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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312: Seeking Strengths (Gareth Burrowes)
March 18th, 2019 | Season 7 | 38 mins 52 secs
Gareth Burrowes, Co-Founder & Head of Product and Marketing at The Tech Connection, discusses employment screening focused on candidate strengths, removing unconscious bias from the hiring flow, and the importance of diversity at every level of a company.
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311: Serving Serverless (Erica Windisch)
March 11th, 2019 | Season 7 | 39 mins 3 secs
Erica Windisch, CTO and co-founder of IOpipe, discusses serverless architecture and how it can provide a clearer user-interaction story, the state of automatic code generation, and her experience in Techstars.
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310: Have a Slide For That (Alec Stern)
March 4th, 2019 | Season 7 | 42 mins 31 secs
Alec Stern, startup founder, entrepreneur, mentor, investor, and advisor, discusses founding Constant Contact, the early days of SaaS, the importance and utilization of 'channels', and pursuing customer feedback.
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309: Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast (Jamie Howard)
February 25th, 2019 | Season 7 | 27 mins 53 secs
Jamie Howard, Director of Engineering at TransLoc, discusses hiring, solutions-driven engineering, leadership in the military vs the private sector, and Agile methodology.
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308: Technology is Everywhere (Siobhan Green)
February 18th, 2019 | Season 7 | 35 mins 25 secs
Siobhan Green, co-founder & CEO of Sonjara, discusses finding good tech solutions for organizations in the social-benefit space and developing countries, merging her passions for tech and international development, GDPR, and the ethics and security of various technological solutions.
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307: Win in the Long Term (Mike McDerment)
February 11th, 2019 | Season 7 | 34 mins 40 secs
Mike McDerment, co-founder and CEO of FreshBooks, discusses reimagining the platform with a system-wide A-B test, experiences with scaling, the value of customer service, and the art/science of change.
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306: 306: Solving a Specific Problem (Ellen Chisa)
February 4th, 2019 | Season 7 | 26 mins 45 secs
Ellen Chisa, CEO and cofounder of Dark, discusses building a complete programming platform from scratch, the benefits of a private beta, and making programming more accessible.
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305: You're Never Done (Ben McRedmond)
January 28th, 2019 | Season 7 | 28 mins 48 secs
Ben McRedmond, CEO of Consider, discusses his time as Senior Director of Growth at Intercom, teases his plans for fixing email, and discusses the importance & difficulty of product validation.
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304: Intentional Soul-Searching (Natalie Nagele)
January 21st, 2019 | Season 7 | 46 mins 5 secs
Natalie Nagele, Co-founder and CEO of Wildbit, discusses product updates, operating with more meaning and purpose, user research, bootstrap vs VC funding, and experiments in productivity (like a 4-day work week, turning off Slack, and strategies for remote work).
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303: Building Something Special (Margaret McKenna)
January 14th, 2019 | Season 7 | 28 mins 32 secs
Margaret McKenna, Software Engineer at Devoted Health, discusses joining a team based on their mission, building systems from scratch, and evolution on a new, rapidly growing team.
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302: What Stage Are We In? (Sam Clemens)
January 7th, 2019 | Season 7 | 40 mins 50 secs
Sam Clemens, Partner at Accomplice VC, discusses utilizing his product experience to nurture new companies, advice for where businesses should focus in various stages of growth, what should really be in an MVP, and his feelings around leaving a company as it's founder.
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301: Projection & Prediction (Aatish Salvi)
December 10th, 2018 | Season 7 | 39 mins 59 secs
Aatish Salvi, CTO of Teikametrics, discusses building a service for 3rd party Amazon sellers using data science, being wary of pre-mature optimization, integrating data engineering research into the team, and working with Amazon as both a partner and a competitor.
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300: More Useable Information (Jennifer Lum)
December 3rd, 2018 | Season 7 | 30 mins 56 secs
Jennifer Lum, COO and co-founder of Forge.ai, discusses building a company and platform that transforms unstructured information into machine-readable data in real-time, avoiding biases in data collection, and evolving & defining company values as one's team grows.
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299: High-Touch (Millie Blackwell)
November 26th, 2018 | Season 7 | 36 mins 42 secs
Millie Blackwell, President & Co-founder of Showcase Workshop, discusses differences in business culture between California and New Zealand, pursuing tablets as a business tool early in the lifespan of the iPad, experimenting with SaaS pricing, and providing value to both enterprise buyers and end-users.
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298: Doing Right is Scalable (DJ Patil)
November 15th, 2018 | Season 7 | 47 mins 10 secs
DJ Patil, Head of Technology at Devoted Health, discusses his time as the U.S. Chief Data Scientist, scaling healthcare to meet modern data demands, and the process of architecting a health care company.
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297: Go Deep (David Kloba & Rob Meinhardt)
November 6th, 2018 | Season 7 | 49 mins 31 secs
David Kloba & Rob Meinhardt, Co-Founders of Furious Collective, discuss the mindset and methodology of their venture production studio, recount their adventures over the past year of growing FormKeep after having acquired it from thoughtbot, and offer advice to founders preparing to sell their product or company.