Ist die Stelle überhaupt etwas für mich? Und was passiert, wenn ich doch lieber Software Entwickeln möchte? Gibt es einen alternativen Karrierepfad?All das und noch über viel mehr Erfahrungen sprechen Andy und Wolfgang in Episode 05 vom Engineering Kiosk.Bonus: Warum Andy Muskelkater im Arsch hatFeedback an stehtisch@engineeringkiosk.dev oder via Twitter an https://twitter.com/EngKioskErwähnte ArtikelMitchell's New Role at HashiCorp: https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/mitchell-s-new-role-at-hashicorpTom Bartel mit "A Year Ago, I Stepped Away From a Leadership Position. Here Are 7 Things I Learned From That": https://www.tombartel.me/blog/leadership-position-to-individual-contributor-what-i-learned/ "What is a Staff (or Staff-Plus or Principal) Engineer?": https://mikemcquaid.com/2021/10/01/what-is-a-staff-plus-principal-engineer/ Bücher über das Engineering Management"The Managers Path" von Camille Fournier"Turn the ship around" oder "Reiß das Ruder rum!" von David Marquet"Drive" von Daniel H. Pink"Start with Why" von Simon Sinek"High Output Management" von Andrew S. Grove"An elegant puzzle" von Will LarsonSprungmarken(00:55) Hörer Feedback(01:43) Wann bist du das erste mal in eine Teamlead-Stelle gerutscht?(03:15) Kann man bereits Aufgaben eines Teamleads übernehmen, ohne ein Teamlead zu sein?(04:18) Wie viel Zeit hast du mit Hands-On und wie viel mit People Management verbracht?(04:52) Wie lang warst du Individual Contributor bevor du Teamleiter wurdest?(05:42) Was hat sich am meisten an deinem Arbeitsalltag geändert?(09:22) Was ist ein 1 on 1 Meeting und warum ist dies sinnvoll?(13:27) Was ist eine gute Teamgröße für den Start als Engineering Manager?(14:50) Woher wusstest du, was du als neuer Engineering Manager machen musst?(20:51) Empfehlungen um die Entscheidung "Möchte ich den Job einer Engineering Managerin machen?" treffen zu können(24:25) Feedback-Loop eines Software Engineers und eines Engineering Managers(25:50) Was solltest du nicht wollen, wenn du ein Engineering Manager werden möchtest?(27:42) Ist es ab und zu notwendig, seine eigene Entscheidung im Team durchzusetzen?(28:36) Schwierige Konversationen als Engineering Manager(30:49) Ist es ein Rückschritt wenn man als Engineering Manager zurück zum Software Engineer wechselt?(34:42) Wie sieht ein möglicher Karriereweg aus, wenn der Engineering Manager-Weg nichts für mich ist?HostsWolfgang Gassler (https://twitter.com/schafele)Andy Grunwald (https://twitter.com/andygrunwald)Engineering Kiosk Podcast: Anfragen an stehtisch@engineeringkiosk.dev oder via Twitter an https://twitter.com/EngKiosk
What are the key skills for managers like you to master as you start leading a new team? What does it take for you to become an amazing manager? How do you stand out so you are recognized as a potential senior leader? In this episode of the Creating High Performing Teams podcast, we give you a run down of the most important skills to master as a new manager, and why they matter. Then, we tell you how you can start to build those skills with your team. Show Notes: You can read all about these skills and how to learn them here: https://getlighthouse.com/blog/professional-development-goals-for-managers/ The Flaming Hot Cheetos story: https://www.inc.com/cynthia-than/the-mexican-janitor-who-invented-flamin-hot-cheetos.html (Note: this may be partially “Urban Legend”) The Toyota Total Production system and how they leverage the knowledge of all their workers: https://hbr.org/2008/06/the-contradictions-that-drive-toyotas-success The Books we mentioned:Andy Grove's High Output Management https://amzn.to/32UeuvF Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People https://amzn.to/32Jk3Nt And some other links specific to parts of today's episode:What to talk about when managing a new team: https://getlighthouse.com/blog/managing-a-new-team/ Have amazing 1 on 1 meetings with your team by following this template: https://getlighthouse.com/blog/one-on-one-meetings-template-great-leaders/ How to give feedback: https://getlighthouse.com/blog/give-constructive-feedback-motivate-improve/ What is Task Relevant Maturity, and and how to apply it to your team: https://getlighthouse.com/blog/management-concept/ Key actions for you to take today from the interview: Pick out one skill from the list we gave you and start working on it this week.
What if you could speak to, engage with, and monitor your pets from outside the home, and be alerted if something important had happened? This week, Shawn & Ivan chat with Yaroslav Azhnyuk of Petcube about home cameras for cats and dogs. Yaroslav recommends High Output Management by Andrew Grove (amzn.to/3pgQ4nk), the Lex Fridman Podcast (bit.ly/3E8sr6V) & Keynes vs. Hayek (bit.ly/3I36Sa6). Learn more about Yaroslav at petcube.com.
Our job is to deliver the product/service on time, with the right quality, and at a competitive price, while making a profit. Map the time and resources required Never stop searching for cost-effective strategies Managers are measured by the output of their teams Open and honest communication allows for better decision-making Meet on purpose and with purpose Focus on better ways to make decisions Learn to think in contingencies The team culture is critical in retaining your people Rules make things work Hire the best
In this week’s episode Want your MSP to stand out in the crowd and really be noticed? There is a solution that involves your car and a LOT of vinyl plastic. Check out Paul’s brilliant tried and tested method for making a lot of noise and being seen in the marketplace Also, did you know your MSP needs a Star Wars-esq opening scrolling story? Okay, maybe not literally yellow text fading into the distance, but Paul explains how creating the right backstory can set up your MSP for increased growth Plus on the show this week, Paul’s featured guest explains exactly how he grew his MSP and navigated some very challenging times Featured guest Thank you to Nick Moran from Powernet for joining Paul to talk about how he grew his MSP to have offices in 3 cities and 85 staff. After co-founding Evolve IT back in 1993 and merging with Powernet in 2019, Nick still looks the same as he did at 18(!). He loves his music, kebabs and travelling with the family. Connect with Nick on LinkedIn. Show notes Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert Producer James told you about a forthcoming chance to win access to the huge DattoCon 21 event Many thanks to the business guide Steve Preda for recommending the book High Output Management by Andy Grove On August 31st Paul will be joined by Reuben Swartz from Mimiran, talking about how to create better MSP proposals Got a question from the show? Email Paul directly: hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday for M`SPs around the world. This is Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast. Paul Green: Hi. Hello and welcome back to the show. Here’s what we’ve got in store for you today. Nick Moran: Once that client lift and they outsourced direct to the vendor, we have to look for a new revenue opportunity. Paul Green: We’re also going to be talking about your backstory today, your origin story, how you came to be the owner of the business. This is a nice follow-up to something we did in last week’s show about wheth
In episode sixteen of PitchIt: the fintech startups podcast we talk with Abound Co-Founder & CEO Trent Bigelow. Abound helps the best businesses in the Independent Economy win by improving the financial security, wealth and wellness of self-employed Americans. Trent and I dig deep into the larger trend of independent and gig workers, the complicated tax scenarios, working with ecosystem partners, raising capital and a whole lot more. We had a lot of fun and I hope you enjoy the show. In this podcast you will learn: Trent's founder story Why independent workers have complicated tax scenarios If the right tools existed Trent and his co-founders would still be freelancing The difference between employment and non-employment income Abound view themselves as a real-time tax ledger that makes the banking stack much more valuable to independent workers How they went from 5 employees in 5 years to more than 20 in the last 2 years Trent and his co-founders need to be more intentional with decision making for a distributed team Objectives and key results, or OKRs drive the team Why early investors passed He recommends reading All the Devils Are Here, High Output Management and The 80/20 Manager. And more...
Nadim is the son of immigrants who arrived in the US with virtually nothing. His upbringing instilled in him a passion for helping people build financial resilience and independence. Prior to EarnUp, Nadim worked at Serent Capital, a $600M private equity firm, focused on tech-enabled services. Prior to Serent, Nadim led investments with NCB Capital, a $12B asset manager. Before this, Nadim worked at McKinsey & Company consulting large banks. Nadim also practiced IP and technology law at Kirkland & Ellis. Nadim holds a JD degree from Harvard Law School and graduated highest honors from Rutgers University.I kick off Nadim's interview with a question about banks, a necessary evil or are they fighting the good fight. He turns the tables and returns the question and we have a good discussion about the banking industry. Nadim continues the interview by sharing his founder's story and how it was inspired by his family and his own experience with paying off their mortgage payment. He tells us how his company grew in customers and employees. He shares the impact on the company and the startup space when his co-founder stepped down to care for his own mental health. Near the end Nadim asks me how people can put into practice the learnings from leadership books. (Note: EarnUp is a Purpose Built portfolio company.)“ I think that's a that's one of those proud moments for me, where we we spend that we spent all the years building a business that has a trusted relationship, a trusted conduit with the customer, such that one of our investors in this nonprofit at the same time is comfortable enough and confident enough in our ability to do the work, but also our relationship with the customer.” - Nadim HomsanyToday on Startups for Good we cover:How FinTechs differ from traditional startupsThe insights of the word “earn” rather than “save”The impact of a kitchen table on a startupWhat a Concierge MVP offersMental health in tech startupsThe concerns of a double bottom line companyBuilding a diverse teamManaging diverse investorsBalancing internal resources when you are a B2B2CConnect with Nadim on Twitter or at myearnup.com The books that Nadim referred to High Output Management and Feedback that WorksThe books that Miles suggested: 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership and The Great CEO Within (review) as well as Lean StartupSubscribe, Rate & Share Your Favorite...
話したネタ Konifarさんにとってマネジメントとは? HIGH OUTPUT MANAGEMENT EM.FM 実際にマネージャとしてどういう課題に取り組んでいたのか? 情報設計の方法論 コミュニケーションの最適な形をどう追求するか? Konifarさんはどうやって問題発見するか? 1on1の場、チームの振り返りで吸い取る 忘れないようにGoogleDocsに書いておく TextやQuickCallで解決する、1on1で解決するための判断基準は? Feedbackを与えるにあたって気をつけていることは? フィードバック入門 耳の痛いことを伝えて部下と職場を立て直す技術 言わないでいるより、言って後悔したほうが良い どうやって褒める箇所を覚えておくか? 1on1 ミーティングの目的 Konifarさんにとって良いミーティングとは? 目的とゴールがハッキリしていること 目的とゴールの違いは? 何かを決めるミーティングは事前準備がすべて ミーティングが上手くいかないとき = 例外処理 ミーティング関数の引数 参加者の発言偏り問題にどう対処するか? 発言しないのは、そもそもなぜなのかを考える必要がある ネガティブなことを言えるように心理的安全性を高めるためにやっていること? ストレートにネガティブな意見が出てくるのは嬉しい タックマンモデルのStormingが苦手な人が多いのでは 率直に物事をいうのはすごい疲れる ブログで言語化して楽になる リモート環境での雑談の工夫 社内でボードゲーム Kyashの全社忘年会で使用したサービス(remo) リモート飲み会でお話を聞く、という形になる リモートミーティングで音声とチャットでマルチで会話する Chatに即興でアンケートFormを埋め込む 「これについて意見ありますか?」の後の沈黙に耐える チェックイン Kyash募集職種一覧 fukabori.fm 個人サポータープラン エピソードスポンサー Offers 運営会社: 株式会社overflow
Hemos hablado de muchas metodologías de productividad, pero hoy toca el OKR o como diríamos en español, Objetivos y Resultados Clave. Un método que mucha gente relaciona con Google, pero ¿qué es realmente? Esta manera de organizarnos funciona sobre todo en equipo, ya sea para lograr objetivos comunes o también individuales y sí, hablaremos en Minimalizados de cómo hacerlo de manera individual tanto en lo personal como en lo laboral. El método OKR antes de hacerse famoso por Google, es una teoría introducida por Andrew Grove ex CEO de Intel (los que hacen que la mayoría de ordenadores funcionen con sus procesadores), que buscaba simplicar (de ahí la relación de esta metodología con el minimalismo) la manera de ir a por los objetivos de la empresa. Luego fue cogiendo fama por su fácil aplicación y grandes resultados, de manera que hoy en día es utilizada por empresas como Google, Spotify, Airbnb, entre otros, inclusive este podcast como podréis ver en el episodio premium Pero para ir al grano, ¿en qué consiste la Metodología OKR y por qué la utiliza Google? Andy Groove en su libro High Output Management dice que tenemos que saber a dónde quiero ir y cómo voy a saber si estoy llegando allí. Por lo tanto a través de varios objetivos con sus diferentes resultados clave, podremos ir repasando trimestralmente y anualmente si estamos avanzando o no. La estructura es muy básica: Objetivos: ¿Qué meta quiero alcanzar? Intenta que sea lo más ‘flipada’ posible, ya que al final nos quedaremos cortos pero ese plus de fliparse nos ayudará a dar un 110% y encontrar el progreso real. Resultados Clave: Demos nombre y apellidos al objetivo, encuentra valores que midan el progreso, es decir, si quiero como objetivo aumentar los ingresos de mi negocio en 10.000€, debo poner como resultados clave el hecho de conseguir 10 clientes nuevos, hacer 100 llamadas para presentar el producto y contactar con 1000 personas en LinkedIn para que me den su teléfono y accedan a la llamada. ¿Eso es todo? Así es, el método OKR es muy simple, por ello algo que te recomendamos es que pilles 3 o 4 objetivos, no utilices más ya que perderías el foco, solo ve a por los importantes. Tienes que ser conciso/a, nada de ‘ir creciendo’ o ‘seguir mejorando’, números, fechas, cosas concretas. Una vez tengas esos objetivos, ponle 3 o 4 resultados clave a cada objetivo, siempre tienen que ser datos que puedan medirse, porque de lo contrario no sabríamos si estamos haciéndolo bien o no. ¡Y compártelo! Si estás solo en esto busca un grupo de amigos/as o compañeros/as de profesión con los que mediros los objetivos y si trabajas en equipo, que quede en público eso que estáis haciendo para que todos reméis hacia el mismo lugar. Esto tiene mucha más ‘chicha’ como diríamos aquí, pero lo mejor será que escuches el episodio de hoy para que te quede 100% claro Y grábate a fuego que si no puedes medirlo, es difícilmente mejorable. Esa es la regla básica del método OKR que llevan a cabo nuestros colegas de Google. Como siempre, recuerda que puedes suscribirte a este podcast sobre minimalismo y desarrollo personal en español desde tu plataforma favorita. iVoox | Spotify | iTunes Puedes seguirnos en redes sociales para no perderte todo el contenido extra que subimos o poder hablar con nosotros: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/minimalizados/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/minimalizados ¿Quieres apuntarte a nuestro grupo LIMITADO de WHATSAPP? Recibe a diario tips, alertas de nuevos episodios, reflexiones, etc. Todo ello de manera gratuita www.minimalizados.com/whatsapp
Some highlights of the show include: The company's cloud native journey, which accelerated with the acquisition of Uswitch. How the company assessed risk prior to their migration, and why they ultimately decided the task was worth the gamble. Uswitch's transformation into a profitable company resulting from their cloud native migration. The role that multidisciplinary, collaborative teams played in solving problems and moving projects forward. Paul also offers commentary on some of the tensions that resulted between different teams. Key influencing factors that caused the company to adopt containerization and Kubernetes. Paul goes into detail about their migration to Kubernetes, and the problems that it addressed. Paul's thoughts on management and prioritization as CTO. He also explains his favorite engineering tool, which may come as a surprise. Links: RVU Website: https://www.rvu.co.uk/ Uswitch Website: https://www.uswitch.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pingles GitHub: https://github.com/pingles TranscriptAnnouncer: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native podcast, where we explore how end users talk and think about the transition to Kubernetes and cloud-native architectures.Emily: Welcome to The Business of Cloud Native. I'm your host, Emily Omier, and today I am chatting with Paul Ingles. Paul, thank you so much for joining me.Paul: Thank you for having me.Emily: Could you just introduce yourself: where do you work? What do you do? And include, sort of, some specifics. We all have a job title, but it doesn't always reflect what our actual day-to-day is.Paul: I am the CTO at a company called RVU in London. We run a couple of reasonably big-ish price comparison, aggregator type sites. So, we help consumers figure out and compare prices on broadband products, mobile phones, energy—so in the UK, energy is something which is provided through a bunch of different private companies, so you've got a fair amount of choice on kind of that thing. So, we tried to make it easier and simpler for people to make better decisions on the household choices that they have. I've been there for about 10 years, so I've had a few different roles. So, as CTO now, I sit on the exec team and try to help inform the business and technology strategy. But I've come through a bunch of teams. So, I've worked on some of the early energy price comparison stuff, some data infrastructure work a while ago, and then some underlying DevOps type automation and Kubernetes work a couple of years ago.Emily: So, when you get in to work in the morning, what types of things are usually on your plate?Paul: So, I keep a journal. I use bullet journalling quite extensively. So, I try to track everything that I've got to keep on top of. Generally, what I would try to do each day is catch up with anybody that I specifically need to follow up with. So, at the start of the week, I make a list of every day, and then I also keep a separate column for just general priorities. So, things that are particularly important for the week, themes of work going on, like, technology changes, or things that we're trying to launch, et cetera. And then I will prioritize speaking to people based on those things. So, I'll try and make sure that I'm focusing on the most important thing. I do a weekly meeting with the team. So, we have a few directors that look after different aspects of the business, and so we do a weekly meeting to just run through everything that's going on and sharing the problems. We use the three P's model: so, sharing progress problems and plans. And we use that to try and steer on what we do. And we also look at some other team health metrics. Yeah, it's interesting actually. I think when I switched from working in one of the teams to being in the CTO role, things change quite substantially. That list of things that I had to care about increase hugely, to the point where it far exceeded how much time I had to spend on anything. So, nowadays, I find that I'm much more likely for some things to drop off. And so it's unfortunate, and you can't please everybody, so you just have to say, “I'm really sorry, but this thing is not high on the list of priorities, so I can't spend any time on it this week, but if it's still a problem in a couple of weeks time, then we'll come back to it.” But yeah, it can vary quite a lot.Emily: Hmm, interesting. I might ask you more questions about that later. For now, let's sort of dive into the cloud-native journey. What made RVU decide that containerization was a good idea and that Kubernetes was a good idea? What were the motivations and who was pushing for it?Paul: That's a really good question. So, I got involved about 10 years ago. So, I worked for a search marketing startup that was in London called Forward Internet Group, and they acquired USwitch in 2010. And prior to working at Forward, I'd worked as a consultant at ThoughtWorks in London, so I spent a lot of time working in banks on continuous delivery and things like that. And so when Uswitch came along, there were a few issues around the software release process. Although there was a ton of automation, it was still quite slow to actually get releases out. We were only doing a release every fortnight. And we also had a few issues with the scalability of data. So, it was a monolithic Windows Microsoft stack. So, there was SQL Server databases, and .NET app servers, and things like that. And our traffic can be quite spiky, so when companies are in the news, or there's policy changes and things like that, we would suddenly get an increase in traffic, and the Microsoft solution would just generally kind of fall apart as soon as we hit some kind of threshold. So, I got involved, partly to try and improve some of the automation and release practices because at the search start-up, we were releasing experiments every couple of hours, even. And so we wanted to try and take a bit of that ethos over to Uswitch, and also to try and solve some of the data scalability and system scalability problems. And when we got started doing that, a lot of it was—so that was in the early heyday of AWS, so this was about 2008, that I was at the search startup. And we were used to using EC2 to try and spin up Hadoop clusters and a few other bits and pieces that we were playing around with. And when we acquired Uswitch, we felt like it was quickest for us to just create a different environment, stick it under the load balancer so end users wouldn't realize that some requests was being served off of the AWS infrastructure instead, and then just gradually go from there. We found that that was just the fastest way to move. So, I think it was interesting, and it was both a deliberate move, but it was also I think the degree to which we followed through on it, I don't think we'd really anticipated quite how quickly we would shift everything. And so when Forward made the acquisition, I joined summer of 2010, and myself and a colleague wrote a little two-pager on, here are the problems we see, here are the things that we think we can help with and the ways that technology approach that we'd applied at Forward would carry across, and what benefits we thought it would bring. Unfortunately because Forward was a privately held business—we were relatively small but profitable—and the owner of that business was quite risk-affine. He was quite keen on playing blackjack and other stuff. So, he was pretty happy with talking about probabilities of success.And so we just said, we think there's a future in it if we can get the wheels turning a bit better. And he was up for it. He backed us and we just took it from there. And so we replaced everything from self-hosted physical infrastructure running on top of .NET to all AWS hosted, running a mix of Ruby, and Closure, and other bits and pieces in about two years. And that's just continued from there. So, the move to Kubernetes was a relatively recent one; that was only within the last—I say ‘recent.' it was about two years ago, we started moving things in earnest. And then you asked what was the rationale for switching to Kubernetes—Emily: Let me first ask you, when you were talking with the owner, what were the odds that you gave him for success?Paul: [laughs]. That's a good question. I actually don't know. I think we always knew that there was a big impact to be had. I don't think we knew the scale of the upside. So, I don't think we—I mean, at the time, Uswitch was just about breaking even, so we didn't realize that there was an opportunity to radically change that. I think we underestimated how long it would take to do. So, I think we'd originally thought that we could replace, I think maybe most of the stuff that we needed replaced within six months. We had an early prototype out within two weeks, two or three weeks because we'd always placed a big emphasis on releasing early, experimenting, iterative delivery, A/B testing, that kind of thing. So, I think it was almost like that middle term that was the harder piece. And there was definitely a point where… I don't know, I think it was this classic situation of pulling on a ball of string where it was like, what wanted to do was to focus on improving the end-user experience because our original belief was that, aside from the scalability issues, that the existing site just didn't solve the problem sufficiently well, that it needed an overhaul to simplify the journeys, and simplify the process, and improve the experience for people. We were focusing on that and we didn't want to get drawn into replacing a lot of the back office and integration type systems partly because there was a lot of complexity there. But also because you then have to engage with QA environments, and test environments, and sign-offs with the various people that we integrate with. But it was, as I said, it was this kind of tugging on a ball of string where every improvement that we made in the end-user experience—so we would increase conversion rate by 10 percent but through doing that, we would introduce downstream error in the ways that those systems would integrate, and so we gradually just ended up having to pull in slightly more and more pieces to make it work. I don't think we ever gave odds of success. I think we underestimated how long that middle piece would take. I don't think we really anticipated the degree of upside that we would get as a consequence, through nothing other than just making releases quicker, being able to test and move faster, and focusing on end-user experience was definitely the right thing to focus on.Emily: Do you think though, that everybody perceived it as a risk? I'm just asking because you mentioned the blackjack, was this a risk that could fail?Paul: Well, I think the interesting thing about it was that we knew it was the right thing to do. So, again, I think our experience as consultants at ThoughtWorks was on applying continuous delivery, what we would today call DevOps, applying those practices to software delivery. And so we'd worked on systems where there weren't continuous integration servers and where people weren't releasing every day, and then we'd worked in environments where we were releasing every couple of hours, and we were very quickly able to hone in on what worked and discard things that didn't. And so I think because we've been able to demonstrate that success within the search business, I think that carried a great deal of trust. And so when it came to talking about things we could potentially do, we were totally convinced that there were things that we could improve. I think it was a combination of, there was a ton of potential, we knew that there was a new confluence of technologies and approaches that could be successful if we were able to just start over. And then I think also probably a healthy degree of, like, naive, probably overconfidence in what we could do that we would just throw ourselves into it. So, it's hard work, but yeah, it was ultimately highly successful. So, it's something I'm exceedingly proud of today.Emily: You said something really interesting, which is that Uswitch was barely profitable. And if I understand correctly, that changed for the better. Can you talk about how this is related?Paul: Yeah, sure. I think the interesting thing about it was that we knew that there was something we could do better, but we weren't sure what it was. And so the focus was always on being able to release as frequently as we possibly could to try and understand what that was, as well as trying to just simplify and pay back some of the technical debt. Well, so, trying to overcome some of the artificial constraints that existed because of the technology choices that people have made—perfectly decent decisions on, back in the day, but platforms like AWS offered better alternatives, now. So, we just focused on being able to deliver iteratively, and just keep focusing on continual improvement, releasing, understanding what the problems were, and then getting rid of those little niggly things. The manager I had at Forward was this super—I don't know, he just had the perfect ethos, and he was driven—so we were a team that were focused on doing daily experiments. And so we would rely on data on our spend and data on our revenue. And that would come in on a daily cycle. So, a lot of the rhythm of the team was driven off of that cycle. And so as we could run experiments and measure their profitability, we could then inform what we would do on the day. And so, we have a handful of long-running technology things that we were doing, and then we would also have other tactical things that he would have ideas on, he would have some hypothesis of, well, “Maybe this is the reason that this is happening, let's come up with a test that we can use to try and figure out whether that's true.” We would build something quickly to throw it together to help us either disprove it or support it, and we would put it live, see what happened, and then move on to the next thing. And so I think a lot of the—what we wanted to do is to instill a bit of that environment in Uswitch. And so a lot of it was being able to release quickly, making sure that people had good data in front of them. I mean, even tools like Google Analytics were something which we were quite au fait with using but didn't have broad adoption at the time. And so we were using that to look at site behavior and what was going on and reason about what was happening. So, we just tried to make sure that people were directly using that, rather than just making changes on a longer cycle without data at all.Emily: And can you describe how you were working with the business side, and how you were communicating, what the sort of working relationship was like? If there was any misunderstandings on either side.Paul: Yeah, it's a good question. So, when I started at Uswitch, the organizational structure was, I guess, relatively classical. So, you had a pooled engineering team. So, it was a monolithic system, deployed onto physical infrastructure. So, there was an engineering team, there was an operations team, and then there were a handful of people that were business specific in the different markets that we operated in. So, there was a couple of people that focused on, like, the credit card market; a couple of people that focused on energy, for example. And, I used to call it the stand-up swarm: so, in the morning, we would sit on our desks and you would see almost the entire office moved from the different card walls that were based around the office. Although there was a high degree of interaction between the business stakeholders, the engineers, designers, and other people, it always felt slightly weird that you would have almost all of the company interested in almost everything that was going on, and so I think the intuition we had was that a lot of the ways that we would think about structuring software around loosely-coupled but highly cohesive, those same principles should or could apply to the organization itself. And so what we tried to do is to make sure that we had multidisciplinary teams that had the people in them to do the work. So, for the early days of the energy work, there was only a couple of us that were in it. So, we had a couple of engineers, and we had a lady called Emma, who was the product owner. She used to work in the production operations team, so she used to be focused on data entry from the products that different energy providers would send us, but she had the strongest insight into the domain problem, what problem consumers were trying to overcome, and what ways that we could react to it. And so, when we got involved, she had a couple of ideas that she'd been trying to get traction on, that she'd been unable to. And so what we—we had a, I don't know, probably a, I think a half-day session in an office. So, we took over the boardroom at the office and just said, “Look, we could really do with a separate space away from everybody to be able to focus on it. And we just want to prove something out for a couple of weeks. And we want to make sure that we've got space for people to focus.” And so we had a half-day in there, we had a conversation about, “Okay, well, what's the problem? What's the technical complexity of going after any of these things?” And there's a few nuances, too. Like, if you choose option A, then we have to get all of the historical information around it, as well as the current products and market. Whereas if we choose option B, then we can simplify it down, and we don't need to do all of that work, and we can try and experiment with something sooner. So, we wanted it to be as collaborative as possible because we knew that the way that we would be successful is by trying to execute on ideas faster than we'd been able to before. And at the same time, we also wanted to make sure that there was a feeling of momentum and that we would—I think there was probably a healthy degree of slight overconfidence, but we were also very keen to be able to show off what we could do. And so we genuinely wanted to try and improve the environment for people so that we could focus on solving problems quicker, trying out more experiments, being less hung up on whether it was absolutely the right thing to do, and instead just focus on testing it. So, were there tensions? I think there were definitely tensions; I don't think there weren't tensions so much on the technical side; we were very lucky that most of the engineers that already worked there were quite keen on doing something different, and so we would have conversations with them and just say, “Look, we'll try everything we can to try and remove as many of the constraints that exist today.” I think a lot of the disagreement or tension was whether or not it was the right problem to be going after. So, again, the search business that we worked in was doing a decent amount of money for the number of people that were there, and we knew there was a problem we could fix, but we didn't know how much runway it would have. And so there was a lot of tension on whether we should be pulling people into focusing on extending the search business, or whether we needed to focus on fixing Uswitch. So, there was a fair amount of back and forth about whether or not we needed to move people from one part of the business to another and that kind of thing.Emily: Let's talk a little bit about Kubernetes, and how Uswitch decided to use Kubernetes, what problem it solved, and who was behind the decision, who was really making the push.Paul: Yeah, interesting. So, I think containers was something that we'd been experimenting with for a little while. So, as I think a lot of the culture was, we were quite risk-affine. So, we were quite keen to be trying out new technologies, and we'd been using modern languages and platforms like Closure since the early days of them being available. We'd been playing around with containers for a while, and I think we knew there was something in it, but we weren't quite sure what it was. So, I think, although we were playing around with it quite early, I think we were quite slow to choose one platform or another. I think in the end, we—in the intervening period, I guess, between when we went from the more classical way of running Puppet across a bunch of EC2 instances that run a version of your application, the next step after that was switching over to using ECS. So, Amazon's container service. And I guess the thing that prompted a bit more curiosity into Kubernetes was that—I forgot the projects I was working on, but I was working on a team for a little while, and then I switched to go do something else. And I needed to put a new service up, and rather than just doing the thing that I knew, I thought, “Well, I'll go talk to the other teams.” I'll talk to some other people around the company, and find out what's the way that I ought to be doing this today, and there was a lot of work around standardizing the way that you would stand up an ECS cluster. But I think even then, it always felt like we were sharing things in the wrong way. So, if you were working on a team, you had to understand a great deal of Amazon to be able to make progress. And so, back when I got started at Uswitch, when I talk about doing the work about the energy migration, AWS at the time really only offered EC2, load balancers, firewalling, and then eventually relational databases, and so back then the amounts of complexity to stand up something was relatively small. And then come to a couple of years ago. You have to appreciate and understand routing tables, VPCs, the security rules that would permit traffic to flow between those, it was one of those—it was just relatively non-trivial to do something that was so core to what we needed to be able to do. And I think the thing that prompted Kubernetes was that, on the Kubernetes project side, we'd seen a gradual growth and evolution of the concepts, and abstractions, and APIs that it offered. And so there was a differentiation between ECS or—I actually forget what CoreOS's equivalent was. I think maybe it was just called CoreOS. But there are a few alternative offerings for running containerized, clustered services, and Kubernetes seems to take a slightly different approach that it was more focused on end-user abstractions. So, you had a notion of making a deployment: that would contain replicas of a container, and you would run multiple instances of your application, and then that would become a service, and you could then expose that via Ingress. So, there was a language that you could use to talk about your application and your system that was available to you in the environment that you're actually using. Whereas AWS, I think, would take the view that, “Well, we've already got these building blocks, so what we want our users to do is assemble the building blocks that already exist.” So, you still have to understand load balancers, you still have to understand security groups, you have to understand a great deal more at a slightly lower level of abstraction. And I think the thing that seemed exciting, or that seems—the potential about Kubernetes was that if we chose something that offered better concepts, then you could reasonably have a team that would run some kind of underlying platform, and then have teams build upon that platform without having to understand a great deal about what was going on inside. They could focus more on the applications and the systems that they were hoping to build. And that would be slightly harder on the alternative. So, I think at the time, again, it was one of those fortunate things where I was just coming to the end of another project and was in the fortunate position where I was just looking around at the various different things that we were doing as a business, and what opportunity there was to do something that would help push things on. And Kubernetes was one of those things which a couple of us had been talking about, and thinking, “Oh, maybe now is the time to give it a go. There's enough stability and maturity in it; we're starting to hit the problems that it's designed to address. Maybe there's a bit more appetite to do something different.” So, I think we just gave it a go. Built a proof of concept, showed that could run the most complex system that we had, and I think also did a couple of early experiments on the ways in which Kubernetes had support for horizontal scaling and other things which were slightly harder to put into practice in AWS. And so we did all that, I think gradually it just kind of growed out from there, just took the proof of concepts to other teams that were building products and services. We found a team that were struggling to keep their systems running because they were a tiny team. They only had, like, two or three engineers in. They had some stability problems over a weekend because the server ran out of hard disk space, and we just said, “Right. Well, look, if you use this, we'll take on that problem. You can just focus on the application.” It kind of just grew and grew from there.Emily: Was there anything that was a lot harder than you expected? So, I'm looking for surprises as you're adopting Kubernetes.Paul: Oh, surprises. I think there was a non-trivial amount that we had to learn about running it. And again, I think at the point at which we'd picked it up, it was, kind of, early days for automation, so there was—I think maybe Google had just launched Google Kubernetes engine on Google Cloud. Amazon certainly hadn't even announced that hosted Kubernetes would be an option. There was an early project within Kubernetes, called kops that you could use to create a cluster, but even then it didn't fit our network topology because it wouldn't work with the VPC networking that we needed and expected within our production infrastructure. So, there was a lot of that kind of work in the early days, to try and make something work, you had to understand in quite a level of detail what each component of Kubernetes was doing. As we were gradually rolling it out, I think the things that were most surprising were that, for a lot of people, it solved a lot of problems that meant they could move on, and I think people were actually slightly surprised by that. Which, [laughs], it sounds like quite a weird turn of phrase, but I think people were positively surprised at the amount of stuff that they didn't have to do for solving a fair few number of problems that they had. There was a couple of teams that were doing things that are slightly larger scale that we had to spend a bit more time on improving the performance of our setup. So, in particular, there was a team that had a reasonably strong requirement on the latency overheads of Ingress. So, they wanted their application to respond within, I don't know, I think it was maybe 200 milliseconds or something. And we, through setting up the monitoring and other bits and pieces that we had, we realized that Ingress currently was doing all right, but there was a fair amount of additional latency that was added at the tail that was a consequence of a couple of bugs or other things that existed in the infrastructure. So, there was definitely a lot of little niggly things that came up as we were going, but we were always confident that we could overcome it. And, as I said, I think that a lot of teams saw benefits very early on. And I think the other teams that were perhaps a little bit more skeptical because they got their own infrastructure already, they knew how to operate it, it was highly tested, they'd already run capacity and load tests on it, they were convinced that it was the most efficient thing that they could possibly run. I think even over the long run, I think they realized that there was more work that they needed to do than they should be focusing on, and so they were quite happy to ultimately switch over to the shared platform and infrastructure that the cloud infrastructure team run.Emily: As we wrap up, there's actually a question I want to go back to, which is how you were talking about the shifting priorities now that you've become CTO. Do you have any sort of examples of, like, what are the top three things that you will always care about, that you will always have the energy to think about? And then I'm curious to have some examples of things that you can't deal with, you can't think about. The things that tend to drop off.Paul: The top three things that I always think about. So, I think, actually, what's interesting about being CTO, that I perhaps wasn't expecting is that you're ever so slightly removed from the work, that you can't rely on the same signals or information to be able to make a decision on things, and so when I give the Kubernetes story, it's one of those, like, because I'd moved from one system to another, and I was starting a new project, I experienced some pain. It's like, “Right. Okay, I've got to go do something to fix this. I've had enough.” And I think the thing that I'm always paying attention to now, is trying to understand where that pain is next, and trying to make sure that I've got a mechanism for being able to appreciate that. So, I think a lot of the things I try to spend time on are things to help me keep track of what's going on, and then help me make decisions off the back of it. So, I think the things that I always spend time on are generally things trying to optimize some process or invest in automation. So, a good example at the moment is, we're talking about starting to do canary deployments. So, starting to automate the actual rollout of some new release, and being able to automate a comparison against the existing service, looking at latency, or some kind of transactional metrics to understand whether it's performing as well or different than something historical. So, I think the things that I tend to spend time on are process-oriented or are things to try and help us go quicker. One of the books that I read that changed my opinion of management was Andy Grove's, High Output Management. And I forget who recommended it to me, but somebody recommended it to me, and it completely altered my opinion of what value a manager can add. So, one of the lenses I try to apply to anything is of everything that's going on, what's the handful of things that are going to have the most impact or leverage across the organization, and try and spend my time on those. I think where it gets tricky is that you have to go broad and deep. So, as much as there are broad things that have a high consequence on the organization as a whole, you also need an appreciation of what's going on in the detail, and I think that's always tricky to manage. I'm sorry, I forgot what was the second part of your question.Emily: The second part was, do you have any examples of the things that you tend to not care about? That presumably someone is asking you to care about, and you don't?Paul: [laughs]. Yeah, it's a good question. I don't think it's that I don't care about it. I think it's that there are some questions that come my way that I know that I can defer, or they're things which are easy to hand off. So, I think the… that is a good question. I think one of the things that I think are always tricky to prioritize, are things which feel high consequence but are potentially also very close to bikeshedding. And I think that is something which is fair—I'd be interested to hear what other people said. So, a good example is, like, choice of tooling. And so when I was working on a team, or on a problem, we would focus on choosing the right tool for the job, and we would bias towards experimenting with tools early, and figuring out what worked, and I think now you have to view the same thing through a different lens. So, there's a degree to which you also incur an organizational cost as a consequence of having high variability in the programming languages that you choose to use. And so I don't think it's something I don't care about, but I think it's something which is interesting that I think it's something which, over the time I've been doing this role, I've gradually learned to let go of things that I would otherwise have previously thoroughly enjoyed getting involved in. And so you have to step back and say, “Well, actually I'm not the right person to be making a decision about which technology this team should be using. I should be trusting the team to make that decision.” And you have to kind of—I think that over the time I've been doing the role, you kind of learn which are the decisions that are high consequence that you should be involved in and which are the ones that you have to step back from. And you just have to say, look, I've got two hours of unblocked time this week where I can focus on something, so of the things on my priority list—the things that I've written in my journal that I want to get done this month—which of those things am I going to focus on, and which of the other things can I leave other people to get on with, and trust that things will work out all right?Emily: That's actually a very good segue into my final question, which is the same for everyone. And that is, what is an engineering tool that you can't live without—your favorite?Paul: Oh, that's a good question. So, I don't know if this is a cop-out by not mentioning something engineering-related, but I think the tool and technique which has helped me the most as I had more and more management responsibility and trying to keep track of things, is bullet journaling. So, I think, up until, I don't know, maybe five years ago, probably, I'd focus on using either iOS apps or note tools in both my laptop, and phone, and so on, and it never really stuck. And bullet journaling, through using a pen and a notepad, it forced me to go a bit slower. So, it forced me to write things down, to think through what was going on, and there is something about it being physical which makes me treat it slightly differently. So, I think bullet journaling is one of the things which has had the—yeah, it's really helped me deal with keeping track of what's going on, and then giving me the ability to then look back over the week, figure out what were the things that frustrated me, what can I change going into next week, one of the suggestions that the person that came up with bullet journaling recommended, is this idea of an end of week reflection. And so, one of the things I try to do—it's been harder doing it now that I'm working at home—is to spend just 15 minutes at the end of the week thinking of, what are the things that I'm really proud of? What are some good achievements that I should feel really good about going into next week? And so I think a lot of the activities that stem from bullet journaling have been really helpful. Yeah, it feels like a bit of a cop-out because it's not specifically technology related, but bullet journaling is something which has made a big difference to me.Emily: Not at all. That's totally fair. I think you are the first person who's had a completely non-technological answer, but I think I've had someone answer Slack, something along those lines.Paul: Yeah, I think what's interesting is there there are loads of those tools that we use all the time. Like Google Docs is something I can't live without. So, I think there's a ton of things that I use day-to-day that are hard to let go off, but I think the I think that the things that have made the most impact on my ability to deal with a stressful job, and give you the ability to manage yourself a little bit, I think yeah, it's been one of the most interesting things I've done.Emily: And where could listeners connect with you or follow you?Paul: Cool. So, I am @pingles on Twitter. My DMs are open, so if anybody wants to talk on that, I'm happy to. I'm also on GitHub under pingles, as well. So, @pingles, generally in most places will get you to me.Emily: Well, thank you so much for joining me.Paul: Thank you for talking. It's been good fun.Announcer: Thank you for listening to The Business of Cloud Native podcast. Keep up with the latest on the podcast at thebusinessofcloudnative.com and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. We'll see you next time.
Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel, wrote this classic text on people management almost four decades ago. Listen in as Sandi MacPherson (Founder of Quibb) and Anna Marie Clifton (product manager at Yammer) discuss the highlights and hard learned lessons from this book.