Between Two COO's with Michael Koenig

Between Two COO's with Michael Koenig

By Michael KoenigBusinessEntrepreneurshipCareersManagement
Download on the App Store

Between Two COO's with Michael Koenig episodes

  • Tom Masterson, Deep Genomics COO on AI Drug Discovery That Learned the Rules

    Tom Masterson, COO of Deep Genomics, on AI drug discovery where precision beats creativity. He explains how the company's siRNA model picked an approved cholesterol drug out of 3,500 candidates for a target it had never seen, why it designs toxic molecules on purpose, and how a COO runs a company where the lab and the software move on different clocks.

    In this episode, Tom and Michael discuss:

    • The difference between life sciences and healthcare, and where a tech bio company fits
    • Brendan Frey, Geoffrey Hinton's lab, and a thesis that was right but early
    • Retiring 40 task-specific models when a foundation model beat them
    • Lab in the loop, and why the best training data includes molecules designed to be toxic
    • The siRNA result: a target the model had never seen, and nine picks out of 3,500
    • Why drug developers think in 10 years and machine learning teams think in an afternoon
    • From chief of staff to COO, and getting scientists to adopt process
    • Running waterfall and agile side by side, on a quarterly board and advisor rhythm
    • The N-of-one problem: a hero to the world, or a hero to your shareholders

    About Tom:
    Tom Masterson is chief operating officer of Deep Genomics, the Toronto company building biological foundation models for RNA drug discovery. He joined in business development and strategy, then served as chief of staff to founder Brendan Frey and to CEO Brian O'Callaghan before becoming COO. He partners with the CEO on board and investor relations, owns the company's project management and executive functions, and is the person who turns Deep Genomics' science into its business story. Before Deep Genomics he was the first employee at Microbiome Insights in Vancouver, worked in contract research and healthcare design strategy, and founded Caregiver Support, a startup that helped family caregivers through medical crises. He started his career selling dental lasers at a medical device company. He holds a BSc in cell biology and genetics from the University of British Columbia and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

    Resources mentioned:

    • Deep Genomics: https://www.deepgenomics.com
    • GenomeKit (open source): https://github.com/deepgenomics/GenomeKit
    • Alnylam Pharmaceuticals: https://www.alnylam.com
    • Moderna: https://www.modernatx.com
    • Merck: https://www.merck.com
    • Broad Institute: https://www.broadinstitute.org

    Connect with Tom:

    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mastersonthomas/

    Connect with Michael:

    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-koenig514
    • Building Helm: https://helmapp.ai

    Subscribe to Between Two COOs:

    • Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/between-two-coos-with-michael-koenig/id1596195041
    • Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4OQY2oizo3rWUlwhmtdpSi
    • Newsletter: https://betweentwocoos.com
    47 min
  • The AI Bubble Has a Due Date. It's 2029 | Paul Kedrosky, SK Ventures

    Paul Kedrosky of SK Ventures says AI capex is driving up to 70 percent of US GDP growth, and most of it is now borrowed. He walks through the money map, the 2029 maturity wall, why AI tokens are a deflationary commodity, and three ways the AI bubble reaches companies that never touch a data center.

    In this episode, Paul and Michael discuss:

    • Why AI capex now accounts for 30 to 70 percent of US GDP growth, and the historical moments that looked the same
    • The money map: how the buildout moved from hyperscaler cash flow to more than 60 percent external financing
    • The 2029 maturity wall, and why it rhymes with the mortgage resets of the financial crisis
    • Tokens as the first hyper-deflationary industrial commodity, and the growth math that follows
    • Why developers are a misleading signal for how the rest of the economy will use AI
    • Circular financing: when one company is customer, supplier, investor, and lender at once
    • Whether anyone is safe building on top of the frontier models, and what quant funds do instead
    • Three things operators should do now: guard your signal, vet your vendors, and stop extrapolating from coders

    About Paul:
    Paul Kedrosky is co-founder and managing partner of SK Ventures and a fellow at MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, where his research focuses on AI and the future of work. A former Wall Street technology equity analyst, he consults with major asset managers, is a regular contributor at CNBC and Bloomberg, and co-hosts a weekly show with former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.

    Resources mentioned:

    • Paul Kedrosky: https://paulkedrosky.com
    • MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy: https://ide.mit.edu
    • National Bureau of Economic Research: https://www.nber.org
    • CoreWeave: https://www.coreweave.com
    • Hudson River Trading: https://www.hudsonrivertrading.com
    • Jane Street: https://www.janestreet.com
    • Stratechery by Ben Thompson: https://stratechery.com

    Connect with Paul:

    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-kedrosky/
    • Newsletter: https://paulkedrosky.com

    Connect with Michael:

    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-koenig514
    • Building Helm: https://helmapp.ai

    Subscribe to Between Two COOs:

    • Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/between-two-coos-with-michael-koenig/id1596195041
    • Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4OQY2oizo3rWUlwhmtdpSi
    • Newsletter: https://betweentwocoos.com
    41 min
  • Lior Eldan, Moburst COO on Reinventing the Marketing Agency Before AI Eats It

    Lior Eldan, co-founder and COO of Moburst, has reinvented what his agency sells three times, from app store optimization to AI products. He explains why replacing people with AI is backwards, why managers have to do the work, and why automating a broken process just gets the AI blamed.

    In this episode, Lior and Michael discuss:

    • Why Moburst has moved off its winning product three times since 2013, and what each move broke
    • Build vs. buy for services: why an acquisition brings a founder, and what the day after actually looks like
    • Managers do the work: the rule that keeps middle management from becoming a layer of measurers
    • Why replacing people with AI is backwards, and what Moburst now requires of every junior hire
    • Forward-deployed: what an embedded team found inside a mortgage company's operations
    • Answer engine optimization and why an LLM reads your whole digital footprint, not your website
    • Fix the process before you automate it, and the cadence underneath a company that keeps reinventing itself

    About Lior:
    Lior Eldan is co-founder and COO of Moburst, the digital marketing agency he started in 2013 with Gilad Bechar after the two met as HR officers in the Israeli army. Moburst began in app store optimization, grew through acquisitions including Uproar and Kitcaster, and now sells AI products alongside its services. Adweek has named it one of the fastest-growing agencies in the world.

    Resources mentioned:

    • Moburst: https://www.moburst.com
    • Kitcaster: https://kitcaster.com
    • HubSpot: https://www.hubspot.com
    • Supercell: https://supercell.com
    • Claude Code: https://claude.com/product/claude-code
    • Tucows: https://tucows.com

    Connect with Lior:

    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lioreldan/

    Connect with Michael:

    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-koenig514
    • Building Helm: https://helmapp.ai

    Subscribe to Between Two COOs:

    • Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/between-two-coos-with-michael-koenig/id1596195041
    • Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4OQY2oizo3rWUlwhmtdpSi
    • Newsletter: https://betweentwocoos.com
    55 min
  • Joe Yaffe, COO at Cowboy Space, on Whether Data Centers in Space Are Cheaper

    Part 2 of 2. Part 1 is here: https://betweentwocoos.com/65

    In part 1, Joe Yaffe explained how an orbital data center works. This time, the question is

    whether it works as a business.

    In this episode, Joe and Michael discuss:

    • Why Cowboy Space measures itself in cost per GPU hour, not cents per kilowatt hour
    • Why a lot of new space companies are run by technologists who aren't asking if it's a business
    • What has to go right to raise the billions this needs beyond the first $365 million
    • Why the perfect rocket engine is designed to sit on the balance point of failure
    • How being your own only customer changes what a failed launch costs you
    • Six-year chip life, and why you stop caring that you can't reach them
    • The seven-year wait for a data center in Northern Virginia
    • Which agencies regulate an orbital data center, including the FDA
    • Why hiring, not physics, sits at the top of his list
    • The December 2028 launch date the whole company runs against

      • About Joe:

      Joe Yaffe is COO and chief legal officer at Cowboy Space, which is building data centers
      that run in orbit. He spent 31 years practicing law in Silicon Valley, fifteen of them at
      Latham & Watkins and the rest at Skadden, where he was managing partner of the Palo Alto
      office. He studied ancient Greek in college.

      Connect with Joe:

      • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephyaffe/

        • Connect with Michael:

        • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-koenig514
        • Building Helm: https://helmapp.ai

          • Subscribe to Between Two COOs:

          • Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/between-two-coos-with-michael-koenig/id1596195041
          • Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4OQY2oizo3rWUlwhmtdpSi
          • Newsletter: https://betweentwocoos.com
            • 37 min
          • Joe Yaffe (Cowboy Space): From Big Law to Orbit, Part 1 of 2

            Part 1 of 2. Part 2 drops later this week.

            Joe Yaffe had climbed as high as the ladder goes. Fifteen years at Latham & Watkins,

            then Skadden, managing partner of the Palo Alto office, 31 years advising founders and
            CEOs. By his own account, his idea of a midlife crisis was moving from one mega law firm
            to another. Then Baiju Bhatt stepped away from Robinhood, Joe asked what was next, and
            the answer was space lasers.

            In this episode, Joe and Michael discuss:

            • Why switching law firms counted as a midlife crisis, and what that says about risk
            • The three traits Joe saw in every successful founder across 31 years of client work
            • The easy button for a lawyer, and why he calls it second grade lawyering
            • One way doors and two way doors, with a real one from Cowboy Space
            • Getting to an undergraduate understanding of rocket science in about a year
            • How data centers in space actually work, explained without an engineering degree
            • Why the second stage of the rocket becomes both the data center and the radiator
            • Why none of it breaks the laws of physics

              • About Joe:

              Joe Yaffe is COO and chief legal officer at Cowboy Space, which is building data centers
              that run in orbit. He spent 31 years practising law in Silicon Valley, fifteen of them at
              Latham & Watkins and the rest at Skadden, where he was managing partner of the Palo Alto
              office. He studied ancient Greek in college.

              Chapters

              00:00 Cold open
              01:11 Introduction
              02:27 Thirty-one years, and a very small midlife crisis
              04:03 Meeting Baiju Bhatt
              05:13 "I thought I would die at my desk"
              05:31 Space lasers
              06:34 "If you do it, I'll come join you"
              07:32 What twenty years beside founders teaches you
              09:13 The eight billion people rule
              11:46 Second grade lawyering
              13:26 Tapping the brakes and hitting the accelerator
              14:33 One way doors and two way doors
              17:14 "Be careful with the rations"
              18:13 Zero to rocket science in a year
              19:45 "I'm the liberal arts guy in the room"
              22:03 Acronyms, and blowing a fastball by you
              23:27 Advice for anyone standing at the fork
              26:37 The best advice he got before he jumped
              29:29 How Cowboy Space works, explained for the rest of us
              31:05 Asimov wrote about this in the 1940s
              35:27 Turning the second stage into the data center
              36:30 The radiator epiphany
              37:50 Cheaper than Earth, or it's a science project
              39:29 Why they're building their own rocket
              43:54 Chips, cooling, and NVIDIA
              45:54 "We're not breaking any laws of physics"
              47:50 Four companies at once
              50:37 Nuclear reactors on the moon

              Resources mentioned:

              • Cowboy Space: https://cowboyspace.com
              • I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, which collects "Reason", the 1941 short story on beaming power
                • from orbit: https://www.amazon.com/dp/055338256X

                Connect with Joe:

                • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephyaffe/

                  • Connect with Michael:

                  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-koenig514
                  • Building Helm: https://helmapp.ai

                    • Subscribe to Between Two COOs:

                    • Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/between-two-coos-with-michael-koenig/id1596195041
                    • Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4OQY2oizo3rWUlwhmtdpSi
                    • Newsletter: https://betweentwocoos.com
                      • 53 min
                    • Riikka Söderlund, Katana COO, on Why AI Won't Know Your Product Exists

                      Riikka Söderlund is the chief operating officer at Katana Cloud Inventory, a Finland-based platform that helps small product businesses run inventory, manufacturing, and multi-channel sales. She and host Michael Koenig discuss how AI search is affecting product discovery, why an out-of-stock product is invisible to an AI chat, and why she thinks marketing is an underused path to the COO seat. Along the way: six-week sprints instead of quarters, why Katana opened its API while SAP closed theirs, and the brand that discovered it had been selling at a loss.

                      • Why marketing is an underrated path to the COO seat, and what narrative building does for an operator that sales training does not
                      • The six-week sprint, why four weeks is too short and eight is too long, and how she bridges the gap between a key result and an actual plan of execution
                      • Product metadata as the new SEO, and why an out-of-stock product does not get surfaced by AI search at all
                      • The Shopify earnings-call number: AI referral traffic to Shopify stores grew 13-fold quarter over quarter
                      • Why Katana opened its API to any AI the customer chooses while SAP closed theirs, and why she frames that as a values choice about who owns inventory data
                      • The brand that did not know its cost of goods sold was negative, and the one that found $40,000 of inventory it had misplaced

                        • Riikka Söderlund is the chief operating officer at Katana Cloud Inventory, where she runs the commercial side of the business. She spent two decades in marketing, starting in Helsinki ad agencies, then a decade in consumer marketing, before joining Katana as VP of marketing and later CMO. She studied communications, and she credits narrative building as the skill that carried across from marketing into operations. Katana serves merchants in over 70 countries, with more than $3 billion in gross merchandise value flowing through the platform.

                        Chapters

                        • 0:00 Cold open
                        • 1:04 Introducing Riikka Söderlund and Katana
                        • 2:12 From Helsinki PR to Vogue and Oprah
                        • 3:55 Why old-era marketing skills became rare
                        • 6:05 What COOs should learn from marketers
                        • 7:24 Storytelling, listening, and internal communication
                        • 10:37 Founder gravitas versus learned operator skill
                        • 11:53 Training to be a COO before the title
                        • 14:15 Running Katana day to day
                        • 15:22 Goal setting and the six-week sprint
                        • 19:16 Physical goods, SAP, and the market gap
                        • 25:01 The golden era of creativity and branding
                        • 30:35 Product metadata is the new SEO
                        • 33:44 AI search and the internet economy
                        • 36:33 Opening the API while SAP closed theirs
                        • 38:06 Training for product management
                        • 42:02 The brand that didn't know it was losing money
                        • 43:43 Harry Potter and the invisible inventory

                          • Mentioned in this episode

                          • Katana Cloud Inventory: https://katanamrp.com
                          • Shopify: https://www.shopify.com
                          • SAP: https://www.sap.com
                          • Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com
                          • Gong: https://www.gong.io
                          • Lovable: https://lovable.dev
                          • Claude Code: https://claude.com/product/claude-code
                          • Cannes Lions: https://www.canneslions.com

                            • Connect with Riikka

                            • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/riikkasoderlund/
                            • Katana Cloud Inventory: https://katanamrp.com

                              • Connect with Michael

                              • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-koenig514
                              • Building Helm: https://helmapp.ai

                                • Subscribe to Between Two COOs

                                • Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/between-two-coos-with-michael-koenig/id1596195041
                                • Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4OQY2oizo3rWUlwhmtdpSi
                                • Newsletter: https://betweentwocoos.com
                                  • 46 min
                                • Rick Marini on the Day-One Speech That Turned Grindr Around

                                  Rick Marini, co-founder of Rails and former COO of Grindr, joins Between Two COOs to explain why he would rather be a great COO than a good CEO. He and host Michael Koenig cover the CFIUS-forced sale that put Grindr in play, the day-one culture reset that ended two and a half years later in a $2 billion New York Stock Exchange debut, the three-months-of-cash pivot that saved Tickle in the dot-com crash, and how he evaluates moats now that AI lets anyone stand up a company in a weekend.

                                  • Why he says he is a good CEO but a great COO, and the honest question behind it: where do you add the most value?
                                  • The vision gap: great CEOs see ten years out, he sees two, and the COO executes
                                  • Buying Grindr for roughly $600 million after CFIUS forced the Chinese owner to sell
                                  • The day-one speech: equity for everyone, transparency, and earning a burned-out team's trust
                                  • Fight or flight at Tickle: the PhD-validated IQ test that turned three months of cash into the fastest-growing site on the internet
                                  • Moats in the AI era: network effects plus a product people will pull out a credit card for

                                    • Rick Marini has founded and operated consumer technology companies for 26 years. He co-founded Tickle in 1999, founded and led BranchOut to 800 million profiles and $49 million raised, and served as COO of Grindr from its 2020 acquisition through its $2 billion NYSE debut. He has been an angel investor in 60 companies, 15 of them unicorns, started Protocol Ventures, the first crypto fund of funds, and is now co-founder of Rails, a crypto perpetuals exchange.

                                    Read more and explore related coverage at betweentwocoos.com/rick-marini-good-ceo-vs-great-coo. (update if slug changes)

                                    Chapters

                                    • 00:00 Good CEO, great COO
                                    • 00:31 Introducing Rick Marini
                                    • 02:00 Where do I add the most value?
                                    • 03:59 The realization and what got better
                                    • 08:11 The $600 million Grindr acquisition
                                    • 11:00 Day one: earning a broken team's trust
                                    • 12:49 The $2 billion IPO callback
                                    • 15:17 CFIUS, TikTok, and forced sales
                                    • 17:37 Tickle and three months of cash
                                    • 21:31 Fight or flight: the IQ test
                                    • 24:23 What repeats: team, TAM, differentiation
                                    • 26:51 Moats in the AI era
                                    • 29:47 Grizzled vets vs rookie founders
                                    • 31:49 Crypto, Rails, and perps
                                    • 34:29 Waymos, AI, and what's next

                                      • Mentioned in this episode

                                      • Grindr
                                      • Rails (confirm link before publish; press coverage cites Rails.xyz but the landing page is sparse)
                                      • Protocol Ventures
                                      • Waymo

                                        • Connect

                                        • Rick Marini on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickmarini (confirm before publish)
                                        • Rick Marini on X: https://x.com/rmarini
                                        • Michael Koenig on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-koenig514
                                        • Building Helm: https://helmapp.ai

                                          • Subscribe to Between Two COOs

                                          • Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/between-two-coos-with-michael-koenig/id1596195041
                                          • Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4OQY2oizo3rWUlwhmtdpSi
                                            • 39 min
                                          • Zapier CEO Wade Foster on Why AI Is a People Problem, Not a Tech Problem

                                            Michael Koenig talks with Wade Foster, co-founder and CEO of Zapier, about running the company for 14 years without a CEO safety net and without ever naming a COO. Wade explains why he thinks hiring a chief operating officer from outside a company is a coin flip, why Zapier put AI transformation inside the chief people officer role instead of naming a dedicated AI executive, and why he believes AI adoption is fundamentally an organizational and people problem rather than a technology problem. The conversation covers Zapier's “code red” response to GPT-4, the pricing decision that traded short-term revenue for long-term customer trust, and what changed in Wade's own leadership style over 14 years in the same seat.

                                            • Why Zapier has never had a COO and why Wade calls external executive hiring a coin flip
                                            • Why AI sits inside the chief people officer's role at Zapier instead of a dedicated AI leader
                                            • The 2023 “code red” triggered by the jump from GPT-3.5 to GPT-4
                                            • How Zapier decides when a workflow needs deterministic software versus AI judgment
                                            • Why Zapier delayed its mid-market and enterprise push, and what that delay cost
                                            • Advice for non-tech companies on building an AI adoption mindset without a hackathon culture

                                              • Wade Foster co-founded Zapier and serves as its CEO. Zapier is a workflow automation platform that connects thousands of software tools and now powers billions of automated actions each month. Under Wade's leadership, Zapier grew to roughly 850 employees and a multi-billion dollar valuation while raising only a small seed round after Y Combinator.

                                              Read the full episode page at Between Two COOs: Wade Foster on why AI adoption is a people problem.

                                              Mentioned in this episode

                                              • Zapier — https://zapier.com
                                              • Acquired podcast — https://www.acquired.fm
                                              • Y Combinator — https://www.ycombinator.com
                                              • Claude Code — https://claude.com/product/claude-code
                                              • Zapier MCP — https://zapier.com/mcp
                                              • EVE Online — https://www.eveonline.com
                                              • The Hard Thing About Hard Things — https://a16z.com/books/the-hard-thing-about-hard-things/
                                              • The High Growth Handbook — https://press.stripe.com/high-growth-handbook
                                                • 51 min
                                              • Zulema Quintans, COO of Noda, on Why Your OKRs Don't Get Done

                                                Zulema Quintans runs operations at an energy company, and she has a clear theory about why goals fail. This is a conversation about making OKRs actually work, and how AI is changing the operator's job.

                                                In this episode, Zulema and Michael discuss:

                                                - Why most OKRs never get done, and the one link that fixes it

                                                - Running OKRs as an operating system, not a quarterly ritual

                                                - Aiming for 70 percent completion, and the Federer mindset behind it

                                                - Being directive without micromanaging

                                                - The $200 billion commercial buildings spend on energy, and how much is wasted

                                                - How Noda connects to legacy buildings and cleans messy data

                                                - Automated demand management, and the knob that quietly saves energy

                                                - Why AI makes this a golden age for operators

                                                - Where the human still has to stay in the loop

                                                 

                                                Chapters

                                                00:00  Cold open: the energy waste problem

                                                01:05  Meet Zulema and Noda

                                                01:45  From Juilliard ballet to COO

                                                03:30  Holding focus and flexibility

                                                06:01  Why OKRs fail, and the 70% rule

                                                08:41  Top-down meets bottom-up OKRs

                                                13:09  Making OKRs the operating system

                                                15:55  Inside Noda: climate tech for buildings

                                                19:19  Turning messy building data usable

                                                20:39  The modular path to automation

                                                22:50  AI cuts onboarding from weeks to hours

                                                24:50  The Buildings IoT acquisition

                                                25:46  AI, the COO role, and human judgment

                                                32:09  The five-year view for buildings

                                                34:42  A warehouse full of sensors

                                                 

                                                About Zulema:

                                                Zulema Quintans is the chief operating officer of Noda, an energy and building intelligence platform for commercial real estate, where she leads product, operations, and customer success. Before Noda she held leadership roles at Arcadia, American Express, and Bain & Company. She began her career as a professional ballet dancer trained at Juilliard.

                                                 

                                                Resources mentioned:

                                                - Roger Federer, 2024 Dartmouth commencement address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqWUuYTcG-o

                                                 

                                                Connect with Zulema:

                                                - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zulema-quintans-36152223/

                                                - Noda: https://noda.ai

                                                 

                                                Connect with Michael:

                                                - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-koenig514

                                                - Building Helm: https://helmapp.ai

                                                 

                                                Subscribe to Between Two COOs:

                                                - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/between-two-coos/id1635533318

                                                - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2NjVgGm6mqLPEbJUvHnHEH

                                                - Newsletter: https://betweentwocoos.com   

                                                - Episode Website: https://betweentwocoos.com/zulema-quintans-noda-ai-okrs-energy

                                                38 min
                                              • Peter Rojas, New Products at Mozilla, on Why Ideas Don't Decide Success

                                                Watch on YouTube.

                                                Peter Rojas has built new things at almost every scale there is, and he planted the seed for this show years ago in an email to Michael.

                                                In this episode, Peter and Michael discuss:

                                                • How building new products inside a big company differs from a startup, and why you have to invest ahead of traction
                                                • Why corporate product development is a harder numbers game than a venture portfolio
                                                • AI, vibe coding, and the Mozilla Pioneers program for widening the top of the funnel
                                                • Why incumbents keep losing the next technology wave
                                                • Why coordination breaks down at scale, and the clarity that fixes it

                                                  • About Peter: Peter Rojas co-founded Gizmodo and Engadget, two publications that changed how people understand technology. He has been an operator and investor across AOL, Meta, and BetaWorks, where he was a founder and VC. Today he leads new product development at Mozilla and runs Mozilla Pioneers.

                                                  00:00 Cold open

                                                  01:46 The email that started the show

                                                  03:33 Startup vs building inside a company

                                                  06:57 The corporate product numbers game

                                                  11:03 Vibe coding and Mozilla Pioneers

                                                  15:13 When a trusted brand is the advantage

                                                  18:04 Why incumbents lose the next wave

                                                  21:58 Meta's metaverse bet vs AI

                                                  25:44 If I were running Meta

                                                  29:02 Was the VR bet a failure

                                                  30:27 Why coordination breaks at scale

                                                  35:07 Fear, focus, and the CEO filter

                                                  38:56 How Mozilla runs on KPIs

                                                  40:30 The founder who hid his idea

                                                  46:33 Where to find Peter

                                                  Resources mentioned:

                                                  • Mozilla Pioneers: https://newproducts.mozilla.org/mozilla-pioneers/
                                                  • WordPress: https://wordpress.org
                                                  • Lovable: https://lovable.dev
                                                  • Replit: https://replit.com
                                                  • Claude Code: https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code
                                                  • Rec Room: https://recroom.com

                                                    • Connect with Peter:

                                                    • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterrojas/

                                                      • Connect with Michael:

                                                      • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-koenig514
                                                      • Building Helm: https://helmapp.ai

                                                        • Subscribe to Between Two COOs:

                                                        • Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/between-two-coos/id1635533318
                                                        • Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2NjVgGm6mqLPEbJUvHnHEH
                                                        • Newsletter: https://betweentwocoos.com
                                                        • Watch on YouTube.
                                                          • 46 min

                                                        About Between Two COO's with Michael Koenig

                                                        From the publisher's feed

                                                        Between Two COOs is hosted by veteran COO Michael Koenig and brings together Chief Operating Officers, executives, and business leaders to share real insights on operations, leadership, scaling, AI,…