In this special Engineering Founders episode, we’re featuring a live panel of some of the ELC community’s longstanding members who share insights from their founder journeys: Pete Nichols (Co-Founder @ Lightfield), Lizzie Matusov (Co-Founder / CEO @ Quotient), and Tony Dong (Founder & CEO @ Propel Code AI). They dive into what it was like exploring their first big ideas and then strategies for identifying when it’s time to pivot. They cover validating if you’re working on the right problem and using customer research to determine product road map. They also share go-to-market and selling insights, finding your first customers, and getting users willing to pay for your product. This ep also features an audience Q&A from fellow ELC community members!
In this special Engineering Founders episode, we’re featuring a live panel of some of the ELC community’s longstanding members who share insights from their founder journeys: Pete Nichols (Co-Founder @ Lightfield), Lizzie Matusov (Co-Founder / CEO @ Quotient), and Tony Dong (Founder & CEO @ Propel Code AI). They dive into what it was like exploring their first big ideas and then strategies for identifying when it’s time to pivot. They cover validating if you’re working on the right problem and using customer research to determine product road map. They also share go-to-market and selling insights, finding your first customers, and getting users willing to pay for your product. This ep also features an audience Q&A from fellow ELC community members!
Pete Nichols is the Head of Core Product Engineering at Pinterest, where he leads the development of inspiring product experiences and Android/iOS/Web/API platform technology. Prior to Pinterest, Pete spent 15 years at Electronic Arts in development leadership roles for The Sims and SimCity. Pete holds a BS in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Lizzie Matusov is the co-founder and CEO of Quotient, a developer tool that surfaces the friction slowing down engineering teams and resolves it directly. Her team also co-authors Research Driven Engineering Leadership, a newsletter that uses research to answer interesting questions on engineering leadership and strategy. She previously worked in various engineering roles at Red Hat and Invitae, and has an MS in Engineering Sciences and MBA from Harvard.
Tony is the Founder & CEO of Propel, an AI engineering agent that integrates into your team’s workflows to automate engineering tasks and elevate developer productivity. Before Propel, Tony served as the VP of Engineering at Rippling, where he led the development of the company's Platform and HR products. As a seasoned entrepreneur, Tony was also the founder and CTO of a YC-backed startup and held key engineering roles at Periscope, TellApart, and Twitter.
Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/