Engineer and Creator Varun Rana, discusses optimising content performance on different channels, being vulnerable in the tech industry and using personal experience to go viral.

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Varun's Links: https://linktr.ee/the_varunrana

Show Notes
00:30 Michigan background
03:15 Struggling in UMichigan CS
06:50 Openly vulnerable sharing
07:55 Theta Tau as community and delving into other skills
10:15 Original inspiration in making skits
15:00 Content performance on different platforms
17:25 Intuition for video performance
21:10 Finding a niche in a very saturated tech content space
22:55 Creative process, ideation to uploading
28:45 Strokify cinematic universe
30:15 Content evolution
33:58 Key Habits developed
37:50 Nicest thing someones done for you

Co-Founder of Taro Rahul Pandey, discuss his tech career growth as a Meta Tech lead, sharing his advice on Youtube to 75k+ subscribers and minimizing regret to go all in on Taro.

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Follow Rahul on Linkedin at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpandey1234/
Subscribe to Rahul's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RahulPandeyrkp
Taro - https://www.jointaro.com/

Show Notes
00:30 Stanford vs CalTech
01:45 Exploration at Stanford as a freshman
03:00 Missing out on WhatsApp pre Facebook Acquisition
05:45 Being a founding engineer at Kosei
07:25 Getting acquired by Pinterest
10:10 Leaving Meta despite being a Tech Lead
12:25 Quitting jobs, but being rejected from YC
13:45 Being sure of Cofounder
15:30 Knowing for sure on the problem space of Taro
17:40 First few youtube videos as Android tutorials
20:10 Growth Strategies of Taro
22:10 Surprises as an Engineer starting a company
25:00 Key Habits developed
26:50 Memorable inbound/appreciation
28:30 Where will Taro be in 1 years time

Founder and CEO at Backscoop Amanda Cua, discuss not going to college, how she came to start Backscoop and scaling to 10,000+ subscribers.

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Follow Amanda on Linkedin at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-cua/
Backscoop - https://www.backscoop.com/

Show Notes
00:30 Growing up in the Philippines
01:35 Family business pressures
03:35 Choosing not to go to University/ Gap Years
10:50 Coming across Avion School through a news article
13:40 Having to prove herself at Avion School
16:40 Background on leaving Avion School to start Backscoop
20:45 Messaging FB/Linkedin friends for first subscribers
23:20 Getting inspirations from other newsletters
26:00 Utilising social channels for growth
28:00 Being vulnerable on social media
30:25 Perspective on monetising Backscoop
32:30 Increasing Luck Surface Area
37:10 Where will Backscoop be in 1 years time

Creator and APMM at Google Lillian Zhang, discuss landing her dream job at Google, balancing that with content creation and figuring out brand negotiations to earn $47K in her first year.

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Follow Lillian's socials at: https://beacons.ai/lillianzhang

Show Notes
00:45 Growing up in Bay Area
01:45 Ending up at Cal
03:50 Going through Google BOLD
05:40 Starting an Etsy store in middle school
08:00 Getting into content creation
09:45 Perspective on creating content
11:10 Realising on being able to earn with social media
13:20 Figuring out rates for brand deals
14:45 Getting featured by news outlets
16:10 Mindset on effort of content vs virality
17:25 Balancing content and a full time job
18:50 Content creation when similar videos exist
20:00 How much Cal actually helped this journey
21:18 What's the nicest thing someone's done
23:00 Key Habits
24:35 What's the aim in 1 years time

Cofounders of Clearspace, Royce Branning and Oliver Hill, discuss building a company together after only knowing each other for 4 weeks, doing things that don’t scale with phone checks at social events and turning a no from Y Combinator into a yes.

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Follow Royce on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/rbfasho
Follow Oliver on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/_oliver_hill
Clearspace - https://www.getclearspace.com/

Show Notes
00:45 How did Royce and Oliver meet
02:05 How they come across this screentime problem
03:55 Being part of Founders University to start
05:15 The utility of Y Combinator
07:00 How do two SWEs manage an entire company
08:40 Choosing the breathing screen quotes
09:45 The story of hosting a phone check in at a YC event
12:30 Best reactions to the check in
14:40 Different growth strategies
16:50 ProductHunt #1 and not being another 'tech app'
18:45 Differentiating amongst competition
20:45 Key working habits
22:30 Prioritizing being in person together
23:10 Clearspace in 1 years time
25:30 Getting rejected by YC but writing back and eventually getting accepted.

Cofounder/CEO of FeatureForm Simba Khadder, discusses the virtual feature store, balancing building open source while catering to enterprise customers and the impact the 80:20 rule has had in propelling his career forward.

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Follow Simba on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simba-k/
Featureform - https://www.featureform.com/

Show Notes
00:35 Leaving dream job at Google for entrepreneurship
05:50 Working with Embeddings at first startup Triton
09:15 Founding story of Featureform
13:30 What is Featureform
16:50 The Virtual Feature Store
20:20 Building Opensource but catering to enterprise
27:30 Pink branding
31:00 How the 80/20 principle has impact Simba
35:30 Key habits developed

Engineering Manager at Datadog and creator David Xiang, discusses being one of the first tech youtubers (earning over 4 million views), his book Software Developer Life and reflections on staying technically relevant throughout his over 13 year career.

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Follow David on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dxiang/
Sub to David on Youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/@DaveXiang

Show Notes
00:45 Influence from parents and getting into engineering at CMU
02:30 Competitive breakdancing,
04:00 Inspiration for first few tech videos (technical explanations)
06:30 Pivoting from Qualcomm (C/C++ roles) into startups
09:13 Cold emailing rap genius and building a web project in a month
11:10 The transition into a manager position with a deeply technical background
14:45 Mentorship coaching moments for SWEs
17:30 Vulnerability and transparency - amazon rejection video
20:10 Compiling his thoughts into the book Software Developer Life
23:05 Staying relevant in tech, even as a manager
27:20 Key habits developed
30:55 What's the nicest thing someone's done for you?

Cofounder/CEO of Locofy AI and my former CPO Honey Mittal, discusses studying in the National University of Singapore on scholarship without even applying, lessons learnt from over 10 years of building and being CPO at 3 previous startups and now raising over $7M for Locofy.

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Follow Honey on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/honeymittal/
Locofy - https://www.locofy.ai/

Show Notes
00:31 Growing up in India, Air Force dreams and a friend applying him for a NUS Scholarship
03:40 Earning $4/hour working at a gas station
04:01 Early Buildings at WeGo
06:15 Building great products but struggling with real monetizable problems
08:30 Working Nights/Weekends on SportMeNow balancing full time with WeGo
09:30 $30,000 raised leading to 5 years of runway and how the frugal mentality applies to Locofy with $0 marketing
10:40 Meeting Sohaib at WeGo, going over to Homage together and how he knew it was the right match to cofound Locofy
13:55 Burnout in 2021, wanting a 6 month break
15:05 Avoiding another marketplace idea
15:45 Ideation of Locofy, automation of front end code
17:15 Every friend wanting to invest on idea, raising $1M in 48 hours
18:25 Being confident in launching
19:00 Validation from friends and family
20:00 Everyone wants to build an app,
20:50 Best developer tools are never sold
22.30 Product of the day, week and month on Product Hunt. Viral wheel starting.
23:15 Why Open Beta versus a closed beta like Figma
25:10 Why keeping it free
26:10 Keeping an active slack community, reply messages within 2 hours
29:00 Engineers going from fans to joining the team
29:30 Long run goal of Locofy community
31:00 Raising $4M+ Seed 2 Funding, emphasis on adding talent, concept of scaling with early stage hires
36:00 Benefits of Angel Investing while day to day building
39:15 Focusing on company behaviour, remembering your why
41:55 Locofy in 1 year, 1000+ products built with Locofy