Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots
About the show
A podcast about the design, development, and business of great software. Each week thoughtbot's Chad Pytel is joined by the people who build and nurture the products we love.
Episodes
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441: Creative Startups with Alice Loy
September 22nd, 2022 | Season 11 | 40 mins 47 secs
Alice Loy is a Founding Partner at DaVinci Ventures and the Co-Founder and CEO of Creative Startups, the leading global startup accelerator and company builder for design, food, immersive, and creative companies.
Victoria and Chad talk with Alice about what she means by creative companies, how much judgment she must pass as an investor with a love for the "weird and wonderful," and some of the challenges faced in bringing diversity to the rest of the accelerator world.
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440: The LGBTQ+ Family Connections Center with Joe Barb
September 15th, 2022 | Season 11 | 20 mins 49 secs
Joe Barb is Executive Director and Founder of LGBTQ+ Family Connections Center. They have a mission to strengthen and empower all youth, however they identify, to overcome obstacles by providing housing, supportive counseling, community education, and advocacy.
Victoria and Chad talk with Joe about identifying needs for the center, his own lived experience and connection to the LGBTQ+ community, and deciding what services to provide and evaluating which are most impactful.
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439: LOANHOOD with Lucy Hall
September 8th, 2022 | Season 11 | 31 mins 14 secs
Lucy Hall is the Co-Founder of LOANHOOD, an online fashion rental platform and community that allows users to loan inclusive, diverse, and creative styles for an affordable price.
Chad talks with Lucy about being a peer-to-peer fashion rental app, building a community, and reducing the impacts of the fashion industry on the planet and people by helping to create a sustainable future.
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438: Bright Ventures with Lenore Champagne Beirne
September 1st, 2022 | Season 11 | 24 mins 56 secs
Lenore Champagne Beirne is Founder and Managing Partner at Bright Ventures, a groundbreaking space for transformation in people, companies, and industries with coaching, capital, and community.
Chad talks with Lenore about being at the intersection of all three of those services, providing support for diverse entrepreneurs, and staying intentional about the kind of company and culture they're creating.
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437: Hello Prenup with Sarabeth Jaffe
August 25th, 2022 | Season 11 | 30 mins 40 secs
Sarabeth Jaffe is CTO and Co-Founder at HelloPrenup, the digital prenup platform designed to get couples on the same page.
Chad talks with Sarabeth about dogfooding her own product, completely starting over from a technical perspective using Bubble, a low-code/no-code platform, and appearing on the ABC hit series Shark Tank.
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436: Welcoming our new co-host Victoria Guido
August 18th, 2022 | Season 11 | 24 mins 58 secs
Victoria Guido is the new Associate Director of Business Development and DevOps Strategy at thoughtbot, and is joining Chad as co-host of the show!
Chad talks with Victoria about getting involved in DevOps work, transitioning to agile, moving away from her old community which was based on geography, and tips for people onboarding into a new role.
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435: Numerated with Adam Kenney
August 11th, 2022 | Season 11 | 34 mins 49 secs
Adam Kenney is Chief Product Officer at Numerated, which helps banks and credit unions transform how they lend to businesses.
Chad talks with Adam about what institutional banks and credit unions are like as a market and customers and what sales cycles look like, going from 17 to more than 130 customers quickly, and the scaling challenges they faced, and how the pandemic affected them as a company.
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434: SOS with Susanna Twarog
August 4th, 2022 | Season 11 | 29 mins 59 secs
Susanna Twarog is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of SOS, which is transforming wellness on the go through a network of smart vending machines that deliver just-in-time necessities where and when you need the most.
Chad talks with Susanna about wellness on the go, the unique business that they're building and what SOS can offer brands, and the biggest hurdles to overcome to get 10,000 machines up and running.
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433: Techie Staffing with Anna Spearman
July 28th, 2022 | Season 11 | 50 mins 53 secs
Anna Spearman is the Founder of Techie Staffing, which connects high-quality technology talent with high-caliber clients.
Chad talks with Anna about founding and growing the company, immediately after graduating college, during a pandemic, reputation building, and facing skepticism around her lack of track record in recruiting, and finding and providing talent for clients as a white-glove service.
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432: MustWatch with Chelinde Edouard
July 21st, 2022 | Season 11 | 28 mins 20 secs
Chelinde Edouard is Co-Founder and CEO of MustWatch, which connects people through television.
Chad talks with Che about creating a social and user engagement platform that allows people to come back and constantly use an app without interrupting TV-watching experiences, how they use data to improve user experience, and fundraising and giving investors opportunities to help build out the app, increase marketing, and potentially build an Android version.
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431: DEI at thoughtbot with Geronda Wollack-Spiller
July 14th, 2022 | Season 11 | 37 mins 29 secs
Geronda Wollack-Spiller is the DEI Program Manager at thoughtbot.
Chad talks with Geronda about implementing a successful Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion program at the company by providing a culture of belonging, the challenges, in particular, the tech industry faces, and acknowledging that many of us work in spaces where when we're bringing someone onto a team who has underrepresented identities, they might be the only one. How do we create a space that's as inclusive as possible?
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430: LearnWorlds with Panos Siozos
July 7th, 2022 | Season 11 | 37 mins 55 secs
Panos Siozos is Co-Founder and CEO of LearnWorlds, an online course platform for creating, selling, and promoting online courses.
Chad talks with Panos about building e-learning platforms dating back to 1999, providing rich feature sets and catering to customers located in lots of different places, and deciding to stop bootstrapping and take investor money.
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429: 5x with Tarush Aggarwal
June 30th, 2022 | Season 11 | 31 mins 59 secs
Tarush Aggarwal is the Founder and CEO of 5X, the modern data stack as a managed service that enables companies to answer business questions without having to worry about building data infrastructure or bringing in the right data engineering team.
Chad talks with Tarush about the modern data stack movement, choosing things that make sense on behalf of their customers, and building a team culture at a company with a fairly large time zone distribution.
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428: LGBT YouthLink of CenterLink with Deborah Levine
June 23rd, 2022 | Season 11 | 25 mins
Deborah Levine is the Director of LGBT YouthLink at CenterLink, which supports, strengthens, and connects LGBT centers.
Chad talks with Deborah about working on something new called imi: a free digital research-backed mental health tool intended to support and help LGBTQ+ teens explore and affirm their identity and learn practical ways to cope with their sexual and gender minority stress, founding Q Chat Space, a digital LGBTQ+ center where teens join live-chat, professionally facilitated, online support groups, and how over the time that she's been doing work in LGBTQ+ spaces products and online interaction have changed and evolved.
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427: BrainStation with Johanna Mikkola
June 16th, 2022 | Season 11 | 41 mins 22 secs
Johanna Mikkola is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wyncode Academy, recently acquired by BrainStation, whose project-based programs have helped over 100,000 professionals launch new careers in the tech industry.
Chad talks with Johanna about creating a digital skills training bootcamp, the hiring and training market and challenges, and prioritizing inclusion and diversity in the student population.
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426: Marvelous with Jeni Barcelos
June 9th, 2022 | Season 11 | 40 mins 53 secs
Jeni Barcelos is the Co-Founder and CEO of Marvelous, the world's most beautiful all-in-one teaching platform.
Chad talks with Jeni about what makes Marvelous different from other teaching platforms out there, the importance of elevating women to leadership positions, and why applying for and getting accepted into an accelerator program was the right path for the company.