Startup RX
Startup RX
Prassanna Ravishankar and James Leung
We interview founders while they are breaking ground or scaling up. This is an opportunity to discuss their thought process as they determine the timing, growth, and the risks, as they face them. Hosted by James, a Head of Product, and Prass, a Senior Machine Learning Engineer both veterans of seed level start ups
Season 2 EP 1 - Pivot
In this episode we share our experience with pivoting, when, how, and why. We also discuss examples of startups, some at the brink of bankruptcy pivoting into unicorns.
May 21, 2023
59 min
Episode 008 - Premature Scaling
Premature scaling is the number one cost for startup death. In this episode we explore the premature scaling problem decomposed in three arenas - Product, Operations and Engineering References -------------- Forbes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanfurr/2011/09/02/1-cause-of-startup-death-premature-scaling/?sh=3f066b4e1fc9 Premature optimization: https://stackify.com/premature-optimization-evil/ Juicero: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juicero Writing in space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_in_space Feature creep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep Technical Debt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt
Nov 28, 2022
57 min
Episode 007 - Acquisitions
Navigating company acquisitions from an employee point of view, and how to preserve culture and momentum post-acquisition. 
Nov 11, 2022
58 min
Episode 006 - Making the Metaverse work
Advait is a pre-seed founder exploring problems to solve in the Metaverse. Drawing out Advait’s rich experience of being a product focussed person in Amazon and the Mobile premier league, we navigate the content creator space, attention spans and how to fall in love with the problem and the market instead of the product. Find Advait Alai on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/advait-alai-a6789427/ Footnotes/Resources ------------------------ Avatar creation tool : https://joinhallway.com/ Story creating AI: https://www.hiddendoor.co/ Simon Sinek's Golden circle (What, Why, How) : https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en
Oct 30, 2022
2 hr 35 min
Episode 005 - Onboarding
The do's and don'ts of onboarding new employees. We shared best practices from various startups. We also touch on inclusion.
Oct 24, 2022
1 hr 10 min
Episode 004 - warning:dev
Prass and James discuss the red flags in developer interviews, ranging from non-standard work hours to team dynamics to unclear vision. We mirror this episode to episode 001: Red flags [for Product Managers]. ----------- Original blog post: https://cult.honeypot.io/reads/10-developer-interview-red-flags/ Stanford productivity study: https://docs.iza.org/dp8129.pdf An article on role ambiguity: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/role-clarity-vs-ambiguity-work-stress-manuel-pistner/?trk=portfolio_article-card_title Validated learning by the Lean startup: http://theleanstartup.com/ Ode to truth (ending poem):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N66ve8YK7Zw
Oct 16, 2022
1 hr 8 min
Episode 003 - Securing Web 3.0
Abhinit is a Founder and CEO at decision3.ai, an off-chain secure compute layer for decentralised applications. He shares his view on the meaning of trust in distributed systems, the enabling experience of a secure compute layer, and the strategy of monetisation in a decentralised world. Reach out to Abhinit on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhinitambastha/ or via email at [email protected] Footnotes/Resources ------------------------ Decision3: https://decision3.ai/ Lex Fridman's episode with Tony Fidell: https://lexfridman.com/tony-fadell/ The snippet from the poem, "Dance of the universe": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-C2xof7PKc Simon Sinek's Golden circle (What, Why, How) : https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en
Oct 9, 2022
1 hr 11 min
Episode 002 - Deep Seed
Iusef is a pre-seed founder at Antler, an incubator that receives 200 applications per week. He shares his experience with Edtech and how he ended up getting accepted at Antler twice. Find Iusef on Linkedin at linkedin.com/in/iusef
Oct 3, 2022
1 hr
Episode 001 - Red Flags
wiki: Product management is the business process of planning, developing, launching, and managing a product or service. We start our podcast series by directly diving into some red flags.  We discuss the timing of hiring a product manager, the connection of a product manager role with the health of the start up, differences between a product manager and a product owner and many more related topics. We discuss Akash Gupta’s post on the 11 red flags for a product manager job description : https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aagupta_there-are-424156-open-product-manager-jobs-activity-6976393792694235136-FblX. The guru of product management we talked about is Marty Cagan (https://www.linkedin.com/in/cagan). You can find his books on SPVG : https://www.svpg.com/books/ Look out for our next episodes where we dive deeper into more red flags and recipes around engineering and product,
Sep 26, 2022
1 hr 13 min