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Engineering Founders

Engineering Founders

By: The Engineering Leadership Community (ELC)
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 The show for engineering leaders making the leap to start their own company! We dive into the stories, pivotal moments and critical insights from former eng leaders turned founders, that helped them take those early leaps to launch their own company! Economics Leadership Management Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Why founders should invest in coaching, communication & leadership mechanisms before you scale w/ James Birchler

    Why founders should invest in coaching, communication & leadership mechanisms before you scale w/ James Birchler
    Aug 14 2025
    Founders often delay leadership coaching until a major crisis hits, leading to significant costs in productivity, team churn, and poor decisions. In this episode, James Birchler (Technical Advisor & Executive Leadership Coach) argues that early coaching is a game-changer for a startup's success. We explore the hidden costs of waiting and the benefits of intentionally installing leadership and communication systems before you scale. James shares specific self-awareness mechanisms, like advisory groups and feedback loops, to help founders design their day and create accountability. You'll also learn practical strategies like the "5-Minute Alignment Loop" for spotting communication breakdowns & for reinforcing clarity. Plus insights on how to "install your leadership OS" so it can scale with your company.ABOUT JAMES BIRCHLERJames Birchler is an executive leadership coach and technical advisor who specializes in helping engineering leaders and founders develop greater self-awareness and build high-performing teams. He combines deep technical expertise with practical leadership development, making him particularly valuable for technical leaders scaling their organizations.As both a founder and engineering leader, James has more than 20 years of experience leading teams at companies ranging from early-stage startups to Amazon, where his current role is Technical Advisor to the VP of Amazon Delivery Routing and Planning. Most recently, he founded NICER, a premium natural personal care company, and Actuate Partners, his executive coaching and technical advisory practice. He also held VP of Engineering roles at companies including Caffeine (backed by Greylock and Andreessen Horowitz), SmugMug (where his team acquired Flickr), and IMVU.At IMVU, James implemented the Lean Startup methodologies alongside Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup and creator of the methodology, literally the first company to apply these principles. His team helped pioneer the DevOps movement by building infrastructure to ship code to production 50 times per day and coining the term "continuous deployment." This experience in systematic experimentation and continuous improvement now informs his coaching approach through frameworks like CAMS (Coaching, Advising, Mentoring, Supporting) and the Think-Do-Learn Loop.James completed his executive coaching certification at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Executive Coaching Institute. His coaching practice focuses on self-awareness, integrity, accountability, and fostering growth mindsets that support continuous learning and high performance. He writes the Continuous Growth newsletter and offers both individual executive coaching and peer learning circles for technical leaders.Through his advisory work with growth-stage startups in the US and Europe, James helps leaders navigate common scaling challenges including hiring and interviewing, implementing development methodologies, establishing operational cadences, and developing other leaders. His approach treats leadership development like product development—with systematic feedback loops, measurable outcomes, and continuous improvement.You can find James at jamesbirchler.com, LinkedIn, and Substack. ToolHive Unlocks the Full Value of MCP & Your AI AgentsSo you’ve invested in AI agents for code generation, but they’re limited to experiments or even stuck on the shelf. To do real, valuable work, those AI agents need access to your data and systems.ToolHive helps you confidently connect the pieces by making it simple and secure for you to use the Model Context Protocol (MCP).ToolHive includes a pre-vetted registry of MCP servers, containerizes every MCP server for consistency and leans on built-in security to keep your secrets safe.Leaders trust ToolHive to put MCP into production and put their AI agents to work.ToolHive is open source, so get started for free at toolhive.dev Join us at ELC Annual 2025ELC Annual is the premier event for engineering leaders. This is our biggest event of the year: 1,000+ CTOs, VPs & Directors in San Francisco @ ELC Annual 2025 for two days of leadership breakthroughs, tactical peer learning & curated connections!🔗 Get your ticket now → https://sfelc.com/annual2025 SHOW NOTES:Why founders should seek coaching earlier rather than waiting for a crisis to occur (2:47)The high stakes of ignoring this critical advice & how this leads to communication & Scaling problems (4:50)The importance of effective communication channels & leadership mechanisms before pressure increases (6:31)How investing a small amount in coaching early on can prevent hundreds of thousands of dollars in future costs (8:07)Frameworks for cultivating self-awareness / leadership blind spots (11:06)James's practice of "designing your day" around a desired identity, not just a list of tasks (12:30)Why designing your day is about intentionality (15:13)How this practice leads to better relationships & opportunities to reflect (17:44)...
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    51 mins
  • Balancing shifting priorities, leveraging your founder network, and navigating cost vs. value w/ Sumeet Vaidya @ Crafting

    Balancing shifting priorities, leveraging your founder network, and navigating cost vs. value w/ Sumeet Vaidya @ Crafting
    Jul 31 2025

    In this episode, we cover some of the most important founder challenges, including engineering management, prioritization / time management principles, analyzing the market, and making the decision to sell to enterprise early on with Sumeet Vaidya, Co-founder & CEO @ Crafting. He unpacks the story behind Crafting & the decision to found it along with how he knew he was the right person to lead this org. Patrick & Sumeet dissect GTM strategies when it comes to enterprise sales, how funnel optimization for sales works, and making business decisions while navigating cost vs. value. We also chat about the importance of forming founder-to-founder connections as you navigate the founder journey – it’s definitely better with others than alone.

    ABOUT SUMEET VAIDYA

    Prior to co-founding Crafting, Sumeet has scaled engineering teams and built products at Meta, Uber, and Discord. He has worked on developer platforms, consumer products, marketplaces, enterprise integrations, and more. He also angel invests and advises startup founders, motivated by helping sharp people solve real problems to build successful businesses.

    Join us at ELC Annual 2025

    ELC Annual is the premier event for engineering leaders. This is our biggest event of the year: 1,000+ CTOs, VPs & Directors in San Francisco @ ELC Annual 2025 for two days of leadership breakthroughs, tactical peer learning & curated connections!

    🔗 Get your ticket now → https://sfelc.com/annual2025

    SHOW NOTES:
    • The origin story behind Crafting & challenges in eng management (2:56)
    • Dissecting Sumeet’s decision to found the company (5:28)
    • Questions & processes for analyzing founder conviction from an investor POV (7:00)
    • How to know if you’re the right person to lead this org (8:45)
    • Analyzing the market / competitors & determining your product’s differentiators (11:34)
    • Go-to-market strategy & enterprise sales (14:07)
    • Optimizing for enterprise sales early on / understanding PMF (16:15)
    • Why you need to leverage your founder network for advice (17:45)
    • Frameworks for determining gaps in the sales funnel (20:55)
    • Exploring happiness and connection (22:31)
    • Sumeet’s perspective on prioritization & time management as a founder (24:45)
    • Balancing cost vs. value in business decisions (27:11)
    • Remote vs. in-person team dynamics for eng & sales (31:00)
    • Hiring the first non-engineer (34:45)
    • Rapid fire questions (38:54)
    LINKS AND RESOURCES
    • https://www.themarginalian.org/

    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/
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    43 mins
  • Early team building and pivoting to competitive advantage as a solo founder w/ Tony Dong @ Propel

    Early team building and pivoting to competitive advantage as a solo founder w/ Tony Dong @ Propel
    Jul 17 2025
    Tony Dong (Founder & CEO @ Propel) shares how he navigated the early days of solo founding, hired eight engineers in a month, and rapidly built early momentum. We explore how he leveraged existing relationships, storytelling, and competitive advantage analysis to pivot Propel’s focus, providing value quickly in your product, and building credibility for early sales. Plus, support systems for early founders, strategies for going broad vs. narrow, and how Tony’s current tech stack / AI tools are accelerating how they build.ABOUT TONY DONGTony is the Founder & CEO of Propel, an AI engineering agent that integrates into your team’s workflows to automate engineering tasks and elevate developer productivity.Before Propel, Tony served as the VP of Engineering at Rippling, where he led the development of the company's Platform and HR products. As a seasoned entrepreneur, Tony was also the founder and CTO of a YC-backed startup and held key engineering roles at Periscope, TellApart, and Twitter.Join us at ELC Annual 2025ELC Annual is the premier event for engineering leaders. This is our biggest event of the year: 1,000+ CTOs, VPs & Directors in San Francisco @ ELC Annual 2025 for two days of leadership breakthroughs, tactical peer learning & curated connections!🔗 Get your ticket now → https://sfelc.com/annual2025SHOW NOTES:Tony’s journey transitioning from eng leader to founder (2:29)Lessons learned from founding Pershop & working @ Rippling (3:47)The origin of Propel & turning frustration into a startup idea (5:58)Recognizing the right moment to pivot your product (7:55)Incorporating competitive advantage analysis into strategic decision making (10:29)Accelerating user research & establishing credibility in your product area (12:32)The process of pivoting / solving highly valuable problems (14:15)Examples of how a product can quickly prove its value to customers (16:35)Strategies for proving value quickly during the early product building stages (17:51)Dynamics of being a solo founder & early team building (19:30)Pitching Propel as a solo founder / building support systems (21:13)How Tony hired a team of eight within one month, using relationships and public storytelling (23:32)How hiring contractors & sharing publicly helped drive early team building (25:19)Frameworks for attracting talent as a competitive advantage (27:44)Assessing hiring candidates: using every available AI tool, real projects & hands-on collaboration (31:09)Tony’s current stack & AI tools enhancing team productivity and innovation (33:49)The impact of AI on early-stage company building (35:39)Tony’s thoughts on capturing a broad market @ Propel (37:03)Understanding today's fundraising landscape (39:00)Rapid fire questions (40:48)LINKS AND RESOURCESUnreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect - Today, every business can choose to be a hospitality business—and we can all transform ordinary transactions into extraordinary experiences. Featuring sparkling stories of his journey through restaurants, with the industry’s most famous players like Daniel Boulud and Danny Meyer, Will Guidara urges us all to find the magic in what we do—for ourselves, the people we work with, and the people we serve.The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket - In this exposé, author Benjamin Lorr pulls back the curtain on this highly secretive industry. Combining deep sourcing and immersive reporting, Lorr leads a wild investigation in which we learn the secrets of Trader Joe's success from Trader Joe himself, why truckers call their job "sharecropping on wheels," what it takes for a product to earn certification labels like "organic" and "fair trade," the struggles entrepreneurs face as they fight for shelf space, including essential tips, tricks, and traps for any new food business, the truth behind the alarming slave trade in the shrimp industry and much more.CAFEC Pour-Over Flower Dripper DEEP 27 - Tony’s favorite coffee dripper!This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/
    Show More Show Less
    46 mins
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