The Founder's Foyer with Aishwarya Ashok

00:00 Intro to Kristen Berman 

01:21 The Genesis of Irrational Labs & Power of Behavioral Economics

02:45 Unlocking User Insights: The Shift in Customer Interviews 

05:00 The Art of Designing Effective Incentives & Understanding User Behavior

11:26 Empty Text Boxes to User Empowerment: ChatGPT as an example

13:07 Overcoming Barriers: Making Products More Accessible 

19:42 B2B—Understanding Consumer vs. Business Decision-Making

24:27 Product-Led Growth: Strategies and Challenges

25:09 Simplifying B2B User Experiences: A Key to Adoption

26:20 Customer Feedback vs. Actual Behavior: Navigating the Bias

27:17 Case Studies & Learning from Failures

37:41 The Power of Environment in Shaping User Behavior

42:36 Embracing AI: Behavioral Economics in the New Decade

49:23 Concluding Thoughts on Behavioral Science in Product Design

Getting feedback and listening to what customers have got to tell us has been the favorite part for all of us product folks. Whether it’s a new app, feature, or even a little shiny interaction, we love getting validation from our audience. We’re in the constant exploration of how best to solve our users’ problems and jumping in as the demi-gods they’d see. But wait, how do we know what exactly goes on in our users’ minds? Like literally brain-reading them. Kristen Berman is the CEO and co-founder of Irrational Labs, a behavioral product design firm. She helps companies like Google, Airbnb, PayPal, Microsoft, and LinkedIn improve their products and services through behavioral design research. Yes yes, the one where she helps builders and founders design, test and scale products by learning behavioral economics. Kristen’s work has been featured in The Stanford Innovation Review, TechCrunch, and Scientific American.

Kristen shares her experiences working with tech companies and highlights how behavioral design research aids in creating products that truly resonate with users. She touched upon the evolution of AI tools like ChatGPT and its impact on user experience, psychology of nudging, overcoming biases, and the role of behavioral economics in a new AI-driven era.

00:00 Intro to Peter Yang and Creator Economy

01:21 The Intersection of Product and Creative Tracks

05:14 Finding Your Zone of Genius

12:34 How to Use Humor in Communication

18:30 Defining Success in the Creator Economy

22:04 Crafting Creative Journeys

22:34 Learning from Fellow Creators

23:56 Avoiding Analysis Paralysis

24:22 Packaging Value in Your Work

25:16 Discovering Your Unique Path

26:36 The Importance of Energy in Your Work

27:04 Maximizing Content Creation Efforts

29:49 The Pressure to Become the Next Best Someone

32:50 Building Your Personal Brand

38:42 Exploring AI Experiments with Custom GPTs

42:42 Wrapup

If you are a deep thinker, you naturally enjoy the intersection of creating something and seeing it come alive just as you build. The journey of a product builder and creator cross paths—because it’s all about finding an audience and shipping projects that resonate with both you and them. So how do you set foot to build a business around something that you’re proud of creating? How to look at creation as a craft and channelize it with the way the tech world evolves? Peter Yang has spent more than a decade leading product teams at Meta, Amazon, Reddit, and Roblox. He runs a newsletter community called Creator Economy with over 70k+ folks supporting his work. Peter enjoys sharing tips and humor about how to level up your product and creator skills. Peter shares insights from his journey, exploring how creators can leverage their unique skills and interests to carve out niches in the creator economy. From blending humor in content to the transformative impact of AI on personal productivity and the significance of building with a customer-focused mindset—there’s valuable takeaways for anyone looking to make their mark in the creative and product spaces.
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00:00 Introduction to Lane

01:14 Lane's Nonlinear Career Path

04:09 How Endurance Helps With Success

12:51 Importance of Mindset in Product Building

23:19 Power of Shipping and Learning by Making

26:49 The Origin of the 'Rituals' Concept

29:03 Offer Parties: Gusto’s Ritual with Job Offers

29:51 Transforming Status Quo Rituals

30:58 Impact of Feedback in Product Development

33:01 Influence of French Literary Salons

37:46 Authenticity and Serendipity in Community Building

43:44 Creative People and Connections

46:14 The Ritual Pack: Enhancing Team Meetings and Decision Making

58:01 Intentionality in Building Culture

Everyone’s got an interesting journey into crafting their product careers—the best part is to embrace all of our facets and dimensions and see how to bring them into one picture. And over time, that translates to exploring habits that help us stay in those dimensions and keep learning, not just from our own work but from networks around us. How to channelize these non-linear paths, find rituals, and focus on growth while building products?Lane Shackleton is the CPO of Coda. Lane previously led product teams at YouTube and Google, and brings in a set of unique work experiences from before. Lane works with so many creators across the globe and digs deep into empathy, goal setting, and stories.In this episode of The Founder's Foyer, Aishwarya and Lane delve into the concept of product rituals and the importance of habits in fostering product growth. Lane shares insights from his nonlinear career path, his approach towards leadership, the significance of enduring pain, and the role of mindfulness in product development. He highlights the significance of mental models, the role of serendipity, and the importance of maintaining authenticity in community engagement

00:00 Introduction to Aarthi

01:38 A Deep Dive into Creation

02:22 The Importance of Focusing on Value

02:43 The Evolution of The Aarthi and Shriram Show

07:20 Persistence in Creative Work

18:15 The Importance of Genuine Connections

23:22 Curiosity in Learning and Networking

29:21 Consistency in Creative Output

30:27 Handling Criticism and Negative Energy

31:21 Dealing with Self-Doubt

32:39 Power of Positive Surroundings

33:05 Handling Negative Feedback and Emotions

35:28 Journey of Self-Reflection and Growth

39:05 The Power of Techno-Optimism and Entrepreneurship

44:54 Individuality in Creative Pursuits

45:11 Authenticity in Content Creation

52:12 Self-Reflection in Personal Growth

52:54 Authenticity in Business and Personal Interactions

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Shipping a piece of work brings inexplicable joy—so much that we learn and grow every time we do it. While this comes with a lot of challenges, adding to the effort is the way tech platforms, market, and so many external factors keep fluctuating. How do we get better at our craft, focus on a creative long game, and win against the odds in the internet world?

Aarthi Ramamurthy is entrepreneur, creator, product advisor, angel investor, and someone who has so many other facets. Aarthi runs the Good Time Show along with her partner Sriram, and trust me she has had a fantastic lineup of conversations with tech and creative geniuses. Their dinner table is so full of ideas, sometimes I wonder if it’s even more than the food. She’s currently heading product at Rithum, formerly led teams at Clubhouse, Netflix, Facebook, and Microsoft, while also co-founding two startups.

Sponsor for this episode: Recast, the AI-powered marketing assistant to create podcast highlight videos, show notes, newsletters, and social posts. Try - https://recast.studio/

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All of us like to meet interesting people—we love getting to know about unique experiences, what inspired them, and how they’ve managed to ship something. We also like to be such interesting people—we love to share what we know and the ways by which we’ve created amazing things. What signifies this ‘interesting’ as an identity? How can we come up with ideas that in turn show us the way to both excel at what we do and find more people in the same league of excellence? Does serendipity help us in maximizing our success? Danny Miranda is very busy asking questions to the world's greatest entrepreneurs & thinkers. He runs the famous podcast, The Danny Miranda show, and has a fantastic roster of guests who’ve shared their musings. Danny himself is praised as the best podcaster by so many business stalwarts, and he recently created Art of Interviewing, the go-to course to learn about research, interviewing, and mastering the creative craft.

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00:00 Introduction to Danny 00:49 Sponsor - Recast Studio 03:00 Exploring the Concept of Light and Darkness 05:02 Self-Discovery in Creation 18:18 Power of the Internet and Childhood Influences 25:35 How Grandparents Shape Our Vision and Purpose 29:41 The Long-Game in Content Creation 30:28 Importance of Long-Term Goals 32:11 Art of Creating Content That Ages Well 33:31 Podcast and Press—the Synonymity 35:29 Impact of Social Media on Content 36:26 Journey of Starting a Podcast 39:28 Podcast and Listenership 40:21 Asking Questions in Getting to Know People 52:49 Role of Research in Podcasting 53:45 Why Serendipity Matters

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0:00 Intro to Matt Munson's work

03:51 Story of ups and downs in starting up

08:20 Moving to coaching founders and CEOs & learnings

12:26 Tackling intellectual loneliness and building a trusted community

25:42 Freedom to experiment & experience outcomes

30:22 How a sense of separation from the work fosters creativity

36:41 Embracing creative play and curiosity for self-awareness

40:12 How can founders figure out their maximum focus areas

44:25 Balancing leadership with company growth

45:46 Diversifying identities to not get locked up with beliefs

53:57 Why 'rest' is termed as a dirty word at work and how it shouldn't be

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Sponsor for this episode: Recast, the AI-powered marketing assistant to create podcast highlight videos, show notes, newsletters, and social posts. Try - https://recast.studio/

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Living the founder or builder life is like a permanent oscillation between “I feel so good” and “I feel shitty”—and this is something common with creative people that it often gets passed off with a laugh. But what would it be like to take notice of our moods and energy patterns, see what amplifies our effort and what saps out that enthusiasm? Is there a way to change the outlook to our own thinking and observations, just as we are high on potential to achieve something? How to obsess less about us to learn more about us?

Matt Munson is the founder & CEO coach at Sanity Labs. Matt draws on his own experience as a venture-backed founder to help other founders, CEOs, and product builders navigate the journey of leadership, self-awareness, and team building. Prior to this, Matt co-founded Twenty20, the world’s largest crowd-sourced commercial image catalog.

Tune in!

Being a founder or product person calls for enjoying the ride even when things are uncertain. While grit and passion are the regulars, it takes a few more skills like competence, agency, clarity of thought, to be able to navigate that uncertainty. And this means, you’ve got to be ready to embrace challenges, relearn some of what you seemingly thought you knew already, and find new pieces of information to put together. First things first, how to get started with all of this? Shreyas Doshi is a seasoned product leader and presently a fantastic advisor to many founders across the globe. Shreyas formerly led product teams at Stripe, Yahoo, Google, Twitter, and is most known to this world as a product coach who writes detailed ‘threads’ on many unsaid and important topics.

In this episode, Shreyas and Aishwarya discuss about: Distilling product knowledge through observations, shared vocabulary & how it connects teams without blame, human comprehension and the LLM in our minds, power of 'Why' over 'What' and 'How much', high IQ & cognitive empathy, recognizing the inner creative resistance, combating the 'product builder' fear with actionable steps, signals of growth for better and clear thinking, unlearning traditional programming of the mind for better evaluation.

Sponsor for this episode: Recast, the AI-powered marketing assistant to create podcast highlight videos, show notes, newsletters, and social posts. Try - https://recast.studio/

[ Note: For folks who enjoy Shreyas' thoughts just like me, you can check out his product management course on Maven. I loved taking this up and the best part was to meet a bunch of brilliant PMs through the cohort. Learn More: https://bit.ly/shreyas-course ]

Building products is such a fun journey—especially if users are involved early in the process that it feels like co-creating and riding the wave with them. There’s also racing against the advancements in technology, thanks to AI’s hypergrowth every passing day. So how do you balance the ride and race, when do you know it’s time to take a dive or a turn and how do you account for changing markets? Yana Welinder is the founder and CEO of Kraftful, an Al copilot that helps teams build better products by listening to user feedback. A YC alum and a Stanford fellow, she formerly led product teams at IFTTT, Carbon, and Wikimedia Foundation. Yana loves backing up founders and she currently runs GenAIFounders community and she invests into promising ideas via Pioneer fund. A true 0-1 person and an amazing friend in the product community.

Yana and Aishwarya chatted about: Early-stage product: When & how to pivot, Handling customers' emotional quotient during a pivot, Experimenting product updates with early users, Setting up a community on X (Twitter) for PMs, Revisiting product strategy for dynamically changing markets, Possibility of AI in multiple domains & what would stay, Scope and future of product management, How to get started with LLMs & GenAI, AI & creativity for artists

There’s so much in parallel with tech and art—for instance, innovation starts with small steps, iteratively leading up to radical explorations. A lot of people today blend creative arts together with the principles grounded in ethics and emerging tech. To be at the intersection of all of this creativity and build versatile careers across entertainment media, business, and law, only teaches us that anything is just a step away from learning afresh. Abigail Hing Wen has mastered technology and storytelling, formerly leading emerging AI tech at Intel. She is a New York Times Best Selling Author, a media producer and filmmaker too. She writes and speaks about tech, AI ethics, women's leadership, and transforming culture.

In this episode, Abigail and Aishwarya chat about Legal to Tech to Writing and Filmmaking, trade-off between difficult decisions, community and belief circles in entertainment industry, AI founders and foundational questions to consider, how to combine core tech into media and fiction writing, consumerization of data, fairness, and tech ethics, AI prompts + entertainment and film content, finding a unique voice by combining creative pursuits, and building audiences over different generations

Sponsor: Build in Public Fellowship by Karthik Puvvada (KP) - Apply by Aug 7th for the Cohort 3 - https://buildinpublicfellowship.com/

What’s the hardest part about starting up, you ask? Plenty of them. And topping the charts, amongst the top three things, would be—nailing the branding and go-to-market strategy. While our entire focus is on the target audience all through the stage of building the product, there are quite a number of slips and shaky edges that take our path away from the ideal audience. So how exactly to build a brand, get those first few users to understand our product, nailing the messaging, and getting better at distribution? Arielle Jackson is currently the Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital. Arielle helped grow Gmail, Square, and Cover during their early stages—whether it was hitting 1M+ users or getting distribution to 30k doorsteps. She's worked with 100+ early stage companies — including Patreon, Loom, Front, Bowery, and even Maven — on their foundational messaging.

In this episode, Arielle and Aishwarya chat about how psychology and marketing are related, being the first marketer at Gmail, working on rival brands and difference in positioning, how to associate 'personality' with a brand, five attributes to pick the tone and style of a brand, what constitutes a brand—elements of good branding, fun stories from naming new brands, the domain game—.com, .co, .ai, and more, get rid of jargons in websites—Cinderella Spectrum & Bar Test, how solopreneurs can start with their marketing efforts, and positioning vs messaging.

Finding the right set of peers, building the dream team to work towards a vision, setting the table for growth—all of these are interrelated from the perspective of strengthening teams. However, there’s a layer of science behind all of the best performing companies and the humans who’re a part of those teams. When the tools from the biological sciences meet the business world, there’s a ton of possibilities that open up—from understanding one’s personality and communicating better to even making right decisions at the workplace.

Evan LaPoint is the founder of Core Sciences, a platform that helps teams accelerate to a peak performance state. Evan has been an entrepreneur in the past as well, and he sold his company Satellite to Adobe, and before that merging his firm Marketing Alpha with Search Discovery.

pushed Evan along analytics, tech, and biological sciences, data silos that we end up with in and how to tackle, internal customer vs external customer narrative, how cognitive thinking separates people's performance, concept of "intuitives" and "semi-intuitives" traits of people, hiring for mindset > skillset, conscientiousness and working mindset, learning styles and personalities for a team, why ideas have a greater value than execution, vision vs fantasy, and how great thinkers obtain clarity.

If there’s one phrase that’s ruling all of our social media experiences today, it’s Open AI’s GPT. It’s amazing to see the wonders of large language models kick in with everyday user experience, and the best part is that we’re only getting started. Beyond exposing ourselves to the numerous tools that spin out of AI, we as builders really got to dig deeper into understanding what this phase of tech advancement could mean from the lens of open source computing, ethical tech, personification, user generated content, API layers, and co-creation. Travis Fischer, AI researcher, entrepreneur & software developer has been working in the open source space for nearly a decade, with previous stints at Microsoft & Amazon. Travis has built a bunch of Open AI based projects, and loves working towards Passion Economy, about building products that will help enable a more independent and fulfilling future of work.

Travis and Aishwarya discuss about his journey from corporate to open source development, striving to create value and perseverance in the long game , balancing creative pursuits with monetization, using community as a leverage to upskill, understanding the challenges in passion economy, navigating the platform risk of where your work is displayed.

They also go in depth about AI—Personification, LLMs, and AI; Artificial generative intelligence: Are we nearing it?, AI as a foundational application layer, experimenting with opportunities in the AI playground; AI, boundaries, and ethics: Where are we headed at?, The boons and consequences of the AI play, what's in the AI game for open source devs?, AI as a copilot with all forms of works

What’s the best way to unlock creativity? Does our mind have the power to process so many thoughts and references? How does AI help in creating, building, and sharing ideas as founders and creators? Some of these questions are deep enough, but there’s a common line that connects them all—the power of cognition and how computers can be trained to augment that science behind. Alice Albrecht is a founder building something cool in the AI space. She did a PhD in cognitive neuroscience at Yale and then spent 10 years researching AI before starting up to solve challenges in human creativity and knowledge.

Alice and Aishwarya chatted all about cognitive neuroscience and the way it's associated with augmenting creativity:

Getting started with the neuroscience space and entering tech, what does it mean to augment creativity, challenges in building tools for knowledge workers & creators, why humans are obsessed with tools over the creativity process, the effect of AI algorithms on attention span, keeping users' consciousness in mind while building products, concepts and cognitive theories that Alice is fascinated with, and the future of AI space with the role of ethical tech

This is a summary episode where Aishwarya looks back at the memory lane and talks about the interesting concepts she got to discuss with 18+ guests on The Founder's Foyer show. For anyone starting afresh and the ones who are looking to revisit specific episodes, this is a primer on going about. Tune in. 

If there’s one phrase we’ve heard over a thousand times in the last two years it is — remote work. Or say hybrid work. From building and iterating on ideas by pulling out chairs, to virtually looking at each other’s faces on tiles—we’ve done it all. But there’s a whole lot of stuff to think about working with folks across different geographies, time zones, interests. And so many questions to keep us seeking for answers.

Marissa Goldberg is the Founder of Remote Work Prep, a platform that provides services to help teams set up an effective remote work experience. Marissa has been working remotely since 2015 and has managed distributed product team members across 20+ countries.

Marissa and Aishwarya chat everything about how remote work, the effect of pandemic in shaping hybrid-remote work cultures, the 'physicality' of team-building activities and how to keep up with times, work-forward approach, high performance management, and more. 

Whether it’s meeting a founder friend, a potential hire, investor, customers, or even a bunch of product team leads, there’s one thing that stands out–the ‘narrative’ you want to tell, the story of what you’re building and why you’re building that. Strategic narrative binds all the folks who are directly impacted by your ideas and in turn gives you all the clarity and helps you articulate your vision well. But, how do you frame this narrative? What are the components of a great story?  

Andrew Raskin is a Silicon Valley storytelling mastermind. Andy helps C-suite leaders and leadership teams align around a high-level story that powers success—in sales, marketing, fundraising, product development and recruiting—by getting everyone on the same page about strategy and differentiation. His post “The Greatest Sales Deck I’ve Ever Seen” is an internet sensation, with nearly 90+k views on Medium.

Andy explains what strategic narrative is, why it's an evolutionary thing, deconstructing the parts to make a good narrative; he discusses about what makes a good pitch and the mistakes founders often make while presenting their pitch; Andy and Aishwarya also chat about the influence of leadership in making a strategic narrative, real-time examples from Andy's advising companies, and the practical tips to get better at product storytelling.

Often as we build our products, we feel stuck and we are on the constant lookout for the next set of action plans. We seek some form of a structure to help us unblock challenges, understand the benchmark of the market we’re building for, as well as pave the way for personal success too. This conversation is all about that mindset to step forward, with so many practical examples to help us understand. 

Lisa Kostova is Founder of CareerClimb, a unique network and development platform for mid-career female professionals in technology, to help them ascend to the top of their field. Lisa spent a decade as VP and senior Product leader in Silicon Valley for a number of consumer and enterprise companies.

In this episode, Lisa and Aishwarya discuss what it takes to build career plans, stepping into the path of entrepreneurship, actionable growth roadmaps, stepping out of comfort zone, storytelling, and more.

John Koelliker is the Co-Founder and CEO of Leland, a marketplace for ambitious people to access coaching, classes, mentorship, and community, to reach their career and educational goals. From growing in your career ladder, to taking a test, finding the right school—discover a friend and mentor to guide you through.

How to start a new company, building communities around the purpose, leading the content game strong, what to look for in the VCs during fundraising—John and Aishwarya touch upon all of these concepts, as they explore the journey of Leland and how John went about getting inspired to build it from a side project idea he earlier worked on.

 

Launching the product you build involves massive effort—not just in terms of shipping, but also figuring out the ways in which your audience finds satisfaction with your product. Do they find value? Of course, it’s important to align your product with the market, especially with the right problems to be solved. And this conversation is all around product, market, channels, and how to achieve a fit across all of those.

Emily Tate is Managing Director for Mind the Product, world’s largest community of passionate product people. Emily brings nearly 15 years of product experience and is focused on the craft of product management; She loves talking about new ways to make products that people love.

Emily and Aishwarya discuss about how the product management and product building landscape has changed in the last 20 years, how founders should think beyond product/market fit, what customer channels could teach us, how to effectively tune in for customer feedback, things you shouldn't do as a new founder, and so much more. Listen now! 

Building and shipping impactful products is definitely the enjoyable part of a product manager’s journey. It’s fun to think about what problems to work on, putting on the founder’s mindset from time to time or working with fellow co-founders on the team. Of course, there are so many challenges to tackle on the way, and as someone doing it on my day job, I can’t agree enough! So, here's a fellow peer to chat about building products, navigating ideas, and understanding all about this journey.

Shyvee Shi, Product Manager at LinkedIn Learning, has also co-founded the PM Learning Series wherein she chats with product leaders across the globe to share insights for levelling up the product career. She’s a passionate creator and an educator who also just launched a course on productivity for product managers.

We discuss all about product management career foundations and growth, personal productivity, creator skills, and more...

In today’s Foyer Feature, let’s welcome Sonia and Blake from Kernal, the community platform to connect founders, investors and startup ideas. 15,000+ members, 1,500+ startup ideas, they are doing an amazing work in helping creators and builders find success with their project journeys.

Sonia, Blake, and Aishwarya sit down to discuss everything around what makes it interesting for creative folks who look out to building amazing stuff—from no-code tools to helpful communities and resources, the internet is full of inspiration and guidance to step forward and get better at our craft. They also talk about the challenges in running a startup, building sustainable communities, and working towards helping founders in their projects. 

So your product is now launched and it's out for customers to try. You know it’s awesome, but do you know whether they know? How do you ensure your potential buyers understand the value you’re providing; do they care? Often we hear about go-to market strategy—but before all that, what should you do to ensure your target customers know your secret sauce? Here’s someone, the ONLY one, who has all the lessons to teach us how to position a product!

April Dunford is the author of the most-famous book on tech product positioning - Obviously Awesome. She’s an executive consultant and speaker who formerly led product, sales, and marketing teams across many startups (now bigger companies) as their VP of Marketing and currently helps technology companies make complicated products easy for customers.

April talks to Aishwarya about the foundations of product positioning, what weak and strong positioning looks like, why building the positioning is a team activity, when is the right time to back up on trends and when it's not, why founders need to segment their target market, and a lot more. So many fun examples and frameworks to refer to from the conversation—tune in!

So you’ve got a great idea and you’ve been building out your initial version of the product. With a little bit of socializing around, you see that people are starting to gain interest in what you’re building—what next? Obviously, the thought of building a community is something that’ll definitely cross your mind. But building a community and engaging with your early believers calls for so much dedicated effort that needs to be consistent. This conversation is around making those connections and investing in a supportive community.

Nazuk Jain is a Product Manager at Apple. She’s also a creator who runs Product Career, a community with 30k+ people around all the social platforms, and she shares knowledge about early-career product management.

Nazuk talks to Aishwarya all about the ways in which creators and founders should find their niche and purpose, go on to set up that initial close circle of conversations, and practical ways to scale the community with context. 

If building a startup is an arduous journey, finding the right people to grow with you is another mountain to climb. Ideas can meet product, but both of these need to meet the right team to live the vision. But how to find the folks who are as passionate as you in helping build great ideas? What should the benchmark be like? That’s exactly what we’ll navigate in today’s conversation about building teams and culture.

Joining Aishwarya today is Padmini Janaki, Co-Founder & CEO of Mind and Mom, a pregnancy welfare app. Padmini has formerly led product teams at PayPal and she recently represented TN at the World Economic Forum in Davos, with her Mind and Mom team. 

What we discuss:

- Finding the inner circle of advisors and supporters

- Importance of co-founder and how/why to find one

- Building the culture and values for your team

- Legal procedures and incorporation of a brand

- Things founders often miss out easily

- Representing Tamil Nadu and India at the World Economic Forum, Davos

- Growing a startup brand over the pandemic—the learnings and takeaways

- Importance of clear communication and candor 

#FoyerFeature—a section that completely focuses on a particular project and how the founder created an impact with it. We’ll be discussing all about their journey, the way they come up with creative ideas, and patterns they follow to learn and shine through.

Kicking off the first feature is someone special, who had a mission of democratizing mentorship—and, he actually went on to do that with his project-turned-venture. Let’s say hello to Felix Lee, Co-Founder of ADPList, a platform and community that helps everyone learn and grow with the help of world class mentors.

Felix chats with Aishwarya about all things Awesome Design People List aka ADPList—the base idea, the way he built the team with people from across different countries, how a community of mentors came along, designer-to-founder journey, challenges in being a creator, and more. 

Discovering ideas is definitely an exciting phase—we wake up, walk around, and go to sleep thinking about the best ideas we can build for. But, what happens to all those ideas? Do we really have a tried and tested way to pick out just the right ones and get to implement them? I know that journey is super hard. And this conversation is all about discovering, analyzing, and validating the right ideas to work on.

Ravi Mehta chats with Aishwarya Ashok about building out early-stage ideas and validating assumptions in the best way. Ravi is the Co-founder and CEO of Scale, a platform that’s reinventing the way people learn and grow with the power of coaching. He was formerly the Chief Product Officer at Tinder, and led product teams at Meta, Xbox, and TripAdvisor.