Getting2Alpha: Recent Episodes
Amy Jo Kim
Wanna innovate faster and smarter? Getting2Alpha pulls back the curtain on how breakthrough innovators bring their ideas to life - and delivers actionable tips to help you bring innovative ideas to life. You’ll meet luminaries who've created genre-defining hits - and rising stars who are shaping the future. Listen in and get inspired to innovate smarter and increase your odds of success.
Lisha Li is the founder of Rosebud AI, a groundbreaking platform that makes game creation accessible to anyone. With roots in pure math & AI research, she’s transformed cutting-edge technology into creative tools that empower people to build, remix & share games in entirely new ways.
Listen as we explore Lisha’s journey from academia & venture capital to launching Rosebud AI, & how she’s reimagining game design as a collaborative, ever-evolving ecosystem.
Rosebud AI
Hansohl Kim is an engineer at Anthropic, where he focuses on reinforcement learning & AI safety for models like Claude. With experience spanning computer science, biotech, & machine learning, he brings a unique perspective to the fast-changing world of artificial intelligence.
Listen as Hansohl unpacks the challenges of alignment, the importance of guardrails, & what it takes to design AI systems we can truly trust.
RELATED LINKS:
🌐 Anthropic – https://www.anthropic.com
💼 Hansohl Kim on LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/hansohl
Hugo Alves is the co-founder of Synthetic Users, a startup helping teams accelerate product development with AI-powered user feedback. What began as a bold idea evolved through iteration & a surprising pivot on the way to product-market fit.
In this conversation, we explore where synthetic users shine—and where they fall short. You’ll hear Hugo’s lessons on using AI to simulate real users, plus a live demo of Synthetic Users in action.
Join me as we dive into Hugo’s insights on building better products, faster—with the help of synthetic users.
🌐 Synthetic Users – https://www.syntheticusers.com
💼 Hugo Alves on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/hugomanuelalves
Amy Bucher is a leading voice in behavioral science & the author of Engaged, with a passion for designing systems that help people thrive—especially in health & wellness.
Join us as we dive into Amy’s insights on what really drives behavior change, why personalization matters, & how her work at Lirio is bringing customized healthcare nudges to life.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amybucher/
Engaged: https://amzn.to/4moF6Za
Lirio: https://www.lirio.com/
Nate Bosshard is a visionary brand builder and entrepreneur who’s helped shape iconic companies like Burton, Tonal, and hims & hers through a rare blend of taste, intuition, and strategic insight.
Join us as we explore Nate’s perspective on what makes a brand truly resonate, from crafting emotional worlds to resisting the pull of algorithmic influence. He shares hard-earned lessons on launching category-defining products, building brands that move culture, & why taste might just be your most valuable asset.
Vicki Tan is a seasoned product designer whose work spans Lyft, Headspace, & Pinterest. With a background in behavioral psychology, she brings a unique lens to decision-making and design.
Join us as we explore Vicki’s journey, how she turned curiosity into a powerful creative tool, & why her new book "Ask This Book a Question" reimagines cognitive bias as a pathway to insight.
Jason Hreha is a leading expert in behavioral science & a serial entrepreneur who has helped shape the way we understand habit-building and human behavior.
Join us as we catch up with Jason on what really matters when it comes to building lasting habits. From his groundbreaking work in applied behavioral science to launching & scaling multiple businesses, Jason shares key insights on designing behavior-driven products, cutting through the noise of self-improvement trends, and focusing on what truly works.
👉 Full video podcast available here: https://youtu.be/f4Gn46oQDPA
Andy Budd is a designer, entrepreneur, and investor making waves with his new book, The Growth Equation. With a background in UX design, web standards, and startup advising, Andy now helps founders navigate the complex world of venture funding and product growth.
Listen as we explore Andy’s journey from building one of the first UX agencies in the UK to shaping the next generation of startups at Seedcamp. He shares invaluable insights on avoiding the Field of Dreams fallacy, mastering go-to-market strategies, and why a great product isn’t enough—you need to know how to sell it.
Nana Janashia is a pioneering force in DevOps education and founder of TechWorld with Nana, a seven-figure training powerhouse that's transformed how people learn DevOps engineering.
Listen as we explore Nana's remarkable path from teaching English in Georgia to building a global tech education platform with over 1 million YouTube subscribers. She shares invaluable insights on structuring complex technical content, maintaining laser-sharp focus in business, and the critical importance of deeply understanding your customers.
Mark Jacobstein is a renowned figure in the gaming and tech universe, with three decades of experience building and leading companies at the forefront of new technologies.
Having transitioned from a successful career as a Game Executive to becoming a Venture Builder, Mark offers a unique perspective on innovation and leadership. Listen as we explore his journey from the gaming world to venture building and the lessons he's learned along the way.
Ryan Douglas is the co-founder of DeepWell DTx, a digital therapeutics venture lab dedicated to creating immersive experiences that address mental health challenges.
Recently, DeepWell DTx achieved a major milestone: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared five mental health apps, including DeepWell's software development kit (SDK). This marks the first time digital therapeutics have been approved for medical use, paving the way for games to be reimbursed through medical insurance.
Gina Pell, a digital media pioneer, runs an exclusive Facebook group with 27K members and a private professional women's network featuring world-class leaders, from early-stage entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 executives.
Gina has built companies, audiences, and communities. She observes a significant shift happening online that will impact us all. Discover why she believes social media is transforming into something the world truly needs, especially now.
Julie Dirksen is an author and learning strategy consultant, renowned for her expertise in creating impactful learning solutions. She wrote the bestselling book Design For How People Learn, and her latest release, Talk to the Elephant: Design Learning for Behavior Change, is gaining significant attention.
Julie’s diverse clientele includes Fortune 500 companies, international NGOs, tech startups, and research initiatives.
Julie blends behavioral science with innovative learning design to craft transformative educational experiences, and her insights are reshaping learning strategies across various sectors.
Mike Maples is a pioneering Silicon Valley investor who founded Floodgate Ventures in 2005, introducing the concept of seed investing. He achieved major successes with early investments in Twitter, Twitch, and Lyft.
His curiosity about what it takes to create a world-changing startup led him to explore how revolutionary ideas often appear crazy at first. This journey inspired his new book, "Pattern Breakers," where he delves into the dynamics of breakthrough startups shaping the future.
Jillian Ahrens is the CPO at Realized Care, a digital therapeutics company specializing in VR solutions. She was formerly Associate Director of Product R&D at Pear Therapeutics, where she led a project developing a CBT-based AI chatbot.
Discover what Jillian learned at Pear about patient engagement with AI chatbots, and how she's taking those lessons into her cutting-edge work delivering digital therapeutics for chronic pain.
Ryan Douglas is the co-founder of DeepWell DTx, a digital therapeutics Venture Lab focused on creating immersive experiences that address mental health concerns.
Ryan has created numerous medical devices, along with several profitable startups. He has deep experience with the regulatory landscape for digital therapeutics, and is pushing to get digital therapeutics accepted by the medical community.
Check out the video here: https://youtu.be/xuXe-HtmBMk
Long before World of Warcraft, there was Ultima Online, the first MMO. How did this highly innovative & influential game come to be? And what can we learn from its successes and failures?
Starr Long is a game designer and producer who directed the team that built Ultima Online, the first popular Massively Multiplayer Online game. In this in-depth interview, you'll learn how a theater major became a game designer, how Ultima IV blew player's minds, and the shocking things players did early the development of Ultima Online.
Check out the video here: https://youtu.be/nzlNq_yiO2Y
Samuel Hulick, a renowned UX consultant and leading authority in user onboarding, operates the well-known website useronboard.com. Through this platform, he expertly deconstructs the initial experiences of popular apps and services, showcasing his insights into effective user onboarding processes.
Check out the video here: https://youtu.be/YFFw5u_Aq-s
Jason Hreha is a behavioral scientist, formerly Global Head of Behavioral Sciences at Walmart, who uses his knowledge of human behavior to build better products. With a decade of applying behavioral science to tech challenges, he co-founded Walmart's Behavioral Science Team and pioneered Behavioral Strategy as an interdisciplinary approach. He studied human biology and neuroscience at Stanford University, and is currently co-founder and CEO of Persona, the Startup Assistant company.
Alfie Kohn is an American author and lecturer in education, parenting, and human behavior. The author of fourteen books and hundreds of articles, he is a proponent of progressive education and a strong critic of competition and rewards. Kohn has been described by Time magazine as “perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades [and] test scores.”
Adrian Hon is an English writer and game designer, known for his expertise in alternate reality games and transmedia storytelling. As the CEO of Six to Start, he created the bestselling fitness game "Zombies, Run!" and authored books like "You've Been Played" (2022) and "A History of the Future in 100 Objects" (2020). He studied neuroscience at Cambridge, UCSD, and Oxford, and has spoken at TED, Long Now Foundation, GoogleX, and Disney Imagineering.
Robin Allenson is a serial entrepreneur who studied AI at University of Edinburgh in the early 90s, and went on to found a series of AI-powered ventures. His current venture Similar.ai uses AI to automate the important and often laborious process of optimizing web sites for SEO.
Douglas Hofstadter is a professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature at Indiana University in Bloomington. His research into cognitive science includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics. His 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid won both the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. His AI interests explore the subtlest and most slippery aspects of human intelligence, as embodied in deceptively deep analogy problems like ABC is to ABD as XYZ is to what?
Dr. Julie Gurner is an executive performance coach with a Doctorate in Psychology. She has coached top-percentile executives, talent, and teams operating in fast-paced, competitive environments for over ten years, helping her clients unlock peak performance. She publishes the Ultra Successful newsletter on Substack.
Joakim Achrén, “the gaming startup guy”, is a games investor, and founder of Elite Game Developers, which provides advice for game founders. He co-founded Next Games (which was acquired by Netflix), and worked as Director of Analytics at Supercell.
Pavel Samsonov is a design architect and UX Practice Lead at Amazon Web Services (AWS) based in New York City. With a background in graphic design and a passion for human-computer interaction, Pavel has spent the last three years at AWS helping large companies adopt cloud computing and build innovative products using design methods. His professional accomplishments include being named a top UX designer by prominent industry publications, and his work has been featured in major design exhibitions and conferences worldwide. In addition to his work at AWS, Pavel is also a contributor to UX Collective, a prominent online publication in the design community.
Kevin Kelly is a writer, futurist, and Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He co-founded Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor for its first seven years. His books include The Inevitable, about future trends, and What Technology Wants, a theory of technology. He is founder of the popular Cool Tools website, which has been reviewing tools daily for 20 years. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a subscriber-supported journal of unorthodox conceptual news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers’ Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985.
Celia Hodent, a Game UX Strategist with a PhD in Psychology, has dedicated 15 years of her career to applying user experience (UX) and cognitive science in product development, particularly in the realm of video games. Her impressive portfolio includes her role as Director of UX at Epic Games for Fortnite, as well as work on well-known franchises such as Star Wars: 1313 at LucasArts and Rainbow 6 at Ubisoft. Hodent has shared her expertise with the world in her book, The Gamer’s Brain: How Neuroscience and UX can Impact Video Game Design.
Vinayak Joglekar is head of India Operations and Chief Technology Officer at Excellarate, with more than three decades of professional software development and delivery experience. Joglekar earned his mechanical engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology and a master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Management and mentors bright minds in software development and product delivery.
Osama Dorias is a Lead Content Designer at Blizzard Entertainment. In the past, he’s worked at Unity, Warner Brothers, Gameloft, GEE Media, Ubisoft, and Minority Media. He also teaches game design at Dawson College and loves to empower people in expressing themselves through game-making, especially marginalized people and causes.
Steve Meretzky is an American video game developer best known for creating Infocom games in the early 1980s, including collaborating with author Douglas Adams on the hit interactive fiction version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the comically titled Leather Goddesses of Phobos. Later, he created the Spellcasting trilogy, the flagship adventure series of Legend Entertainment. His keen wit, prose, and coding skill made him one of the first interactive fiction writers admitted to the Science Fiction Writers of America. He has been involved in almost every aspect of casual game development, from design to production to quality assurance and box design.
Hilmar Pétursson is CEO of CCP Games in Iceland, makers of the long-running space battle game EVE Online. Billed as the world’s largest living work of science fiction, EVE has a highly developed internal economy and deep social structure that makes it an ideal testbed for how the coming Metaverse could work.
Brendan Greene, better known as PlayerUnknown is a video game developer best known for creating PUBG: Battlegrounds. In 2019 he left active development on the game to form PUBG Special Projects and PlayerUnknown Productions, where he is developing an ambitious virtual world far larger than the one in PUBG.
Entrepreneur and angel investor, Rei Wang is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at The Grand, a group coaching platform to help people navigate transitions at the intersection of work and life.
Before The Grand she served as CEO of Dorm Room Fund at First Round Capital where she nurtured a community of 250+ startups, and counseled entrepreneurs on topics ranging from fundraising to management.
For her leadership growing Dorm Room Fund from an experiment into the world’s premiere university-focused venture fund, she received the Forbes 30 under 30 award in venture capital.
Entrepreneur and angel investor, Rei Wang is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at The Grand, a group coaching platform to help people navigate transitions at the intersection of work and life.
Before The Grand she served as CEO of Dorm Room Fund at First Round Capital where she nurtured a community of 250+ startups, and counseled entrepreneurs on topics ranging from fundraising to management.
For her leadership growing Dorm Room Fund from an experiment into the world’s premiere university-focused venture fund, she received the Forbes 30 under 30 award in venture capital.
Philip Rosedale is the founder of Linden Lab, which launched the popular virtual world Second Life in 2003. His goal has always been to build a viable model for a virtual economy or virtual society, not just an entertainment platform. Before Second Life he served as CTO at RealNetworks, where he wrote some of the earliest algorithms to compress video for transmission across the internet. In 2013 he founded High Fidelity, which builds a spatial audio for group chat. He is currently involved with both Second Life and High Fidelity, and advises on Metaverse efforts.
Philip Rosedale is the founder of Linden Lab, which launched the popular virtual world Second Life in 2003. His goal has always been to build a viable model for a virtual economy or virtual society, not just an entertainment platform. Before Second Life he served as CTO at RealNetworks, where he wrote some of the earliest algorithms to compress video for transmission across the internet. In 2013 he founded High Fidelity, which builds a spatial audio for group chat. He is currently involved with both Second Life and High Fidelity, and advises on Metaverse efforts.
Mitch Zamara is Lead Product Designer on Million on Mars: Land Rush! He has over a decade of experience as a game designer working in the free-to-play social/mobile game space at Zynga and other companies. He specializes in designing game economies.
Raph Koster is an entrepreneur, game designer, and author of a Theory of Fun for Game Design. He is currently CEO of playable worlds. He was Lead Designer on pioneering MMO Ultima Online, and Creative Director of Star Wars Galaxies. He founded Metaplace in 2006, which was acquired by the social gaming company Playdom.
Amy Bucher is Chief behavioral officer at the digital health company Lirio. She is the author of Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change, and has a Ph.D. in Psychology from University of Michigan.
John Linden is CEO of Mythical Games, creators of the pioneering NFT collectible game Blanko’s Block Party. John has a deep background in gaming, leading AAA titles like Call of Duty, and helping develop the Millenium Falcon ride at Disneyland.
Mark Pincus is a serial entrepreneur and investor who founded the early social media company Tribe Networks, and the mobile social gaming company Zynga. More recently he co-founded investment firm Reinvent Capital in 2018.
Barry O'Reilly is a business strategist and author of Unlearn and Lean Enterprise. He’s worked with top executives at Wells Fargo, American Airlines and Walmart to cut through complexity and make smart decisions in a changing world.
In doing this work, Barry has learned that most executives resist unlearning what they already know.
Listen as Barry talks about the importance of questioning assumptions, and the power of incentive systems to shape human behavior.
Chris Heatherly is head of Games & Engagement at Recur, a pioneering NFT platform. A creative executive who works at the intersection of games and entertainment, Chris oversaw hit games based on IP from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars, when he was an exec at Disney and NBCUniversal
Gabby Dizon is cofounder of Yield Guild Games, an organization that helps its members make money playing blockchain-based play-to-earn games. As a long-time game developer and player, Gabby had long dreamed of a game guild owned by its members.
Garry Tan is a software engineer turned entrepreneur turned investor. On his popular YouTube channel he offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs. He is intensely aware of the privileged position he is in as a tech-savvy investor in Silicon Valley, and is eager to share his knowledge with the next generation.
Chris Spiek is Chief Product Officer at Autobooks. Chris co-founded the Product Design Consultancy, the Re-Wired Group in 2010 with jobs-to-be-done expert Bob Moesta, and co-authored The Jobs-to-be-Done Handbook with Bob Moesta.
I first learned about John Hagel in the late 1990s, when I was elbow-deep in community-building -- working as a systems designer & UX leader on Ultima Online and eBay. One of my clients gave me John’s book, Net Gain: Expanding markets through virtual communities. It blew my mind and inspired me as I was writing my first book, Community Building on the Web. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to get to know John better. He’s written many books since Net Gain exploded on the scene, and now runs the Center for the Edge at Deloitte, where he leads research efforts that reveal where business is headed next. Come hang out with us and discover what a leading business strategist thinks about the future of work - and the impact of lost trust on community and marketplace dynamics.
Schwark Satyavolu is a serial entrepreneur and early-stage investor at Trinity Ventures. After founding and growing several innovative startups in the fintech space - a journey that included a stint as an executive at Mastercard - Schwark is now building up the fintech practice at Trinity. His background as an entrepreneur makes him empathetic to the realities of what startup life is life -- a great quality for an investor to have. I also loved hearing Schwark’s perspective on the future of crypto - because it comes from such a deeply informed perspective. Listen in and find out how this successful entrepreneur-turned-investor is shaping the next generation of fintech innovators.
I first met Siqi Chen at a Lightspeed CEO dinner hosted by Jeremy Liew. We bonded over our mutual love of product design and fascination with customer engagement. Ever since, I’ve followed Siqi’s career from Zynga product lead to fast-pivoting startup CEO to VR executive. I love how Siqi’s ideas about vision and leadership keep evolving. This is a guy who’s always learning. Listen in and learn how this globally-minded entrepreneur is applying his hard-won innovation lessons to carving out a new category of location-based entertainment.
Tracy Rosenthal Newsom is an award-winning game producer and product leader who brought you hits like Rock Band and Dance Central. I worked with Tracy in the early days of bringing Rock Band to life - and learned so much from her. In many ways, we've traveled parallel paths - moving through the worlds of gaming, digital healthcare and humanistic product design. The common thread is a deep, abiding interest in creating experiences that connect with people in a deep and positive way. And I'll tell you - Tracy knows how to do that. Join us and discover the key practices that led this innovative creative powerhouse towards success.
BJ Fogg is a shining light in the often murky field of behavioral science. His Stanford Lab was Ground Zero in the Facebook Platform explosion of 2007. He’s now pioneering the influential “Tiny Habits” training program that’s finding it’s way into popular culture. BJ has the soul of a scientist – an explorer seeking the truth, rather than selling a vision. Join us to learn about BJ’s fascinating backstory – plus find out how a near-miss plane crash led to BJ’s current creative obsession.
Jeri Ellsworth is a tinkerer, inventor, and entrepreneur who grew up fixing toasters and building race cars - then moved on to inventing the future of AR at Valve, CastAR and now Tilt Five. Jeri’s got a unique take on bringing innovation to market - and a healthy appreciation for the human side of technology development. Listen in and discover how a quirky kid from rural Oregon transformed herself into a Silicon Valley powerhouse.
I first met David Vogler during the early, heady days of the Web, when we worked together to craft Nickelodeon’s first online presence. David went on to lead creative teams at Disney, Hearst, NBC Universal, and other leading brands. He’s now the Head of Design for Complex Networks, a joint venture between Hearst and Verizon.
David has a knack for creating innovative media experiences that still manage to connect with basic user needs. Listen in and discover how this long-time insider navigates the dynamic landscape of online video and big media brand-building.
Bob Moesta is the CEO and President of the Re-Wired group, a consultancy specializing in demand-side innovation. Bob and his team help large companies innovate with demand-side techniques and learn methods - meaning that he helps them validate market demand before building something. Bob and I share a mutual love of using #jobs-to-be-done to innovate smarter and help people ask better questions. I love Bob’s down-to-earth perspective and deep insights into the systemic nature of innovation - derived from being on the front lines of innovation in Japan. Listen in and learn about the key qualities and habits that lead to successful innovations.
Bob Moesta is the CEO and President of the Re-Wired group, a consultancy specializing in demand-side innovation. Bob and his team help large companies innovate with demand-side techniques and learn methods - meaning that he helps them validate market demand before building something. Bob and I share a mutual love of using #jobs-to-be-done to innovate smarter and help people ask better questions. I love Bob’s down-to-earth perspective and deep insights into the systemic nature of innovation - derived from being on the front lines of innovation in Japan. Listen in and learn about the key qualities and habits that lead to successful innovations.
Michael John runs the Games and Playable Media masters program at UC Santa Cruz, where he and his team work to transform eager game students into industry-ready designers. Michael has a long and storied history in games. Ever heard of Spyro the Dragon - the adorable character who enchanted and educated kids on the Playstation? Michael helped bring Spyro to life, and did the same for other games including the God of War series, and the innovative Glasslab educational games. Michael’s passion for using games to educate and inspire is a key theme in his career arc from producer to educator. Listen in and find out what’s hot and happening among the upcoming generation of game creators.
Brian Norgard is a serial entrepreneur - expert team-builder - and currently Chief Product Officer at Tinder, the massively successful dating app. Brian knows a thing or two about how to grow and evolve successful products - and it's NOT about chasing trends or adding sexy new features. If you're into creating compelling products, I know you'll enjoy soaking up his wisdom and hard-won advice. Listen in and discover how a seasoned product leader guides his team towards success.
Howard Rheingold is a colorful character in every sense of the word. From his psychedelic painted shoes to his extraordinary legacy of ground-breaking visionary books, Howard offers a unique and incisive approach to creativity, learning and community-building. Most people know Howard from his writing about Virtual Communities and mind amplification - but he’s also a gifted & innovative educator. In his role as a visiting professor at Stanford & UC Berkeley, Howard re-imagined the relationship between students and teachers as “co-learners” - in keeping with his deep, long-term interest in collaboration. Listen in and find out how a true Web pioneer thinks about “bullshit-detection” and the future of collaborative learning.
Intro Casey Winters is a growth specialist who understands how to blend qualitative and quantitative data to get massive and sustained results. Casey learned his craft at GrubHub and Pinterest, and then moved on to Greylock - the storied investment firm - to help their portfolio companies scale up and accelerate growth. Casey focuses on the space where scaling techniques meet product design – and he’s collected some hard-won & actionable insights about on what gets in the way of growth – and what you can do to help your team succeed. Listen in and find out how a Silicon Valley insider helps to turn startups into rocketships.
Jason Hreha is a product leader at Walmart, where he works across the company to run smart experiments and infuse the retail giant with effective digital design. Jason has an academic background in psychology and neuroscience - and has learned through experience what actually works when you’re building products for humans. Listen in and learn how a behavioral scientist sees the world of product design.
Jeff Patton is well-known as the father of story-mapping - a visual way of mapping out and prioritizing your product backlog. Jeff is someone who deeply understands how teams come together to build products - and where that process can go off the rails. If you’re a product manager - or aspire to be one - Jeff’s work is fundamental background knowledge. Listen in and learn how to navigate around the common obstacles of corporate life that keep your product from succeeding
Steve Hoffman is a force of nature - and an amazing human. Known affectionately as “Captain Hoff” Steve is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and CEO of Founders Space, an one of the world’s leading incubators with over 50 partners in 22 countries. Steve’s book on innovation, “Make Elephants Fly: The Process of Radical Innovation,” is required reading for entrepreneurs worldwide. Listen in and learn what Steve has learned about getting companies ready for takeoff.
Karl Kapp is a influential leader in the learning and development space. He wears many hats: a professor of Instructional Technology Professor at Bloomsburg University, author of 5 books, and a popular speaker and consultant on learning technology and gamification. Karl is passionate about making learning effective and compelling, and knows a thing or two about how to achieve those goals - and what gets in the way. Join us and discover why this multi-talented educator embraces failure and challenge as the tools that prepare students for world success.
Lee LeFever and his wife Saachi pioneered a form of visual communication called “explainer videos.” They run Common Craft, an animated video production company - and a training spinoff, the Explainer Academy, that empowers anyone to create better, clearer explanations. Lee has a refreshingly clear way of looking at the choices a small business owner has to make when things start to take off. Join us and learn more about how Lee transitioned his successful business to support the life of his dreams.
Jeremy Liew is a managing partner at Lightspeed, a global investment firm. Jeremy specializes in the consumer segement - including investments in Snapchat and The Honest Company. Join us and discover what a top-tier SIlicon Valley VC thinks about the current state of consumer tech - and what’s coming next.
When I first met Merci Victoria Grace, she was fresh out of school and leading a wildly innovative game project. Fast-forward to today, she’s a talented & accomplished product manager, most recently leading growth at Slack. Her blend of creativity, strategy & development chops gives her a great foundation for leading teams. Join us and discover how a fast-rising product leader integrates vision with collaborative leadership.
Gina Bianchini is a visionary entrepreneur with deep experience in social software and online communities. Gina co-founded the pioneering social platform Ning, and is taking what she learned from that experience into her current project, Mighty Networks - a place for deep interest communities to flourish. Gina’s passion and brilliance shine through in everything she does. I’m always excited to hear her take on the evolution and purpose of online communities. Listen in and learn from Gina’s decades of experience bringing innovative ideas to life.
Jeff Atwood is the co-founder of Stack Overflow - he played a major role in bringing that influential Q&A network to life. Jeff now brings his community-building prowess to Discourse, a fast-growing community SAAS company. Jeff knows all about the fear, discomfort and iterative experiments that pave the way to success in the digital world. He's one of my favorite people to talk with - listen in and enjoy his stories and insights.
If you want to get a feeling for Josh Elman’s career, just trace the history of modern social networks. Josh held increasingly senoir roles at RealNetworks, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Now he’s now supporting the next generation of breakthrough entrepreneurs at Greylock Ventures. In his VC role, Josh sees a lot of pitches -- and he’s got a keen eye for the tricky balance that successful entrepreneurs need to strike: Listen in and take a journey through the recent past and exciting future of networked social experiences.
Steve Vassallo trained as a mechanical engineer, studied design thinking at Stanford, and worked at IDEO as a award-winning product designer. Now he’s an early-stage investor at Foundation Capital, where he helps founders bring world-changing ideas to life. If you’re into great design, you’ll love Steve’s new book, The Way to Design - where he shares his passion for the intersection of user experience and systems thinking. Listen in and learn how Steve’s design sensibilities inform his investing choices and inspire his knowledge-sharing.
Tim Chang is a polymath, a longtime Burner, an accomplished musician, and a forward-looking VC who invests in the positive side of technology. As Managing Director of Mayfield, Tim blends his background in engineering and business development with a customer-first approach to supporting breakthrough products and services. I’ve worked with Tim several times -- and I’m always inspired by our interactions. Listen in and get a taste of Tim’s mind-expanding ideas about how to create deeply engaging experiences.
Tony Ulwick, is one of the pioneers who brought us the jobs-to-be-done approach to product innovation. Tony’s breakthrough idea was to uncover and leverage latent customer needs - something he calls outcome-driven innovation. In his new book, "Jobs to be Done,” Tony shares his deep experience helping traditional companies disrupt themselves and innovate successfully. Listen in and soak up the wisdom Tony’s gained working at the forefront of innovation for over two decades.
Jared Spool is a legend in user interface design. Through his pioneering consultancy, User Interface Engineering, he’s helped hundreds of teams create more usable and delightful software. Jared’s latest project is Center Centre -- a 2-year college for UX professionals that’s setup to train the next generation of user interface professionals. His approach to product design is informed by decades of experience and pattern-matching - I love hearing his stories and actionable chunks of UX wisdom: Join us for a far-reaching and high-impact conversation about user experience design.
Jim Scheinman is a lifelong entrepreneur who’s spent the last two decades working at the forefront of social software. As an early employee of Friendster and Bebo, Jim rode out the first big social media wave. Now he’s helping the next generation of founders invent the future through his work at Maven Ventures. Jim’s approach is grounded in operational reality - and infused with a passion for working on a ‘vision worth fighting for.’ He appreciates the power of a truly compelling experience to draw people in and keep them engaged. Learn how an early-stage investor decides who to work with - and how to help his companies succeed.
In the short history of web design, Jeff Veen is a true pioneer. In his work for Wired, Adaptive Path, Google, Adobe, and now True Ventures, Jeff has been pushing the boundaries of online publishing and Web interactivity for decades. He’s worked with some of the best and brightest teams in tech - and has a deep and abiding passion for group collaboration Find our what's on Jeff's mind and capturing his his attention these days. I got a lot our of this conversation - and I know you’ll enjoy it too.
As the former VP Community at Kickstarter, Cindy Au managed the fast-growing crowdfunding community through a major growth phase, and balanced the competing needs of campaigners and funders. Cindy cut her teeth in New York’s tech scene - and she's got great insights about what it takes to say NO to short-term gains in order to fulfill a long-term vision. If you’re interested in community dynamics, cooperative design or tech entrepreneurship, you’re gonna love Cindy's stories about how Kickstarter transformed from a promising idea into a wildly successful fundraising powerhouse.
Richard Garriott is a pioneering game designer, gifted world-builder second-generation astronaut, arctic explorer - and ever-inspiring creative force. I first met Richard when I was teaching online community design at Stanford; half my class was in the Beta for Ultima Online, and I jumped in enthusiastically to learn the ropes. I ended up working with Richard, Raph Koster and their amazing crew of developers through the launch & growth of that early graphic MMO. Like many great game designers, Richard is a sophisticated systems thinker who sees the world through a unique lens that's on full display in this far-ranging & fascinating conversation.
Cindy Alvarez is an expert in customer research and iterative development. She’s the author of Lean Customer Development, a hands-on guide for validating product and feature ideas. She's worked for small and medium-sized startups - and now runs user experience for Yammer (a Microsoft company).
Cindy’s got a flair for explaining user-centered design in a compelling and understandable way. From her early days doing tech support for her professors at Harvard — to her current leadership role evangelizing lean tactics at Microsoft — Cindy thrives on new challenges. Listen in and learn how a seasoned UX expert blends customer development with product leadership.
Dan Olsen is a seasoned product manager - and the author of the Lean Product Playbook, a soup-to-nuts handbook for doing smart product management with Lean principles. Dan runs the Lean Product & Lean UX meetup in Silicon Valley, where he brings cross-functional teams together to lean how to create great products. Dan is an articulate proponent of a lean & disciplined approach to product development - and he knows the power of choosing the right mental model to organize your thinking. In this interview, you'll learn how an experienced product manager approaches customer discovery, rapid prototyping and smart MVP development.
Teresa Torres is a rising star in product management, and the author of the popular “Product Talk” blog. She's got an eclectic background in cognitive science, UX design, startup management and organizational change - which gives her a unique perspective on product discovery. Teresa shares her deep & hard-won product wisdom - and her inspiring perspective on the long game of product management. Learn how one talented product manager is forging a new path & shaking up the organizational change management game.
Mike Sellers is a pioneering social game designer turned academic. Long before World of Warcraft was a world-wide hit, Mike & his merry crew of innovators - including John Hanke, the driving force behind Pokemon Go - created Meridian 59, the first graphical MMO - or massively multiplayer online game. Since then Mike has worked on many games for companies like Electronic Arts and Kabam - and is now a professor of game design at Indiana University. Like many of our Getting2Alpha guests, Mike has a deep & longstanding fascination with human psychology and social systems - and a LOT of experience wrestling with the challenges of bringing new ideas to life.
Mike is one of my favorite people in gaming - he’s a deeply insightful and innovative thinker, with as astonishing breadth of knowledge. In this interview, you'll learn what Mike thinks about early MMOs, super-powered mental models, and the pervasive future of Augmented Reality gaming.
Irene Au is a design leader and UX expert with deep experience in team-building. She’s currently an operating partner at Khosla Ventures, where she works with startup CEOs to make their designs great. Irene started her career at Netscape - then moved on to lead design efforts at Yahoo, Google and Udacity. This progression gives her a unique perspective on growing UX teams - and smart strategies for enhancing design in different situations. Irene brings a deeply humanistic approach to everything she does, and integrates her passion for Yoga and mindfulness into everything she does. Listen in and discover how a silicon valley legend gets startup CEOs to embrace iterative, user-centered design practices.
Matt Leacock is a board game designer and UX expert. His first big hit, Pandemic, is a cooperative board game where you team up with others to save the world from virulent diseases. In his latest game, Pandemic Legacy, Matt extends the core Pandemic gameplay with an overarching narrative structure that delivers an episodic experience where every choice you can has irrevocable impact. Matt’s background as a UX designer shines through in his approach to iterative prototyping and “finding the fun” in his games. Matt Leacock is one of my game design heroes, and I'm thrilled to get to talk with him about his creative process. Listen in and learn how a world-class board game designer brings new ideas to life.
Kevin Kelly is is a multi-talented creator and deeply insightful futurist. His latest book, The Inevitable, lays out the twelve technological forces that will drive change over next thirty years and weaves together a convincing story about how these forces will shape our world. Listen in as Kevin explains how the world is changing - and how we can harness these insights to chart a a successful path into the future.
If you’ve ever struggled to get your team or organization to adopt Lean principles that really work - this interview is for you. Jeff Gothelf is a Lean UX expert who specializes in enterprise software & change management. In his new book, Sense & Respond, Jeff and his co-author Josh Seiden provide tools & techniques that help large organizations listen to customers & create new products continuously. In this fascinating interview, Jeff summarizes what he’s learned working with enterprise leaders - and pinpoints the speed bumps that get in the way of effective Lean product development. Listen in and discover how to implement change management that really works.
Dennis Crowley is the founder and executive chair of Foursquare - a company whose location-based technology is used by Uber, Apple, and others. Dennis a pioneer in location-based social experiences - and an endlessly creative serial entrepreneur who knows how to navigate the ups and downs that go along with bringing new ideas to life. Tune in and hear Dennis’s thoughts on Pokemon Go, entrepreneur payback, and the future of location-based social experiences.
Raph Koster is a leading expert in social gaming worlds. He’s best known for his work seminal MMOs like Ultima Online and Star Wars: Galaxies - and his influential book “A Theory of Fun” - a must-read if you want to understand the deep connection between games & learning. Raph is a multi-talented renaissance man - designer, artist, musician, and poet - someone who knows a LOT about bringing ideas to life. Listen in and get a shot of Raph’s relentless, inspiring creative energy.
Paul Adams is a Dublin-based designer, researcher and product manager with a storied career. He's played influential roles at both Google and Facebook — and now runs product at a fast-growing customer communications startup called Intercom. Paul and his colleagues use a product design technique called Job Stories that's inspired by the Jobs-To-Be-Done approach first developed by Clayton Christensen. I’ve been inspired by how Intercom uses Job Stories in product design - and I love Paul's clarity in communicating how to best turn customer insights into product design decisions. Listen in and learn how Paul and his intercom colleagues navigate the turbulent seas of customer feedback - and use core values and product vision - to steer their fast-growing startup towards success.
Tony Stubblebine is a product creator and entrepreneur who got his start working at Odeo and Twitter - and now runs an innovative training and education company called Coach.me. Tony has a unique perspective on finding product/market fit - and a long history of following his nose into whatever is new, hot and exciting in tech. Listen in and learn about what’s on Tony’s radar these days - and why he thinks nanodegrees and augmented intelligence might just be the future of online education.
Christina Wodtke is a designer, educator and author who’s worked for a string of iconic Internet companies - Yahoo, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Zynga. Now she teaches design thinking, story structure and how to use OKRs (Objectives & Key Results) - with her own unique twist.
Christina has a gift for bringing ideas from different disciplines into design & management. Listen in and learn about Christina’s boundary-crossing model of design thinking as distributed cognition. It blew my mind - I know you’ll enjoy it to.
Today we’re talking with Mimi Ito - an educator and anthropologist turned startup founder. Mimi & her co-founders run an innovative education startup that offers summer camps, after school programs and coding classes on custom Minecraft servers. My daughter attended a Connected Camp last summer - and it was a transformational experience for her, and frankly for me as well.
Mimi has a gift for understanding how kids adopt and use new technologies - she’s written many influential books and papers on this topic, and she’s now turning her considerable talents towards building real products.
I’ve known and admired Mimi for many years, and I'm thrilled to share with her deep insights about progressive education with you. Listen in and learn how Mimi bridges the gap between research & practice, and where her innovative startup is heading next.
Samuel Hulick is a user onboarding expert who runs a popular website called useronboard.com where he deconstructs the initial experience of popular apps and services. I first met Samuel in Amsterdam, where were were both speaking at TNW Europe. We clicked immediately - and bonded over our shared love of great design - and smart design process. If you want to know what goes into creating a great first-time experience, listen in and discover how this tech-savvy designer became a world-class expert in onboarding.
Steve Portigal a world-class expert in customer research, and the author of Interviewing Users, a practical handbook oh how to get the most value from customer interviews. In this podcast, Steve pulls back the curtain on his professional journey and shares powerful insights about who to talk with - and what to listen for - when you’re interviewing users.
Erika Hall is the co-founder of Mule Design, and the author of “Just Enough Research” - a handbook for improving design with smart, effective user research. Erika uses business goals to focus a project - and targeted customer insights to inform the design. She's got a big bag of research techniques - and knows which ones to pull out to get the job done. If you're into customer-centered design, Erika's work is right up your alley. Check out the episode notes for links and videos featuring Erika' work.
Join us for a look back at the highlights and key themes of the first season of Getting2Alpha - the podcast about how creative people bring their idea to life.
Jon Radoff is the CEO of Disruptor Beam, an independent studio building social games for beloved brands like Game of Thrones and Star Trek. Jon combines a deep love for strategy games with a knack for innovation. He's got great stories to tell about bringing iconic properties to life with rapid prototyping and early fan involvement. Tune in to find out what really goes on behind the scenes at a top independent game studio.
Hiten Shah is a serial entrepreneur and startup advisor who loves to create and grow businesses. He's is the co-founder of two software-as-a-service companies: Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics - and co-host of The Startup Chat - a podcast that offers actionable advice straight from the trenches of startup life. Hiten has great insights about business and marketing - and a knack for simplifying complexity into cogent ideas. Listen in and learn from a true pioneer who’s on the forefront of building and selling software as a service.
Peek inside the creative mind of Eric Zimmerman - a multi-talented game designer, educator and artist who never stops innovating. A self-described Play-Test Fundamentalist, Eric teaches at the NYU Game School and co-creates innovative experiences on the sides. Eric is a true industry visionary - always ahead of his time. What does Eric thinks about teaching, playing and creating compelling and meaningful games: Listen in.
Katherine Isbister is well-known for her work exploring how emotions are evoked through interactive entertainment. She's an accomplished game designer and educator who works with students and collaborators to bring innovative ideas to life. Her new book, Games and Emotions, will be out in February from MIT press. Join me for a glimpse into Katherine’s approach to teaching, researching, and creating emotionally evocative games.
Blair Ethington is a product manager turned game creator - with a passion for numbers and a knack for innovation. At Crowdstar, she's VP of Covet Fashion - a innovative mobile game with over 3 million monthly players who like to dress-up in real-world designer fashions - and then purchase those clothes in real life. I worked on Covet Fashion under Blair's leadership - I learned a lot from her, and admire her greatly. Listen in and discover what Blair has learned about bringing hit products to life.
Erin Hoffman is a game designer and fantasy novelist - with a passion for social activism and projects with a purpose. She's currently lead game designer at GlassLabs, a Gates-foundation initiative where she creates assessment-based learning games for underserved niches. Erin has deep insights into the nature of games and learning - and powerful ideas about how game design can impact the world.
Jesse Schell is a game designer, educator and product leader. His approach is fun, playful and enlightening - and his experience spans theme park design, interactive entertainment, educational games and juggling. Come hear Jesse reveal the magical roots of his lifelong fascination with transformative entertainment, and take notes as he shares the powerful techniques that his team uses to prototype their games into existence.
Chelsea Howe wears many hats: indie game designer, community organizer of local game jams & QGCon, a Creative Director of Electronic Arts Mobile, creator of successful mobile games, and champion of underdogs and outsiders everywhere. She's not afraid to speak her mind and cut to the chase - a woman after my own heart :-) She's fascinated with the role of love in game design, and the submission to ritual that's embedded in free-to-play gaming. Always stimulating and original, Chelsea is a force of nature - and a rising star in the gaming industry.
Tracy Fullerton is a player and maker of games. Her most recent game, “Walden,” puts you - the player - inside Thoreau’s Walden Pond experiment. Tracy runs the USC Digital Media and Games program - the top game design school in the country, according to the Princeton Review. We co-taught multi-player game design when that program was first getting started - and Tracy has gone on to train innovative designers like Jenova Chen - creator of Journey. She's an accomplished and insightful designer and educator, and one of my all-time favorite people on the planet.
Laura Klein a customer development ninja. She runs the “Users Know” website, and wrote UX for Lean Startups. In this episode, we explore design-led growth hacking, ninja user research techniques, and how to turn your hot idea into a high-learning MVP. Find out how to create better products with Laura’s special blend of Lean UX with smart customer research.
Dan Cook is a pioneering co-op game designer, co-founder of Indie game studio Spry Fox, author of the legendary Lost Garden website, and a truly inspiring and insightful guy. Dan has a deep understanding of social dynamics in online gaming - our conversations blow my mind on a regular basis. Come along as Dan takes us on a whirlwind tour of indie game design life, remote collaboration, and the magic of small groups for getting things done.