The Waterloo Advantage: Recent Episodes
The Collective
“If you are prepared to share workplace experiences with fellow students, you are able to access intimately and in nearly real time the workplaces and problems of potentially more than 4,000 employers, covering the widest range of industries, technologies and marketplaces.
No other university student on earth can access such a rich environment in which to search for the treasure of unsolved killer problems. Other students read business case studies; you live them.” (Larry Smith)
This week we chat with Eric Li, a 3rd year computer engineering student who was a Software Engineering Intern at Lacework. Tune in to learn about cloud security, his YCombinator experience, leaving school and then returning, and other insights on startups!
Find Eirc Li at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericli1234
00:13
- Podcast introduction
00:38
- Guest introduction
00:58
- Role at Lacework
08:00 - What Lacework does
10:02 - Clients of Lacework
13:24 - Interest in security
15:58 - Writing code for a security company
19:36 - About own startup
26:28 - YCombinator experience
40:14 - Shutting down own startup
46:01 - Do you want to keep building startups?
49:31 - Thoughts on opportunity cost
53:25 - Conviction in your ideas
56:27 - Advice for listeners
01:00:10
- Closing
The Waterloo Advantage is produced by The Collective. The theme music is produced by Ayush Ghosh (https://www.ayushsitar.com/).
New episode with David Gu, previously a 2nd year Software Engineering student who started a startup, Perfect Recall, and has been working full time on it for over a year now. Tune in to learn about his YCombinator experience, Perfect Recall, and other insights on startups!
Find David Gu at: https://linkedin.com/in/david-gu
Perfect Recall: https://perfectrecall.app/
00:13 - Podcast introduction
00:39 - Guest introduction
01:08 - Working full time on a startup
01:41 - Wish and role at Wish
02:38 - Leaving school to startup
04:11 - Previous startup
05:11 - YCombinator experience
09:31 - How you met your co-founder
10:17 - Process of pivoting
12:24 - What is Perfect Recall
13:14 - Perfect Recall: support for other platforms
14:05 - Launch strategy for Perfect Recall
16:37 - Perfect Recall: how have things changed over the year
19:15 - Users of Perfect Recall
20:37 - Process of pricing your product
22:57 - Selling to enterprise customers
24:40 - Working at a co-op vs working on your own startup
29:40 - Context switching at a startup
32:44 - Growing your team at a startup
37:25 - Future of Perfect Recall
38:25 - Which problems spaces and technology are you interested in
45:07 - Note taking workflows during video calls
45:52 - Products you'd want made
46:53 - Conviction in your ideas
50:14 - Book recommendations
51:56 - Advice for listeners
53:56 - Closing
The Waterloo Advantage is produced by The Collective. The theme music is produced by Ayush Ghosh (https://www.ayushsitar.com/).
This week, we chat with Narayan Subramoniam, a 3rd year double degree math and business student who was a Sales Analyst at SodaStream. Narayan is super passionate about food security and is heavily involved with the UW food bank. Tune in to learn some unique perspectives on food security, selling to retailers, and transferring universities!
Find Narayan Subramoniam at: https://linkedin.com/in/nsub2
00:13 - Podcast introduction
00:40 - Guest introduction
01:27 - How is it like taking a double degree
03:22 - What made you pick business and math
07:08 - University transfer process
13:22 - Background on SodaStream
16:42 - Role at SodaStream
21:00 - Does SodaStream sell directly to consumers
22:18 - Selling to retailers
25:20 - Retail price of SodaStream products
27:17 - How technology impacts your role as an analyst
31:16 - Working in a team as a Sales Analyst
34:58 - Impact of COVID-19
38:42 - Passion for food security
47:55 - Food bank at UWaterloo
50:55 - What's next for food banks
54:23 - How to help the food bank
55:49 - Using the food bank
58:24 - UWaterloo food bank team
01:01:12 - Dream co-op
01:03:18 - Recommendations for people interested in food security
01:04:13 - Advice for listeners
01:05:51 - Closing
The Waterloo Advantage is produced by The Collective. The theme music is produced by Ayush Ghosh (https://www.ayushsitar.com/).
New episode with Katherine Gotovsky, a 3rd year double degree computer science and business student, who was a product manager at Caresplit. Tune in to learn about product management, venture capital, and an incubator that Katherine started called the Product Initiative!
Find Katherine Gotovsky at: https://linkedin.com/in/katherinegotovsky
The Product Initiative: https://productinitiative.ca/
00:12 - Podcast introduction
00:38 - Guest introduction
00:56 - BCS (Bachelor of Computer Science) vs BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration)
02:17 - Why do you love business
03:25 - What venture did you start
04:30 - Role at Caresplit
05:38 - Experience at Caresplit
07:37 - First female recession
08:23 - Learning about Product Management
10:05 - What part of Product Management interests you the most
11:25 - Weakness in Product Management
12:28 - Product Management vs Software Engineering
14:22 - Using intuition vs data driven decision making
16:39 - How case competitions have helped you
18:58 - Case competitions vs hackathons
21:06 - Most impressive product you've seen
22:58 - Internal tools you've used
24:47 - Approach to understanding a new space
26:14 - Sources for learning
26:52 - What is your narrative
28:01 - Thoughts on opportunity cost
29:43 - What is the Product Initiative
31:44 - Who the Product Initiative is for
32:14 - Products launched from the Product Initiative
33:54 - Scaling the Product Initiative
34:26 - How does the Product Initiative work
35:37 - How many students are part of the Product Initiative
36:27 - Finding students for the Product Initiative
37:20 - Problems you would want to work on at the Product Initiative
38:35 - Experience in venture capital (VC)
40:22 - What you like and dislike about VC
41:17 - Startup insights from VC experience
45:23 - Spaces getting oversaturated and emerging spaces
47:33 - Conviction in your ideas
49:09 - Managing a busy lifestyle
51:34 - Finding time to reflect
53:10 - Advice for listeners
55:00 - Closing
The Waterloo Advantage is produced by The Collective. The theme music is produced by Ayush Ghosh (https://www.ayushsitar.com/).
This week, we chat with Jackson Mills, a 4th year computer science student who is working at Alarm.com as a Product Manager. Jackson is also the co-founder of the Zero Experience which is a part-time entrepreneurship program. Tune in to learn some unique perspectives on PM, enterprise security, and entrepreneurship!
Find Jackson Mills at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacksonmills6/
Zero Experience: https://uwaterloo.ca/problem-lab/zero-experience
00:13 - Podcast introduction
00:40 - Guest introduction
01:19 - Role at Alarm.com
03:43 - Transition from Software Engineering to Product Management
06:10 - Project Management vs Product Management
09:16 - Learning about Product Management
10:08 - Transition from Product Management to Founder
10:42 - How do you understand users at Alarm.com
13:06 - Innovation Engine
16:30 - Don't mix feedback and evaluation
18:20 - Can your manager be your mentor?
19:19 - Is 4 months enough time for a company to invest in the growth of a student?
20:58 - Historical lens of enterprise security and Alarm.com
26:00 - What is the Zero Experience?
31:02 - How Zero Experience works
34:20 - Size of the program and scaling Zero Experience
35:47 - Why the problem Zero Experience is solving is important
38:52 - Zero Experience and the Problem Lab
40:31 - Meeting co-founder and start of Zero Experience
44:32 - Which Problem Lab Billion Dollar Problem would you pick to work on?
48:16 - You are more than your job role
52:36 - Plans after graduation
53:42 - Aim to work towards throughout life
55:30 - Thoughts on opportunity cost
59:30 - Impactful advice you've received
01:01:36 - Closing
The Waterloo Advantage is produced by The Collective. The theme music is produced by Ayush Ghosh (https://www.ayushsitar.com/).
Listen to our inaugural episode of The Waterloo Advantage! We chat with Navya Mehta, a 3rd year computer science and finance student, who is working at Loblaws as a Data Science Intern. Navya is a very intelligent, humble person and his passion for data science is inspiring.
Find Navya Mehta at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/navya-mehta-uj
00:13 - Podcast introduction
00:40 - Guest introduction
01:36 - Role at Loblaws
03:03 - Data science team at Loblaws
04:30 - How important is understanding the core business
07:19 - Is Loblaws a data first company?
08:28 - Do you mostly work with technical problems or adaptive (people) problems?
10:30 - Are there privacy issues with the data you work with?
11:00 - Is data cleaning and data preprocessing common in a data science role?
14:13 - Time breakdown of data cleaning vs preprocessing vs insights
15:37 - Experience with management and leadership communicating the value of A.I.
18:09 - Love and passion for data (data as a way to understand human behaviour, find order in chaos, pursuit of meaning)
23:54 - Do you think of data science as tools to help programmers or replace programmers?
26:40 - Questions data science struggles with today but could help with in the future
31:51 - Monopolistic sense in ML due to compute resources required
35:47 - Is availability of data also a monopolistic problem?
39:15 - Collaboration in data science
42:53 - Hero/role model in data science
44:21 - How data science impacts other parts of life (eg. optimization in relationships)
45:40 - Ideal data science role
47:07 - How data science training impacts problem solving and link to CS courses
49:37 - Do you think human life and society can be modelled as an optimization problem?
50:56 - What worldview is more appealing: deterministic or stochastic
52:38 - Do you think we're living in a simulation?
53:46 - Impact you want to create
56:23 - Advice for students/people wanting to get into data science
58:00 - Closing
The Waterloo Advantage is produced by The Collective. The theme music is produced by Ayush Ghosh (https://www.ayushsitar.com/).