Generation Builders: Recent Episodes

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Join us as we delve into the world of successful software companies and uncover their superpowers and valuable lessons. In this episode, Mariam talks with Scott Belsky, an industry icon and expert in product development. Scott is one of the most talented and beloved figures in the tech industry and an incredible product person.

He is an entrepreneur, author, investor, and Chief Product Officer (now Chief Strategy Officer) of Adobe, formerly founded Behance in 2006 and served as CEO until Adobe acquired the company in 2012.

Together, we explore the fascinating journey behind creating Behance, the importance of taking action, and the unique challenges faced by startups. Scott shares his insights on building exceptional products, fostering user engagement, and the future of software development. Tune in for an inspiring conversation with a true visionary!

Questions and Topics we discussed with Scott:

Behance story

• What were the reasons early on why how and why you decided to build Behance? What kind of issues where you trying to fix in the design community
• You almost entirely bootstrapped the company, early on with some gigs, and why the decision later to raise money, as you were already going well and established the company?

Building a product

• What was the hardest part about the 0 to 1 phase of Behance? What’s your advice for new founders going through it today?
• What are some common patterns you see in building products, that make the product and design extraordinary and users sticky?

Speed

• How important do you think the speed of execution is for startups?
• What do you think about the dilemma of losing quality with speed vs perfecting the product before launch?
• What can startups do to build the execution and shipping muscle?

Finding product market fit

• When did you know you had a true product-market fit with Behance?

Community

• How have you guys nurtured the community around Behance? It's amazing how helpful, knowledgeable, and open everyone is.

Team

• How you built your team from day 1, what key characteristics and mindset you were looking for when bringing new team members on board?

Adobe

• Being a small company, with a scrappy and doer team, then getting acquired by a big company with big teams and departments, can you share the biggest lessons you learned from the acquisition?
• Adobe while being a very big company, seems to always stay on top of the game - and ahead of the curve with new innovations
• the acquisition of Behance
• the acquisition of Figma
• the latest launch of Adobe Firefly and probably future plans with AI
• How much of them staying on top of the game is an influence of bringing and being open to such amazing talent, entrepreneurial minds, and ideas?

The Future of no-code and Creativity

• What are some trends you’re most excited about within no-code and AI?
• How will the new generation of kids learn, use and build the software? will they build their own?

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Join us in the 9th episode of the Generation Builders podcast as we dive into the world of software with our special guest, Zoelle. Discover Zoelle's inspiring journey from her initial resistance to the term 'no code' to becoming an expert in growth and marketing. With her experience at Airtable and her involvement with Vaccinate CA, Zoelle shares valuable insights on the power of control and ease of use in software.

Zoelle is one of the top experts when it comes to growth! She is most known for her time at Airtable as employee #11, helping build and scale marketing and customer success efforts.

Outside of her professional roles, she's also passionate about tech for social good, which led her to co-found Vaccinate CA during the height of the pandemic.

Nowadays, you'll find her at the helm of growth and marketing at Block Party, a tool aimed at making our digital spaces safer. When she's not doing that, she's likely advising or investing in the next big thing in tech.

We dive into the following topics:

Marketing deep-dive at Airtable

• I know you started your career outside the tech but were really eager and very savvy to try and figure out a way to get into tech. What was the motivation behind and why that passion?
• Why did you decide to join Airtable at such an early stage?
• What was the hardest part about the 0 to 1 phase of Airtable GTM?
• How did you balance the work between strategy and execution?
• What were the key drivers of the organic growth of users in Airtable? Was it mostly consumer-driven, then expanded into business customers early on?

Horizontal GTM

• What do you think about go-to-market motion for horizontal, built-yourself-type products? How did you leverage who to reach out to, and how to position such products to reach the right users?
• What channels worked best and why?
• How big a role did use cases/templates play in the growth?
• You also run some quite unconventional experiments at Airtable, like billboards. Why did you decide to do that, and what hypotheses do you have in mind?
• How are you thinking of PR? For a typical software company, PR is usually not the biggest and non-scalable channel, what’s your take on how best to leverage PR for an early-stage startup?

Customer Success

• One of the biggest challenges of “build yourself” type products is the learning curve + helping users understand what they can build with the tool, and how they can build it to stick with the building process along the way. How did you help them through that, and what key things did you discover along the way?
• When to start hiring for customer success, and who is the right candidate, what type of skillsets and mindset should they bring on board?

Community

• How did do you build Airtable’s passionate community early on? And what role education fits within that?

Vaccinate CA Project

• After Airtable, you started/helped a very impactful project - VaccinateCA (California) that helped as many people as possible get vaccinated. How did you join that and what was the motivation?
• And one of the most incredible parts of this story is how quickly you managed to build the infrastructure, a platform for people to interact and manage the whole workflow, without any code! That's very fascinating and shows the potential and the impact that no-code platforms can and are having to help solve real-world critical problems.

The Future of no-code - what’s next?

• How are work and tools changing in modern organizations? What’s the next phase of tools and products that’ll empower the ind

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In the 8th episode of the Generation Builders podcast, we sat down with Stella Garber, co-founder and CEO of Hoop, a software company that helps teams make better decisions without meetings.

Stella shares her experience as the first marketing hire at Trello and how she helped grow the company from its early days to its acquisition by Atlassian. She also discusses the importance of integrated marketing campaigns and collaboration between teams for success. Tune in to learn more about Stella's journey as a serial founder and startup person.

Stella is the co-founder and CEO of Hoop, and Hoop is helping teams make better decisions faster (without meetings!).

She was the first Marketing hire to join Trello and grew and led the Marketing team from the early days all the way to tens of millions of users and a $425 million acquisition by Atlassian. Since her early days, Stella has held the helm at 5 businesses, turning her into what we like to call a serial founder!

We dived deeper into the following topics:

Marketing deep-dive at Trello

• Why did you decide to join Trello?
• What was the hardest part about the 0 to 1 phase of Trello GTM?
• What were the key drivers of the organic growth of users in Trello?
• Trello is a horizontal product as well and can drive many use cases. On the content and SEO side, how did you try to cater to different use cases?
• Many early-stage companies delay the monetization to a later stage and focus on building and perfecting the product. When did you start monetizing Trello and why not earlier?
• How are you thinking of PR? For a typical software company, PR is usually not the biggest nor a scalable channel, what’s your take on how best to leverage PR for early-stage startups?
• What would you do differently if you joined Trello again?
• Let's talk about Trello’s acquisition. Being a small company, with a scrappy and doer team, suddenly getting acquired by a big company with a big marketing organization.

Path to founding a company

• What is Hoop? and what is your mission with it?
• You have recently launched Hoop Alpha, people can apply for early access. How do you stay close to customers and prioritize your product backlog at Hoop?
• What do you think about the dilemma of losing quality with speed vs perfecting the product before launch?
• What can startups do to build the execution and shipping muscle?
• Startup life is full of challenges, what have been the hardest challenges you have faced so far at Hoop?

Community

• What role do Community and Education play especially in successfully growing these types of products and companies?

The Future of no-code

• How are work and tools changing in modern organizations? What’s the next phase of tools and products that’ll empower the individual knowledge workers to adapt the tools to their workflow, and build their own solutions to the problems they are trying to solve?
• How will the new generation of kids learn software? will they build their own?

Angel Investing

• You are also an angel investor in a number of amazing companies. How does that involvement help you be better at your own startup? Are there some things you are learning back from companies?

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Join us as we explore Koen's journey, from building Sofa to its exciting acquisition by Facebook, to his latest venture, Framer. Discover the challenges and opportunities of creating a platform that empowers people to build professional websites without code. You'll learn from Koen's experience and insights into the world of software companies, and find out how the next generation will use and build software without needing to know how to code.

Koen is the Founder and CEO of Framer, a platform to build professional websites. Koen used to work at Facebook as a product designer and previously founded a company called Sofa a software/design company, that was acquired by Facebook.

We delve into the following topics with Koen:

Path to founding a company

• How Koen made his way into the world of startups and how he came up with the idea for Sofa, then Framer?
• How do you explain Framer to a 5-year-old?
• When starting a company, what do you think are the most important things to do first to be successful? (Create a product, build a team, find capital, or something else?)
• What do you know now that you wish you had known when starting out?

Building a product

• What was the hardest part about the 0 to 1 phase of Framer? What’s your advice for new founders going through it today?
• How much effort do you put into your work perfecting things before launching products?

Speed

• How important do you think the speed of execution is for startups?
• How do you stay close to customers and prioritize your product backlog at Framer?

Finding product market fit

• What do you think about GTM for horizontal, built-yourself-type products?
• When did you know you had a true product-market fit with Framer?
• The startup is full of challenges, What have been the hardest challenges you have faced so far?

Team

• What are some key decisions you made, or beliefs you hold when making hiring decisions?

Community

• How have you guys nurtured the community around Framer? It's amazing how helpful, knowledgeable, and open everyone is.
• How do community and education fit within growth? Should you even be investing in the community?

The Future of no-code

• How will the new generation of kids learn the software? will they build their own?
• What does the world look like in 5 years for the no-code ecosystem?

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Join us on this episode as we chat with Jaclyn Rice Nelson, co-founder and CEO of Tribe, a community connecting top engineers and data leaders to solve real-world problems using AI. Dive into Jaclyn's journey from her time at Google and Capital G to her passion for unlocking the power of talent networks. Discover how Tribe has grown into a thriving, organic community that fosters meaningful connections through shared interests and expertise. Learn how Jaclyn built a successful business with minimal engineering resources and her thoughts on the future of AI and machine learning as the new standard in software development. Don't miss this insightful conversation packed with valuable lessons and insights!

1. Coalition Operators Fund

2. Why did you start Coalition Operators fund together with the rest of the amazing women? What’s the gap you noticed in the market that drove you to start a new fund?

3. How big is the operator network and who are the people involved?
4. What are your fund’s advantages and the biggest value for founders and their startups?

2. Tribe.ai

• You call Tribe an AI Lab, for top machine learning engineers and data scientists. Why you started Tribe?
• How do you attract and retain this amazing talent / top tech talent?
• What role community plays in the company’s goals? What are some ways they leverage the community for learning, insight sharing, or just emotional connection?
• How do you get access to top ML talent, fast - one they would not possibly have access to without being the Googles and Apples of the world?

3. How Tribe leverages Softr

• Tribe is a self-funded company, without outside investor money. Can you please share what are some key decisions you made to help keep the company lean, and sustainable and build the product and the platforms to operate internally?
• Would be interesting to hear how you use Softr and other automation tools for different use cases and platforms.

4. Open AI

• With the new OpenAI advancements, and now AI and machine learning being democratized further, how do you think this will impact Tribe and new startups in the coming future?
• How big will the need become for more companies to leverage data and AI into their product or services to stay ahead of the curve?

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Partnerships are one of the most incredible flywheels to develop and where your Product meets the ecosystem it lives in. In this episode, Cristina Cordova will share her experience with us on how to start the conversation about partnerships internally, evaluate their potential return and how to get this flywheel spinning and accelerate your company's growth.

Cristina is a partner at First Round Capital and the former Head of Platform & Partnerships at Notion and Stripe. She started and scaled their Partnerships teams and worked hard to build relationships with companies such as Shopify, Squarespace, and Apple.

Partnership & product-led growth
1. What were some of the three common characteristics or superpowers that you believe made them successful?
2. What do you think of partnerships in a product-led growth context? How much can partnership influence your growth? Can it be one of your main growth levers?
3. Do you think there is a specific product type for which the partnership could or could not work, and what are the core differences?
4. What do you consider when integrating with other platforms on a more technical level?
5. When is the right time to bring a partnership hire on board? How to evaluate if partnerships can impact your business and hire a full-time person to drive the efforts?
6. What do you think about growth and marketing for horizontal, built-yourself-type products? What are the biggest challenges you have seen?
7. What's your recommendation for more customer-built products to become more proficient in what they do? How can they challenge themselves to get more “technical"?

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Wes Bush is the Founder of Product-Led and the driving force behind the company's success.

He wrote a book on Product-Led Growth titled 'Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself', hosted a Summit, and runs courses and a podcast devoted to the topic of product-led growth. Prior to his work with Product-Led, Wes was the leader of demand generation at Vidyard, where his efforts quickly led to over 100,000 users nearly overnight! His knowledge and expertise have made him a highly sought-after speaker in the tech industry.

In this episode, we’ll explore the following topics around product-led, community-led growth and the future of no-code:
Product-led Growth
- What exactly is “product-led growth,” and why is it the most successful and effective way to acquire customers?
- How to build a product-led motion process at early-stage companies?
- You are teaching product-led growth courses and helping so many companies and operators learn why and how to apply it in their companies. What’s the biggest challenge in convincing or incentivizing more traditional sales-driven companies to move to PLG motion?
- What are the core parts where you'd focus your efforts as a team
- For horizontal companies how do you segment users and how do you help your users win

Community
- What role do community and education play, especially in successfully growing these types of products and companies?

NoCode
- Over the last 2 years, there is new types of products emerging - beyond just being product-led, customer-built products - great examples are Airtable, Zapier, Notion, and Softr. What is the fundamental difference (if any) between the two?
- How do you see it evolving, and how will knowledge workers in your opinion use tools in their work to solve their problems?
- How will the new generation of kids learn the software? will they build their own software?
- What does the world look like in 10 years product and growth direction-wise?

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Holly is the Founder and CMO of ExponentialX, a Growth and Marketing Advisory Collective. She is one of the top experts when it comes to product-led growth, and has led marketing in the early days at Google, Slack, and advised companies like Miro, Loom, ServiceNow.

In this episode, we’ll explore the following topics around product-led, community-led growth and the future of no-code:

1. What exactly is “product-led growth,” and how can you apply it at every stage of growth?
2. Why is PLG the most successful way to acquire customers? what is your recommendation for the split of acquisition the in early days of PLG company?
3. What KPIs do you want to track and for which skillset to hire that might be unique to only PLG companies?
4. How to build a product-led motion process at early-stage companies?
5. What the industry has learned about growth over the last several years, what is “growth”?
6. When you already have a product-led motion, how do you move towards product-led sales - without becoming a pure sales-driven company?

Customer-built growth + community

1. What’s unique about the new generation of fast-growing software companies like Notion, Airtable, Zapier?
2. What are the shortcomings of product-led growth motion in these (typically horizontal product) companies?
3. What do you think about GTM for horizontal, built-yourself-type products? What are the biggest challenges you have seen?
4. How do community and education fit within growth? Should you even be investing in the community?
5. How can you leverage the community in evangelizing and growing your product?

Future of no-code:

1. How are work and tools changing in modern organizations? What’s the next phase of tools and products that’ll empower the individual knowledge workers to adapt the tools to their workflow, and build their own solutions to the problems they are trying to solve?
2. How will the new generation of kids learn the software?
3. What does the world look like in 10 years product and growth direction-wise?

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What is Product-led Growth, which companies can it help, and how? 

Brian Balfour, founder of Reforge and Growth Expert, walks us through these questions and more, sharing the experiences of hundreds of companies that went through Reforge's cohorts. 

If you fit the proper criteria, product-led growth is a great way to scale the distribution of your product without growing your headcount. 

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Today's fast-growing software companies have 3 superpowers that make them unique: Product, Community, and Growth.

They harness the power of product-led growth and community to design products that empower end-users to build their own solutions (with "no/low-code"). Generation Builders podcast is here to tell the next generation customer-built growth stories about Gen "Builders" by featuring conversations with the most talented folks in product, growth, and community, who helped build the best software companies of today like Miro, Mixpanel, Reforge, Airtable, Canva.

Softr is where Lego meets No-Code, empowering anyone to create custom software, powered by their data.