Nithya Ruff is an expert on open source. As the head of AWS’s Open Source Program Office and the Chair of the Linux Foundation, she has a wide view on all things open source.

On this episode of CRAFTED., we discuss:

• Why Open Source AI is so tricky, but also so essential, to define
• How open source needs to evolve for the next generation of developers
• What an Open Source Program Office is — and why companies like AWS have them
• The questions, benefits, and risks that arise when a company is considering using open source technologies
• Why contributing to open source (“giving back”) is not always so selfless: relying on a successful, well-supported open source technology can be very advantageous to companies
• Why you need need to be deliberate when growing an open source project – just let it grow organically is not a great recipe for success today
• How open source draws on so many skills beyond coding, such as community management, marketing, and legal
• How open source is not just for software. Social change, agriculture, and other domains often use open source approaches
• Nithya’s path, and why she loves with open source

Key Moments:

• (02:20) - The state of open source today
• (04:47) - Teaching a new generation the values of open source, increasing diversity
• (07:38) - Open source AI, why we need a definition of it, and why we should insist on it or else live in a “black box” future
• (11:34) - Open source is full of possibilities
• (13:08) - What an OSPO (Open Source Program Office) is and why companies have them
• (16:18) - Common open source questions developers face
• (21:24) - How to balance risk vs. reward when using open source
• (25:21) - Why (most) open source projects should not grow organically, and the value of community management
• (27:13) - Open source is not just for code. Social good, agriculture, and other applications…
• (29:00) - Nithya’s story: how she got into tech and why she fell in love with open source because it draws on so many skills, beyond just coding
• (33:21) - Outro

CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run and verify applications anywhere – without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications.

CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg and team can help you take a new product from zero to one... and beyond. We specialize in early stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation. Learn more at modernproductminds.com

Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 crafted.fm

Mario Rodriguez is GitHub's Chief Product Officer. And he believes that Copilot and other AI advances will unleash a wave of creativity and enable a billion people to be software developers.

Mario says the definition of “software developer” will have to change as non-professionals discover that they can make apps, too. And the way they do so will look very different: “It's gonna feel a lot more like how kids play. ​​It's like you create something you play with and you're like, Nope. Then you instruct it again… It’s going to be real time development.”

On this episode of CRAFTED., Mario gets us excited about the future of software development!

Takeaways:

• Mario says we’ve lost some of the creativity of the early days of the web; AI is helping bring it back
• With AI, it’s getting much easier (for non-professional developers) to build “micro experiences” and other ephemeral apps that just serve one purpose.
• The craft of product management must change with AI, because building with non-deterministic AI is so tricky to get right
• When building with AI, run your scenario multiple times. Test your prompts repeatedly. You will get different responses each time. Are they all helpful to your user?
• Invest in offline evaluation when building with AI or else you’ll have lots of problems later.
• Psychology is key. How will users react if AI tells them something subjective? Mario has seen Copilot users get upset, e.g. “Nope, you're completely wrong. I know what I'm doing. You are a machine. I am not gonna ask you to ever review my code.”
• Don’t optimize for just one metric. Mario says you should have three or so that you evaluate in concert.
• Product sense matters!
• Prompt engineering is real. How you can better prompt your Copilot
• Keeping developers in flow is critical.
• How much time do developers spend on “sense-making” vs. coding? How much time do they spend waiting for reviews? These are some of the questions GitHub asks when evaluating developer productivity.
• Mario came to the US from Cuba when he was in high school. His father is an electrical engineer and his mother is a teacher. Both influence him greatly.
• Mario founded a charter school in rural North Carolina because “everyone should have access to amazing education.”
• System thinking and evaluating things from first principles are key skills for the future.

CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run and verify applications anywhere – without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications.

CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg and team can help you take a new product from zero to one... and beyond. We specialize in early stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation.

Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 crafted.fm

Key Moments

• (00:00) - Intro
• (02:32) - 1B Developers!
• (05:53) - Ephemeral apps and how they will unleash creativity and learning
• (06:21) - The time Dan programmed his TI-83 calculator to play blackjack
• (07:32) - Why “natural language is going to take center stage” as software development evolves
• (10:30) - Why building with Generative AI is completely different
• (13:50) - Why humans don’t always respond well to suggestions from CoPilot
• (15:36) - Why offline evaluation is so important when building with AI
• (19:14) - Building Copilot: balancing speed with value
• (21:01) - Why “product sense” matter so much
• (21:54) - Tips for prompting CoPilot effectively
• (27:02) - Building Copilot: the early days
• (31:47) - How GitHub measures developer happiness
• (34:23) - Growing up in Cuba and developing a love for teaching (his mom’s profession) and engineering (his dad’s)
• (38:21) - Why Mario founded a school in rural North Carolina
• (40:34) - Systems thinking, and other skills that Mario hopes today’s kids will learn
• (43:19) - Outro

Henrik Werdelin is on an AI-fueled mission to launch thousands of startups a year.

He is the founder of BARK, which went public, and prehype, a studio that has incubated several unicorns. With Audos, Henrik is building AI agents that can coach founders how he would — if he had infinite time to do so.

And Audos is not just for the cliche founder looking to launch a unicorn… It’s for entrepreneurs of all stripes. With AI making things easier, Henrik expects to see lots more “DonkeyCorns,” i.e. highly profitable businesses operated by just one or two people.

“DonkeyCorns party like unicorns, but they grind like mules.”

Check out this episode for lots of practical tips for how you can get more out of AI. Plus, we’ll peer into the weird future we’re building.

Takeaways from this episode:

• AI enables new businesses to be created, launched, and tested very quickly. Henrik shares how Audos uses AI to help founders focus on their customers, launch, and get customers
• Henrik talks to his AI agents like they’re people: He gives them names and backstories. By doing so, he finds he has a better partner than a bot or Google search would be.
• The more creative you are with prompts, the better the AI will be. e.g., Ask for “ten ideas that will definitely get me fired”
• “Customer-founder fit” is the most important ingredient to Henrik
• Use “signal mining” to prove there is real demand for your product
• “The swipe” proves there is real intent for your product, i.e. get people to pay for it, even if you haven’t built it yet.
• BARK succeeded (it’s gone public) by following its mission (be “Disney for dogs”) not by following its utility (boxes of stuff for pets)
• “Relationship capital” and “humanity” will be more important, as AI continues to excel at technical jobs.
• Take AI seriously right now. And Henrik says senior leaders need to be using it themselves
• It’s weird out there: We discuss the uncanny valley of talking to AI agents (including those that impersonate your dead spouse)
• Rock and roll – Henrik tells the story of his career break: As an intern, he pulled an on-air stunt at MTV that he was sure would get him fired, but instead got him a huge promotion.

Henrik is the author of The Acorn Method: How Companies Get Growing Again. And he’s writing a new book, Me, My Customer, and AI. He also co-hosts the podcast Beyond the Prompt, which features the interesting, weird, and uncanny-valley ways people are using AI in their day-to-day lives, as well as practical tips for how you can go beyond “beginner mode” in your own use of AI.

CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run and verify applications anywhere – without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications.

CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg and team can help you take a new product from zero to one... and beyond. We specialize in early-stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation.

Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 crafted.fm

Key Moments

• (00:00) - Intro
• (02:56) - Henrik’s method for launching startups
• (04:08) - Why “customer-founder fit” is the first thing he looks for and how it manifested at BARK
• (06:43) - How to use “signal mining” to prove there is real demand for your product
• (08:42) - Launching BARK Air, “a totally real airline for dogs”
• (12:28) - Launching Audos and using AI to launch thousands of startups a year
• (18:07) - “DonkeyCorns!” Why we will see more highly profitable companies run by just one or two people
• (22:32) - How Henrik uses AI, why he personifies his agents, and the creative prompts he uses
• (28:52) - The stunt that nearly got Henrik fired at MTV, but instead was his career break
• (32:02) - Why big companies need to take AI seriously right now
• (35:29) - How Henrik advises entrepreneurs looking for their next play
• (38:14) - “Pursue interestingness”
• (39:26) - The uncanny valley of AI embodying people
• (40:52) - Outro

Sports, and the way we experience them, is changing. And AI, 5G, 3D, and all the other buzzy acronyms are why. Behshad Behzadi is the CTO and Chief AI Officer of Sportradar and on this episode of CRAFTED., we explore ways sports and technology are intersecting in novel, weird, and amazing ways.

Sportradar creates immersive experiences and data products for sports fans, players, leagues, and bettors.

Behshad joined after 17 years at Google where he co-founded Google Assistant, Google Lens and more. He's been building with AI and voice for way longer than most and has lots of practical advice on how to get the most out of AI.

Takeaways from this episode:

• AI enables incredibly precise levels of personalization — and that’s coming to a sports experience near you
• “GenAI is like a hammer…” but don’t use it like one. Traditional coding is often more effective, and you may want a mix of GenAI and old school code for different parts of the same problem
• You don’t always need the latest greatest GenAI models – save costs by using smaller models when you can
• To build moats, look to your data and customer relationships; less so to your GenAI models
• When adopting GenAI, corporations need good governance and oversight
• Google Assistant, which Behshad helped launch, promised too many things in its earliest versions, leading to user confusion
• Ignore the competition and focus on user needs (not easy when there is a race to dominate a market, as there was with the rise of Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa)
• Behshad says the “ultimate assistant” is coming within the next 20 years
• Behshad says AI will help cure many diseases in the next 20 years

Key Moments:

• (02:42) - Why this (AI) moment is so exciting in sports and beyond
• (04:04) - Personalizing the fan experience
• (06:09) - How GenAI can give you a competitive advantage (and where it won’t)
• (08:05) - How companies can succeed with GenAI, and pitfalls to avoid
• (10:48) - When to use GenAI and when to use old school coding
• (11:59) - midroll
• (13:10) - Adopting GenAI internally for writing code and more
• (16:06) - Building Google Assistant and early AI + voice products
• (18:09) - Why you should ignore the competition, and other hard moments from scaling Google Assistant
• (20:58) - Why Behshad believes “ultimate assistant” will soon be reality and many diseases will be cured thanks to the rise of AI
• (22:32) - Outro

CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run and verify applications anywhere – without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications.

CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg and team can help you take a new product from zero to one... and beyond. We specialize in early stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation. Learn more at modernproductminds.com

Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 crafted.fm

Jeff Birkeland is the SVP of Product and Platform at Included Health, a company that aims to be the app on your phone that you first think of when you have a healthcare need.

On this episode of CRAFTED., we explore why “the integration itself is the innovation.”

Included Health has more than 2,000 employees across both technology and clinical care, and its services are used by many top companies and their employees. The goal: create an integrated experience that brings it all together… from insurance to diet to doctors to drugs and more…

The disjointed nature of healthcare is something Jeff has experienced personally. Such as when he asked his surgeon about food: “ He told me directly like, ‘Hey, the dietician stuff is not my thing…’ Our challenge at Included health is how do we make those connections?”

To make those connections, Jeff relies on skills he learned before he got into product: He used to make documentaries. We'll hear how Jeff applies this power of narrative at Included Health and at Headspace, where he used to lead the consumer product team.

Takeaways from this episode:

• Often, the “integration itself is the innovation.”
• Consider the “in-between” times: What is your user doing before and after they use your product? What should they do?
• Personalization: How small product details for you add up to a great product experience
• GenAI: How to build and test new AI-powered experiences
• Speed matters: the quicker you make something, the more your user will want to do it (an old lesson from Google, that also applies at Included and many more things)

Key Moments:

• (02:35) - “Like a movie” — How Jeff applies his storytelling skills to user experience
• (03:58) - Consider the “in-between moments” – What is your user doing before and after they use your app? And how Jeff applied this thinking at Headspace
• (05:42) - “The dietician stuff is not my thing,” said Jeff’s surgeon. Included Health is trying to prevent its members from that sort of disjointed experience
• (08:12) - Lessons from leading the consumer product team at Headspace
• (11:10) - About Included Health and what is surprising Jeff about healthcare innovation
• (14:34) - Personalization: How Included Health is creating personalized experiences to serve members better
• (18:30) - AI and product development: experimenting with using AI to answer members’ questions about their insurance coverage
• (21:49) - Evaluating the AI product and considering whether it’s ready for a wider roll out
• (23:38) - Outro

CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run and verify applications anywhere – without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications.

CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg and team can help you take a new product from zero to one... and beyond. We specialize in early stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation.

Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 crafted.fm

April Dunford is an expert at product positioning. She’s advised hundreds of B2B companies on how they can make their products Obviously Awesome — that’s also the title of her bestselling book on positioning.

On this episode of CRAFTED., April shares tips on how you can make your product standout and how you can drive more sales — that’s the focus of her latest book, Sales Pitch.

April says great positioning starts when you truly understand the answer to this question: “If you didn't exist, what would a customer do?”

And the answer may surprise you: “We lose half of our deals in B2B to ‘do nothing!’”

Do nothing – the status quo – is a fierce competitor and April has identified ways to help customers gain the confidence they need to make a scary purchase decision (e.g. buying a new CRM). Key here: don’t sell to your customer; help them buy.

April is fun and has a knack for sharing colorful anecdotes and analogies that will stick with you. e.g. Tune in to find out what buying a toilet has to do with B2B SaaS.

Takeaways from this episode:

• Positioning defines how your product is the best in the world at delivering something to a defined group of people
• Great positioning starts with understanding the competition. Not what you think the competition is, but what your customers actually evaluate you against. e.g. Is your product cake (dessert) or a muffin (breakfast)? They’re both made of bread and pretty similar, but they’ve got totally different competitors.
• Startups often have great positioning at the outset, but then it slips over time as new competitors copy what you do and your uniqueness gets lost. You need to pay attention to your positioning as the market changes.
• Don’t sell! Help your customers buy. Don’t assume they know how to! Imagine you’re selling a CRM… When was the last time your customer bought one? Ten years ago? If ever. Help them contextualize your product among the others out there.
• Lead with business outcomes! Not features.

Key Moments:

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (02:20) - - Working with founders, being "the positioning expert", and why positioning is so tricky to get right
• (05:22) - - How to make your product "Obviously Awesome"
• (07:18) - - The five elements of great positioning
• (15:59) - - Why "do nothing" is your strongest competitor: 50% of B2B deals are lost to "do nothing"
• (17:43) - - Don't sell: Rather, "help your customers buy" (and what buying a toilet has to do with this)
• (29:50) - - April positions herself: How she grew her personal brand and narrowed in on her solopreneur offering
• (33:16) - - Outro

CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run and verify applications anywhere – without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications.

CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg and team can help you take a new product from zero to one... and beyond. We specialize in early stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation.

Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 crafted.fm

Making media is hard. Distributing it to the right audience even more so. GenAI can help.

Matt Monahan is the president of Arc XP at the Washington Post. On this episode, we're digging into the core technology of any media company: the content management system (CMS), why they’re so hard to build right and how new GenAI tools can reduce the toil required for journalists to get their stories to the right audience.

Arc XP is not only the CMS used by the Washington Post, but it’s also used by many other publishers, broadcasters, and companies with stories to tell. Matt shares more on the challenge of commercializing and white-listing an internal tool for others to use. It’s a tantalizing idea – turn that cost center into a profit center! — but it’s not for the faint of heart.

Plus, lessons from Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, including how the Post uses key Amazon practices, such as the “six page memo” and “one- and two-way doors.”

Key Moments:

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (02:25) - From print to digital: hard product & organizational changes
• (04:17) - Why the CMS is where it all comes together
• (06:27) - Commercializing an internal tool: selling Arc XP to other publishers
• (10:07) - AWS and the impact of Jeff Bezos on the Washington Post
• (11:30) - The famous six-page memo and how the Post benefits from it
• (14:06) - GenAI: New features Matt is building to reduce toil for journalists
• (20:45) - How to pick the right model and fine tune it
• (23:24) - Matt’s a pilot! What flying has taught him about running a business
• (24:33) - Being nimble: Why there are more “one way doors” than you think
• (26:07) - Outro

CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run and verify applications anywhere – without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications.

CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg and team can help you take a new product from zero to one... and beyond. We specialize in early stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation. Learn more at modernproductminds.com

Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 crafted.fm

Dr. Kristen DiCerbo is Khan Academy’s Chief Learning Officer, where she sets the company's product, teaching, and learning strategy — with AI at the forefront.

Khanmigo is amazing. It’s the GenAI-powered product from Khan Academy that helps students learn and teachers teach — and could revolutionize education.

Khan Academy is used by 12 million students a month! And they’ve been an early adopter of GenAI.

Khanmigo coaches students in math and English, helps teachers prepare lesson plans, enables parents to get help as they help their children with their homework, and much more…

On this episode of CRAFTED., Kristen shares how they build with Generative AI — and how you can learn from their experiences to build your own AI experiences.

We dig into how Khan Academy:

• Builds with GenAI’s unpredictability in mind
• Helps GenAI get good at math (and also built a UX that masks the ways it is bad at it)
• Gave Khanmigo an “inner monologue” that helps it slow down and better tutor students
• Built a “prompt playground” where they can evaluate various prompts
• Built a “prompt library” where they can keep track of prompts
• Employ fine-tuning, red teaming, hackathons, and more…

Sal Khan’s new book is entitled “Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing)” – On this episode we explore how and why!

***

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (02:04) - Education + technology: Kristen early experiences
• (05:10) - Khan Academy primer: 12M students a month!
• (07:36) - Getting early access to GPT4
• (09:02) - GenAI: early experiments with tutoring
• (11:40) - GenAI is bad at math! How Khan Academy grappled with this
• (17:02) - Building an AI-powered writing tutor
• (21:09) - How AI can free teachers from grading homework and help students learn more quickly
• (22:40) - Prompt chaining: why you need to break up your prompts to get good results
• (24:08) - Preventing AI-powered plagiarism
• (27:50) - The role of teacher in an AI world
• (31:46) - Outro

***

CRAFTED. is brought to you in partnership with Docker, which helps developers build, share, run and verify applications anywhere – without environment confirmation or management. More than 20 million developers worldwide use Docker's suite of development tools, services and automations to accelerate the delivery of secure applications.

CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds, where CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg and team can help you take a new product from zero to one... and beyond. We specialize in early stage product discovery, growth, and experimentation. Learn more at modernproductminds.com

Subscribe to CRAFTED., follow the show, and sign up for the newsletter 👉 crafted.fm