Develomentor

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Amar Ghose.

Amar Ghose is a Software CEO, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu lover, marketing nerd and compulsive audiobook listener.  He is also a full time digital nomad

For the last 6 years Amar has been running ZenMaid, where he leads an awesome team who help thousands of Maid Services every day.

As a SaaS marketing specialist, Amar also helps software companies to think outside the technical box and reach their customers in creative, and often unorthodox ways.

Amar has been traveling the world full time since 2015. He regularly donates his time to help aspiring nomads make the jump into a location-independent lifestyle. 

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A note from Grant

Joining us today from Bali, Indonesia is Amar Ghose. Amar is a full time digital nomad and the co-founder and CEO of ZenMaid.com, a Software as a Service company targeted at Maid Service owners. 

Amar’s journey to tech CEO is built on an economics and philosophy degree from the University of California, Davis and a number of years working in sales, marketing and account executive roles for the likes of BidMail and UserVoice, as well as starting his own maid service called Fast, Friendly, Spotless. 

In addition to his role as CEO, Amar is a regular advisor to people in the SaaS industry as well as for those wanting to lead the nomad lifestyle.  

-Grant Ingersoll

Additional Resources

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

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Twitter

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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Ruby Shrestha

Reiner Kraft has more than 15+ years of experience leading high-impact technological organizations both large and small, and has spent 20 years in the Silicon Valley. (Master Inventor)

During his 20 years in Silicon Valley, Reiner was one of the most prolific inventors in the area, filing more than 120 patent applications with the US Patent Office. Both IBM Research and Yahoo recognize Reiner as a Master Inventor, and the prestigious MIT Technology Review (TR 100) in 2003 also nominated him as a top innovator under the age of 30. Alongside were other nominees including Larry Page (Google) and Jerry Yang (Yahoo).

Reiner also has a proven track-record of building up and balancing long-term strategic research (Zalando Research) with short-term tactical product requirements. 

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A note from Grant

Reiner Kraft has spent 20+ years working in tech across companies big and small.  During the span of his career, Dr. Reiner Kraft has held down roles like senior software engineer, director of engineering, assistant professor, VP of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer.  

Along his journey, Reiner earned his PhD in Computer Science from the University of California Santa Cruz and he’s also garnered the title of Master Inventor due to his prolific work in inventing new technologies. He filed more than 120 patent applications over his career while working at the likes of IBM, and Yahoo!. 

In 2003, MIT Technology Review named Reiner one of the Top 100 top innovators under 30. In 2016, Dr Kraft left Silicon Valley for his native home in Germany to help scale the fast growing fashion startup Zalando. These days, Dr. Kraft is based in Berlin Germany where he runs an executive coaching business called the Mindful Leader. This business is focused on helping technical leaders deepen their skills and scale their organizations.  

-Grant Ingersoll

Quotes

“If you’re interested in a particular research environment I think it can’t hurt to get a phd. It’s probably a necessity to have it to actually get in. Otherwise you can still work as a research engineer m ore on the practical engineering side. For that, a PhD is not necessary at all.”

“I took a mindfulness based stress reduction class that was offered at Yahoo and it felt really good having more clarity, slow things down a little bit and reflect. Stress levels at that point were also decreasing and it made me more open to new things, new experiences.”

—Reiner Kraft

Additional Resources

Check out Reiner’s article ‘The 12 Mindfulness Leadership Principles’ 

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Connect with Reiner Kraft
LinkedIn

Connect with Grant Ingersoll
LinkedIn
Twitter

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Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Ruby Shrestha

Ruby Shrestha is a People Ops Manager at tech co., a startup seeking to build technology to change the landscape of democracy in America. 

Prior to her journey into the startup world, she worked as an administrator at a summer camp in rural New Hampshire after earning her degree in Engineering Science at the University of Virginia. 

Ruby loves working in a startup environment where she is always kept on her toes and can see the positive impact her work has had even early on in her People Operations career.

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A note from Grant

A key part of building any great company is hiring and retaining people that can not only do the work but add to the company culture. Accomplishing that requires a top notch people operations team that is more than just about selecting your healthcare benefits.  

Today, we are going to check-in with Ruby Shrestha, a people ops manager for a Washington DC based tech startup. After earning her bachelor’s in engineering science from the University of Virginia and two years as a camp administrator, Ruby, has worked her way up the people operations career ladder.

-Grant Ingersoll

Quotes

“I like to think of People Ops as HR’s cuter friend. When I think about People Ops, its all encompassing of the employee experience. So from when you first reach out to someone to apply to your company all the way to their last day. You are not only recruiting but thinking about employee engagement and also employee retention the overall company’s culture.”

“Within people operations there is a significant amount of data analysis you can do to cultivate your company culture. So we use a program called Lattice and it gives us a bunch of different data. But its really up to us to synthesize and use that data in a productive way to improve our company culture.” 

—Ruby Shrestha

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Connect with Ruby Shrestha
LinkedIn

Connect with Grant Ingersoll
LinkedIn
Twitter

Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/develomentor)

Support the show

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Matthew Kelcey

Mat works part time at ThoughtWorks where he is the Principal Consultant for Machine Learning in Australia. He divides the rest of his time between advisory / mentoring work for early stage companies as well as maintaining his small farm. 

Prior to ThoughtWorks, Mat was a senior research engineer in the Google Brain team where he worked across robotics & natural language understanding. Mat has held a mix of roles across his 20 year career ranging from machine learning research to engineering for large scale distributed systems; in both internet scale companies (such as Google & Amazon) as well as startups (such as Distra & Wavii)

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A note from Grant

Mat Kelcey is our first guest to join us from Australia where he resides on his farm near Melbourne. Mat has built a career over the years that has spanned the globe, spanned a number of industries and spanned a number of topics. Over the years, he’s stayed deeply focused on doing technical work, holding down titles like software engineer and senior software engineer. 

Mat has worked in search, machine learning, big data and deep learning for the likes of Sensis in Australia, Wavii, Google, Lonely Planet, Amazon AWS and these days Thought Works. He’s also a prolific blogger and open source contributor who regularly shares his experiments and ideas in machine learning with the world. Please stay tuned as we connect halfway around the world with Mat Kelcey and hear his journey through the tech world.

-Grant Ingersoll

Key Milestones

1. Matt started work on artificial intelligence and machine learning back in the AI winter.  What inspired Matt to get a degree in AI at University?
2. Throughout his career Matt somehow avoided management. Was this intentional?
3. Matt worked specifically on the Google Brain team as a research engineer. What was that experience like?
4. When did Matt have imposter syndrome throughout his career?

Additional Resources

Check out Matt’s Medium articles – https://medium.com/@alyjuma/the-regret-minimization-framework-how-jeff-bezos-made-decisions-4d5a86deaf24

Matt’s personal blog – http://matpalm.com/blog/

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Connect with Matt Kelcey
LinkedIn
Twitter
GitHub
Blog 

Connect with Grant Ingersoll
LinkedIn
Twitter

Support the show

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Carolyn Stransky

Biography

Carolyn Stransky (she/her) is a software developer and journalist based in Berlin, Germany. She’s currently working with the GraphQL Foundation as part of the Google Season of Docs program. Out of the office, she teaches at ReDI School of Digital Integration, freelance writes for outlets like Curve Magazine and maintains an admittedly ridiculous skincare routine. You can find her most places on the Internet @carolstran.

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A note from Grant

Carolyn Stransky is a graduate of Beloit College with a degree in Journalism and Media Studies. She spent the first few years of her career in roles like communications management and technical writing before deciding to go to SPICED Academy, a boot camp focused on full stack development based in Berlin, Germany. 

Since that career change, Carolyn has held down roles in frontend development, software engineering, as well as technical writing. She freelances both as a developer and as a journalist. Over her career, she’s worked for the likes of Contentful, Blacklane, Meeshkan and is now on her own as a freelancer. 

Quotes

“Almost all of the startups I’ve worked for are early stage. So what is a venture capitalist? How do we get our money? What do we need to do to get our next phase of money? How do these phases work? All of these things were things I needed to learn as well as technical vocabulary.”

“I wish I would have realized earlier that programming for many is a new way of thinking, mostly If you’re not used to breaking down problems into logic and putting everything in particular orders. Its a completely new approach to what you may be used to especially if you come from more of a creative field.”

“While I was in my marketing roles I was trying to learn how to code. I would bug our developers and do things like Code Academy. But I hit these blockers and I didn’t really know who to ask. It was hard to figure out on my own. I knew I wanted someone like a teacher who I could bug as much as I want. I chose SPICED because they were full stack java script.”

—Carolyn Stransky

Additional Resources

Carolyn’s writing and portfolio – https://workwithcarolyn.com/

Previous episodes mentioned:
Simon Willison – Data Journalism, The Importance of Side Projects

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Connect with Carolyn Stransky
LinkedIn
Twitter
GitHub

Connect with Grant Ingersoll
LinkedIn
Twitter

Support the show

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Marcello La Rocca.

Marcello La Rocca is a research scientist and a full-stack engineer focused on optimization algorithms, genetic algorithms, machine learning and quantum computing. He has contributed to large-scale web applications at companies like Twitter and Microsoft, has undertaken applied research in both academia and industry. He also authored the Neatsort adaptive sorting algorithm.

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A note from Grant

Joining us from Zurich, Switzerland, our guest today, Marcello La Rocca, has held down a large variety of roles in the software industry over the years, including full stack engineer, data visualization engineer, backend engineer, game programmer, and most recently, applied Research Engineer. 

Marcello has held those roles at companies like Microsoft, SwiftIQ, Twitter and Apple.  Marcello has even taught computer science in high school on two different occasions. In addition to his day job, he is a prolific blogger and the author of Manning Publications “Algorithms and Data Structures in Action”.  

-Grant Ingersoll

Quotes

My main job was creating nice meaningful visualization using javascript. Where there is data we have to figure out ways to present it to the customers where they can understand it very easily or at least get a grasp of how they were doing.” 

“When I moved to twitter I felt it [imposter syndrome] very strongly. I was afraid of asking questions because I thought I would look bad.”

“I feel like discussing things with other engineers is one of the best perks of especially large companies. It’s also one of the ways you can learn better from your mistakes and from other people’s experiences.”

—Marcello La Rocca

Key Milestones

1. What does a Data Visualization engineer do?
2. Marcello is the author of Algorithms and Data Structures in Action by Manning Publications. What’s the book about and who is it for?
3. How will tech and more specifically data visualization engineering change in the next couple of years?
4. Marcello got imposter syndrome when he started at Twitter. How did he deal with this?

Additional Resources

Algorithms and Data Structures in Action – by Marcello La Rocca

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Connect with Mada Seghete
LinkedIn
Twitter

Connect with Grant Ingersoll
LinkedIn
Twitter

Support the show

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Mada Seghete

Biography

Mada leads market development and culture initiatives at Branch and is also one of its co-founders. Branch specializes in deep linking for mobile applications. Mada was born and raised in Romania and she came came to the US to study Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University. She later earned her Masters of Engineering and MBA from Stanford. 

Mada enjoys playing the latest viral mobile game, binge-watching the hottest sci-fi show, and photographing Branch events. Mada regularly speaks about mobile growth at top tech events like Web Summit and SaaStr, and was included in Linkedin’s Next Wave: 150 top professionals in 15 industries all under 35.

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A note from Grant

Mada Seghete is originally from Romania. She did her undergrad in computer engineering and computer science at Cornell University before launching her career as a software engineer at Siemens Medical Solutions.  

After her time at Siemens, Mada returned to school, this time at Stanford to get her master’s in Management Science and Engineering as well as her MBA. From that base of engineering, Mada Seghete pivoted into consulting, business development and product management for the likes of Deloitte and Yola.com. She then ventured out on her own to co-found Kindred Prints.  

These days, Mada is the co-founder and head of marketing at Branch, a company powering mobile deep linking for the likes of Pinterest, Slack, Ticketmaster and Tinder.  In addition to that, Mada is a regular public speaker on growth hacking and mobile, including via her own podcast “How I grew this”. 

Stay tuned as we hear how Mada Seghete growth hacked her way from software engineering to co-founding a company that’s raised over $50 million in venture capital.

-Grant Ingersoll

Additional Resources

Learn more about Branch – https://branch.io/

What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture (book) – by Ben Horowtich 

The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups (book) – by Daniel Coyle

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Connect with Mada Seghete
LinkedIn
Twitter

Connect with Grant Ingersoll
LinkedIn
Twitter

Support the show

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Noah Labhart.

Noah Labhart is the CTO & Co-Founder of Veryable, and the Founder & CEO of Touchtap, a digital solutions studio. A tech veteran himself, Labhart is intimately familiar with the challenges, risks and rewards of introducing new tech into the world.

Tune in to hear about how Noah became a two time tech startup founder. 

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Quotes

“I got into math and started pursuing it but I really started to enjoy my computer science classes. In coding, I loved the creativity and I started building some websites for myself, throwing pictures up of my family and little bios. I learned html, css, javascript, and really liked it.”

“At the time there was an opportunity to work for Alcon Laboratories. I had a lot of friends that worked there. Great company. Takes really good care of their employees. Pretty good flexibility. So I was like ‘I can do my band during the weekends and have a really great job during the week’. And I worked for Alcon for 8 years.”

“As problems needed to be fixed, we brought on more help. We didn’t try to bite off more than we can chew. That’s how Touchtap grew and we’ve done a similar thing with Veryable. We’ve started with uncsontrained models. We’ve built things as we’ve needed them. And instead of building these intricate systems, we’ve built something, responded to market feedback, and then build it in a new way to meet the needs of the market.”

—Noah Labhart

Key Milestones

1. What inspired Noah Labhart to get into tech and to pursuing a comp sci and math degree at Texas A&M?
2. Why did Noah transition into IT management after starting his career in development?
3. Noah was at Alcon Labs when he decided to found his tech startup, TouchTap. How did this happen?
4. How does Noah think about building teams and businesses these days?
5. What is Veryable why did Noah decide to build another tech startup company?
6. Noah also has a successful podcast called Code Story. What is it about? who is it for?
7. From a career perspective, why start and run a podcast?

Additional Resources

Check out Noah’s podcast Code Story – https://codestory.co/

Find out more about Veryable – https://veryableops.com/

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Connect with Noah Labhart
LinkedIn
Github
https://noahlabhart.com/

Connect with Grant Ingersoll
LinkedIn
Twitter

Support the show

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Evan Korth. 

Evan Korth has worn many hats as an active member of NYC’s academic and innovation communities since ’99 — computer science professor, developer, investor, advisor, founder, expert witness, researcher, board member, coach and mentor.

Evan also advises Flybridge Capital and sits on the NYU Innovation Venture Fund’s investment committee. 

Evan’s work in helping his students find opportunities at startups in early 2000’s led him to cofound his first non-profit, HackNY, to help federate the next generation of hackers for the New York City innovation community. 

After helping the Bloomberg administration create NYC’s first two software engineering high schools, Fred Wilson and Evan co-founded CSNYC in order to ensure all 1.1 million NYC public school students have an opportunity to study computer science. In September 2015, Mayor Deblasio announced a $81mm public private partnership with CSNYC to meet its mission within ten years.

Today, Evan serves on the boards of hackNY, CSNYC and GirlsWhoCode.

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Quotes

“When I was offered an opportunity to teach a course in 1999 at NYU I thought, wow, what an opportunity to get over my fear of public speaking. I get to talk about something I know really well so I’d have the confidence to speak about it to undergraduates who wanted that knowledge.”

“We threw the first college hackathon as far as we know in April 2010. Then we started a summer fellowship program where we got the best hackers we could across the country, brought them to New York for the summer, and put them up in NYU dorms. They interned at different startups during the day and we had an educational program for them at night.”

—Evan Korth

Key Milestones

1. Why did Evan choose to get a degree in Accounting?
2. What was it like working as a sports agent?
3. What inspired Evan to leave Bruce Levy after 8 years?
4. How did Evan become a computer science professor?
5. Evan founded two non-profits, HackNY and the NYC Foundation for Computer Science Education. What drew Evan to nonprofits?

Additional Resources

Previous episodes mentioned:
Adam Cheyer – Co-Founder of Siri, Viv Labs, and Change.org #67
Andrew Montalenti – From Morgan Stanley to Founding Parse.ly #92

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Connect with Evan Korth
LinkedIn
https://cs.nyu.edu/~korth/
[email protected]

Connect with Grant Ingersoll
LinkedIn
Twitter

Support the show

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Gianluca Mauro. 

Gianluca Mauro is the founder and lead artificial intelligence coach of the AI Academy and the co-author of Zero to AI, a non-technical hype free guide to prospering in the AI era from Manning Publications. 

Gianluca’s roots lie in energy engineering from his University days, including getting a master’s from Università di Roma Tor Vergata. Since then, he has been in the tech space building apps, freelancing and coaching people in data science and artificial intelligence. 

Stay tuned learn how this Fullbright scholar has gotten past the hype of AI to the reality of working in a hot field in tech.

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Quotes

“The first tip [to write] is just do it. We definitely think that we don’t know how to write, but if you just write the way you speak, usually you end up with pretty good stuff!”

“[Zero to AI] is a book that is geared towards people who have an MBA in business management who really have no experience in computer science. But they want to be a part of this revolution, they want to have a place and want to be a part of the conversation.”

“Writing has some clarity of mind on what you’ve done, and I like to add some story telling to my blog posts. I just started by telling the story of how I started to solve a problem of something related to my field.”

—Gianluca Mauro

Key Milestones

1. What is energy engineering and what drove Gianluca to get a master’s degree in it?
2. When did Gianluca decide to be an artificial intelligence coach?
3. Why did Gianluca also choose to pursue a business degree?
4. What is AI Academy? Who is it for? And what will they learn? 
5. Gianlua co-authored the book, “Zero to AI”. What inspired the book, what is it about and who is the audience?

Additional Resources

Zero to AI (book) – https://www.manning.com/books/zero-to-ai

Check out some of Gianluca’s writing on Medium – https://medium.com/@gianlucahmd

Find out more about AI Academy – https://ai-academy.com/

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

Connect with Gianluca Mauro
LinkedIn
Twitter

Connect with Grant Ingersoll
LinkedIn
Twitter

Support the show