Build

It’s the final episode of FemgineerTV for the 2015 season! It felt like just yesterday I was waking up at 5am on a January morning to buy bagels for Ben Congleton our first guest. Then driving up with him to SF to beat the traffic on 101. Still can’t believe we made it one piece for the live pilot episode! Since then we’ve produced a total of 11 episodes with guests who are changing the landscape of technology in the way they design, engineer, and lead product innovation and their companies. If you’ve missed even one episode, then take some time this holiday season to watch them all here. Of course none of these episodes would have been possible without the support of our sponsor Pivotal Tracker. Specials thanks to Ronan Dunlop, Charles Springer, and Dan Podsedly for believing in my vision for FemgineerTV and continuing to support it. These are some of the BEST guys in Silicon Valley to work with! I also want to thank my team: Michael Zeligs (videographer), Nathalie Arbel (editor), Christy Buckland (editor),

We know that funding is critical for the life of a startup, and founders can opt to bootstrap or raise capital from VCs. Many do both as we saw in episode 8 when I interviewed Melody McCloskey. Then in episode 9, I spoke to Shruti Gandhi, the founding and managing partner at Array VC, a fund that invests in early stage startups. Shruti shared with us the different ways investors can help a company grow, plus tips for dealing with different types of investors, and how to dig into an investor’s thesis to see if they’re the right fit for you. In today’s episode, we’re going to expand beyond the mechanics of funding, and learn about a startup that’s helping investors and founders learn all they can to make decisions when it comes to investing.  Danielle Morrill is the CEO and co-founder of Mattermark, a data platform that keeps track of startups and their growth signals. Danielle began her startup career working Pelago, then went on to become the first employee at Twilio, and recently launched Mattermark.   Her g

If you’ve been following along with FemgineerTV, you’ll have learned what the investor-founder dynamic is like from the viewpoint of an entrepreneur. In the last episode, I sat down with the CEO & co-founder of StyleSeat, Melody McCloskey, to understand what it takes to raise capital at the various stages of a startup, from Seed to Series A and beyond. In today’s episode, we’re going to get the opposite perspective by diving into an investor’s mindset. We’ll try to understand what compels them to write a check and, more importantly, how they add value beyond a check. (That’s right, they’re not just a source of capital; they can be an indispensable partner!) I’ve invited Shruti Gandhi to chat with us. Shruti is the founding and managing partner at Array VC, a fund that invests in early stage startups. She began her career as software engineer. Since then, she has been a startup founder and an investor in five funds; now, she has started her own. Having been in many roles, Shruti understands the importance

You’ve probably noticed the ongoing debate about whether or not we’re in a tech bubble. Headlines are always gushing about the latest companies with billion dollar valuations. There’s a lot of investment capital out there right now, and if you’re a startup founder who hopes to raise money, you might be wondering what it takes to attract some of that capital to you . You have to figure out what to say to attract investors, but here’s the thing: depending on whether it’s your first fundraise or a follow-on round, you have to take a different approach. So, what do investors look for in a startup ripe for Series A versus Series B? When should you stop bootstrapping and search for seed funding? To help us out with these questions, I’ve invited Melody McCloskey, the CEO & Co-Founder of StyleSeat, who has successfully raised $39.9M for her company through 4 separate fundraising rounds, ranging from seed to Series B. Each round was different, and it wasn’t all smooth sailing for Melody. Hear how she succeeded in

You might have used products that just get the job done. (Think Excel.) They compete with similar products on features, cost, and other mechanics. The problem is, these products become commodities and can lose their users to competition in a heartbeat.  Meanwhile, there are standout products that are heralded as works of art. They inspire people and change lives, and consumers stick with these brands for a long time thanks to a glue called love. Most of us want to make amazing products and are looking for that je ne sais quoi to take it to the next level: Why do Apple and Nike stores continue to make money during retail recessions? What do the Jony Ive’s and Tom Gruber’s of the world know that we don’t? And when we hear that our products need to “delight” the user, what does “delight” really mean? Today on FemgineerTV we’re going to talk about the balance of science and art that goes into amazing design and discuss the building process behind products that delight users every single time. To help us out I’ve

We all have ideas for features, products, and companies. But we cannot bring them to life alone. Partners and teams help us get out of our echo chambers, see possibilities we’ve never imagined, and put one foot in front of the other when the going gets rough.  The best teams are composed of individuals with complementary skill sets, and as we learned back in Episode 4, empathy for one another. But you might be wondering: How does a team form over time? And how do you pick an initial partner or co-founder if you’re starting from scratch? In today’s episode of FemgineerTV we’re going to talk about how to pick partners, assemble a founding team to get your idea off the ground, and reveal the key ingredient to a lasting partnership. To help us out I’ve invited the co-founders of Pop Up Archive, Anne Wootton and Bailey Smith. Pop Up Archive is a startup based in Oakland, CA that makes sound searchable by using cutting edge speech-to-text technology. Anne Wootton is the CEO and Bailey Smith is the CTO. We’ll learn

If you’re a technical person, such as an engineer or designer, then your todo list is probably filled with product launches, bug fixes, interviewing candidates, attending meetings, answering emails, and fighting fires.  The daily grind can leave you wondering if the work that you do is actually worthwhile and makes a big impact. While it’s easy for people to tell us to work smarter, not harder, the bulk of the work still falls on our shoulders, and it often feels like the only way to get it all done is to put in more hours! In today’s episode of FemgineerTV, we’re going to tackle your todo list. We’ll talk about how you can identify activities that will make a big impact for your organization, your team, and yourself, and how to feel good about deprioritizing those that don’t! For expert guidance, I’ve invited Edmond Lau, who is the author of the new book The Effective Engineer. Edmond has worked as an engineer at big companies like Google and growth-stage startups like Ooyala, Quora, and, most recently, Quip

There’s one skill that every wildly successful product manager, UX designer, businessperson, and leader has in common. It helps them unite teams and ship products that customers love time and time again.  What could possibly unite all these technologists?  It’s conscious and deliberate empathy.  Most people believe empathy is just about being compassionate, like lending your friend a shoulder to cry on when they’re going through a breakup. Others dismiss it altogether as a distraction, because they believe it’s more important to be efficient, focus, and get stuff done! Well, it just so happens that when a company is plagued by lack of motivation, missed deadlines, and high employee turnover, often it’s because employees feel that their teammates, bosses, and management don’t “get them.” They might feel like coworkers jump to conclusions or assume their intentions and motivations. In other words, they don’t feel that anyone has empathy for them as an individual. Lack of empathy is terrible for team-building, b

We all want customers to crave the products we build. Next, we want them to spread the word, because WOM (word-of-mouth) marketing is THE strongest and most authentic for your product.  WOM is a testimonial delivered from one customer to another. The customer spreading the word cares about helping the other person out and is willing to vouch for the product based on benefits they’ve personally experienced.  These days, most customer-to-customer testimonials live on the internet through social media, forums, forwarded emails, and other online communities.  They also live on Product Hunt, TechCrunch’s Best New Startup of 2014. Product Hunt is an online community where members submit and vote up the best new tech products. A simple upvote arrow is the site’s distilled version of word of mouth, and highly recommended products float to the top of the site and get an influx of visitors. According to TechCrunch, Product Hunt is “taking the industry by storm as founders, investors, early adopters and other tech enthu

As technologists we want to build software that is friendly, fast, beautiful, reliable, secure, and scalable. And we expect ourselves to deliver it on time and under budget, because our ultimate goal is to have lots of happy customers who can do what they want: cue Daft Punk’s Technologic! But time and energy are finite, and we simply cannot deliver it all at once. We need to choose our priorities, and this choice is one we should make consciously. Evaluating our software development priorities while dealing with constraints is known as the tradeoff space. How can you make wise tradeoffs for your product? The choice is based on a balance between your technology stack and business model type. “Move fast and break things!” While this has become a popular motto, it doesn’t apply to every company. For example, enterprise software companies that are building system-level software prioritize reliability because customers need to use them. Each change needs to be rigorously tested, and often approved before it can b

While a lot of people talk about the financial benefits of a remote team, that’s actually NOT the reason why Ben Congleton and his team decided to build a remote team. You’ve probably also heard over and over again the importance of company culture, but Ben actually breaks down what him and his team at Olark do to build a strong company culture! During the show we covered the following 3 misconceptions people have about remote working: 1. Employees won’t be as productive and progress will stagnate 2. Communication between employees and teams will break down 3. A remote team will be devoid of culture In the pilot episode of FemgineerTV Ben and I tackled each of these misconceptions. And Ben shares how he and his co-founders have built an amazing remote team of 30-people, which spans San Francisco to Europe.