Engineering Founders

By: The Engineering Leadership Community (ELC)
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  • Summary

  • The show for engineering leaders making the leap to start their own company! We dive into the stories, pivotal moments and critical insights from former eng leaders turned founders, that helped them take those early leaps to launch their own company!
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Economics Leadership Management Management & Leadership
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Episodes
  • Shifting from founder-led sales to repeatable GTM, differentiating on responsiveness/customer support & the art vs. science of product building w/ Stephen Whitworth @ incident.io

    Shifting from founder-led sales to repeatable GTM, differentiating on responsiveness/customer support & the art vs. science of product building w/ Stephen Whitworth @ incident.io
    Feb 13 2025
    ABOUT STEPHEN WHITWORTH

    Stephen is the co-founder and CEO of incident.io, where they're building incident management tooling that's so good, people will break things on purpose. A software engineer by training, he previously led engineering teams at Monzo, and co-founded Ravelin, a fraud detection startup.

    ABOUT INCIDENT.IO

    Incident.io provides a platform to help you better respond to and learn from incidents. Helping you seamlessly orchestrate incident response from start to finish.

    This episode is brought to you by Clipboard Health

    Clipboard Health is looking for the next generation of exceptional software engineering leaders, not just managers. They’re a profitable unicorn, backed by top-tier investors, and they take the craft of engineering management seriously.

    Clipboard Health matches highly qualified healthcare workers with nearby facilities to fulfill millions of shifts a year - revolutionizing healthcare staffing with a fast, flexible, and user-friendly platform.

    Learn more & browse their open roles at clipboardhealth.com/engineering

    SHOW NOTES:
    • The early days of incident.io (2:45)
    • Transitioning from working on incident.io part-time to full-time (5:32)
    • Tactics that helped the co-founder team decide on incident.io over other ideas (8:21)
    • How incident.io received 750 demo requests right away (11:07)
    • incident.io’s product-market fit cheat code & identifying internal PMF (12:24)
    • How incident.io landed major logo companies like Netflix, Airbnb & Etsy (14:32)
    • Strategies to differentiate yourself from competitors in the B2B space & why execution and responsiveness can beat technological advantage (17:30)
    • Stephen’s perspective on “inflicting software” on people & how that changes your product, org & GTM strategy downstream (21:14)
    • Enterprise sales insights that surprised Stephen (23:56)
    • Why GTM is infinitely harder than product & how founders can start to scale themselves out of sales activities (27:21)
    • What incident.io’s GTM team looks like now (32:12)
    • Differentiating in B2B enterprise on customer support & the strategic role of support at incident.io (34:20)
    • Why a culture of responsiveness and support can be your hidden advantage (37:03)
    • Rapid fire questions (39:26)
    LINKS AND RESOURCES
    • Billion Dollar Whale - Tom Wright and Bradley Hope’s epic tale of white-collar crime on a global scale revealing how a young social climber from Malaysia pulled off one of the biggest heists in history.
    This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

    Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

    Jerry Li - Co-Host

    Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

    Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

    Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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    46 mins
  • Pricing is the API Between Your Business Model and Customers & Great Product Experiences are Made in the Margins w/ Michael Grinich @ WorkOS

    Pricing is the API Between Your Business Model and Customers & Great Product Experiences are Made in the Margins w/ Michael Grinich @ WorkOS
    Jan 30 2025
    ABOUT MICHAEL GRINICH

    Michael is the founder and CEO of WorkOS, a developer platform that enables companies to become Enterprise Ready through features like Single Sign-On (SAML). Their customers include many of the fastest-growing startups including Webflow, Drata, Loom, and +200 others. Before WorkOS, Michael co-founded Nylas and studied CS at MIT.

    This episode is brought to you by Clipboard Health

    Clipboard Health is looking for the next generation of exceptional software engineering leaders, not just managers. They’re a profitable unicorn, backed by top-tier investors, and they take the craft of engineering management seriously.

    Clipboard Health matches highly qualified healthcare workers with nearby facilities to fulfill millions of shifts a year - revolutionizing healthcare staffing with a fast, flexible, and user-friendly platform.

    Learn more & browse their open roles at clipboardhealth.com/engineering

    SHOW NOTES:
    • Michael’s first journey as a founder @ Nylas (2:21)
    • Great product experience happens in the margins (6:09)
    • Why prioritizing the details of the last 3% of your product is key (7:17)
    • How obsession, taste, care, and the intangible wow factor impact your product experience (9:24)
    • Study and design the business model like you would the product experience / system architecture (12:59)
    • Designing WorkOS’s early business model & prioritizing early product decisions (16:39)
    • The Philosophy of 'You Pay When We Create Value For Your Business' and Why It Works (20:04)
    • ”Pricing is the API between your business model and your customer” (22:10)
    • Why you should iterate on pricing the same way you iterate your product (24:18)
    • How to navigate making a pricing decision - and think through options like public pricing, tiers, usage, etc. (27:21)
    • Questions Michael asks to determine pricing of different WorkOS products (30:54)
    • Pricing is all about considering trade-offs - start with “what’s the ideal buying experience and pricing structure for your consumer?” (32:53)
    • Factors to consider when changing prices or revisiting pricing assumptions (34:00)
    • Rapid fire questions (36:28)
    LINKS AND RESOURCES
    • ACQUIRED - Every company has a story. Learn the playbooks that built the world’s greatest companies — and how you can apply them as a founder, operator, or investor.
    • The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation - The need to understand what top-performing reps are doing that their average performing colleagues are not drove Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson, and their colleagues at Corporate Executive Board to investigate the skills, behaviors, knowledge, and attitudes that matter most for high performance. And what they discovered may be the biggest shock to conventional sales wisdom in decades.
    • Founder-Led Sales: Sales Simplified for Startup Founders - Founder-led sales can be challenging, as it requires expertise and charisma to sell a product or service. Potential customers may be skeptical of the founder's intentions. However, founder-led sales can also be rewarding, providing valuable feedback and insights to improve the product or service, building strong customer relationships, and leading to repeat business and positive recommendations. It's a powerful tool for business growth.
    This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

    Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

    Jerry Li - Co-Host

    Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

    Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

    Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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    43 mins
  • GTM Insights from Top DevTool companies w/ David Mytton @ Arcjet & Console

    GTM Insights from Top DevTool companies w/ David Mytton @ Arcjet & Console
    Jan 16 2025
    David Mytton (CEO @ Arcjet & Co-founder @ Console) shares insights on “what makes a great DevTool company!” We unpack lessons on bootstrapping vs. seeking VC funding & why it’s important to stick with one; building prototypes; considerations for selling your company; and his founder journey with Server Density, Console & now with Arcjet. David also highlights GTM practices for finding reliable channels & distribution, why documentation can make a critical impact on dev tool sales, the impact of design, and translating the benefits of dev tools for finance teams vs. developers.ABOUT DAVID MYTTONA dynamic approach to tech innovation, security, sustainability, and developer empowerment can be seen in everything David Mytton touches. As co-founder of Console and host of the Console DevTools Podcast, he delights in keeping developers ahead of the curve with the tools they need the most. As the founder of Server Density (acquired by StackPath), he created a product that helped organizations manage mission-critical IT environments. As a sustainable computing researcher at Oxford and a global green tech speaker, he’s brought much-needed attention to the impact of cloud emissions and the water and energy consumption of the data centers that fuel our online lives. Now, as founder and CEO of Arcjet, he’s helping developers and businesses protect their apps with just a few lines of code. His professional career is a direct reflection of his relentless pursuit of making tech smarter and greener. How he invests his spare time showcases his unwavering commitment to mentoring developers and building the communities they need to succeed.SHOW NOTES:David’s founder journey, starting with Server Density (2:31)Behind the early decision to start a company & start building a product (4:00)Key lessons from bootstrapping, raising funding, and being acquired (7:40)How those early lessons shaped Arcjet & Console (9:39)Why VC money can make finding experienced engineers easier (12:24)Strategies to help early teams build their first product / prototype (14:02)Considering company outcomes: Should you build a company just to sell it? (15:17)Signals that it’s the right time for a sale / acquisition (17:02)The story behind Arcjet (18:54)“What makes a great DevTool company” & strategic insights that shaped Arcjet (22:11)Key practices that helped shape Arcjet’s GTM plan (24:09)David’s approach to experimentation and discovery (26:09)The impact of documentation on dev tool companies (30:03)How discovery pathways for dev tools impact sales (31:55)Making the decision-making process easier for users & buyers (33:30)Translating dev tool benefits for finance teams vs. developers (38:18)The impact of design on dev tool companies (40:55)Rapid fire questions (44:21)LINKS AND RESOURCESDavid’s reading lista16z BlogThe Hard Thing About Hard Things - Ben Horowitz, a leading venture capitalist, modern management expert, and New York Times bestselling author, combines lessons both from history and from modern organizational practice with practical and often surprising advice to help executives build cultures that can weather both good and bad times.The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World - Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance.The Lessons of History - In this illuminating and thoughtful book, Will and Ariel Durant have succeeded in distilling for the reader the accumulated store of knowledge and experience from their four decades of work on the ten monumental volumes of "The Story of Civilization." The result is a survey of human history, full of dazzling insights into the nature of human experience, the evolution of civilization, the culture of man.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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    50 mins

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