Geeks Who Lead Podcast
Hear the inside stories of the "geeks who lead at scale" - Directors, VPs and CTOs running software engineering orgs at larger companies with 100+ engineers, and interviews with domain experts who can help those leaders to manage their engineering orgs more effectively.
I'm your host - Peter Bell, I've been helping senior engineering leaders to connect with and learn from their peers since 2010!
This podcast is designed for engineering leaders who want to learn the latest good practices from their peers who are way too busy operating to write an article or publish a book!
Running a software engineering org at scale is hard! You need to manage stakeholder expectations, attract and retain top talent, align and structure your org effectively and keep up with the latest processes and tooling. And that's before we even try to make sense of the potential impact of LLMs and GenAI on managing technical teams.
Our podcast and weekly newsletter provide you with access to hard-won wisdom from top engineering leaders and relevant domain experts. Learn more at https://geekswholead.com/
Geeks Who Lead Podcast
A Playbook for Starting a Startup with Bob Friday
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When we think of startups we think of charismatic entrepreneurs plugging away on their passions. But what does it really take to form a startup? Our guest this week on CTO Connection is Bob Friday, CTO of Mist, a Juniper Company.
Bob is a veteran who has been through the startup process many times. He talked to Peter about the thought processes that go into crafting both teams and entire organizations. Bob also talks about the formula behind the process new ventures will go through and which positions are the most important to fill. Listen in for his strategy tips.
- [01:28] - The beginnings of Bob's technology career
- [04:16] - The ultimate team sport
- [05:30] - The blank sheet of paper
- [07:52] - CEO checkbox
- [09:00] - Market timing
- [10:20] - Bob's first big company adventure
- [16:05] - Mist Systems
- [20:10] - Returning to the startup world
- [21:43] - Taking on the incumbents
- [26:13] - Jumping off the cliff
- [28:40] - Getting the team together
- [30:47] - Going all-in on an enterprise AI play
- [33:57] - Creating an environment where data scientists enjoy being
Special thanks to our global partner – Amazon Web Services(AWS). AWS offers a broad set of global cloud-based products to equip technology leaders to build better and more powerful solutions, reach out to aws-cto-program@amazon.com if you’re interested to learn more about their offerings.
CTO Connection is where you can learn from the experiences of successful engineering leaders at fast-growth tech startups. Whether you want to learn more about hiring, motivating or managing an engineering team, if you're technical and manage engineers, the CTO Connection podcast is a great resource for learning from your peers!
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