Engineering Founders Podcast Por The Engineering Leadership Community (ELC) arte de portada

Engineering Founders

Engineering Founders

De: The Engineering Leadership Community (ELC)
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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! Economía Gestión Gestión y Liderazgo Liderazgo
Episodios
  • Balancing shifting priorities, leveraging your founder network, and navigating cost vs. value w/ Sumeet Vaidya @ Crafting

    Balancing shifting priorities, leveraging your founder network, and navigating cost vs. value w/ Sumeet Vaidya @ Crafting
    Jul 31 2025

    In this episode, we cover some of the most important founder challenges, including engineering management, prioritization / time management principles, analyzing the market, and making the decision to sell to enterprise early on with Sumeet Vaidya, Co-founder & CEO @ Crafting. He unpacks the story behind Crafting & the decision to found it along with how he knew he was the right person to lead this org. Patrick & Sumeet dissect GTM strategies when it comes to enterprise sales, how funnel optimization for sales works, and making business decisions while navigating cost vs. value. We also chat about the importance of forming founder-to-founder connections as you navigate the founder journey – it’s definitely better with others than alone.

    ABOUT SUMEET VAIDYA

    Prior to co-founding Crafting, Sumeet has scaled engineering teams and built products at Meta, Uber, and Discord. He has worked on developer platforms, consumer products, marketplaces, enterprise integrations, and more. He also angel invests and advises startup founders, motivated by helping sharp people solve real problems to build successful businesses.

    Join us at ELC Annual 2025

    ELC Annual is the premier event for engineering leaders. This is our biggest event of the year: 1,000+ CTOs, VPs & Directors in San Francisco @ ELC Annual 2025 for two days of leadership breakthroughs, tactical peer learning & curated connections!

    🔗 Get your ticket now → https://sfelc.com/annual2025

    SHOW NOTES:
    • The origin story behind Crafting & challenges in eng management (2:56)
    • Dissecting Sumeet’s decision to found the company (5:28)
    • Questions & processes for analyzing founder conviction from an investor POV (7:00)
    • How to know if you’re the right person to lead this org (8:45)
    • Analyzing the market / competitors & determining your product’s differentiators (11:34)
    • Go-to-market strategy & enterprise sales (14:07)
    • Optimizing for enterprise sales early on / understanding PMF (16:15)
    • Why you need to leverage your founder network for advice (17:45)
    • Frameworks for determining gaps in the sales funnel (20:55)
    • Exploring happiness and connection (22:31)
    • Sumeet’s perspective on prioritization & time management as a founder (24:45)
    • Balancing cost vs. value in business decisions (27:11)
    • Remote vs. in-person team dynamics for eng & sales (31:00)
    • Hiring the first non-engineer (34:45)
    • Rapid fire questions (38:54)
    LINKS AND RESOURCES
    • https://www.themarginalian.org/

    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 m
  • Early team building and pivoting to competitive advantage as a solo founder w/ Tony Dong @ Propel

    Early team building and pivoting to competitive advantage as a solo founder w/ Tony Dong @ Propel
    Jul 17 2025
    Tony Dong (Founder & CEO @ Propel) shares how he navigated the early days of solo founding, hired eight engineers in a month, and rapidly built early momentum. We explore how he leveraged existing relationships, storytelling, and competitive advantage analysis to pivot Propel’s focus, providing value quickly in your product, and building credibility for early sales. Plus, support systems for early founders, strategies for going broad vs. narrow, and how Tony’s current tech stack / AI tools are accelerating how they build.ABOUT TONY DONGTony is the Founder & CEO of Propel, an AI engineering agent that integrates into your team’s workflows to automate engineering tasks and elevate developer productivity.Before Propel, Tony served as the VP of Engineering at Rippling, where he led the development of the company's Platform and HR products. As a seasoned entrepreneur, Tony was also the founder and CTO of a YC-backed startup and held key engineering roles at Periscope, TellApart, and Twitter.Join us at ELC Annual 2025ELC Annual is the premier event for engineering leaders. This is our biggest event of the year: 1,000+ CTOs, VPs & Directors in San Francisco @ ELC Annual 2025 for two days of leadership breakthroughs, tactical peer learning & curated connections!🔗 Get your ticket now → https://sfelc.com/annual2025SHOW NOTES:Tony’s journey transitioning from eng leader to founder (2:29)Lessons learned from founding Pershop & working @ Rippling (3:47)The origin of Propel & turning frustration into a startup idea (5:58)Recognizing the right moment to pivot your product (7:55)Incorporating competitive advantage analysis into strategic decision making (10:29)Accelerating user research & establishing credibility in your product area (12:32)The process of pivoting / solving highly valuable problems (14:15)Examples of how a product can quickly prove its value to customers (16:35)Strategies for proving value quickly during the early product building stages (17:51)Dynamics of being a solo founder & early team building (19:30)Pitching Propel as a solo founder / building support systems (21:13)How Tony hired a team of eight within one month, using relationships and public storytelling (23:32)How hiring contractors & sharing publicly helped drive early team building (25:19)Frameworks for attracting talent as a competitive advantage (27:44)Assessing hiring candidates: using every available AI tool, real projects & hands-on collaboration (31:09)Tony’s current stack & AI tools enhancing team productivity and innovation (33:49)The impact of AI on early-stage company building (35:39)Tony’s thoughts on capturing a broad market @ Propel (37:03)Understanding today's fundraising landscape (39:00)Rapid fire questions (40:48)LINKS AND RESOURCESUnreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect - Today, every business can choose to be a hospitality business—and we can all transform ordinary transactions into extraordinary experiences. Featuring sparkling stories of his journey through restaurants, with the industry’s most famous players like Daniel Boulud and Danny Meyer, Will Guidara urges us all to find the magic in what we do—for ourselves, the people we work with, and the people we serve.The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket - In this exposé, author Benjamin Lorr pulls back the curtain on this highly secretive industry. Combining deep sourcing and immersive reporting, Lorr leads a wild investigation in which we learn the secrets of Trader Joe's success from Trader Joe himself, why truckers call their job "sharecropping on wheels," what it takes for a product to earn certification labels like "organic" and "fair trade," the struggles entrepreneurs face as they fight for shelf space, including essential tips, tricks, and traps for any new food business, the truth behind the alarming slave trade in the shrimp industry and much more.CAFEC Pour-Over Flower Dripper DEEP 27 - Tony’s favorite coffee dripper!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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    46 m
  • Building insight engines, emotionally intelligent AI products & blending PLG / enterprise GTM w/ Aiswarya Sankar @ Entelligence.AI

    Building insight engines, emotionally intelligent AI products & blending PLG / enterprise GTM w/ Aiswarya Sankar @ Entelligence.AI
    May 29 2025

    How do you build an AI product that engineers actually enjoy? ****Aiswarya Sankar, co-founder of Entelligence.AI, reveals how her team is creating an AI-powered “insight engine” that supports (and celebrates) the work of engineering teams. We explore how Entelligence.AI evolved from code search to a full-stack insight engine that reduces merge times, improves code quality, and makes teams more effective. Aiswarya explains how personalization, context awareness, and positive reinforcement drive adoption. Plus Aiswarya unpacks the psychology of feedback, how to make AI feel collaborative (not corrective), and their dual GTM strategy blending product-led growth with enterprise sales. Whether you’re building an AI-native product, leading an eng org, or just curious about the future of developer tools, this episode is packed with insights.

    ABOUT AISWARYA SANKAR

    Aiswarya Sankar is the co-founder of Entelligence.AI, an AI-powered engineering intelligence platform that streamlines development, enhances collaboration, and accelerates engineering productivity. Previously, Aiswarya has held roles at Intel, Google, and Uber. She has a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.

    Join us at ELC Annual 2025

    ELC Annual is the premier event for engineering leaders. This is our biggest event of the year: 1,000+ CTOs, VPs & Directors in San Francisco @ ELC Annual 2025 for two days of leadership breakthroughs, tactical peer learning & curated connections!

    🔗 Get your ticket now → https://sfelc.com/annual2025

    SHOW NOTES:
    • Aiswarya’s eng leadership background & founder journey (3:22)
    • The early “mini search engine” project that ignited Entelligence.AI (6:23)
    • Behind the decision to start with code search and what it unlocked (7:44)
    • From Uber to full-time founder: the leap into AI entrepreneurship (9:03)
    • What Entelligence.AI does & who it serves (10:12)
    • Deconstructing engineering pain points into product strategy (12:04)
    • Insights from engineering users that informed the product’s direction (13:52)
    • Building customizable, context-aware intelligence for teams (16:47)
    • Lessons learned on balancing proactive feedback and team culture (19:24)
    • Use sprints & rituals to surface hidden team contributions (21:05)
    • Emerging trends in how software is being built and how teams are measured (23:45)
    • Key principles for designing AI-based systems to align with evolving workflows (26:49)
    • Strategies for measuring qualitative & quantitative impact (29:27)
    • Frameworks for humanizing AI & creating enjoyable AI experiences (31:42)
    • Identifying the psychological needs / drivers of your users (33:14)
    • Rapid fire questions (36:47)
    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/
    Más Menos
    41 m
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