Engineer and Creator Varun Rana, discusses optimising content performance on different channels, being vulnerable in the tech industry and using personal experience to go viral.

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Varun's Links: https://linktr.ee/the_varunrana

Show Notes
00:30 Michigan background
03:15 Struggling in UMichigan CS
06:50 Openly vulnerable sharing 
07:55 Theta Tau as community and delving into other skills
10:15 Original inspiration in making skits 
15:00 Content performance on different platforms 
17:25 Intuition for video performance 
21:10 Finding a niche in a very saturated tech content space 
22:55 Creative process, ideation to uploading 
28:45 Strokify cinematic universe 
30:15 Content evolution 
33:58 Key Habits developed
37:50 Nicest thing someones done for you

Co-Founder of Taro Rahul Pandey, discuss his tech career growth as a Meta Tech lead, sharing his advice on Youtube to 75k+ subscribers and minimizing regret to go all in on Taro.

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Follow Rahul on Linkedin at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpandey1234/
Subscribe to Rahul's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RahulPandeyrkp
Taro - https://www.jointaro.com/

Show Notes
00:30 Stanford vs CalTech
01:45 Exploration at Stanford as a freshman
03:00 Missing out on WhatsApp pre Facebook Acquisition 
05:45 Being a founding engineer at Kosei
07:25 Getting acquired by Pinterest
10:10 Leaving Meta despite being a Tech Lead
12:25 Quitting jobs, but being rejected from YC
13:45 Being sure of Cofounder 
15:30 Knowing for sure on the problem space of Taro
17:40 First few youtube videos as Android tutorials 
20:10 Growth Strategies of Taro 
22:10 Surprises as an Engineer starting a company 
25:00 Key Habits developed
26:50 Memorable inbound/appreciation
28:30 Where will Taro be in 1 years time 

Founder and CEO at Backscoop Amanda Cua, discuss not going to college, how she came to start Backscoop and scaling to 10,000+ subscribers. 

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Follow Amanda on Linkedin at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-cua/
Backscoop - https://www.backscoop.com/

Show Notes
00:30 Growing up in the Philippines 
01:35 Family business pressures 
03:35 Choosing not to go to University/ Gap Years
10:50 Coming across Avion School through a news article 
13:40 Having to prove herself at Avion School 
16:40 Background on leaving Avion School to start Backscoop
20:45 Messaging FB/Linkedin friends for first subscribers 
23:20 Getting inspirations from other newsletters 
26:00 Utilising social channels for growth 
28:00 Being vulnerable on social media 
30:25 Perspective on monetising Backscoop
32:30 Increasing Luck Surface Area 
37:10 Where will Backscoop be in 1 years time

Creator and APMM at Google Lillian Zhang, discuss landing her dream job at Google, balancing that with content creation and figuring out brand negotiations to earn $47K in her first year.

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Follow  Lillian's socials at: https://beacons.ai/lillianzhang

Show Notes
00:45 Growing up in Bay Area 
01:45 Ending up at Cal
03:50 Going through Google BOLD
05:40 Starting an Etsy store in middle school
08:00 Getting into content creation 
09:45 Perspective on creating content 
11:10 Realising on being able to earn with social media  
13:20 Figuring out rates for brand deals 
14:45 Getting featured by news outlets
16:10 Mindset on effort of content vs virality
17:25 Balancing content and a full time job 
18:50 Content creation when similar videos exist 
20:00 How much Cal actually helped this journey 
21:18 What's the nicest thing someone's done
23:00 Key Habits
24:35 What's the aim in 1 years time 

Cofounders of Clearspace, Royce Branning and Oliver Hill, discuss building a company together after only knowing each other for 4 weeks, doing things that don’t scale with  phone checks at social events and turning a no from Y Combinator into a yes.

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Follow Royce on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/rbfasho
Follow Oliver on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/_oliver_hill
Clearspace - https://www.getclearspace.com/

Show Notes
00:45 How did Royce and Oliver meet
02:05 How they come across this screentime problem
03:55 Being part of Founders University to start
05:15 The utility of Y Combinator
07:00  How do two SWEs manage an entire company
08:40 Choosing the breathing screen quotes 
09:45 The story of hosting a phone check in at a YC event
12:30 Best reactions to the check in 
14:40 Different growth strategies
16:50 ProductHunt #1 and not being another 'tech app'
18:45 Differentiating amongst competition
20:45 Key working habits 
22:30 Prioritizing being in person together 
23:10 Clearspace in 1 years time
25:30 Getting rejected by YC but writing back and eventually getting accepted.

Cofounder/CEO of FeatureForm Simba Khadder, discusses the virtual feature store, balancing building open source while catering to enterprise customers and the impact the 80:20 rule has had in propelling his career forward.

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Follow Simba on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simba-k/
Featureform - https://www.featureform.com/

Show Notes
00:35 Leaving dream job at Google for entrepreneurship
05:50 Working with Embeddings at first startup Triton
09:15 Founding story of Featureform 
13:30 What is Featureform
16:50 The Virtual Feature Store 
20:20 Building Opensource but catering to enterprise 
27:30 Pink branding 
31:00 How the 80/20 principle has impact Simba
35:30 Key habits developed  

Engineering Manager at Datadog and creator David Xiang, discusses being one of the first tech youtubers (earning over 4 million views), his book Software Developer Life and reflections on staying technically relevant throughout his over 13 year career.

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Follow David on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dxiang/
Sub to David on Youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/@DaveXiang

Show Notes
00:45 Influence from parents and getting into engineering at CMU
02:30 Competitive breakdancing, 
04:00 Inspiration for first few tech videos (technical explanations)
06:30 Pivoting from Qualcomm (C/C++ roles) into startups
09:13 Cold emailing rap genius and building a web project in a month 
11:10 The transition into a manager position with a deeply technical background 
14:45 Mentorship coaching moments for SWEs
17:30 Vulnerability and transparency - amazon rejection video 
20:10 Compiling his thoughts into the book Software Developer Life 
23:05 Staying relevant in tech, even as a manager 
27:20 Key habits developed 
30:55 What's the nicest thing someone's done for you?

Cofounder/CEO of Locofy AI and my former CPO Honey Mittal, discusses studying in the National University of Singapore on scholarship without even applying, lessons learnt from over 10 years of building and being CPO at 3 previous startups and now raising over $7M for Locofy.

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Follow Honey on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/honeymittal/
Locofy - https://www.locofy.ai/

Show Notes
00:31 Growing up in India, Air Force dreams and a friend applying him for a NUS Scholarship
03:40 Earning $4/hour working at a gas station
04:01 Early Buildings at WeGo
06:15 Building great products but struggling with real monetizable problems 
08:30  Working Nights/Weekends on SportMeNow balancing full time with WeGo
09:30 $30,000 raised leading to 5 years of runway and how the frugal mentality applies to Locofy with $0 marketing
10:40 Meeting Sohaib at WeGo, going over to Homage together and how he knew it was the right match to cofound Locofy
13:55 Burnout in 2021, wanting a 6 month break 
15:05 Avoiding another marketplace idea 
15:45 Ideation of Locofy, automation of front end code
17:15 Every friend wanting to invest on idea, raising $1M in 48 hours 
18:25 Being confident in launching 
19:00 Validation from friends and family
20:00 Everyone wants to build an app, 
20:50 Best developer tools are never sold
22.30 Product of the day, week and month on Product Hunt. Viral wheel starting.
23:15 Why Open Beta versus a closed beta like Figma
25:10 Why keeping it free 
26:10 Keeping an active slack community, reply messages within 2 hours 
29:00 Engineers going from fans to joining the team 
29:30 Long run goal of Locofy community
31:00 Raising $4M+ Seed 2 Funding, emphasis on adding talent, concept of scaling with early stage hires
36:00 Benefits of Angel Investing while day to day building
39:15 Focusing on company behaviour, remembering your why 
41:55 Locofy in 1 year, 1000+ products built with Locofy
 

Creator of Instafest and Head of Product at Drumify, Anshay Saboo discusses going viral in highschool with the Grades App, scaling Instafest to over 100 million views, and navigating numerous offers landing on building out Drumify.

Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Follow Anshay on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/AnshaySaboo
Instafest - https://www.instafest.app/
Drumify  - https://drumify.com/

Show Notes
00:31 Introduction
0:45 Quick fire questions
02:01 Building the Grades App to 200,000 users
05:00 Dealing with the first taste of virality
06:30 College Admissions Process
08:25 Ideation process of Instafest
10:20 Incurring massive server charges 
11:40 Thoughts on kickstarting growth 
13:05 Twitter presence with Instafest 
15:00 Deciding not to put up any ads
17:10 Spotify vs Apple Music API
19:30 Deciding what to work on after Instafest 
23:00 Why Drumify
24:50 Thinking about AI with the music industry 
27.15 Most important habits
29:55 The nicest thing someone has ever done for you 
33.10 Where will Anshay and Drumify be in 1 year time 

Founder/CEO of Carbonlink. Mitchell Morrison discuses his growth as a nontechnical student founder, lessons from raising a seed round and the importance of carbon credits.

Subscribe to Wilson on Youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH59qgZdA_fA5lTlmiQzNBQ
Follow Wilson on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/WilsonLimSet
Follow Mitchell on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/greymoit
Follow Carbonlink: https://twitter.com/carbonlinkio
Carbonlink  - https://www.carbonisbad.com/home
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Show Notes
00:31 Introduction
0:45 Growing up outside of Nashville 
03:40 College Decisions
04:20 Realising consulting/finance wasn't for him
06:40 The origins of the idea of Carbonlink
10:05 Building without being technical 
12:10 Thoughts on hiring at such a early stage 
16:00 Why do carbon offsets matter 
19:20 Mastering pitch mechanics 
22:25 How much raised so far
22:50 Reflections on raising the seed round
25:15 Key habits 
27.15 What is Carbonisbad
30.15 The nicest thing someone's ever done 
32.25 Where will Carbonlink be in 1 years time 
35.20 Closing Remarks