Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots
About the show
A podcast about the design, development, and business of great software. Each week thoughtbot is joined by the people who build and nurture the products we love.
Episodes
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Data
September 8th, 2020 | Season 9 | 41 mins 11 secs
Data drives the world, and so this month we'll be talking about common pitfalls of building a business around data, laying out a tandem roadmap to drive forward both data and product, the importance of insight over raw data, when does it makes sense to reach for machine learning, tooling, and thoughts on the ethics & future legislation of data collection.
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Fundraising - Nurse-1-1
August 31st, 2020 | Season 9 | 50 mins 21 secs
Chad and Lindsey are joined by Michael Sheeley, founder & CEO of Nurse-1-1, to discuss vetting your investors, his experience with fundraising, maintaining your reputation, his mindset while negotiation with investors, lessons learned while building and funding startups, the importance of establishing a founding team, and involving the team in the fundraising process.
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Fundraising - ShearShare
August 24th, 2020 | Season 9 | 1 hr 11 mins
Chad and Lindsey are joined by Courtney & Tye Caldwell, Co-founders of ShearShare, to discuss their acceptance into the first cohort of Google for Startups' Black Founders Accelerator, speaking the language of investors, preparing for series A, how they think about an exit, and equity for the team.
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Fundraising - Teikametrics
August 17th, 2020 | Season 9 | 42 mins 14 secs
Chad and Lindsey talk with Alasdair McLean-Foreman, CEO & Founder of Teikametrics, discussing early days of community building online, geography in relation to investors, his history with VC, the importance of relationship building, when & how much money to raise, time investment of a CEO for fundraising, and sharing financials with the team.
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Fundraising
August 10th, 2020 | Season 9 | 33 mins 19 secs
This month we'll be talking about all things fundraising! The discussion covers investors vs bootstrapping, crowd-funding, differences between the various levels of fundraising, accelerators, and the expectations of taking venture capital.
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Work-Life Flow - Nurse-1-1
August 3rd, 2020 | Season 9 | 39 mins 8 secs
Chad and Lindsey are joined by Michael Sheeley, founder & CEO of Nurse-1-1, to discuss figuring out the summer and working from home during Covid and beyond, his approach to feature rollout, pings, & to-dos, as well as keeping the team on a unified path, and his personal motivations to keep going.
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Work-Life Flow - ShearShare
July 27th, 2020 | Season 9 | 46 mins 10 secs
Chad and Lindsey talk with Courtney & Tye Caldwell, Co-founders of ShearShare, about the offset schedule of the beauty industry, an unexpected source of inspiration, the importance of a routine, and supporting the betterment of their team & community.
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Work-Life Flow - Teikametrics
July 20th, 2020 | Season 9 | 38 mins 51 secs
Chad and Lindsey catch up with Alasdair McLean-Foreman, CEO & Founder of Teikametrics, as they head into the second half of the year discussing finding balance (especially when you love your work), examining 'what's our role' to make an impact in responding to national and global events, the importance of exercise in his life, and staying engaged with the product even as one's focus shifts more broadly in the company.
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Work-Life Flow
July 13th, 2020 | Season 9 | 37 mins 19 secs
Lindsey and Chad discuss work-life flow, both in general and during quarantine, their schedules, hobbies, and methods to preserve personal time like time-boxing, prioritization, and calendar blocking.
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Sales - Nurse-1-1
July 6th, 2020 | Season 9 | 38 mins 24 secs
Chad and Lindsey are joined by Michael Sheeley, founder & CEO of Nurse-1-1, to discuss prioritizing revenue, their revenue models, why sales at their stage is more like business development, and considering your first 'sales' hire.
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Sales - ShearShare
June 29th, 2020 | Season 9 | 51 mins 7 secs
Chad and Lindsey talk with Courtney & Tye Caldwell, Co-founders of ShearShare, about all the different forms that sales can take, their revenue model, the importance of personal outreach, and building trust through content marketing.
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Sales - Teikametrics
June 22nd, 2020 | Season 9 | 47 mins 43 secs
Chad and Lindsey talk with Alasdair McLean-Foreman, CEO & Founder of Teikametrics, about product-led direct-to-consumer as the future of sales, capturing multiple market segments, and sales structure within Teikametrics.
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Sales
June 15th, 2020 | Season 9 | 35 mins 18 secs
Chad and Lindsey discuss thoughtbot's ideology around sales, the sales process & cycle, identifying your ideal customers, and fostering real relationships with customers.
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367: Securing Opportunity (Shelly Bell)
June 8th, 2020 | Season 9 | 37 mins 56 secs
We’re pushing out our next episode in the Giant Robots startup series. We want to pause to acknowledge, reflect, and take action against injustices against the black community.
thoughtbot stands with the black community. We’re outraged by the systematic racism and violence in the US. George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, and too many other members of the black community have lost their lives due to racial injustice. It needs to end.
We recognize we haven’t been doing enough to fight this injustice and need to be active in anti-racism. Our D&I council and many others on the thoughtbot team are discussing how we can do more and are working on new initiatives to better support our black colleagues, friends, and beyond - far into the future.
We're looking to do things both large and small. For example, this week we changed our conference reimbursement benefit to only be applicable to conferences that have a diverse speaker lineup and a code of conduct. We hope our efforts will be useful to others as well, and plan to make them available to other companies to work from. In the meantime, we’re going to link to a reading list that we recommend.
Today we’re resharing a past episode that features a black voice in the tech community that we look up to and you should know - Shelly Bell. Shelly is the founder of Black Girl Ventures, an organization that creates access to social and financial capital for Black and Brown women founders. She’s been named in the Top 100 Power Women by Entrepreneur Magazine and has a fantastic story you don’t want to miss.
Stay safe and see you soon.
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Communication & Collaboration - Nurse-1-1
June 1st, 2020 | Season 9 | 41 mins 47 secs
Chad and Lindsey are joined by Michael Sheeley, founder & CEO of Nurse-1-1, to discuss feeling disconnected from the team during quarantine, evaluating for communication skills during the interview process, how communication standards differ in the medical field, and avoiding AI & automation within patient conversations.
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Communication & Collaboration- ShearShare
May 25th, 2020 | Season 9 | 49 mins 33 secs
Chad and Lindsey talk with Courtney & Tye Caldwell, Co-founders of ShearShare, about being founded as remote company, their communication tools and methodologies, interview process, and messaging implementation.