Arya Asemanfar, Co-Founder @ Runway, joins us to share how he transitioned from eng leader to co-founder & strategies for both pre & and post-product market fit! We also cover how to determine if you and your potential co-founder are a good match, core principles & primitives that inform Runway’s product strategy, why you should pay attention to how a product makes users feel, strategies for transitioning with ease throughout your org’s evolutions, and implementing learning loops in your org.

ABOUT ARYA ASEMANFAR

Arya is co-founder and CTO of Runway, a modern, beautiful product funded by a16z to help business and finance leaders truly understand and collaborate together for the first time. Prior to Runway, Arya was Head of Product at Lightstep, Tech Lead at Mixpanel, and was one of 3 Principal Engineers at Twitter where he led engineering efforts on the main Timeline product.

"I discovered this book, The Extended Mind, and this concept of offloading. She describes it as being able to take your thoughts or your ideas and offload them out of your head onto something like paper or a whiteboard. What that does is it actually reduces the cognitive load that you have as a person solving a problem or doing some work.

You offload it onto the products or onto the too and it actually frees your mind to do more. It can be faster, it can come up with new ideas, it can make more connections. The tool or the product can be an extension of your mind and so I was like, ‘Hey Siqi, you should listen to this and see if this is what you meant.’ 

And it was like a light bulb moment. ‘Yes, this is it!’”

- Arya Asemanfar   

ABOUT RUNWAY

Business financials got stuck in the 15th century so Runway is showing them today’s computers 🖥- Runway is a SaaS product that helps you and your team understand your business so you can make better decisions together. Unlike other financial software, Runway is designed to be a consumer-grade product for normal people who aren't accountants, and is fast, intuitive, and social.

Runway reinvents how business financials are presented through modern design and engineering. By bringing clarity, power, and speed to financial data, they help every team become more aligned on the entire business so they can collaborate to make better decisions, faster.

Join us for one of our in-person community events!

That's right! We're hosting in-person community events in San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, and Chicago! Break out of your comfort zone and join us in a casual environment to connect, problem-solve, and support each other in our engineering leadership journeys.

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Reach out to Tim at [email protected] and let's bring ELC to you - and make it happen!

To get involved email our Head of Community Tim at [email protected]SHOW NOTES:

• Arya’s background & the early days at Runway (2:24)
• How Arya & Siqi reconnected to co-found Runway (5:18)
• Determining if you’re a good match as co-founders (6:37)
• What made hiring in the early stages of Runway easy (8:38)
• Why Arya made the jump from eng leader @ LightStep to co-founder (9:52)
• Core principles & primitives that inform Runway’s product strategy (12:01)
• Pay attention to how a product makes you feel (15:14)
• Examples of how Runway imbues feeling into its product (18:23)
• Tips for instilling this paradigm in your team in the early product-building phase (20:03)
• Lessons learned throughout Runway’s product evolutions (21:42)
• How working/building the Runway product has evolved over time (25:32)
• What Arya’s learning process between Runway’s iterations looked like (27:48)
• Arya’s strategies for building out your engineering org (30:43)
• Frameworks for determining pre- & post-product market fit (32:46)
• Runway’s current learning loops (34:40)
• Rapid fire questions (37:16)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• First Round Capital Co-founder Questionnaire - 50 questions spanning across six categories designed to test compatibility with a potential co-founder.
• The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain - Anne Murphy Paul’s book that reveals how we can tap the intelligence that exists beyond our brains—in our bodies, our surroundings, and our relationships.
• Ezra Klein Interviews Anne Murphy Paul on The Extended Mind
• No Stupid Questions - Stephen J. Dubner ****and research psychologist Angela Duckworth really like to ask people questions, and came to believe there’s no such thing as a stupid one. So they made a podcast where they can ask each other as many “stupid questions” as they want.
• The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly And Others Don’t - Julia Galef’s book that shows that what makes scouts better at getting things right isn’t that they’re smarter or more knowledgeable than everyone else. It’s a handful of emotional skills, habits, and ways of looking at the world that anyone can learn.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

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/