Jun 4
How to build a beloved tech brand | Sheila Joglekar Vashee (CMO, Figma)
In today's conversation, Brett sits down with CMO of Figma, Sheila Joglekar Vashee. Previously the second marketing hire at Dropbox, where she helped scale the company past $1 billion in revenue, she now leads marketing at Figma fresh off its IPO. In an industry that has spent a ... Show More
1 h
May 21
Why old-school sales work still wins in the AI era | Graham Moreno (Head of GTM, Parallel)
In the latest episode of Executive Function, Brett sits down with Graham Moreno, Head of GTM at Parallel Web Systems. Before Parallel, Graham scaled Windsurf's GTM organization from three sellers to seventy-five in under a year, served as President through the Cognition acquisiti ... Show More
1h 2m
May 14
Why founders should bet on first-time executives | Praveer Melwani (CFO, Figma)
In this latest episode of Executive Function, Brett sits down with Praveer Melwani, CFO at Figma. Praveer joined Figma in 2017 as the company's first business operations and finance hire—when the team was around 30 people and not yet charging for the product—and stepped into the ... Show More
43m 48s
Jan 2024
How to be more innovative | Sam Schillace (Microsoft deputy CTO, creator of Google Docs)
<p><strong>Sam Schillace</strong> is deputy CTO and corporate vice president at Microsoft. Prior to working at Microsoft, Sam started a company called Writely, which was acquired by Google and became the foundation of what today is Google Docs. While at Google, Sam helped lead ma ... Show More
1h 27m
Feb 2024
Inside OpenAI | Logan Kilpatrick (head of developer relations)
<p><strong>Logan Kilpatrick</strong> leads developer relations at OpenAI, supporting developers building with the OpenAI API and ChatGPT. He is also on the board of directors at NumFOCUS, the nonprofit organization that supports open source projects like Jupyter, Pandas, NumPy, a ... Show More
1h 8m
Jan 2024
The engineering mindset | Will Larson (Carta, Stripe, Uber, Calm, Digg)
<p><strong>Will Larson</strong> is Chief Technology Officer at Carta. Prior to joining Carta, he was the CTO at Calm and held engineering leadership roles at Stripe, Uber, and Digg. He is the author of two foundational engineering career books, <em>An Elegant Puzzle</em> and <em> ... Show More
1h 16m
Apr 2024
Lessons from 1,000+ YC startups: Resilience, tar pit ideas, pivoting, more | Dalton Caldwell (Y Combinator, Managing Director)
<p><strong>Dalton Caldwell</strong> is Managing Director and Group Partner at Y Combinator. Prior to YC, he was the co-founder and CEO of imeem (acquired by MySpace in 2009) and the co-founder and CEO of <a target="_blank" href="http://app.net/">App.net</a>. During his time at YC ... Show More
1h 20m
Oct 2023
Reflections on a movement | Eric Ries (creator of the Lean Startup methodology)
<p><strong>Eric Ries</strong> is the creator of the Lean Startup methodology, author of the New York Times bestseller <em>The Lean Startup</em>, and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE). He’s also a multi-time founder and currently advises startups, VC firms, and larger ... Show More
2h 14m
Mar 2024
E168: Can Google save itself? AI takes over Customer Support, Reddit IPO teardown
(0:00) Bestie intros! Jato Caelin (1:36) Groq update!: The key metric developer platforms should care about (5:55) Google's make or break moment: Should Sundar be fired, AI safety team's power, RIF potential, stock pressure, and more (29:17) How bloated HR departments slow down c ... Show More
1h 26m
Oct 2023
What AI means for your product strategy | Paul Adams (CPO of Intercom)
<p><strong>Paul Adams</strong> is the longtime chief product officer at Intercom, where he leads the product management, product design, data science, and research teams. Before Intercom, Paul was the global head of brand design at Facebook, a senior user researcher at Google, an ... Show More
1h 23m
Nov 2023
Unpacking Amazon’s unique ways of working | Bill Carr (author of Working Backwards)
<p><strong>Bill Carr </strong>is the co-author of <em>Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon</em>. With a background at Amazon of over 15 years, Bill played a pivotal role in shaping the company’s global digital music and video ventures, including Am ... Show More
1h 33m
May 2024
In conversation with Sam Altman
(0:00) Welcoming Sam Altman to the show! (2:28) What's next for OpenAI: GPT-5, open-source, reasoning, what an AI-powered iPhone competitor could look like, and more (21:56) How advanced agents will change the way we interface with apps (33:01) Fair use, creator rights, why OpenA ... Show More
1h 43m
Sam Schillace is the CVP and Deputy CTO at Microsoft. Before Microsoft, Sam held prominent engineering roles at Google and Box. He has also founded six startups, including Writely, which was acquired by Google and became Google Docs.
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In today’s episode, we discuss:
Sam’s advice for future engineers
What’s next for AI
How to develop technical taste
The ... Show More
