alphalist.CTO Podcast - For CTOs and Technical Leaders
This podcast features interviews of CTOs and other technical leadership figures and topics range from technology (AI, blockchain, cyber, DevOps, Web Architecture, etc.) to management (e.g. scaling, structuring teams, mentoring, technical recruiting, product etc.). Guests from leading tech companies share their best practices and knowledge. The goal is to support other CTOs on their journey through tech and engineering, inspire and allow a sneak-peek into other successful companies to understand how they think and act. Get awesome insights into the world‘s top tech companies, personalities with this podcast brought to you by Tobias Schlottke.
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#54 - Cal Henderson // CTO @ Slack
Cal Henderson, CTO of Slack, creator of Flickr, and author of ‘Building Scalable Websites’ (O'Reilly Media, 2006) shares how Slack was built from both a tech and product perspective and what you should be doing to reclaim your focus time ⏱️. You don’t want to miss out on hearing about the Slack tech stack from someone who is a pioneer in the use of web APIs and created the basis for OAuth and oEmbed.Listen to find out: > > How Slack does focus time > > What tech stack?? powers Slack across platforms > > Why Twitter ? has allowed for better products to be created + why you need to disconnect to produceListen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/54-cal-henderson-cto-slack
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#53 - Mikko Hypponen // Chief Research Officer @ WithSecure
Find out what is new in the world of cybersecurity in this CTO podcast featuring cybersecurity expert Mikko Hypponen, the originator of Hypponen's Law (if it's smart?, it's vulnerable?) and Europol ? board member. Tune in to hear what he has to say as an expert with more than 30 years of experience in protecting users’ cyber security and privacy.Listen to find out: - Why you should see open source vulnerabilities as a supply chain problem (and why it's your job to contribute an audit ?). - How Bitcoin makes a great quantum-proof encryption ? solution. - Should we be scared of AI-aided cyberattacks? ? + Cybersecurity and the Russian?/Ukrainian? conflictListen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/53-mikko-hypponen-chief-research-officer-withsecure
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#52 - Oren Etzioni // CEO of Allen Institute for AI
I spoke with Oren Etzioni - CEO of Allen Institute for AI (a leading AI research institute). Get an insight into what's new in the world of AI from the person whose company's incubated startups worth $300 million+ and released a number of AI tools and technologies.Listen to find out: > > How to get the scientists ? and engineers ?on your team to work together> > > > What opportunities await you ? in the latest developments in Artificial Intelligence? > > What is going to be the next big thing in the world of AI?, computer vision?️ and NLP?? + Is AI good or bad? ?Listen here - https://alphalist.com/podcast/52-oren-etzioni-ceo-of-allen-institute-for-ai
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#51 - Eben Upton // Co-founder & CEO of Raspberry Pi Ltd
Eben Upton, Co-founder & CEO of Raspberry Pi Ltd (which produces low-cost, high-performance Raspberry Pi single-board computers and microcontrollers for kids - and adults) shares what it’s like to build hardware that makes computing accessible to more people (Did you know that some components are camera shy ???). In the past decade, they have made 45 million Raspberry Pis while improving on the original’s performance 40X!!! Learn top tips about building great hardware (it is called hard for a reason) and why you need 10 domain experts, $1 million dollars, and a risk appetite to ⚙️ power the creations of millions of people.Listen to find out: - Why technical leaders with multiple demands on their time should stay away from the code ?? - Why do they no longer manufacture hardware in the Far East ? - What will outdated semi-conductor manufacturing facilities ? be used for? - How they are handling the supply chain disruptions ? and the conflict in Eastern Europe (e.g. bot scalping, rerouting, prioritization).P.S. If you like gambling - try the semi-conductor industry.
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#50 - Niilo Säämänen // CTO at Wolt
Niilo Säämänen, CTO of Wolt (best known for their delivery platform) ⚡, shares how he leads an engineering organisation of 40+ autonomous product teams through hyper-growth to serve millions of customers across 23 countries ?.Learn how to structure your team and product across domains, platforms, and countries while putting employee satisfaction at the forefront of your work ⭐. You’re bound to learn a thing or two from his unique approach to building impact-driven tech organisations built on autonomy, ownership and accountability ?. Listen to find out: - How to build & maintain a company culture ? in a hyper-growth company - Why autonomous teams allow you to attract and retain the most talented ? engineers - How to measure engineering performance (hint: engineer satisfaction is more important than you think) - Why they use semi-annual tiered team-owned roadmaps at Wolt (and their process ⚙️ for creating them)Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/50-niilo-saamanen-cto-at-wolt
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#49 - Mike Perham // Creator of Sidekiq
Mike Perham, the creator of Sidekiq ? (a background job managers for Ruby) shares how he commercialised the open-source as a solopreneur doing what he loves ? without the costs & management headaches ? of a team or the pressures of a VC investment. Discover tips for building sustainable software (e.g. minimise dependencies) and choosing the right business model that enables you to support and maintain your software for years to come. Listen to find out::-How to get to $4M ARR with 20% YoY growth by creating a helpful add-on ➕ to a popular open-source framework (i.e. Rails). -Why you should avoid dependencies originating from a ?VC-backed company or non-commercialized OS project -Why you activate a ticking time-bomb ? when you get VC funding (better to bootstrap and get the revenue without the pressure)Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/49-mike-perham-creator-of-sidekiq-faktory
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#48 - Michael Kagan // CTO at Nvidia
Michael Kagan, the CTO of computing giant Nvidia and co-founder of Mellanox shares insight into the world of hardware, software, AI, and of course computing.Listen to find out: - Why you should ditch deep hierarchy and allow those close to the product to make the decisions. ?⚖️ - The benefits of working with inexperienced engineers ? - How to retain employees by hiring them every day ?. + Why instead of fighting for a bigger slice of pie ? - we should just bake a bigger pieListen Here- https://alphalist.com/podcast/48-michael-kagan-cto-at-nvidia
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#47 - Daniel Krauss // CIO & Founder at FlixMobility
I spoke with Daniel Krauss, the Chief Organisational Plumber at FlixBus - a leading Mobility-as-a-Service ?.Learn how to grow a company from a ‘fastest-shippable-product monolith’? to a neat ‘independent service’ architecture ? with ‘Team Self Design’ events, empowered teams & domain-orientated org structure.Listen to find out: - How to push technological innovation in a highly-regulated industry⛔ (and its limits). - How to adapt your tech architecture and organizational structure of your product as you scale ⇗ - Why you should never compromise on hiring the best ? engineers. + How he chose FlixBus tech stack
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#46 - Taylor Otwell // Creator and CEO of Laravel
Taylor Otwell, CEO, and Creator of Laravel (a popular PHP framework) - gives tips on how to commercialize an open-source by sharing his winning recipe of a lean team, great UX/UI, time management, product management, and of course, commercial products. He also gives insight into the use of the various frameworks for full-stack engineering (SPOILER ALERT: Full-stack bootcamps should be teaching more than Javascript).Listen to find out::- How to get to 6M$ ARR starting with an open-source project (HINT: It’s not through sponsored repositories) - Why to build a SaaS with a single full-stack engineer ? you need to abandon Javascript - Why it's better to follow product vision ? and ROI when building features rather than detractors' requests. - What goes on behind the scenes ?️ at Laravel (product management, team structure, async etc.) + A day in the life ⏰ of Taylor Otwell
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#45 - David Heinemeier Hansson // Ruby on Rails Creator and CTO at Basecamp and Hey
David Heinemeier Hansson, CTO of Basecamp and Hey and creator of Ruby-on-Rails? blows us away yet again in this thought-provoking podcast about bootstrapping, scaling, remote work, and of course Ruby on Rails.Learn insights into technical leadership from someone who has been leading a remote team since 2004 (hint: You are doing Slack and Zoom wrong), believes in async work, and loves the fact that his company doesn’t have an office ?. Plus, after 20 years of creating multi-million dollar SaaS products - he just made his first middle management hire!! ? Listen to find out:- Product discovery: Why he rather ships a product instead of doing discovery with Figma prototypes. There is no stronger confirmation than a user that pays for your product - Why they capped Basecamps size to 60 for a long time ??and discontinued a lot of products to fully focus - How he would bootstrap a startup in 2022 ? (e.g. SaaS, remote, small team, nodecode vs. handcrafted software). - Why he doesn’t work on Ruby on Rails?? full time and why he thinks it’s good for the framework that it’s not commercial at all - How Rails 7 brings back developer productivity + pushes UX to the next level WITHOUT a lot of Javascript (No SPA inside!) with Hotwire + His favorite productivity tip? He cut down Twitter by 97%Listen here - https://alphalist.com/podcast/45-david-heinemeier-hansson-ruby-on-rails-creator-and-cto-at-basecamp-and-hey
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#44 - Laura Major // CTO at Motional
Laura Major - CTO at motional (an autonomous vehicle company ?) and author of the book ‘What To Expect When You Are Expecting Robots’? - talks about what it takes to build a commercially-viable SAE Level 4 self-driving vehicle ?. The motional team has been working with Hyundai and Lyft to get robotaxis on the streets of Las Vegas by 2023.You don't want to miss this inside scoop on the AV industry from a robotics expert with a background in the aerospace industry?.Listen to find out: -What goes into making AVs: sensing, data processing, testing, maintenance and more. -Why they released their NuPlan dataset as a virtual driving test for AVs -What its like competing in the autonomous vehicle industry. -How to manage your time ⌚ as a CTO + How she deals with the (unfortunate) challenges inherent in being a #WomenInTech ?
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#43 - Ilya Grigorik // Principal Engineer at Shopify
Our next guest has a serious need for ⚡ speed ⚡! I spoke with Ilya Grigorik, Principal Engineer at Shopify, founder and former CTO of PostRank (acquired by Google), former co-chair of W3C Web Performance working group.Learn how to optimize your website for speed ? with tips from the web performance engineer who worked on Google’s ‘Make Web Faster’ team (y’know, the one that brought you Core Web Vitals and Page Speed Insights).Listen to find out:- Why every CTO needs how mobile networks operate ? before building anything mobile. - How to use perceptual latency ?️ to your advantage - What features you should be using to #MakeTheWebFaster ⏩ - How Shopify is pivoting to serve developers with its new Hydrogen and Oxygen frameworks. + Why headless eCommerce isn’t actually head-less - it's got many heads (omnichannel).Listen here - https://alphalist.com/podcast/43-ilya-grigorik-principal-engineer-at-shopify
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#42 - Frédéric Rivain // CTO of Dashlane
I spoke with Frédéric Rivain, CTO at Dashlane, a password management ? solution. Learn about the future of passwords, why they are focussing on browsers instead of platforms, and how ‘half-baked agile’ works at Dashlane.Listen to find out: -Why they are moving towards browser-centric delivery (away from OS ?️) The impact of ManifestV3 on the extensions ? community. -Why the future? won’t be entirely passwordless -How they minimize the impact of breaches with their zero-knowledge? approach to engineering + How they structure their teams?�, processes? and OKRs ✔️ at Dashlane.Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/42-frederic-rivain-cto-of-dashlane
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#41 - Snir Yarom // CTO Codility
I spoke with Snir Yarom, CTO at Codility,?? - a leading technical assessment platform - about data-driven technical recruiting ?, the typical hiring process and how to attract talent in a competitive market. Listen to find out: - How to use data ? to optimise each stage of your technical recruiting pipeline (e.g. sourcing, screening, interviews, assessment etc.) - How to lead different tech teams across cultural divides ? ? ? (e.g. confrontational vs. non-confrontational culture). - Why ‘Meeting the Team’ ? is a key step in the hiring process. + The best sources of engineers (by conversion rate).Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/41-snir-yarom-cto-codility
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#40 - Marco Palladino // CTO Kong
I spoke with Marco Palladino, Co-Founder & CTO at Kong ?, the market-leading API Manageent Gateway Solution. Learn deep insight into APIs, the future of the API Economy, and what it takes to build a great API from someone who has been involved in the API industry since its infancy.Listen to find out: - How to build an API for each use case (external, microservice & mobile). - Why it's only the beginning of the API economy ? - Why the best infrastructure software has its roots in the open-source ☸️. - How he managed to commercialise? an open-source project without alienating its community ?Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/40-marco-palladino-cto-kong
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#39 - Chad Fowler // CTO, Musician, Author and VC
Chad Fowler - an engineer, musician, and author - transformed Wunderlist ? from a messy monolith to a neat multi-language microservice.Be inspired by his unique view on technology stemming from his background as a musician ? and RPG player ?.Open your mind ?and prepare to reevaluate ?after you hear from this creative thinker who -in the course of his 25-year career - has worked as both a coder and manager at both startups and enterprise companies in the US ?, EU ? and India ?.Listen to find out: - Why we should rethink how computer science is taught ? to get better coders ?? - Why and how he used multiple languages in his microservice architecture ?️ - Why startups ?should wait before adopting a named methodology (e.g. Agile, scrum, kanban, OKR) - Unique applications of concepts touted in the decentralized Web 3️.0 ?Listen here - https://alphalist.com/podcast/39-chad-fowler-cto-musician-author-and-vc
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#38 - Sagnik Nandy // CTO Okta
I spoke with Sagnik Nandy, CTO & President of Technology at Okta, the market leading IAM Solution ?. Discover deep insight into the world of identity management?, user feedback ?, and why the best products provide a simplified interface to a complex solution (with customizability ⚙️ for advanced users). Don’t miss out on this opportunity to hear how to build scalable products ♾️ from someone who scaled and led Google Analytics ? and Google Ad ? products/Listen to find out: -Why you need to build for both expansion ? and deprecation ? -The need for a passwordless future ? -The challenges of integrations ☮️ (Okta integrates with 7000+ services) -How to Scale Excellence ? + the importance of mentorship ?? Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/38-sagnik-nandy-cto-okta
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#37 - Fabian Wesner // Founder ROQ
I spoke with Fabian Wesner, Founder at ROQ, a FaaS (Feature-as-a-Service) for web applications. Learn deep insight into the world of web applications and frameworks from someone who had to launch an eCommerce shop each week (in different countries ? ? ? and industries!?️?). Fabian, as former Rocket Internet CTO and Spryker Co-Founder and CTO is the hidden gem of the German CTO scene.Listen to find out:- How working in the “Samwer sweatshop” felt - Node vs Ruby vs PHP for a modern web app - Why “keeping your stack lean” is important and how he approaches architecture - What it takes to build a eCommerce shop system ? (he built 3!) - The science ? behind building a new FaaS (Feature-as-a-Service) - Tips into the ?️ Lost Art of Database Schema VisualisationListen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/37-fabian-wesner-founder-roq
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#36 - Kore Nordmann // CTO Frontastic
I spoke with Kore Nordemann, CTO at Frontastic, a Frontend-as-a-Service for headless CMS and commerce systems. Learn deep insight into what it takes to build a web app today: from choosing a stack to hiring frontend/backend/full-stack developers.Listen to find out:- Which ECommerce ? features are Amazon’s Achilles Heel - Why Pair Programming ? ?? works better than Pull Request Reviews - The pros and cons of Stateful/Stateless, Docker, PHP, CouchDB ?️ and more - Why microservices are probably not for you (yet integrated services are). + Plus the design features ?️ of the Frontastic Virtual Office that you might want to implement for your remote office.
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#35 - Alesia Braga // CTO SmartRecruiters
I spoke with Alesia Braga, CTO at SmartRecruiters, an end-to-end recruiting solution. She shares with us insights into the recruiting world, how to improve diversity and what she does to shorten the recruiting cycle time to avoid losing top candidates She also shares with us: - Why she uses a literal scorecard ? for each candidate she interviews - How she juggles ? product and tech in the CTO role - The challenges of balancing enterprise use ? with superior end user experience
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#34 - Mark Porter // CTO MongoDB
I spoke with Mark Porter, CTO at MongoDB. His 40-year career spans time working at companies like Oracle, AWS, and Grab. He shares with us insights into technical leadership, company culture, and the open-source world, Listen to find out -Where DEI initiatives fail〽️ -Why they don’t use OKRs ? at MongoDB -How to Build A product around the Open Source ? +How being a parent makes him a better manager
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#33 - Andreas Schranzhofer // CTO Scalable Capital
I spoke with Andreas Schranzhofer, CTO of Scalable Capital about the best ways to secure an app. Scalable Capital is a Neo-Broker and robo-advisor based in Munich with over 250 million in funding.Learn about app security from someone highly experienced in running an app in the highly regulated FinTech ? industry.Learn: - Why you need both security and obfuscation ?️ - How to prevent Supply Chain and Ransomware attacks ?? - What external tools he uses in the Software Development Cycle ?️
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#32 - Charity Majors // CTO HoneyComb
I spoke with Charity Majors, CTO of HoneyComb, a prolific Twitter user, and blogger. WHO TESTS IN PRODUCTION. ? And is proud of it. She also shares her insight into socio-technical leadership, observability, and databases. Learn: The importance of a tight feedback loop ? Why the maximum deploy time should be 15 minutes. ? How microservices make engineers job harder? Why she wants to do away with hierarchies to increase job satisfaction
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#31 - Alex Solomon // CTO PagerDuty
Alex Solomon of PagerDuty is working on making the DevOps world more efficient with on-call-management, AIOps, and automating routine debugging tasks. He shares with us about:- On-Call Management: The only notifications that provide a better Work/Life Balance - How AIOps and Runbook Automation are the future of DevOps (+other trends) - Partner vs Compete: Why they became an ecosystem - How he grew his B2B Saas Startup
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#30 - Cheryl Hung //VP Ecosystem of CNCF [Cloud Native Computing Foundation]
We spoke with Cheryl Hung of Cloud Native. She runs the ecosystem of over 600 members contributing to over a hundred open source projects. She also started the Cloud Native London meetup where she promotes developer advocacy and diversity. As an early adopter of kubernetes, she has a lot to share! Cheryl shared with us:- The importance of Developer Advocacy ?? - How Edge Computing is the next frontier in Cloud Native ☁️ - Why kubernetes is not for everyone ?and has to become easier - Why End-User companies should contribute to the Open Source ? + Her childhood dream of becoming a Google Engineer and where she is holding with it!Join us in welcoming our First Female Guest.. and send us more because we are missing out!
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#29 - Matthias Jugel // Co-Founder of UBIRCH
We spoke to Matthias Jugel, the co-founder of ubirch, the company behind the ? German digital vaccination passes ?His technology has generated over 30 million vaccine passes giving German their summer holidays back! And they launched in a matter of weeks! We discussed what was involved in creating digital vaccine passports that worked OFFLINE and allow movement around the EU ?; Blockchain verification ✔️ and its applications in pharmaceuticals⚕️, car insurance ?and manufacturing ? and what he learnt from launching a national program in a month!
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#28 - Rasmus Rothe // founder of Merantix
We spoke to Rasmus Rothe, leader in AI space- he has 5 products just based on machine learning. - What is involved in productising and commercialising a machine learning-based service ?➡️? - The need for ML ops ?? - Google Cloud vs AWS vs Azure and why he doesn’t stick to one ☁️ - AI and its applications in medical field ⚕️, autonomous driving ?and BI ? + His go-to resources for libraries, ML ops and conferencesBROUGHT TO YOU BY: Fastly(http://www.fastly.com/alphalist) and Sastrify (http://www.sastrify.com/alphalist)
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#27 - Eric Johnson // CTO GitLab
I had the chance to talk to Eric Johnson, the CTO of GitLab about- How to manage remote teams: async, stand-ups, onboarding, burn out, internships, compensation, and more - How Gitlab uses git for everything from Marketing to Policy - The difference between servant-leadership and situational leadership and when to use what + A message to those who think parenthood :children_crossing:might take away from their careerIf you loved his straight-talking ReadMe about himself, you will also like this thought-provoking episode on leadership, management, and of course remote work from someone who manages a completely remote team of 560, in a company of 1300+
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#26 - John Romero // CEO Romero Games
This Podcast episode is DOOMed ?☠? I had the chance to talk to John Romero, the inventor of DOOM, Wolfenstein and Commander Keen and founder of id Software about* Developing games in the early 90s and how they developed DOOM in a crazy small team * Developing games in 2021 and how it’s still possible to develop games with only a single person team * The crazy amounts of money they made with DOOM ? * The crazy amounts of energy drinks they consumed * Why not he would not start developing a game engine againThanks a lot John! Was really fun talking to you.
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#25 - Tim O'Reilly // Founder & CEO O'Reilly Media
Today with me in the Podcast is Tim O'Reilly, the Founder & CEO of O'Reilly Media and boy, his 1,5 million twitter followers are there for a reason!People call him "the Oracle of the Silicon Valley", he came up with the term "Web 2.0" - This man is crazy a wizard!We spoke about: * Writing as superpower! How it helps you to structure your thoughts. * How he started OSCON and great nerdy 90s * The big tectonic "Platform changes" and how the giants use "Algorithmic Rents" to silently put more money into their pockets * The wrong incentives and optimization functions of our economy and how to change it * How we are part of "the machine" and "the machine" needs us to decide what is good ("ham") and what is bad ("spam")Brilliant thoughts! Thank you so much Tim!
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#24 - Peter Grosskopf // Ex CTO Börse Stuttgart & Solarisbank
In this episode we dive deep into the principles of Blockchain together with Peter Grosskopf who is our guest for the 2nd time.Peter recently quit his job as CTO @ Börse Stuttgart to fully focus on building a decentralized bank in the DeFi (Decentralize finance) space.We spoke about: * How does a blockchain work * Why to use blockchains * Concrete use-cases and applications * How ether works and how to get started
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#23 - Olivier Bonnet // CTO BlaBlaCar
This time I had Olivier Bonnet, the CTO of BlaBlaCar in the podcast. BlaBlaCar is the carpooling company: They own the market. They are active in 22 Countries, have 100M+ Users and acquired 12 other carpooling companies. Olivier, the CTO, joined me to talk about:* How his time at Apple taught him to think long term * 100 million users, 12 acquisitions: The strategy behind BlaCar * The complexity of route planning ? * How writing ?️ helps people at Bla to structure their thoughts: They are writing press releases for new features, Amazon style. * You build it, you run it! How technology decision discipline works at BlaCarWas a great ride with you, Olivier! We both turned out to be a bit more Bla ;-) in this episode than we initially thought.
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#22 - Frank Karlitschek // CEO NextCloud
How to make a living from Open Source? My guest Frank Karlitschek, the CEO of ☁️☁️ NextCloud ☁️☁️ the open alternative to Google Cloud and Microsofts Office 365 (!) does it for years and tells us where to start. He knows the game!**Other topics we touch?** - The 3 Ultimate tipps for open source developers/publishers How he leads his team of 50+ FTE almost fully remote - How GDPR can be seen as a chance for European entrepreneurs - How he built his company without any VC moneyThanks a lot Frank for being my guest!
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#21 - Jason Warner // CTO GitHub
In this episode I talk to Jason Warner, Github CTO aka "the PaaS Guru". He used to work for Heroku before and explained what he's planning and executing at Github and how Github uses it's massive amount of data to go away from pure repo-hosting.Topics that stand out: * How microsoft is working out quite well for them (Careful: contains Steve Balmer rants) * How Github will revolutionize the Platform as a Service world (PaaS) * His thoughts about developer productivity and the broken idea of measuring an individual engineers performance ? * How he breaks down the organization strategy from into mission, vision, priorities, goals, and tasks to get everyone alignedHe also reveals his past as ?️ Fitness Guru, having written multiple fitness books and what happened when a colleague found that out...
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#20 - John Graham Cumming // CTO Cloudflare
This time I spoke to John Graham-Cumming, the CTO of ? Cloudflare?, a publicly listed CDN and Edge Computing platform.Topics we touched: * His GNU Make book ;-) * How they grew to 25 BN marketcap ? * What he thinks about edge computing and concrete usecases for it * How COVID changed the ? security world ? * How they operate and maintain a global network with millions of serversThanks a lot John for the Chat. Looking forward to see what Cloudflare comes up with next.
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#19 - Mitchell Hashimoto // CTO HashiCorp
This time I'm talking to an absolute legend: Mitchell Hashimoto, the CTO of HashiCorp the company behind a series of brilliant open source products (Terraform, Vault, Nomad, Vagrant) that are highly successfully both business wise and community wise. I would even argue that HashiCorp is the only company that manages to do that.We talk about: * The path from 7 to 1000+ employees in the last 10 years ? * How Mitch is still able to be a very active github user and contribute a lot of code while growing a big enterprise company to IPO * How to build successful open source projects * Where to draw the line in open core businesses * How to be able to prevent cloud providers from sucking your blood
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#18 - Jean-Denis Greze // Head of Engineering at Plaid
Podcast time! In this episode I'm chatting with Jean-Denis Greze, the Head of Engineering @ Plaid and former Director of Engineering at Dropbox. Plaid is a fintech Unicorn from the US that just turned down an acquisition by Visa.We spoke about: * The upcoming topic ? Privacy Engineering ? and how it will change our thinking * How plaid handles 1000s of connections to banks and integrates with a lot of legacy APIs just fine * His thoughts around Defi and Blockchain * How they do good business in fintech without touching any money ?It was great having you, Jean-Denis!
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#17 - Eric Bowman // SVP Engineering TomTom
This time in the podcast I have a very bright guest I admire for years: Eric Bowman, SVP Engineering at TomTom, Former VP Engineering at Zalando AND one of the developers behind the game "The Sims" ?♂️ He is a brilliant mind when it comes to tech leadership and has strong opinions on autonomy and empowerment.Topics we touched: * How 90s gaming development compares to 20s large scale tech teams * What TomTom does these days and the technical challenges in location based services & mapping these days * How to establish tech culture and open source in a large enterprise * The challenges of the automotive industry in a software world ? * ? The importances of the accelerate KPIs in modern engineering orgs and how to move fast ?It was a pleasure talking to you, Eric!
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#16 - Tyler McMullen // CTO Fastly
This time, I have a very technical podcast on Webassembly and the new kid on the block: the Edge Cloud with Fastly's CTO Tyler McMullen, one of the leading CDNs and edge cloud companies out there.* The future of distributed computation: From Serverless to ☁️ Cloudless ☁️ * Webassembly as the new industry standard intermediate representation/micro container. And guess what? Your browser most likely already supports it! * How a CDN works internally and the challenges of building it * How he manages to still be a coding geek in ? 10BN companyThis podcast was actually recorded shortly before Covid - if you wonder how we could meet up in Berlin ;-)
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#15 - Jean Michel Lemieux // CTO Shopify
This time I had Jean Michel Lemieux or short JML, the CTO of ? Shopify ? in the podcast. Craziest fact: He took the time two days before black Friday ?. In the podcast he also told me why.We spoke about: * His fight against crazy ? sneaker - sniping - bots and how Shopify keeps people in line happy with games * What it takes to run the largest Ruby on Rails (majestic ;-)) monolith on the planet * Why he does not believe in microservice architecture but still runs some services * How he keeps his 2000 engineer army ? aligned * Why he still sells stuff for kids online through his own platformIt was crazy fun, even if I missed the swearing after David Heinemeier Hansson took that route.
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#14 - David Heinemeier Hansson // CTO Basecamp, inventor of Ruby on Rails, bestselling author & Race driver
In this episode I am thrilled to welcome David Heinemeier Hansson, CTO of Basecamp, inventor of Ruby on Rails, founder of Hey.com, book author of books like "Remote" or "It does not have to be crazy at work".Some topics we touched: * How David Discovered the magic of Ruby ? * How he finds moments of deep flow in programming and racing * Why Smartwatches are a gift from hell⌚ * Why the 60 hour work week is a stupid lie * Why he would immediately quit if he was hired as CTO of Zalando ? * How they successfully manage Basecamp, and why "the Spotify Model" is a myth☠️ Strong language, be careful ☠️ And: You might notice that I had to laugh at least 60% of the time. Thanks David for your time and this great episode.
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#13 Matthias Laug // CTO & Co-Founder at TIER mobility
Podcast time! This time I have the chance to talk to the judo brown belt owning CTO of the scooter& mobility startup TIER mobility Matthias Laug. Before TIER he co-founded Lieferando and boy, he's a nice guest to talk to.We spoke about: * Why he puts people over tech * What they use to run their large IoT stack * His vision of Scooters talking to each other in a huge mesh * Why he after founding Lieferando and having a large exit still started at Thoughtworks * When to not do backflips even if you perfected doing themHe also briefly mentions Eric Bowman, Martin Fowler and Pat Kua who have one thing in common: I did not interview them for the alphalist podcast - Would be happy to chat with you guys too! :)
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#12 with Johannes Schaback // CTO at Home24
This time I am talking to my friend Johannes Schaback, CTO of Home24, who is also originally a co-founder of alphalist and one of the brightest minds in the German engineering, tech and business-tech scene. We are talking about his journey through the AI and data world, the Do's and Don'ts and the real world, no bullshit application of machine learning.We are Tackle: * Data is the new oil - wrong or right? * The machine learning models @ Home24 * How ML-infrastructure evolved in the last decade * The necessity to spend more time in the problem space before entering the solution spaceWe talk about mentorship and great people he learned from (*ping* Marc Appelhoff, Brigitte Wittekind, Christian Weiss, Philipp Kreibohm ;-)). Thanks a lot Johannes and looking forward to track your successes at Home24, your career and investments.
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#11 with Ahti Heinla // Co-founder & CTO at Starship Technologies
In this podcast, it's all about complicated things and my guest masters them all: IoT, Robotics, AI and customer acquisition. Ahti Heinla is former founding engineer of Skype and now runs Starship Technologies as Founder and CTO. In this podcast we talk about * Robotics as the coolest thing to build as an engineer * How I stopped one of his Robots in Hamburg * The hard things about robots ? * The hard things about bringing ML models to productionThanks again Ahti for being my guest and looking forward to see more and more of your robots in the wild. Great to see so much innovation coming from Estonia. Looking forward to feedback and guest proposals.
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#10 with Marty Cagan // Partner at Silicon Valley Product Group
Wow, my guest this time is able to see through the matrix ?: It's Marty Cagan, inventor of product discovery and best selling author of the book "INSPIRED", one of the partners of the Silicon Valley Product Group and potentially the biggest eye opener for 90% of the delivery organizations out there: We are most likely doing our job wrong!He saw so much different product and delivery orgs from Apple to Google to Spotify and talks about his learnings:* How agile is interpreted wrong in 90% of the companies * How modern organizations waste their resources * How to tackle product discovery and user testing * Autonomy vs. EmpowermentThanks Marty, it's been a blast!
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Christian Hardenberg // CTO Delivery Hero
It's podcast-time! This time, I spoke to Christian Hardenberg, CTO of Delivery Hero ? and formerly Rocket Internet ? on how to scale an engineering org from 200 to 2000 people. Delivery Hero just entered the DAX a week ago and is worth almost 20 BN as of today. He shared his perspective and thoughts on: * How to measure software developers at scale * How they keep up the pace / velocity * What he thinks about OKRs * How they manage to integrate all the acquired entities and teams * Their secret sauce and why he thinks it is better thanGoogle
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Peter Großkopf // CTO Börse Stuttgart Digital Exchange
This time, I have the honor to talk to Peter Grosskopf, CTO of Börse Stuttgart digital exchange and former CTO of Solarisbank. He's an amazing guy for philosophical discussions around finance, tech and we share one love that is no longer as cool as it was in the 00's: Ruby on rails!This time we discuss: * How he made regulations his hobby ? and wants developers to feel like working for Spotify or Soundcloud even with regulations in place * The do's and don'ts in Fintech * Why he rather picks mature stacks (aka Postgres and Ruby on rails) against the "new kids on the block" * How he thinks about new things tech like Apache KafkaThanks again for being my guest, it was a lot of fun.
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Sergei Anikin // CTO Pipedrive
I had the chance to interview Sergei Anikin about how to scale a SaaS product. Sergei Anikin comes with vast experience in “large scale tech” as he was with Skype when it was sold 3 times (eBay, Private Equity, Microsoft) and is CTO at 90-million funded pipedrive (CRM SaaS) now. Laser sharp focus on the essential features “Scaling problems are good problems to have” Microservices vs. Monoliths Team structure at scale: Missions and tribes (https://medium.com/pipedrive-engineering/scaling-pipedrive-engineering-from-teams-to-tribes-8f14fd92df8c) How they do M&A and post merger integration It was an honor to talk to Sergei Anikin and see him joining alphalist as a new member too. Looking forward to your comments, feedback and guest proposals.
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Mikko Hyppönen // F-Secure
I had to deal with cybersecurity topics recently; I've even been in touch with the FBI ?. On this occasion I invited a brilliant guest for the alphalist Podcast: It’s Mikko Hyppönen, a computer security specialist and scientific director at the security company F-Secure. He spent half of his life hacking and chasing hackers and he knows how to talk about it: I saw at least 3 TED Talks by him and yes, they are very entertaining and helpful.Key topics in the Podcast are: - The recent twitter hack and the stupidness of the hackers - How cybersecurity evolved and became a required skill for companies and countries - His recommendations for modern mid sized companies around Cybersecurity (Where to start with processes, recruiting, tools, budgets) - What to do if you’ve been compromisedYou won’t regret that you've listened :-)
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Sebastian Thrun // Google X
I am thrilled to announce this weeks podcast guest: Prof. Sebastian Thrun Brief overview: He is a Stanford professor, founder of Google X, built the first self driving car, won the Darpa-Award for it, started the online-academy Udacity and is now building autonomous planes at Kitty Hawk. Wow. Can you tell why I highly admire him and how excited I was when I won him for my podcast? We talked about the car nation in Germany, how competitive we are in the AI and software world, Stanford vs. TU-Munich, why Sebastian is striving for a brain-computer interface, why he has built the leading online university Udacity and how to tackle machine learning as a modern CTO. He also explains why he eventually comes up with a Bluetooth-connected Smart-Bra next.
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