CRAFTED.

“So if you take any great startup and look backwards, you'll see that 90 percent of their growth came from like 10 percent of the stuff that they tried. So how do you find that 10 percent as quickly as possible?”Matt Lerner has advised hundreds of startups on how to grow. Now, the CEO of SYSTM has written a book called Growth Levers and How to Find Them where he shares his approach. This episode of CRAFTED. is full of actionable advice on how you can grow your products and companies. Matt will tell us about the mindset shift founders need to make from thinking about their products to thinking about their customers needs. We'll talk about jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) style interviewing and why it's such a powerful approach, but also why at first Matt was put off by some of the overly academic language that often goes with jobs. And we'll talk about how you can get new customers to that aha moment as quickly as possible, so they stick with your product. Plus, lots of real talk about founders and the mistakes they make. Welcome to CRAFTED., a show about great products and the people who make them. CRAFTED. brings you stories of founders, makers, and innovators that reveal how they've built game changing products and how you can too.—Key Moments:[0:00] Intro[2:20] 90 percent of growth comes 10 percent of the stuff you try[3:53] Over-thinkers, under-thinkers, and delegators: the 3 types of founders and the mistakes they make[7:40] Why the pace of learning is so important[9:51] Great examples of companies that learn quickly[10:52] The “locksmith moment” and why you need to find yours[12:45] Jobs-to-be-Done style interviewing and why it’s so effective[14:07] How to do a JTBD interview[16:05] The mindset shift founders need to make from thinking about their product to thinking about the customers’ needs – and why it’s so hard for them to do so[21:24] Growth Sprints and how to set them up for success[25:07] Retention and customer activation: still (!) overlooked by most and why it’s so critical[29:00] Matt writes a blog post on the spot about how working at an oil refinery taught him about startups[31:36] Writing a book is not an agile process! And the fantastic reception for Growth Levers—CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where host Dan Blumberg also advises companies on product discovery, growth, and experimentation. Learn more and sign up for the CRAFTED. newsletter at modernproductminds.com —CRAFTED. is sponsored by Artium, a next generation software development consultancy that combines elite human craftsmanship and artificial intelligence. See how Artium can help you build your future at artium.ai—More on Matt Lerner:His company: SYSTMThe book: Growth Levers and How to Find Them

On April 1st, 2013, ProdPad promised something revolutionary: “We now take your backlog of ideas, and with highly advanced big data crunching algorithm technology, automagically render a complete and accurate product roadmap. [...] The Auto-Roadmap Tool not only builds itself, but also covers for the hardest part of the Product Manager’s job: Getting complete buy-in from your team.”Amazing! And product managers wrote in with unbridled excitement itching to get their hands on this incredible tool.Except… this was obviously an April Fool’s joke, right!? Well, fast forward to today and it ain’t a joke! ProdPad is building these automagical abilities right now. Thanks to Generative AI, this absurdist joke has become reality (though not yet the part about magically getting buy-in from your fussy stakeholders... that's in the 2.0 version :) On this episode of CRAFTED., Janna Bastow, the founder and CEO of ProdPad, founder of Mind The Product, inventor of the now-next-later roadmap, and an April Fool's prankster you need to keep your eye on describes what a great roadmap is, how AI is freeing up product people to do more meaningful work, and what the future of product management will entail (getting out of the building more!). Welcome to CRAFTED., a show about great products and the people who make them. Sign up for the CRAFTED. newsletter and explore past episodes at modernproductminds.com***CRAFTED. is sponsored by Artium, a next generation software development consultancy that combines elite human craftsmanship and artificial intelligence. See how Artium can help you build your future at artium.ai. 

Enjoy this bonus, happy hour edition of CRAFTED., recorded live during SXSW. It’s a very unCRAFTED. CRAFTED. Featuring four innovators on a rooftop in Austin talking about what struck them at this year’s SXSW. Kick back and unwind with Christie Nicholson (Founder of the Studio for Communicating Complexity), Kwaku Aning (Director, Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Thinking (CIET) at San Diego Jewish Academy and Founder, Retro Futurism Consulting), James Burdine (Founder and Principal at Bishop Linville Consulting), and CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg.Topics and tangents include: the use of AI in education and government, the data we unwittingly give platforms (e.g. Apple Vision Pro could detect when we have a great idea bc our eyes dilate when we do), the deconstruction and redistribution of SXSW, explore/exploit and the need to be bored, and much more random stuff.CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds. Sign up for the CRAFTED. newsletter and explore past episodes at modernproductminds.com***CRAFTED. is sponsored by Artium, a next generation software development consultancy that combines elite human craftsmanship and artificial intelligence. See how Artium can help you build your future at artium. ai.

Career trajectories used to be like steamships: full steam ahead. And then they became more like sailboats: lots of tacking. But now… we’re swirling in whitewater. And, as the Chief Product and Innovation Officer at BetterUp, Dr. Gabriella Rosen Kellerman helps people build the skill they need to flourish:“When you're kayaking in the whitewater. It's hard to get a sense of what could be around the bend, but if you know if what's coming up is a sudden cascade or versus another, you know, set of gentle bumps, or maybe it's a calmer space in the river, it can give you a great advantage.”On this episode of Crafted, we focus on the five key skill groups that can help you be more successful: Prospection, Resilience, Innovation and creativity, Social support by way of rapid rapport, and Mattering and meaning.And, good news! These skills can be trained!Gabriella writes about these skills in Tomorrowmind, which she co-authored with Martin Seligman. And, at BetterUp she builds products that help companies — and their people — build these skills at scale. On an upcoming episode of Crafted, we’ll explore how BetterUp does this using human coaching, backed by artificial intelligence systems. Welcome to Crafted, a show about great products and the people who make them. Crafted is produced by Modern Product Minds. Sign up for the Crafted newsletter and explore past episodes at modernproductminds.com—Key Moments:[00:00 - 01:01] Introduction[02:16 - 06:40] From psychiatry to tech[06:40 - 09:53] Key skill needed for a "tomorrowmind"[09:53 - 13:51] Developing Resilience Skills[16:55 - 18:53] Enhancing Perspective and Creativity[18:53 - 22:35] Planning and Dynamic Adaptation[22:35 - 26:05] The Role of Coaching in Skill Development[26:05 - 27:35] Outro and What's Coming in Part Two—Here’s the book:Tomorrowmind —Crafted is sponsored by Artium, a next generation software development consultancy that combines elite human craftsmanship and artificial intelligence. See how Artium can help you build your future at artium.ai

“You have to invest into change. You cannot invest into stasis.Daniel Kimerling has a keen eye for the trends, technologies, and cultural shifts that are going to be big. A decade ago, he took an insight – that developers needed powerful tool so they could embed banking services into their apps – and launched Standard Treasury, the very first banking-as-a-service (BaaS) startup. Today BaaS and "embedded finance" are huge. Now, as a VC and the founder of Deciens Capital, Dan is again looking for change:“From an ego perspective, I love being right. From a financial perspective, I love being right at the right time."The right team:"You have to be willing to embrace a level of physical, emotional, financial, psychological, spiritual pain and keep going. Just keep fucking going."And business models that actually make sense:"It's not that, like, Generative AI is not cool. As a Dweeb, it's fucking cool as hell. I got it. But then the question is: 'How the fuck are you gonna make a dime?'"This is a fun episode! Listen in for a masterclass in disruption. Also f-bombs. Lots of f-bombs. More on Crafted than ever before. Yet also mixed  with grace and humility. Dan is a mensch. :)Key Moments:[0:00] Introduction[2:07] How Dan got started in tech, as the very first employee at TechCrunch[4:58] Founding Standard Treasury, the very first banking-as-a-service (BaaS) company after meeting the founders of Twilio and Stripe and seeing the API’s and “embedding” were going to be huge[7:25] “What you kind of come to see is that to some degree everything is a financial plumbing problem.”[9:12] “You have to invest into change. You cannot invest into stasis.”[11:37] Founding Deciens Capital[12:23] The “industrial logic” of most VC firms and how Deciens aims to stay small and serve early stage founders[15:07] What Dan looks for when making an investment, including grit, variant perspective, and a MacGyver-like adaptability[18:36] Generative AI: Why VC’s are rushing in, but he’s skeptical about business models. Will all the spoils just go to the open source community + NVIDIA? [22:36] What Dan is excited about: the future of VC and building financial service products that people actually love[24:24] Personalization: “[Big banks] really serve a very median audience. And we have a number of companies [...] that are far outside of that middle lane. And thankfully, because of the power of the internet, the search and distribution costs for those opportunities is way lower than it would have been in a analog era.”[25:11] How Dan goes out of his way to help people – and how you can learn from his system[28:50] Outro[29:27] An F-bomb laced Easter Egg parting giftBooks mentioned:"A Brief History of Financial Euphoria" by John Kenneth Galbraith"Power Law" by Sebastian WallabyAbout CraftedCrafted is a show about great products and the people who make them. Hosted by Dan Blumberg, an entrepreneur, product leader, and public radio host with deep experience not only delivering major software releases, but also as the producer of the best known, and most listened-to, public radio shows. Dan has founded startups and led product releases and growth initiatives at LinkedIn, The New York Times, and as a consultant to fintechs and big banks. Before getting into tech, Dan led the team behind Morning Edition on WNYC, the most listened-to show on the nation’s largest NPR station. Dan produced, edited, reported for, and hosted this and other marquee news shows at WNYC and WBEZ and also frequently reported on national news events for NPR. Crafted is produced by Modern Product Minds. Sponsored ByCrafted is sponsored by Artium, a next generation software development consultancy that combines elite human craftsmanship and artificial intelligence. See how Artium can help you build your future at artium.ai.

A highlight reel that will will help you find great episodes in the Crafted show archive, featuring some of the incredible founders and product builders we featured in 2023. You'll hear voices belonging to the founders of Gusto, Lattice, Monte Carlo, Moov, Wevr, PS, as well as from senior leaders at AWS, Redesign Health, Betterment, Flatiron Health, Predibase, and Bauplan, and more! And we want to hear from you! We're planning big things this year and want to learn more about what you want to hear. Please take two minutes to take this short survey: https://www.tinyurl.com/craftedsurvey ---Crafted is sponsored by Artium, a next generation software development consultancy that combines elite human craftsmanship and artificial intelligence. See how Artium can you build your future at artium.ai

We're not building a set of blogs or something like that where the domain is well understood. We're really pushing the forefront of what people are doing with vessels and optimization."The effect of global shipping on the climate is hard to overstate," reports The New York Times. "Cargo shipping is responsible for nearly 3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — producing roughly as much carbon each year as the aviation industry does." So... Nautilus Labs uses AI to make maritime vessels more efficient by helping giant cargo ships optimize their routes across the oceans and suggesting when they need maintenance, saving money and reducing carbon emissions in the process. On this episode of Crafted, former CTO Todd Sundsted describes how they model ships and their routes and push the envelope with AI. He also shares his approach to organizational design and how to align teams to customer problems.Key Moments:00:00 - Intro01:53 - Helping cargo ships be more efficient04:17 - Getting the data from difficult environments06:24 - Aha moments07:37 - Improving Nautilus Labs’ organizational design12:31 - Aligning teams to the impact they have15:15 - Outro

** Please take this three-minute survey to help us create more great Crafted episodes. http://tinyurl.com/craftedsurvey **Last week, on Thursday January 18th at 4:49pm Eastern, a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on its way to the International Space Station. On board are 4 astronauts from Axiom Space, a private company that’s building a brand new space station. To celebrate the successful launch of AX-3, we’re bringing you one of our favorite episodes from the Crafted archives: an interview with Axiom’s Director of In-Space Manufacturing. Keep listening to find out why Axiom is building a commercial space station — and why microgravity is such a special environment for building things like computer chips and for doing biological research that could lead to new cancer treatments.“When we talk about future cities in space, it seems like they're really far away. The truth is, it's happening right now. We're building those.” That’s the mind-blowing reality that Jana Stoudemire works in everyday at Axiom Space, a leading space infrastructure developer based in Texas. Axiom is building a successor to the International Space Station and developing commercial opportunities in orbit that go way beyond satellites. Central to all this is the unique environment of microgravity, which allows you to do things that just can’t be done on earth.On this episode, Jana takes us to the final frontier, and shares Axiom's plans for advanced biomedical research, space-made semiconductors that could enable quantum computing, and what this means for future scientific advances. She’ll also get into the challenges of building a state-of-the-art lab that will orbit around the earth, from the equipment and personnel, to where does that exercise bike go?This is Crafted from Artium: a show about great products, and the people who make them. Crafted is sponsored by Artium, which helps startups and enterprises build incredible products, recruit high-performing teams, and achieve the culture of craft needed to build great software for years to come. Learn more at ThisIsArtium.com (and let us know you learned about us from the podcast).

“I was a pretty bad people manager and so there was a moment where I decided that this is not going to work and I really need to decide which path I'm gonna go. Am I gonna stay hands on keyboard or am I going to really help build the engineering team and scale the organization?”Edward Kim is the CTO and co-founder of Gusto, a multi-billion dollar company that helps businesses with payroll, benefits, and human resources. In this episode, we’re talking about scaling up and why Gusto’s focus on quality code and engineering mindset is so critical. Plus, Edward tells us how he learned to be a great manager, how watching his parents struggle to run their small business planted the seed for Gusto, and and what it was like recruiting top talent to work on a “boring” problem like payroll, back when Instagram and social-local-mobile startups were all the rage.Timestamps:00:00 - Intro01:50 - Why Edward loves solving problems for small businesses04:20 - Building out version one06:48 - Finding product market fit09:48 - What does Gusto offer today?11:15 - The secret to good code15:49 - Growing as an engineering leader18:44 - What’s next for Edward and Gusto?20:04 - Exploring Generative AI22:09 - Outro

“The last nine months, no matter what we want to talk about, our customers want to talk about one thing, which is Gen AI.”One year ago, ChatGPT woke the entire world up to the possibilities of Generative AI. Since then, the conversation around AI has not ceased, with constant questions being raised about its safety, accuracy, and potential implications for the tech world.In this episode, Dan hosts a panel at NYC Tech Week 2023, discussing the evolution and potential of Generative AI with Jacopo Tagliabue of Bauplan, Cat Miller of Flatiron Health, Raghvender Arni of AWS Industries, and Justin Zhao of Predibase. Together, they discuss the journey in taking Generative AI from prototype to production, delving into the need for a stable foundation of best practices in data and software development, how to overcome the challenges of evaluation and performance, and the cruciality of red teaming and guardrails to ensure the viability and usability of AI models.Timestamps:00:00 - Intro02:19 - About the guests12:58 - GOFAI vs GenAI: Should you just be using a classifier?18:54 - AI + health data23:24 - How do you make sure evaluation works?24:57 - The foundations needed to take GenAI to the next level34:22 - Is now the time for experimentation or business models?36:49 - The science fiction of today that will be commonplace tomorrow42:42 - Outro

“Nobody's going to drive as fast on the straightaway if they don't have good brakes because if that's not available, then you can't go fast confidently.” John Mileham is the CTO of Betterment, and he’s also a race car driving instructor. Though they seem like vastly different roles, he has the same focus in both: going fast but doing so safely. Betterment is a digital financial advisor that builds software that can automate your finances… so safety is key. In this episode, John describes how he empowers teams and creates conditions that foster creativity, speed, and security. In this episode, John breaks down how his experience on the racetrack has influenced his approach to innovation, drawing on the recent improvements to Betterment’s Cash Reserve product, the difficult transition to implementing GraphQL in the organization, and how performance envelopes are expanded with the confidence of safety.

“The lean startup and MVP model is absolutely the right mindset to have, but that doesn't mean that you have to throw spaghetti at the wall.” Neil Caron, Product and Design Leader at Gartner, is doing something hard: helping a big company to innovate. Gartner is the company many technology buyers turn to for advice when they’re looking to buy mission-critical products. Traditionally, that’s meant reading reports and talking to analysts, but with the new BuySmart software-as-a-service product, they can now collaborate more seamlessly with each other as they go through their checklists and make a decision. In this episode, Neil shares more on the challenge of innovating at a legacy corporation, including how to manage relationships with existing clients, pick the right pricing strategy, and the importance of autonomy in an innovation group — and how to go about getting it.

“Being a part of financial services for the last 15 or 20 years, it seemed like we were always putting lipstick on the pig”. Wade Arnold was tired of putting a nice UI on  creaky infrastructure and he saw how insufficient payment systems are for today’s internet-based businesses. So Wade founded Moov, a fintech that's building systems for the way money moves today – and they’re starting at the very bottom of the stack and building their way up. On this episode, Wade shares how Moov emerged from an open source project, how its embrace of developer communities has become a competitive advantage, and why he encourages everyone to “respect the craft” of software development.This is Crafted from Artium: a show about great products, and the people who make them. At Artium, we help startups and enterprises build incredible products, recruit high-performing teams, and achieve the culture of craft they need to build great software long after we’re gone. Check us out at thisisartium.com and start a conversation at hello@thisisartium.com* Special note to Money 2020 attendees: say hi to us in Vegas! Email hello@thisisartium.com or connect with host Dan Blumberg via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dblums/ 

“We just experienced these pains of people feeling unsatisfied, they didn't necessarily feel like there were easy opportunities to be listened to by the company.” CEO Jack Altman is determined to help make work meaningful, and founding Lattice is a big part of that goal. Lattice is an employee performance and engagement software company that wants to put people first. The product was inspired by an experience Jack had with another company when he saw that staff feedback was collecting dust, and employees were disengaged.On this episode, Jack explains how he started Lattice with just a shadow of an idea, and the a-ha moment that clarified the product. He also takes us through Lattice's most important inflection points, his big learnings on finding product market fit, and why he thinks all work should be meaningful.This is Crafted from Artium: a show about great products, and the people who make them. At Artium, we help startups and enterprises build incredible products, recruit high-performing teams, and achieve the culture of craft they need to build great software long after we’re gone. Check us out at thisisartium.com

“When we talk about future cities in space, it seems like they're really far away. The truth is, it's happening right now. We're building those.” That’s the mind-blowing reality that Jana Stoudemire works in everyday at Axiom Space, a leading space infrastructure developer based in Texas. Axiom is building a successor to the International Space Station and developing commercial opportunities in orbit that go way beyond satellites. Central to all this is the unique environment of microgravity, which allows you to do things that just can’t be done on Earth.On this episode, Jana takes us to the final frontier, and shares Axiom's plans for advanced biomedical research, space-made semiconductors that could enable quantum computing, and what this means for future scientific advances. She’ll also get into the challenges of building a state-of-the-art lab that will orbit around Earth, from the equipment and personnel, to where does that exercise bike go?This is Crafted from Artium: a show about great products, and the people who make them.  At Artium, we help startups and enterprises build incredible products, recruit high-performing teams, and achieve the culture of craft they need to build great software long after we’re gone. Check us out at thisisartium.com

"People using this isn't the thing I'm thinking about. Human beings can tolerate high latency and delays to a certain level. Machines cannot. AI cannot, IoT cannot." As Chief Product Officer of Graphiant, Ali Shaikh is building data networks that are flexible, secure, and ready to meet the demands of the next generation of people – and devices. And just as the move to the cloud enabled founders to launch their startups more quickly – because they didn’t have to worry about servers and rackspace – Graphiant’s “as-a-service” network has the same potential: to free founders up to focus on what they really care about, not setting up VPN tunnels and worrying about secure connections. This is Crafted from Artium: a show about great products, and the people who make them.  At Artium, we help startups and enterprises build incredible products, recruit high-performing teams, and achieve the culture of craft they need to build great software long after we’re gone. Check us out at thisisartium.com

“This problem was so painful and so meaningful to people that I just couldn't believe a world where a solution to this didn't exist.” When Barr Moses identified the very costly problem of what she coined “data downtime”, she knew she needed to solve it. Barr is the Founder and CEO of Monte Carlo, a data observability platform that’s on a mission to eliminate data downtime, a problem that can cost companies millions of dollars each time there’s an outage and the numbers — and the systems that rely on them — go haywire. And with the growth of AI, data problems are even more important to prevent. On this episode, Barr explains how she used the scientific method to home in on the problem to solve and the company to found — she actually launched three companies simultaneously before seeing the most traction with Monte Carlo, and going all in. We also learn about Monte Carlo’s customer-led approach that helped them create an end-to-end solution that leaves no data stone unturned.This is Crafted from Artium: a show about great products, and the people who make them.  At Artium, we help startups and enterprises build incredible products, recruit high-performing teams, and achieve the culture of craft they need to build great software long after we’re gone. Check us out at thisisartium.com

“It's not columns and rows, but it's the fact that you could fundamentally increase consumer retention, consumer attention, consumer experience, and that's the fun stuff.” That’s how Sol Rashidi pitched a data and analytics mindset to the world’s biggest companies, back before data was King (and AI became Queen). Sol is the former Chief Analytics Officer at Estée Lauder but she got started in the business of data insights long before it was cool, taking companies from merely collecting and cleaning data to leveraging it in powerful ways. On this episode, Sol takes us through her career working with giants like Sony Music, Merck and IBM to develop use cases and strategy around AI.  She also shares how she fell into data in the first place, and what playing rugby on the women’s national team taught her about guiding businesses through the digital age. This is Crafted from Artium: a show about great products, and the people who make them.  At Artium, we help startups and enterprises build incredible products, recruit high-performing teams, and achieve the culture of craft they need to build great software long after we’re gone. Check us out at thisisartium.com

“You attract security conscious customers. They push you and ask for more security focused features. You build those, you attract more of those companies.” That’s how Greg Neustaetter helped Egnyte find its niche, providing industrial-grade cloud file storage for compliance-focused clients. Greg has spent 11 years at Egnyte and as VP of Product, he’s helped define and refine their offerings in the face of giant competitors like Google and Microsoft. On this episode, Greg explains how Egnyte identified and went all-in on developing their product for two key industries. And hear about how Egnyte fell in love with user-centric design techniques, and why it’s so important for developers to join that user-centric process. We’ll also revisit the 90’s. Greg and Crafted’s host Dan were college roommates who worked together in Silicon Valley just before the bubble burst, so we’ll take a walk through the Valley’s highs and lows. This is Crafted from Artium: a show about great products, and the people who make them.  At Artium, we help startups and enterprises build incredible products, recruit high-performing teams, and achieve the culture of craft they need to build great software long after we’re gone. Check us out at thisisartium.com

“Anyone who knows anything about drug development would say it is a slow and painful process”. Cat Miller is CTO at Flatiron Health, a software company that uses technology to “clean up all the gunk in the trials industry”. Flatiron helps researchers develop new cancer treatments by making clinical trials run smarter and faster. They also identify trial data that lead to new treatments, and help doctors manage and improve patient care.On this episode, Cat breaks down how Flatiron takes piles of data from “hot garbage”  to deep insights that lead to innovative cancer treatments. She also discusses Flatiron’s approach with AI, why she believes there are no wasted skillsets, and how her experience as an actor has helped her steer Flatiron’s team. This is Crafted from Artium: a show about great products, and the people who make them.  At Artium, we help startups and enterprises build incredible products, recruit high-performing teams, and achieve the culture of craft they need to build great software long after we’re gone. Check us out at thisisartium.com