The Founder's Foyer with Aishwarya Ashok

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 ------------- 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/ ----------- 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. --------------- 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 ----------------

00:00 Introduction and Welcome 03:10 Adam's Journey into Product and Growth 09:06 The Role of AI in Growth 10:48 Understanding Different Aspects of Growth 14:13 The Impact of Branding on Growth 14:53 The Patreon Rebranding Journey 27:59 The Role of Subscription Models in Consumer Products 32:06 The Importance of Pricing Experimentation 32:13 Understanding Your Customers and Their Pricing Expectations 33:02 The Art of Pricing and Value Proposition 33:43 Exploring Examples of Pricing Strategies in Different Industries 34:45 The Challenges of Monetization in Social Media Platforms 36:44 The Risks of Reckless Pricing Experiments 37:19 Understanding the Vitamin to Painkiller Product Spectrum 39:07 The Importance of Pricing Experiments in SaaS and Consumer Apps 40:18 The Role of User Psychology in Product Engagement 40:40 Strategies to Reduce Churn and Increase User Engagement 41:35 The Importance of Onboarding and User Motivation 45:04 The Role of Gaming Mechanics in User Onboarding 47:50 Understanding the Competition and Alternatives in User Time 55:07 The Intersection of Fatherhood and Professional Life -------------- 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/ ----------------- When it comes to building products, the biggest lever that pushes the journey forward is the signal of growth. The type of growth where users feel the joy of retaining with your product, the one where your company metrics such as signups and revenue take a happy upward curve. We must have probably heard “Oh that’s a growth problem” way too many times, whenever there’s a challenge with pushing the product to the wider world. So then how does one cross this chasm and see the better sides of growth? Adam Fishman has built some of the fastest-growing consumer companies like Patreon, Lyft, and Imperfect Foods where he served across various roles like CPO, VP of Product & Head of Growth. From driving a company’s critical pivot and rebrand to helping a company scale to $100M revenue—Adam has been the face behind core product growth phases. He is the author of the FishmanAF Newsletter and the creator and host of the Startup Dad Podcast. The conversation traverses from building products that grow, dealing with 'growth problems', the role of branding in a company's growth, intricate aspects of consumer applications, and transitioning to subscription models. Adam also touches upon the psychology affecting product engagement and shares insights on reducing churn. Towards the end, he delves into his podcast 'Startup Dad Podcast' and the unique blend of professional and personal topics he explores through it. Tune in to expand your understanding of product growth strategies and the ongoing shifts in the tech industry.

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 -------------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/ ------------- 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

Sponsor: Build in Public Fellowship by Karthik Puvvada (KP) - Apply to the program - https://buildinpublicfellowship.com/ There’s so much joy in being able to think clearly—whether it’s cracking a tough decision, understanding a complex concept, or even letting go of bottled up confusions. When creating and shipping stuff, it’s very important to introspect on what’s holding us away from this clarity of thought. And the biggest plus is being able to do this as a community, getting to know others’ perspectives, and intellectually growing our knowledge. Anne-Laure is the founder of Ness Labs, a learning community with over 50,000+ makers. She’s a neuroscientist, educator, and soon-to-be author. She writes and speaks about mindful productivity and encourages founders and builders to derive first principles in thinking. Quitting corporate & choosing unconventional career lanes, Kickstarting Ness Labs and how it works, Creator of information vs. collector of information, Building the newsletter in public, Why 5-year career plans are outdated, Embracing serendipity in exploring interests, Liminal creativity and redefining goals, How community thinking accelerates growth, Tools for thought: keeping human consciousness intact, Distress vs Eustress: How to differentiate 

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.