Software development and Internet business

Dan Hill is Product Lead at Airbnb and Former co-founder and CTO at Seedcamp Company Crashpadder (http://tcrn.ch/1L3XiPM). He blogs at http://danhilltech.com/ and tweets at https://twitter.com/serenestudios

We had a chance to sit down with him and chat about his experience with Crashpadder and now at Airbnb and life lessons he's learned along the way.

Dan Hill, Product Lead at AirBnB

Why do startups fail? What are the best ways to scale up and grow your customer base? How do you test and verify new business ideas? In this episode, we're joined by Brian Balfour (VP of Growth at HubSpot) to discuss different user acquisition and growth tactics, as well as the major mistakes that all startups should avoid.

"The landscape of user acquisition is rapidly changing. And it's actually changing at an accelerating rate. More and more platforms are becoming available to us and their cycle of peak effectiveness to depreciation is becoming faster and faster." — Brian at 3:25

Visit Brian's website: www.Coelevate.com
Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com
Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight
Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle
Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

Subscribe on iTunes

Startup Growth Tactics with Brian Balfour (VP of Growth at HubSpot)

Intercom's Elizabeth McGuane sits down with Karen McGrane to discuss when startups should start thinking about content strategy, how to communicate your brand within a product, and why you should stop thinking in pages.

Karen McGrane, Managing Partner, Bond Art + Science

What is Lean UX and how does it change the way that designers work? What are the most effective ways for design organizations to be structured? In this episode, Austin interviews Jeff Gothelf (Author of Lean UX & Sense and Respond) to take a deep dive on UX in the modern workplace and the future of design.

"The goal for me is to illustrate to the folks that I'm speaking with, what the new focus of digital product and service design is. And it's not cranking out more features. It's not getting more stuff out the door and in front of customers. It's having a meaningful impact on customer behavior." — Jeff at 7:54

Jeff’s website: www.JeffGothelf.com
Read Lean UX: www.LeanUXBook.com
Read Sense and Respond: http://SenseAndRespond.co
Jeff on Twitter: Twitter.com/jboogie

Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com
Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight
Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle
Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

Lean UX & Organization Design with Jeff Gothelf (Author of Lean UX & Sense and Respond)

What makes Apple’s recent customer letter on iPhone privacy so important? How will data security play into future business strategies and customer purchase decisions? In this episode, we discuss the importance of encryption, the opportunity for companies to compete on security and trust, and the ethics of experimenting with users.

"I actually see that as being a trend that will come out of this. We see companies have classically competed on features, or technology, or prices. Now they're competing on design. I think another thing we're going to see companies competing on is data security and respect for their users." — Austin at 19:16

Apple's Customer Letter: http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/
Facebook study: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds
UXPA Code of Ethics: https://uxpa.org/resources/uxpa-code-professional-conduct

Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com
Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight
Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle
Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

The Next Frontier of Competition: Data Security, Privacy, and User Trust

Intercom content marketing manager Adam Risman talks with Riley Newman about the importance of early data investment for startups, making data accessible at scale, and why data is "the voice of the customer."

Riley Newman, Head Of Data Science At Airbnb

What makes for an effective design review? And how should designers be preparing for them? In this episode, we sit down with Tom Greever (Author of Articulating Design Decisions) to take a deep dive on the components of design meetings, and how designers should communicate their decisions.

"I've heard it likened to a Rubiks Cube, where our job as designers is to solve for all sides of the cube, but the problem that we face is that we have that developer who comes in and is like 'Oh, I want this side to be red'. We bear the responsibility of making all these parties come together and realize that, by twisting one side, it messes up the other side. And we have to work together to solve the whole cube." — Tom at 34:03

Tom’s website: www.TomGreever.com
Read Articulating Design Decisions: http://amzn.com/1491921560
Tom on Twitter: Twitter.com/tomgreever

Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com
Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight
Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle
Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

Effective Design Reviews with Tom Greever (Author of Articulating Design Decisions)

What are the important qualities that go into design leadership? What can design leaders do to help their teams collaborate and grow? In this episode, we sit down with Tim Merrill (Director of Product Design at HubSpot) to discuss the unexpected intricacies and challenges of leading a design team.

"When you're doing design critiques, which are ultra important to growth as a designer, you have to have that kind of trust and understanding that you're both coming from a place of wanting to make things better. Not from a place of ego or trying to show that you know what you're talking about and somebody else doesn't." — Tim at 10:30

Tim on Twitter: Twitter.com/timeril
Tim on LinkedIn: LnkedIn.com/in/timmerrill

Email us: Hello@UXandGrowth.com
Austin on Twitter: Twitter.com/ustinKnight
Geoff on Twitter: Twitter.com/dailydaigle
Matt on Twitter: Twitter.com/mattrheault

Design Leadership with Tim Merrill (Director of Product Design at HubSpot)

This week, we're featuring a special crossover podcast from our O'Reilly Design Podcast. O'Reilly's Mary Treseler chats with investor, entrepreneur, and former VP of product, Ben Yoskovitz. Yoskovitz talks about product design strategy and the benefits of lean approaches, where product teams tend to fall down, and why a bottom-up approach to product design is more successful—and more scalable—than a top-down approach.

Scalable and Sustainable Approaches to Product Design

Journey to the land of Westeros, and learn about the bastard of Winterfell known as Jon Snow. Don't worry! We only cover Jon's history up to the end of season 3 so viewers of the show can pleasantly enjoy this podcast. So let's go north of the wall as we learn all about Jon Snow. 

So sit back and enjoy as Ashley and Jason begin their lesson. You might learn something. Enter your Mind University!

Be careful! This podcast contains SPOILERS. So if you don't want to know what happens, then you should come back later. 

Listen on Itunes or Stitcher. 

Make sure to visit our Facebook fanpage: facebook.com/geekhistorylesson and our Tumblr: geekhistorylesson.tumblr.com for the latest news on episodes and more geek facts. 

You can find Ashley on Twitter @AshleyVRobinson and Jason on Twitter @Jawiin. 

Thanks for showing up to class today. Class dissmissed!

Ep. 10 - Jon Snow

Long before becoming a successful startup founder, Bridget Harris could be found busking Celtic Folk in London. In a conversation with Intercom's John Collins, she explains how her busking days shaped the way she runs YouCanBook.me, why she opted to bootstrap over the conventional VC funding route, and much more.

Bridget Harris, CEO at YouCanBook.me

It’s often said that good product design is simple, and supporting all of the pixels and interactions we create are the simplest element of all, words. John Saito, UX writer at Dropbox and previously the very first UX writer at YouTube, explains how to find and document your product's voice and effectively use words to guide users to success.

John Saito, UX Writer at Dropbox

In February 2013, Slack had no product, no customers and only 8 employees. One of those employees was Ali Rayl, who was tasked with creating the company's customer support experience. Today her team supports more than 5 million daily active users. In a conversation with Intercom's Adam Risman, Ali shares lessons learned from Slack's early days, the unconventional way she measures her team's performance, how her team promotes knowledge sharing and much more.

Ali Rayl, Head of Global Customer Experience at Slack

Joe Haslam, a startup founder and professor at IE Business School with a focus on how to scale companies, breaks down the common pitfalls cause premature scaling, paths to growth outside the Silicon Valley norm, the pros and cons of getting big, and much more.

The transition from startup to scale-up, with Joe Haslam

John Barrows is a sales trainer and consultant whose client list includes Dropbox, LinkedIn, Twilio, Salesforce, Bitly, New Relic and yes, even Intercom. In this chat with Intercom VP of Sales LB Harvey, John explains when a startup is ready for a dedicated sales team, how to better align sales and marketing, the traits that make for a promising sales hire, and much more.

John Barrows, sales trainer for fast-growing software companies

<p>As Stripe's first marketing hire four years ago, Krithika Muthukumar spanned anything from positioning and branding to developer campaigns, product launches to writing copy. In this interview with Intercom's Adam Risman, Krithika shares how the marketing team has evolved over the years, the importance of launching with intention, and much more. </p>

Krithika Muthukumar, Product Marketing at Stripe

Hiring a VP of Product -- especially as the founder of the company -- can almost feel like handing over your baby to someone else to hold, observes a16z executive talent team partner Caroline Horn, who hosted an event on this topic earlier this year (which this podcast is based on). Featuring Vijay Balasubramaniyan, founder/CEO of Pindrop; Shishir Mehrotra, founder and CEO of Coda; Gokul Rajaram, Production Engineering Lead at Square; and Alan Schaaf, founder/CEO of Imgur -- and moderated by general partner Martin Casado -- the discussion covers everything from what the VP of Product role really is to how to hire and integrate it into your company.

Because if you're going to be handing your "baby" over... how can you avoid common pitfalls? And know that you pick the right person for the job?

a16z Podcast: How Founders Hire a VP of Product

In this episode of the O’Reilly Programming Podcast, we revisit our June 2017 conversation with Sam Newman, presenter of the O’Reilly video course The Principles of Microservices and the online training course From Monolith to Microservices. He is also the author of the book Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems.

Sam Newman on Building Microservices

Edward Wray graduated Oxford University to pursue a job at JP Morgan, where he spent 7 years eventually leaving as the VP of Dept Capital Markets & Derivatives. Going on to co-found Betfair in 1999, he was its first Chief Executive until 2003, when he moved to Australia to set up the company’s joint venture. It floated on the stock market in 2010, valued at £1.4 billion and is now one of the world’s largest online sports betting operators, processing more than 5 million transactions a day.

In this Seedcamp session, Ed shares many aspects of his journey, from raising £1m from his family and friends, as no VC was prepared to back him, to important life lessons he learnt through first time mistakes, like trusting your gut instinct. Now Director of Funding Circle, Ed says that when joining as director of a company, it’s imperative that employees live and breathe the business as well as understand that they themselves don’t always have the answers.

Show notes:
Carlos Medium: sdca.mp/2entVR3
Seedcamp: www.seedcamp.com
Funding Circle: https://www.fundingcircle.com/uk/

Related bio links:
Carlos: linkedin.com/in/carloseduardoespinal / twitter.com/cee
Ed Wray: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-wray-b25b011/ /  https://twitter.com/edwray21

Edward Wray on scaling up, learning from mistakes and creating liquidity

Drawing on a decade of research and interviews with company founders, Harvard Business School Associate Professor Noam Wasserman explores many of the momentous early decisions and pitfalls faced by entrepreneurs and investors. Wasserman outlines paths and options for founders, with an emphasis on the frequently challenging people issues that can inhibit startup success.

Software development and Internet business

Oleg Goncharenko