Co-founder of Brainhub, Matt describes himself as a “serial entrepreneur”. Throughout his career, Matt has developed several startups in Germany, wearing many hats- from a marketer to an IT Engineer and customer support specialist. As a host of the Better Tech Leadership podcast, Matt talks about growing successful businesses and the challenges of being a startup founder and investor.
Julian Tross is an experienced executive leader with a diverse background in product development, business development, finance, strategy, and consulting, having worked at renowned companies like EGYM, Rocket Internet, Siemens, Bertelsmann, and HSBC, with a track record in various global locations, overseeing teams ranging from 5 to 20 employees.
In the 100th episode of the podcast, Matt and James Trunk explore the transition from agile methodologies to Basecamp’s Shape Up framework in product development, emphasizing the 5%, 30% feedback rule for enhanced collaboration and psychological safety. They highlight the importance of job stories, retrospective reviews, and the “stabilize” phase in managing technical debt, especially within regulated industries like banking. The discussion also contrasts Fintech’s regulatory demands with startup practices, while reflecting on maintaining company culture and the value of open-source community engagement.
In this episode, Matt and Luke Rotta explore the Fintech industry’s regulatory challenges and their impact on adopting modern software practices like DevOps, highlighting Luke’s success in implementing automation to enhance safety and efficiency. Luke also shares his experience in transforming a traditional support team into a site reliability engineering (SRE) team, emphasizing strategies like clear mission establishment, skill evaluation, and strong communication. The discussion further touches on leveraging AI tools to reduce administrative tasks and improve knowledge acquisition.
In this episode, Matt interviews Ady Levy about managing tech teams through uncertainty, leveraging skills from Ady’s military background, and the importance of data-driven approaches to resolve team disagreements. The episode also explores emotional management challenges, the thoughtful use of AI, and Ady’s recommended readings for balancing innovation and personal fulfillment.
In this episode, Leszek interviews Oleksandr Taran, CTO of Frienton, who delves into his career journey from a software engineer to a startup co-founder and CTO. Taran emphasizes leveraging his math and computer science background in product development and highlights his current mission to help startups streamline business and financial administration. Oleksandr discusses the challenges of communicating complex technical concepts to business professionals, stressing the importance of translating these ideas into accessible language through analogies and clear explanations.