Trailblazing: Recent Episodes

Alexis Collado

A show on whatever interests Alexis Collado. We talk about leadership, design, product, startups, crypto, NFTs, and more.

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CSJ is a dear friend + first internship manager, co-founder and CEO of UX+ University, and my partner in organizing the UX+ Conference. In this episode, we talk about the problems and potential solutions in UX education, why there arenโ€™t a lot of good design managers, and did a quick discussion on a designer-first job board wireframe.

โœจ Topics with CSJ

  • Why becoming a design manager is a huge ask
  • Empowering designers within organizations
  • Consequences of product-oriented environments
  • The ideal perception of design in organizations, and the flip side
  • Creating more design managers and learning manager skills
  • What enables more design-centric companies
  • Improving the design ecosystem
  • Origin story: what problem is UX+ solving?
  • Hiring, upskilling the design ecosystem
  • Focusing on the early part of the career transition in design
  • Creating forcing functions for learning
  • Ideas from CSJ in evolving UX+โ€™s model
  • Discussing CSJโ€™s designer-first job board wireframe
  • Empowering the candidate in the hiring process
  • Getting companies to up their game

๐Ÿ’Ž Notes

  • UX+ University
  • UX+ Conference
  • Job Board Wireframe

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Dexter is my co-founder and partner at Swarm. He's one of the best founders I can think of โ€” he's smart, funny, strategic, humble, and design + community-oriented. On this episode, we focused on what it means to be a second-time founder and his journey during the first one.

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โœจ Topics with Dexter:

  • Being a second time founder
  • Creating a culture of ownership
  • Probing for ego when hiring
  • Finding the right co-founders
  • Founder break-ups
  • Saying no and being committed to your goals
  • Not creating the necessity to take investor money
  • Taking care of your investor line-up
  • Thinking through what your product needs to achieve
  • Humor and how Dexter was traumatized by Paul Graham
  • Games and being a founder
  • and lots more, TBH

๐Ÿ’Ž Notes

  • Swarm
  • On Deck Community
  • Kalibrr
  • Y-Combinator
  • Dane Howard
  • Joan Magno
  • Aivin Solatorio
  • Manny Ayala
  • Endeavor
  • Aaron Lee
  • Paul Graham

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