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The Tech Trek
By ElevanoTechnology
The Tech Trek episodes
- The relationship between data and engineering teams
In this episode, Che Sharma, Founder & CEO of Eppo, talks about the relationship between data and engineering teams and how both teams can originate impactful experiments.
Key takeaways:
- Data teams are trying to improve decision quality across the org
- How do data quality metrics affect the engineering team?
- Importance of experiments and feedback loops
- Experimentation maturity curve
- Engineering can be a source of experimentation
- Leadership needs to provide clear metrics to help prioritize
- Moving requirements from sales-driven to product-driven
About today’s guest:
Che Sharma is the Founder & CEO of Eppo, a next-gen AB experimentation platform designed to spur entrepreneurial culture. As the 4th data scientist at Airbnb and early data scientist at companies like Webflow, Che has been focused on the maturity curve of growth-stage companies and how data can drive ROI. Che previously led the team that developed Airbnb's knowledge repo and has led data teams focused on production machine learning and instrumentation integrity.
Twitter: @chesharma87
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/chetanvsharma/
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Thank you so much for checking out this episode of The Tech Trek, and we would appreciate it if you would take a minute to rate and review us on your favorite podcast player.
Want to learn more about us? Head over at https://www.elevano.com
Have questions or want to cover specific topics with our future guests?
Please message me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand)
26 min - Empathy-driven process development
In this episode, Ty Sbano, an Information Security executive with over 17 years of experience heavily focused on empowering end users securely, talks about “Empathy-Driven Process Development.” He speaks about driving change and how we are changed by empathy.
Key takeaways:
- What is empathy-driven process development
- Taking yourself out of the equation when changing processes
- How fast do you want to drive change
- Understand the impact of change on people
- The larger the scale of the impact, the more time you might need
- Understanding your change curve and having your champions
- Avoiding thrash by making only a finite number of touches to your process
- Intentional process development
- Thinking about the process, so your successor is set up for success
About today’s guest:
Ty Sbano is an Information Security executive with over 17 years of experience heavily focused on empowering end users securely. Ty currently serves as Vercel’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).
Previously, Ty was the Chief Security & Trust Officer at Sisense. Ty’s career has been focused on developing application and product security programs for Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, LendingClub, and Target. Key areas of knowledge include developing security champions, threat modeling, secure code training, static code analysis, component analysis, dynamic analysis, penetration testing, and red teaming. Outside of being a CISO, Ty is an active angel investor in Silicon Valley CISO Investment Groups (SVCI) and advisor to Cider Security, Nightfall.ai, and Identify Security.
Ty’s security mentality has been concentrated on enabling engineering and product teams to move securely at the speed of the business to make it a competitive advantage. Ty graduated from Penn State University with a B.S. in Information Science & Technology and from Norwich University with a M.S. in Information Assurance. He currently holds a CISSP, CEH, CCSK, and CPT.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tysbano/
Thank you so much for checking out this episode of The Tech Trek, and we would appreciate it if you would take a minute to rate and review us on your favorite podcast player.
Want to learn more about us? Head over at https://www.elevano.com
Have questions or want to cover specific topics with our future guests?
Please message me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand)
28 min - Scaling up your hiring, retention, and management.
In technology, scaling your team is not an easy thing to do! In this episode, Doron Segal, the Co-Founder & CTO at Per Diem, talks about his insights regarding hiring & retention.
Key Takeaways:
- Improving your hiring and retention process.
- Recruiting pitfalls and how to avoid them.
- Hiring junior vs. senior-level employees
- Going after different talent as you scale
- Hiring the right person at the right time
- How employee feedback loops increase employee retention
About today’s guest:
Doron Segal: Co-Founder & CTO at Per Diem (YCW21)
A seasoned, hands-on, technical leader with a track record of building teams and products. He focuses on building organizations and enabling them to get things done. His leadership mantra is Leadership is not wielding authority; it's empowering others. I lead by listening and example.
He served in the Israeli Army as Platoon Commander for four years in a technology combat unit.
He led a platform team at Beats Music (later Apple); was an Engineering manager at OpenTable, and was Director of platform engineering at Saildrone. Currently, Doron is the CTO & co-founder of TryPerDiem, a YC-backed startup.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doronsegal
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Thank you so much for checking out this episode of The Tech Trek, and we would appreciate it if you would take a minute to rate and review us on your favorite podcast player.
Want to learn more about us? Head over at https://www.elevano.com
Have questions or want to cover specific topics with our future guests?
Please message me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand)
24 min - Challenges in hiring for an analytics team
On the show, I speak to Yanyan Wu, the Vice President of Data and Analytics at Verisk. Yanyan shares her strategies, from structuring to scaling an analytics team.
Key Takeaways:
- Challenges in building and scaling an analytics team.
- Dealing with the technology gap
- Getting the right people on your team,
- Roles and responsibilities of a team leader
- Learning metrics that matter to your members.
- Challenges in finding someone technically strong and a great analyst.
- Ways to Identify the future leader in your team and traits that must-haves.
About today’s guest:
As a vice president and data analytics expert, Yanyan Wu develops innovative data analytics strategies and transformed data platforms for big data used in the oil&gas industry. She layout the multi-year product development roadmap and execution to deliver the data and data insights to internal and external clients to enable them to make smart investment decisions/recommendations.
Yanyan’s 15-year career in product management and digital technologies spans the head of data analytics in Halliburton digital solution, Principal digital production manager at GE Digital and Senior production manager at GE Oil&Gas from transforming digital technologies to new product development and its commercialization in financial service and energy businesses. She led the team to help businesses to increase productivity by more than
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wuyanyan/
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Thank you so much for checking out this episode of The Tech Trek, and we would appreciate it if you would take a minute to rate and review us on your favorite podcast player.
Want to learn more about us? Head over at https://www.elevano.com
Have questions or want to cover specific topics with our future guests?
Please message me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand)
28 min - Effectively Onboarding New Engineers
In this episode, Ishmael Samuel, the co-founder and CTO at Paragon, discusses how to effectively onboard new hires. He goes over what should be included in onboarding and thinking about the team's velocity when making a new hire.
Key Takeaways:
- Walk through the onboarding process
- A holistic view of products as a customer
- Importance of filing issues
- Opinionated frameworks and tools
- Integrations as a core value prop
- Understanding a new hire's biggest blocker is key
- Why is it important to ask team members for feedback?
- Building a real relationship with your team members.
- Sprint planning
About today’s guest:
Ishmael Samuel is CTO and co-founder of Paragon, an embedded integration platform that allows SaaS companies to connect their product to their customers’ data and expedite their integration roadmap. Before Paragon, Ishmael founded CTRL LA, a software development agency that built web and mobile apps for companies, including Universal Studios and Uber. Alongside building Paragon, Ishmael advises technical teams and angel invests in startups.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ishmaelsamuel
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Thank you so much for checking out this episode of The Tech Trek, and we would appreciate it if you would take a minute to rate and review us on your favorite podcast player.
Want to learn more about us? Head over at https://www.elevano.com
Have questions or want to cover specific topics with our future guests?
Please message me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand)
32 min - Establishing and growing a security plan
In this episode, I have on Nate Lee, the Chief Information Security Officer at Tradeshift, a B2B SaaS platform specializing in digitizing supply chain financing. He talks about how to grow and establish a security program.
Key takeaways:
- Preparing a security plan for your business.
- Avoid process for the sake of process
- Security program priorities
- Tools that you can use to help - SQL injections, static code analysis, vulnerability management
- When do you make your first security hire
- What you need to look for when hiring your security personnel.
- How to introduce a security person into your program.
- Benefits and value of having a “security champion”
- Dealing with security later will just cost more down the road
About today’s guest:
Nate Lee is currently Chief Information Security Officer at Tradeshift, a B2B SaaS platform specializing in digitizing supply chain financing. With over 25 years in the tech industry, Nate has a wide variety of experience in engineering and management roles at startups, as a consultant, and in the Fortune 50. Nate led at various points platform operations, site reliability engineering, and IT. Subsequently, he started the security program at Tradeshift, building the security team from the ground up with a heavy focus on automation and driving business value through partnerships across internal business units.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nate-lee-2179302/
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Thank you so much for checking out this episode of The Tech Trek, and we would appreciate it if you would take a minute to rate and review us on your favorite podcast player.
Want to learn more about us? Head over at https://www.elevano.com
Have questions or want to cover specific topics with our future guests?
Please message me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand)
28 min - Driving success through experimentation
On this episode, Luis Bruder, the Director of Data Science, Machine Learning, and Advanced Analytics at Foot Locker, talks about managing experiments and how these experiments drive decisions.
Key Takeaways:
- Definition and Classification of experiments
- Moving from experiments to project evaluation
- Who owns the experiment
- Metric evaluation
- Experimentation to Production Life Cycle
- Aligning your team with new experiment opportunities.
- Balancing project and maintenance work
About today’s guest:
Luis Bruder brings over 11 years of experience in Data Science and Analytics, with his most recent work in the marketing and retail industries. His background is in computer engineering, and he holds a master's in business administration. He is passionate about leveraging data science, AI, and Machine Learning to create impactful products and results. He lives in Washington, DC.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lbruder/
Thank you so much for checking out this episode of The Tech Trek, and if you enjoyed this episode, please take a minute and leave a quick rating and review on the Apple podcast app!
Want to learn more about us? Head over at https://www.elevano.com
Have questions or want to cover specific topics with our future guests?
Please message me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand)
22 min - Applying An Engineering Perspective to the Sales Process
Kanat Bektemirov, the CTO at Supplypike, let’s talk about his involvement in sales during the early days and leveraging his engineering expertise to define the sales process.
- Getting to the first million dollars of revenue
- Personalize beyond the basics and automate it
- Reaching out to other experienced founders to get help.
- The idea of doing Personalized landing pages
- Playing the pre-sales roles
- Context switching - managing sales and engineering
- Aligning the Sales, Product, and engineering teams.
- Hiring a Sales SVP and taking a step back from the process
About today’s guest:
Kanat Bektemirov is the CTO of SupplyPike, a 120-person tech company on a mission to make the supply chain easier to navigate for CPGs and retailers.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bektemirov/
Thank you so much for checking out this episode of The Tech Trek, and we would appreciate it if you would take a minute to rate and review us on your favorite podcast player.
Want to learn more about us? Head over at https://www.elevano.com
Have questions or want to cover specific topics with our future guests?
Please message me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand)
26 min - How the ML Product Got Built with Jesus Martinez
Jesus Martinez, Senior Engineering Manager of Machine Learning at Planet, walks us through how the ML product was built at Planet. He also talks about balancing R&D and Delivery Teams in the ML space.
- Challenges in building machine learning products.
- R&D techniques, processes, and challenges.
- Skill set needed from a software engineer.
- New Territories. New People (the hiring process)
- The vision of “Help Life on Earth Using Space”
- R&D spending and monetization
- Balancing Research Development and Delivery
- Importance of communication within the company.
About today’s guest:
Jesus is originally from Sevilla, Spain. He studied physics and then moved to the US to become an astronomer. His research focused on analyzing infrared images from deep space to measure the clustering pattern of galaxies and infer how much dark matter exists around them. After his Ph.D., he moved to San Francisco and transitioned to a career in data science. Today, he leads the applied ML team at Planet, which is a leading company in the Earth-observation space. His team builds core machine vision feeds that transform global streams of images into maps, alerts, and insights.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmartinezmanso/
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Thank you so much for checking out this episode of The Tech Trek, and we would appreciate it if you would take a minute to rate and review us on your favorite podcast player.
Want to learn more about us? Head over at https://www.elevano.com
Have questions or want to cover specific topics with our future guests?
Please message me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand)
26 min - Maturing and scaling an analytics team with Ty Lunsford
On this episode of the Tech Trek, we have Ty Lunsford, Senior Manager at Instacart. Ty discusses the process of maturing analytics org. He provides a first-hand account of how they split their function into two parts ( analytics & business intelligence ) and then reorganize them based on what’s needed for delivery.
Key Takeaways:
- When the intake process isn’t understood by those both internally and externally, it may be time to restructure the team.
- Jira or Trello can help improve the intake process.
- It is important to make sure processes are understood not only internally but also by external stakeholders.
- Creating a vision or mission statement can help address accountability and ownership issues.
- Striking the right balance of ownership and avoiding silos is key.
- Envisioning the team in Venn diagrams can be helpful!
- Even after taking all these steps, it may still be necessary to deliver results.
About today’s guest:
As Senior Manager of Analytics Engineering and Data Product Management at Instacart, Ty Lunsford has been responsible for balancing business needs with technical solutions development. As a result, he's proven to be an effective provider who can deliver services efficiently across different functions within the company. His sales/marketing and business knowledge allow him to deliver effective solutions efficiently.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylunsford/
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Thank you so much for checking out this episode of The Tech Trek, and we would appreciate it if you would take a minute to rate and review us on your favorite podcast player.
Want to learn more about us? Head over at https://www.elevano.com
Have questions or want to cover specific topics with our future guests?
Please message me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand)
27 min
About The Tech Trek
From the publisher's feed
The Tech Trek is a podcast about how founders, operators, and technology leaders build and scale technology companies.
Each episode explores the decisions behind building products, teams, and technical organizations, with conversations spanning engineering, AI, data, product, hiring, leadership, and growth.
Guests share what they are building, what they are learning, and how they are navigating the challenges that come with turning technology into a successful company.