Hilary Mason is a world-builder. She’s a serial entrepreneur, machine learning expert, and now, as the founder and CEO of Hidden Door, she’s creating immersive experiences where fans can interact with their favorite characters from books and movies. The choose-your-own-adventures style games are an amazing blend of AI and human creativity — and Hilary is passionate about both: “If I write a manifesto, this is what it'll be: I don't think the power of generative AI is to create the next amazing novel. I don't think it's gonna create the next amazing movie. I think it is not opinionated, but people are opinionated and people will create those things using these tools.”On this episode of CRAFTED., we discuss what AI is good at and how to create a great marriage of human and machine. And Hilary is not holding back… “Doing data work without a soul or without philosophy is, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.”“I think prompts are gonna go away. We're in a moment of industry-wide product design, chaos…”Listen for a masterclass on building with AI and building with creativity and soul.(02:00) - – This moment in AI: figuring out the right use cases and design patterns (05:00) - – Founding Hidden Door (09:00) - – Why “controllability” is so important (11:00) - – Enabling fans want to play with their favorite characters (13:00) - – Why text-based games are so great (15:00) - – Behind the scenes of how Hidden Door builds for fun (19:00) - – AI has caused a moment of “industry-wide product design chaos” (23:00) - – Industries and use cases where AI will be really good; where it won’t (25:00) - – Effective ways to get beyond AI mediocrity (28:00) - – Why Hilary thinks prompts will soon go away (31:00) - – Hilary’s liberal arts background: English + Computer Science (33:00) - – Why we need philosophy and soul along with the data Where to find Hidden Door:https://www.hiddendoor.co/Where to find Hilary Mason:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hilarymason/X: https://x.com/hmason Where to find Dan Blumberg:Website & newsletter: https://www.crafted.fm LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dblums/X: https://x.com/dblumsCRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg and team can help you take a new product from zero to one... and beyond. We specialize in early stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation. Learn more at modernproductminds.com 

As AI models grow larger and more powerful, they promise incredible capabilities — but at what cost? Karen Hao is a journalist and former engineer who writes about the impact of artificial intelligence on society for The Atlantic and other top publications. On this episode of CRAFTED., we discuss whether the largest AI models are worth their hefty footprint: They consume massive amounts of electricity and water and Karen argues that smaller models better balance cost vs. benefit. Karen will also provide a view of AI from outside — far outside — Silicon Valley. She’s reported on AI from across the Global South and we’ll hear about the fight over data centers in Chile, how New Zealand’s Maori people are using AI to preserve their indigenous language, and why it’s a problem that AI can speak any language, but can only really be policed in a few.Key Moments:(01:51) - - The view of AI from the Global South (04:08) - - Data centers are thirsty and their benefit is unclear to locals in Chile (and elsewhere) (09:16) - - GenAI is English-first: Why it’s not as safe in other languages (12:12) - - Why some activists call AI a new form of “colonialism” (14:50) - - Indigenous communities innovating with AI (17:46) - - The case for smaller AI models (19:40) - - Why open source AI is so important (25:09) - - AI and the environmental impact: Karen’s reporting on Microsoft’s “hypocrisy” (28:40) - - Are big AI models worth the cost? (34:56) - - How Karen trains journalists to cover AI Where to find Karen:Website: https://karendhao.com/X: https://x.com/_KarenHaoLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karendhao/Threads: https://www.threads.net/@_karenhaoArticles Mentioned:Microsoft’s Hypocrisy on AI (The Atlantic) A new vision of artificial intelligence for the people (MIT Technology Review)AI Is Taking Water From the Desert (The Atlantic)Where to find Dan Blumberg:Website & newsletter: https://www.crafted.fm LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dblums/X: https://x.com/dblumsCRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg and team can help you take a new product from zero to one... and beyond. We specialize in early stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation. Learn more at modernproductminds.com Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 crafted.fm

Russ Somers has tripled his productivity by building a “GPTeam” of AI “employees.” In this episode, from Beyond the Prompt, the head of marketing for Quantified reveals how he’s done it, and how you can build your own virtual team to be more productive and creative. Russ’s virtual team helps with tasks ranging from webinar content creation to specialized knowledge acquisition. Through personal anecdotes and exploratory conversations, the episode delves into the process of building AI team members, the importance of play in learning and innovation, and strategies for incorporating AI into personal and professional growth. Highlights include building AI with specific skill sets like 'Wendy Webinar' and 'Roger RevOps,' and the philosophical implications of personifying AI for better engagement and output. And Russ's personal journey from a layoff to pioneering AI productivity tools opens a discussion on the transformative power of AI in the modern workplace.Subscribe to Beyond the Prompt on Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app. And follow hosts Henrik Werdelin and Jeremy Utley on LinkedIn. Key Moments:(00:48) - Meet Russ Summers: The One-Man Marketing Powerhouse (02:30) - Introducing Wendy Webinar: A GPT Team Member Revolutionizing Content Creation (04:30) - Leveling Up with GPT: Beyond Basic Task Automation (06:00) - Roger RevOps: A Custom GPT for Niche Expertise (08:55) - Exploring the Next Frontier: Collaborative and Mentorship GPTs (15:13) - The Art of Building and Utilizing GPT Staff: Tips and Tricks (23:15) - Expanding the Team: Integrating GPTs into Human Workflows (24:30) - Exploring Organizational Progress and Tool Adoption (26:13) - The Importance of Measuring Effort and Encouraging Experimentation (27:38) - Fostering Creativity and Psychological Safety in the Workplace (29:54) - Personifying Bots for Better Engagement and Output (32:30) - Reimagining Brand Communication in a Conversational World (35:46) - The Transformative Power of Play and Exploration (39:31) - Strategies for Personal and Professional Growth with GPT (48:42) - Concluding Thoughts on Innovation and the Future of Work

Kira Radinsky is the CEO of Diagnostic Robotics, which uses AI to make predictions that help patients get better healthcare. She’s also the co-founder of Mana.bio which is using AI to automate drug discovery. On this episode of CRAFTED., Kira will share more on why she believes that, of all the industries that AI will change, it’s those involving chemistry and biology that will change the most. Plus, why she says: “I just want AI to replace me as a scientist.” Kira shares:How Mana.bio is using AI to build new “rocketships” that can deliver drugs to the right planets (cells) — and how they’ve done things in three months that used to take 20 yearsHow AI is accelerating drug discovery by creating feedback loops that speed up learningHow Diagnostic Robotics makes predictions on patient outcomes that help doctors and care teams provide better careWhy she loves making predictions — Kira is famous for them. Over a decade ago, while getting her PhD and working with Microsoft, she built systems that successfully predicted cholera outbreaks and riots.How to incentivize bots to make bolder predictions. i.e. It’s easy to predict that there will not be an earthquake today; it’s harder to say today there will be one. Why predictions are only valuable if there’s something you can do to prevent bad outcomes — and why this makes healthcare an ideal fieldHow advances in software have enabled her to follow her dream and be a scientist. (Kira doesn’t have the great hands you need to be a lab chemist.)Key Moments (02:29) - Why predictions have been so important to Kira from an early age, and her dream to be a scientist (05:46) - How Kira predicts the future and how she became famous for predicting the first cholera outbreak to hit Cuba in more than 100 years (09:49) - How Diagnostic Robotics makes predictions that improve healthcare outcomes (14:22) - Big unlocks to make better predictions — and explain them to doctors (16:42) - What’s “easy” to predict and what’s hard; how to incentivize bots to make bold predictions (e.g. an earthquake) (18:49) - Founding Mana.bio and how AI can improve drug discovery (25:06) - AI will have a huge impact on the administrative aspects of patient care (29:36) - How Mana.bio creates rapid learning feedback loops (31:23) - Tips for building with GenAI and why more attention should be paid to causal inference (34:21) - Where GenAI will be really transformative in the future (36:04) - Outro CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run and verify applications anywhere – without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications. CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg and team can help you take a new product from zero to one... and beyond. We specialize in early stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation. Learn more at modernproductminds.com Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 crafted.fm

Matt Flannery and Branch have done something the banks have not: learned how to profitably lend to people who have little to no credit history. Matt is the founder and CEO of Branch, which issues small loans to millions of people in India, Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania. He's also the founder of Kiva, a microfinance pioneer that skyrocketed from a small project into a worldwide nonprofit that Oprah and President Clinton loved talking about. On this episode of CRAFTED., we learn how Branch uses data from people's phones to confidently make loans to people who don't have traditional credit scores. Plus, how they prevent fraud and avoid bias. We'll also explore the wild ways that Branch is experimenting with Generative AI, including how they are creating “future synthetic data” that they believe will predict how users will save and spend in the future. Takeaways:Branch uses AI to confidently lend to people without traditional credit scoresBranch was built on traditional machine learning models – the name “Branch” derives in part from the “random forest” approach – and now is adding Generative AI approaches to the mixBranch is using GenAI to create “future synthetic data” that predicts how people will spend and save in the years to come. As Matt says, “it’s kind of a wild idea” and it’ll take a few years to see how predictive the approach isTo avoid bias, lend to lots of people no matter what the data says. It will teach you what the “natural loss rate” is and prevent you from training your model on customers you’ve already selected as creditworthy.Preventing fraud is the biggest challenge. And you can go from zero fraud to massive fraud over a weekend if fraudsters discover a vulnerability.Branch is hugely successful in India, because of the approach it developed in Africa: lend very small amounts to lots of people and, as people repay, offer them larger loans. Branch failed in Mexico, because the user experience of repaying the loan (visiting a local shop) was too difficult; meanwhile another reason for success in India is the country’s recent rollout of a nationwide mobile payments system (UPI). Plus, willingness to repay in India is naturally very high. Key Moments:(02:33) - Founding Kiva and its rise from a side project to a worldwide non-profit (06:31) - Founding Branch and the impact of lending to people that banks won’t (10:03) - Scaling Branch, and why it can grow better as a for-profit than Kiva could as a non-profit (14:28) - Why fraud is the biggest challenge to Branch and how they prevent it (16:17) - How Branch got really good at making quick lending decisions and why it’s critical to approve lots of people (19:43) - Why Branch failed in Mexico, and how those lessons led to their outsize success in India (22:36) - How Branch uses AI to make lending decisions and how it’s experimenting with GenAI to create “future synthetic data” (26:42) - How to prevent bias – and why Branch automatically approves lots of people for loans no matter what the data says about them (30:06) - What’s next for branch (30:59) - How being in a rock band helped Matt gain confidence — and how that served him when he’d later appear on Oprah (32:01) - Outro CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run and verify applications anywhere – without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications. CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg and team can help you take a new product from zero to one... and beyond. We specialize in early stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation. Learn more at modernproductminds.com Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 crafted.fm

Nithya Ruff is an expert on open source. As the head of AWS’s Open Source Program Office and the Chair of the Linux Foundation, she has a wide view on all things open source. On this episode of CRAFTED., we discuss:Why Open Source AI is so tricky, but also so essential, to defineHow open source needs to evolve for the next generation of developersWhat an Open Source Program Office is — and why companies like AWS have themThe questions, benefits, and risks that arise when a company is considering using open source technologiesWhy contributing to open source (“giving back”) is not always so selfless: relying on a successful, well-supported open source technology can be very advantageous to companiesWhy you need need to be deliberate when growing an open source project – just let it grow organically is not a great recipe for success todayHow open source draws on so many skills beyond coding, such as community management, marketing, and legalHow open source is not just for software. Social change, agriculture, and other domains often use open source approachesNithya’s path, and why she loves with open sourceKey Moments:(02:20) - The state of open source today (04:47) - Teaching a new generation the values of open source, increasing diversity (07:38) - Open source AI, why we need a definition of it, and why we should insist on it or else live in a “black box” future (11:34) - Open source is full of possibilities (13:08) - What an OSPO (Open Source Program Office) is and why companies have them (16:18) - Common open source questions developers face (21:24) - How to balance risk vs. reward when using open source (25:21) - Why (most) open source projects should not grow organically, and the value of community management (27:13) - Open source is not just for code. Social good, agriculture, and other applications… (29:00) - Nithya’s story: how she got into tech and why she fell in love with open source because it draws on so many skills, beyond just coding (33:21) - Outro CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run and verify applications anywhere – without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications. CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg and team can help you take a new product from zero to one... and beyond. We specialize in early stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation. Learn more at modernproductminds.com Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 crafted.fm

Mario Rodriguez is GitHub's Chief Product Officer. And he believes that CoPilot and other AI advances will unleash a wave of creativity and enable a billion people to be software developers.Mario says the definition of “software developer” will have to change as non-professionals discover that they can make apps, too. And the way they do so will look very different: “It's gonna feel a lot more like how kids play. ​​It's like you create something you play with and you're like, Nope. Then you instruct it again… It’s going to be real time development.”On this episode of CRAFTED., Mario gets us excited about the future of software development!Takeaways:Mario says we’ve lost some of the creativity of the early days of the web; AI is helping bring it backWith AI, it’s getting much easier (for non-professional developers) to build “micro experiences” and other ephemeral apps that just serve one purpose. The craft of product management must change with AI, because building with non-deterministic AI is so tricky to get rightWhen building with AI, run your scenario multiple times. Test your prompts repeatedly. You will get different responses each time. Are they all helpful to your user? Invest in offline evaluation when building with AI or else you’ll have lots of problems later. Psychology is key. How will users react if AI tells them something subjective? Mario has seen CoPilot users get upset, e.g. “Nope, you're completely wrong. I know what I'm doing. You are a machine. I am not gonna ask you to ever review my code.” Don’t optimize for just one metric. Mario says you should have three or so that you evaluate in concert. Product sense matters! Prompt engineering is real. How you can better prompt your CoPilotKeeping developers in flow is critical. How much time do developers spend on “sense-making” vs. coding? How much time do they spend waiting for reviews? These are some of the questions GitHub asks when evaluating developer productivity. Mario came to the US from Cuba when he was in high school. His father is an electrical engineer and his mother is a teacher. Both influence him greatly.Mario founded a charter school in rural North Carolina because “everyone should have access to amazing education.”System thinking and evaluating things from first principles are key skills for the future. CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run and verify applications anywhere – without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications. CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg and team can help you take a new product from zero to one... and beyond. We specialize in early stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation. Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 crafted.fmKey Moments (00:00) - Intro (02:32) - 1B Developers! (05:53) - Ephemeral apps and how they will unleash creativity and learning (06:21) - The time Dan programmed his TI-83 calculator to play blackjack (07:32) - Why “natural language is going to take center stage” as software development evolves (10:30) - Why building with Generative AI is completely different (13:50) - Why humans don’t always respond well to suggestions from CoPilot (15:36) - Why offline evaluation is so important when building with AI (19:14) - Building CoPilot: balancing speed with value (21:01) - Why “product sense” matter so much (21:54) - Tips for prompting CoPilot effectively (25:33) - Building CoPilot: the early days (30:18) - How GitHub measures developer happiness (32:54) - Growing up in Cuba and developing a love for teaching (his mom’s profession) and engineering (his dad’s) (36:52) - Why Mario founded a school in rural North Carolina (39:05) - Systems thinking, and other skills that Mario hopes today’s kids will learn (41:50) - Outro

“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

** Please take this two-minute survey to help us create more great Crafted episodes. http://tinyurl.com/craftedsurvey **Nautilus Labs uses AI to make maritime vessels more efficient by helping giant cargo ships optimize their routes across the ocean and suggesting when they need maintenance, saving money and reducing carbon emissions in the process. In this episode, 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 the customer problems a company aims to solve. Crafted 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.Timestamps: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 - Intro 01:50 - Why Edward loves solving problems for small businesses 04:20 - Building out version one 06:48 - Finding product market fit 09:48 - What does Gusto offer today? 11:15 - The secret to good code 15:49 - Growing as an engineering leader 18:44 - What’s next for Edward and Gusto? 20:04 - Exploring Generative AI 22:09 - 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, Catherine Miller of Flatiron Health, Raghvender Arni of AWS Industries, and Justin Zhao of Predibase. Together, they discuss their companies’ adoption of AI, delving into the need for a stable foundation in order to move Generative AI from prototype to production and the works of science fiction today that could be commonplace in the near future.

“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 [email protected]* Special note to Money 2020 attendees: say hi to us in Vegas! Email [email protected] 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

“Barbershops have historically been a very cash-dominated business. And shaking that mentality is probably the biggest challenge.” Kush Patel knew that the iconic but old-school world of barbering needed a digital upgrade, so he founded theCut, a barber booking app that helps clients find a barber and then book and pay for their cut. It also helps barbers attract and manage their clients, and the app is positioned to help them grow their services beyond the chair.On this episode, Kush tells us what inspired him to build theCut with his co-founder Obi Omile, and how they’re pushing past the stubbornly analog world of barbering. He’ll also talk about their challenges getting investors to see the opportunity, and why they built theCut to reflect the culture of the barbershop. 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

  “We haven’t invented a new way to work out since the ancient Greeks. With electro muscular stimulation, we're breaking that.” Invention is a big part of everything Bjoern Woltermann did at Katalyst to bring electro muscular stimulation, or EMS, to the US market – and to US homes. EMS workouts have been around for decades, but typically only in a physical therapy context. With Katalyst, you wear a suit that triggers your muscles while you work out, promising the equivalent of a 2-hour workout in only 20 minutes, and with less injury risk than a traditional workout. But to make this suit work at home, Bjoern and his team needed to invent everything from special sensors to custom textiles. On this episode, we'll hear how a long-time back problem led Bjoern to discover EMS training in Germany, and realize the untouched opportunity for bringing it to the US. And we’ll go deep to understand how Bjoern and his team created a fascinating mix of hardware, software, sensors, textiles, and content and then stitched it all together. 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

Working with the likes of Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, and Jon Favreau, Nev Spiteri has created some of film and gaming’s most incredible visual sequences. Now the CEO of Wevr has gone all in on building software to enable others to create their own virtual worlds — and to do so seamlessly via the cloud. The goal is to help creators spend more time creating, and less time configuring, updating, and debugging. On this episode, we dig into the unique needs that 3D world creators have, why version control is so critical to them, and how the pandemic led Wevr to move fully into cloud-based collaboration. Nev also peers into the future to share how augmented, virtual, and mixed reality, combined with the latest generation of AI, might change our world in “strange and seemingly bizarre ways”. 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

“Highly complex consumer journeys, lots of entrenched interests, very challenging stakeholder management, and extremely important to your life”. That’s the magic mixture of business interests that Kira Wampler says speaks her love language. Those passions led her to Redesign Health, a company whose mission is to transform healthcare. So far, Redesign Health has incubated, funded and scaled over 50 companies that are taking innovative approaches to cancer care, mental health and more — and they plan to launch 50 more. On this episode, Kira takes us through her early career where she was front and center at influential companies like Lyft and Intuit, and how she developed a thesis about tech, health, and wealth that led her to Redesign Health.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

“Your business applications should be just as intuitive as every other app or website or anything else that you're engaging with in your day-to-day lives”. That’s the product-led approach that Jon Walton took as an engineering leader at Red Bull, where he spent nearly a decade working on the apps that help the energy drink maker run the extreme sports competitions and spectacles it's known for.On this episode, Jon argues that this product-led philosophy is the way all organizations should manage any technology strategy. He also explains why Red Bull’s special events needed special custom-built software, and how the company improved the way it built software in the first place by embracing principles like lean, agile, and pair programming that transformed the team in ways they never anticipated.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

“Their revenue growth is stalling. Their cost of mistakes is going up, and everything is stalling and slowing and getting harder.” For most people that doesn’t sound like a job opportunity with much appeal, but it’s  the point where Tommi Forsstrom usually joins a startup. Tommi is a product management executive who specializes in helping companies navigate “the growth stage,” that adolescent era of startup development where a company has found product-market fit and needs to scale  – and to do that they need to make some hard choices. On this episode, Tommi walks us through the awkward years just after a startup becomes a scale-up, and breaks down how he shepherds a company to the next level. Tommi will share his framework with us, how hard it is to “shove rabbits back into hats” and kill products, and the tough choices he made as VP of Product at Teachable. Plus, how he’s building software to help frontline workers as Chief Product Officer at Workstep. We also hear how Tommi approaches career growth, with practical tips for job seekers. 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.comMentioned on the show: - How To Choose a Job Like a Real Product Person, from Tommi’s blog.https://medium.com/@forssto/how-to-choose-a-job-like-a-real-product-person-a90d59248886

“The number one thing we offer our customers is the feeling of not being in an airport.” PS operates a VIP luxury terminal at LAX, with more airports coming soon. Their travelers enjoy high security, luxurious lounges and private suites, great food, and a ride across the tarmac directly to their first-class seats on their commercial flight. But in order to do that, PS needs to coordinate with 70 different airlines, TSA, customs, and all their service staff to make the experience completely seamless. And that takes the kind of precision that only custom software could manage. As CEO Amina Belouizdad Porter puts it: “We are a just-in-time business, and it takes a really complex orchestra to make it happen.”In this episode, Amina and Leigh Rodwick, PS’s VP of Technology and Analytics,  describe the feelings they hope to evoke, the complex operations that happen out of customer view, and why they had to build custom software and learn agile software development techniques to power it all.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

There’s turmoil in tech right now, so here’s a special episode for job-seekers looking for their next great gig. On this episode of Crafted, Alex Maher, Director of Talent at Artium, shares tips on how to position yourself, how to talk to recruiters, what *not* to put on your resume, and so much more. Plus, she’ll share her philosophy on talent acquisition and why remembering that we’re human is at the center of it all. Crafted is 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

“There was just no way I could say no”. That was how Sonali Zaveri felt about working with Ideas42 Ventures, after learning about the first cohort of entrepreneurs she would advise. Ideas42 Ventures is a venture studio that aims to solve massive social problems by helping founders with lived experience launch companies that address issues like poverty and inequality. The founders are selected based on their potential, their passion, and their lived experience – and unlike other venture studios they don’t necessarily need a tech background, nor even a product idea on day one. On this episode of Crafted, Design and Operations Lead Sonali Zaveri shares how she coaches these founders, as well as why entrepreneurship is such a “privileged sport” — and what she’s doing about that. We also discuss how Ideas42 Ventures uses behavioral science to design products that make lasting impact and why founders should be embarrassed by their first product. 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

For those of you who are brand new to Crafted, this week we’re revisiting our very first episode where we featured experimentation master, Lean Startup Pioneer Andres Glusman:“It's a crime. It's such a waste of time.” That’s how Andres Glusman feels about so many of the tests product teams run. That’s why the former head of product at Meetup founded DoWhatWorks, a company that enables you to see – and learn from – the A/B tests that other companies are running. Rather than test button color for the umpteenth time, Andres wants you to test something that will really move the needle. After more than a decade of running product and strategy at Meetup.com, and a lifetime of being fascinated by experiments, Andres is passionate about helping others learn. In this episode, Andres shares what he’s discovered about testing and human behavior, and why running experiments is critical, but also when it’s not. This is Crafted from Artium; a show about great products, and the people who make them.  At Artium, we build incredible products and recruit high performing teams. Check us out at thisisartium.com. 

How Jon Walker spotted a trend, validated an opportunity, sold his solution before even building it, and created a multi-billion dollar company via the “unfair advantage” of rapid iteration. Back in 2007, Jon saw desktop software everywhere… at restaurants, doctors’ offices, the gym…and he realized it was all gonna move to the web. “So what’s the opportunity here?” On this episode of Crafted, we’ll hear how Jon and his co-founder homed in on property management as their target market and validated their solution with just four slides. We’ll also learn why rapid iteration is absolutely essential, why the secret to great talent management lies in lessons from basketball and fishing, and why Jon thinks artificial intelligence is the wave that AppFolio should ride for the next two decades.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

Jamiel Sheikh is the founder of three different companies all serving the crypto space: Chainhaus, CBDC Think Tank, and most recently, Instamint, which he says will do for tokens what Stripe did for payments, i.e. make it super easy. In this episode we talk about the “unsexy” problems Instamint is solving for enterprises that want to leverage the blockchain, what it takes to build a great API-first company, and why he only sees demand for crypto solutions growing, despite the recent turmoil in the markets.  Our interview with Jamiel comes from a special Artium event that we hosted at Rise, Created by Barclays, an incubator for fintech startups. 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 every day you meet someone who gets ultra excited by the legislative process, but Yemi Adewunmi finds it inspiring: “Why be an innovator if you're not going to be optimistic?”. And that’s one of the reasons she founded Civic Eagle, a startup that helps policy professionals and lobbyists track and collaborate on bills as they wind through Congress or state legislatures on their way to becoming laws…or dying in committee. Either way, Civic Eagle wants to make that journey more transparent, make it easier for advocates to collaborate, and improve democracy in the process.On this episode of Crafted: Civic Eagle’s founder and Chief Operating Officer, Yemi Adewunmi tells us how her former career as a policy analyst at the New York state legislature set her on a winding path toward establishing Civic Eagle. And hear how a failed app, and a lot of UX learning helped Yemi and her team arrive at Civic Eagle, and a huge vision for growth.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

On Crafted we love to highlight great products, so for this special holiday greeting we asked Artisans and friends of Artium two simple questions:  “What product did you fall in love with in 2022 and why?”Find out which products people didn’t know they needed or wanted this year, which features they really appreciated, and what their game changers were. But most importantly, have yourself a Happy New Year, and we’ll see you in 2023 with more stories 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 special episode of Crafted was recorded live at Rise, Created by Barclays, an incubator for fintech startups. In this fireside chat, we speak with Ainslie Simmonds, President of PershingX at Bank of New York Mellon, and D. Orlando Keise, head of Banking Foundational Platform at UBS. Ainslie is building a modern wealth management platform and D. Orlando is building a digital bank from the ground up.  We’ll discuss what it takes to innovate at big financial institutions and hear their advice for fintech startup founders.On this episode of Crafted: Ainslie and D. Orlando discuss their time at startups, big banks, and “startups inside big banks.” Both are building very ambitious products at very big, very old banks — and we discuss how they’ve challenged the status quo. We also dig into why the data layer and foundational platform on which new products are built are so critical if you want to innovate. Plus, the two share advice for fintech founders who are on a mission to democratize finance, as well as what to know when working with — or after you get acquired by — a big company. 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 a recruiter from Till first reached out to Johnny Ray Austin, he didn’t hesitate: “The answer was no. Flat out”. But it turns out Johnny Ray couldn’t have been more wrong about the startup, and what he’d interpreted as a potentially exploitative loan scheme is actually a life-changing new platform that helps renters stay in their homes. On this episode of Crafted, Till’s Chief Technology Officer, Johnny Ray Austin talks about his initial hesitation and what motivated him to jump on board. You'll also hear how Till iterated on its lending product to give renters confidence that Till would in fact pay their rent for them after offering them a line of credit, as well as where Till is similar to and different from buy-now-pay-later services like Affirm, Klarna, and Afterpay. 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

What do you get when you combine 3D cameras mounted on construction workers’ hard hats + visual recognition technology + artificial intelligence? You get OpenSpace, a fascinating startup that’s using new technologies to reduce costs and inefficiencies in the construction industry. OpenSpace enables builders to track progress remotely, without having to visit construction sites to examine every little detail. It was a critical tool during the pandemic lockdowns and adoption has only kept growing since. Today on Crafted: OpenSpace founder and CEO Jeevan Kalanithi shares his journey from computer art and games to drones, 3D cameras and AI. Plus, why he and his team of scientists and engineers had to literally walk in circles to solve complex problems like “indoor navigation in a GPS denied environment.” 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

“Are you making something that is solving a real problem for people?” That’s the question on Chris Ladd’s mind whenever he’s tempted to design a new app feature. Chris’s iOS app ChordBank has been downloaded millions of times; it gives guitar players tools to expand on and improve their craft. With a chord library, lessons and games that use monophonic and polyphonic pitch detection, the app helps players hone their skills and become better players.Chris built the first version of ChordBank 10 years ago, back when he was working as a freelance journalist while getting into programming.  With years of experience as an independent iOS developer under his belt and experience in product teams at The New York Times, Chris has honed his craft and built ChordBank into his full time job. This is Crafted from Artium; a show about great products, and the people who make them.  At Artium, we build incredible products and recruit high performing teams. Check us out at thisisartium.com. 

“It's a crime. It's such a waste of time.” That’s how Andres Glusman feels about so many of the tests product teams run. That’s why the former head of product at Meetup founded DoWhatWorks, a company that enables you to see – and learn from – the A/B tests that other companies are running. Rather than test button color for the umpteenth time, Andres wants you to test something that will really move the needle. After more than a decade of running product and strategy at Meetup.com, and a lifetime of being fascinated by experiments, Andres is passionate about helping others learn. In this episode, Andres shares what he’s discovered about testing and human behavior, and why running experiments is critical, but also when it’s not. This is Crafted from Artium; a show about great products, and the people who make them.  At Artium, we build incredible products and recruit high performing teams. Check us out at thisisartium.com. 

Craft. Attention to detail. Constant iteration. There’s an art to creating great software. On Crafted, host Dan Blumberg speaks with engineers, designers and product people of all stripes to explore great products and the craft of software development. We’ll get into the weeds to understand: What trade-offs did they make? What experiments did they run? And what was the moment when they knew – when they just knew – that they were on to something?At Artium we care deeply about the craft of building great software - and great companies. We help organizations build best in class products, industry leading software and collaborative cross-functional teams that scale.  Join us as we explore the art of… craft.