Getting2alpha

Karl Kapp is a influential leader in the learning and development space. He wears many hats: a professor of Instructional Technology Professor at Bloomsburg University, author of 5 books, and a popular speaker and consultant on learning technology and gamification. Karl is passionate about making learning effective and compelling, and knows a thing or two about how to achieve those goals - and what gets in the way. Join us and discover why this multi-talented educator embraces failure and challenge as the tools that prepare students for world success.

Lee LeFever and his wife Saachi pioneered a form of visual communication called “explainer videos.” They run Common Craft, an animated video production company - and a training spinoff, the Explainer Academy, that empowers anyone to create better, clearer explanations. Lee has a refreshingly clear way of looking at the choices a small business owner has to make when things start to take off. Join us and learn more about how Lee transitioned his successful business to support the life of his dreams.

Jeremy Liew is a managing partner at Lightspeed, a global investment firm. Jeremy specializes in the consumer segement - including investments in Snapchat and The Honest Company. Join us and discover what a top-tier SIlicon Valley VC thinks about the current state of consumer tech - and what’s coming next.

When I first met Merci Victoria Grace, she was fresh out of school and leading a wildly innovative game project. Fast-forward to today, she’s a talented & accomplished product manager, most recently leading growth at Slack. Her blend of creativity, strategy & development chops gives her a great foundation for leading teams. Join us and discover how a fast-rising product leader integrates vision with collaborative leadership.

Gina Bianchini is a visionary entrepreneur with deep experience in social software and online communities. Gina co-founded the pioneering social platform Ning, and is taking what she learned from that experience into her current project, Mighty Networks - a place for deep interest communities to flourish. Gina’s passion and brilliance shine through in everything she does. I’m always excited to hear her take on the evolution and purpose of online communities. Listen in and learn from Gina’s decades of experience bringing innovative ideas to life.

Jeff Atwood is the co-founder of Stack Overflow - he played a major role in bringing that influential Q&A network to life. Jeff now brings his community-building prowess to Discourse, a fast-growing community SAAS company. Jeff knows all about the fear, discomfort and iterative experiments that pave the way to success in the digital world. He's one of my favorite people to talk with - listen in and enjoy his stories and insights.

If you want to get a feeling for Josh Elman’s career, just trace the history of modern social networks. Josh held increasingly senoir roles at RealNetworks, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Now he’s now supporting the next generation of breakthrough entrepreneurs at Greylock Ventures. In his VC role, Josh sees a lot of pitches -- and he’s got a keen eye for the tricky balance that successful entrepreneurs need to strike: Listen in and take a journey through the recent past and exciting future of networked social experiences.

Steve Vassallo trained as a mechanical engineer, studied design thinking at Stanford, and worked at IDEO as a award-winning product designer. Now he’s an early-stage investor at Foundation Capital, where he helps founders bring world-changing ideas to life. If you’re into great design, you’ll love Steve’s new book, The Way to Design - where he shares his passion for the intersection of user experience and systems thinking. Listen in and learn how Steve’s design sensibilities inform his investing choices and inspire his knowledge-sharing.

Tim Chang is a polymath, a longtime Burner, an accomplished musician, and a forward-looking VC who invests in the positive side of technology. As Managing Director of Mayfield, Tim blends his background in engineering and business development with a customer-first approach to supporting breakthrough products and services. I’ve worked with Tim several times -- and I’m always inspired by our interactions. Listen in and get a taste of Tim’s mind-expanding ideas about how to create deeply engaging experiences.

Tony Ulwick, is one of the pioneers who brought us the jobs-to-be-done approach to product innovation. Tony’s breakthrough idea was to uncover and leverage latent customer needs - something he calls outcome-driven innovation. In his new book, "Jobs to be Done,” Tony shares his deep experience helping traditional companies disrupt themselves and innovate successfully. Listen in and soak up the wisdom Tony’s gained working at the forefront of innovation for over two decades.

Jared Spool is a legend in user interface design. Through his pioneering consultancy, User Interface Engineering, he’s helped hundreds of teams create more usable and delightful software. Jared’s latest project is Center Centre -- a 2-year college for UX professionals that’s setup to train the next generation of user interface professionals. His approach to product design is informed by decades of experience and pattern-matching - I love hearing his stories and actionable chunks of UX wisdom: Join us for a far-reaching and high-impact conversation about user experience design.

Jim Scheinman is a lifelong entrepreneur who’s spent the last two decades working at the forefront of social software. As an early employee of Friendster and Bebo, Jim rode out the first big social media wave. Now he’s helping the next generation of founders invent the future through his work at Maven Ventures. Jim’s approach is grounded in operational reality - and infused with a passion for working on a ‘vision worth fighting for.’ He appreciates the power of a truly compelling experience to draw people in and keep them engaged. Learn how an early-stage investor decides who to work with - and how to help his companies succeed.

In the short history of web design, Jeff Veen is a true pioneer. In his work for Wired, Adaptive Path, Google, Adobe, and now True Ventures, Jeff has been pushing the boundaries of online publishing and Web interactivity for decades. He’s worked with some of the best and brightest teams in tech - and has a deep and abiding passion for group collaboration Find our what's on Jeff's mind and capturing his his attention these days. I got a lot our of this conversation - and I know you’ll enjoy it too.

As the former VP Community at Kickstarter, Cindy Au managed the fast-growing crowdfunding community through a major growth phase, and balanced the competing needs of campaigners and funders. Cindy cut her teeth in New York’s tech scene - and she's got great insights about what it takes to say NO to short-term gains in order to fulfill a long-term vision. If you’re interested in community dynamics, cooperative design or tech entrepreneurship, you’re gonna love Cindy's stories about how Kickstarter transformed from a promising idea into a wildly successful fundraising powerhouse.

Richard Garriott is a pioneering game designer, gifted world-builder second-generation astronaut, arctic explorer - and ever-inspiring creative force. I first met Richard when I was teaching online community design at Stanford; half my class was in the Beta for Ultima Online, and I jumped in enthusiastically to learn the ropes. I ended up working with Richard, Raph Koster and their amazing crew of developers through the launch & growth of that early graphic MMO. Like many great game designers, Richard is a sophisticated systems thinker who sees the world through a unique lens that's on full display in this far-ranging & fascinating conversation.

Cindy Alvarez is an expert in customer research and iterative development. She’s the author of Lean Customer Development, a hands-on guide for validating product and feature ideas. She's worked for small and medium-sized startups - and now runs user experience for Yammer (a Microsoft company).Cindy’s got a flair for explaining user-centered design in a compelling and understandable way. From her early days doing tech support for her professors at Harvard — to her current leadership role evangelizing lean tactics at Microsoft — Cindy thrives on new challenges. Listen in and learn how a seasoned UX expert blends customer development with product leadership.

Dan Olsen is a seasoned product manager - and the author of the Lean Product Playbook, a soup-to-nuts handbook for doing smart product management with Lean principles. Dan runs the Lean Product & Lean UX meetup in Silicon Valley, where he brings cross-functional teams together to lean how to create great products. Dan is an articulate proponent of a lean & disciplined approach to product development - and he knows the power of choosing the right mental model to organize your thinking. In this interview, you'll learn how an experienced product manager approaches customer discovery, rapid prototyping and smart MVP development.

Teresa Torres is a rising star in product management, and the author of the popular “Product Talk” blog. She's got an eclectic background in cognitive science, UX design, startup management and organizational change - which gives her a unique perspective on product discovery. Teresa shares her deep & hard-won product wisdom - and her inspiring perspective on the long game of product management. Learn how one talented product manager is forging a new path & shaking up the organizational change management game.

Mike Sellers is a pioneering social game designer turned academic. Long before World of Warcraft was a world-wide hit, Mike & his merry crew of innovators - including John Hanke, the driving force behind Pokemon Go - created Meridian 59, the first graphical MMO - or massively multiplayer online game. Since then Mike has worked on many games for companies like Electronic Arts and Kabam - and is now a professor of game design at Indiana University. Like many of our Getting2Alpha guests, Mike has a deep & longstanding fascination with human psychology and social systems - and a LOT of experience wrestling with the challenges of bringing new ideas to life. Mike is one of my favorite people in gaming - he’s a deeply insightful and innovative thinker, with as astonishing breadth of knowledge. In this interview, you'll learn what Mike thinks about early MMOs, super-powered mental models, and the pervasive future of Augmented Reality gaming.

Irene Au is a design leader and UX expert with deep experience in team-building. She’s currently an operating partner at Khosla Ventures, where she works with startup CEOs to make their designs great. Irene started her career at Netscape - then moved on to lead design efforts at Yahoo, Google and Udacity. This progression gives her a unique perspective on growing UX teams - and smart strategies for enhancing design in different situations. Irene brings a deeply humanistic approach to everything she does, and integrates her passion for Yoga and mindfulness into everything she does. Listen in and discover how a silicon valley legend gets startup CEOs to embrace iterative, user-centered design practices.