1st10 Podcast Lessons from Pinterest’s First Engineer: Yash Nelapati on Building, Scaling, and Trusting the Process
Summary
On this episode of the 1st10 Podcast, hosts Boris Epstein and Alexis Munger sit down with Yash Nelapati, Pinterest's first engineer and first-ever employee! Yash shares his journey from being a young engineer navigating the challenges of the 2008 recession to joining Pinterest in its infancy and helping scale it into a global platform. He reflects on the chaotic early days, the importance of trusting the process, and how his experiences shaped his approach to building teams and products.
Yash also discusses his current venture, MakersPlace, an NFT marketplace aiming to become the "Christie's of NFTs.".
Here's a quick glimpse of the insights from the episode:
Simplicity Wins: Joining a startup doesn't have to be a complicated decision. If you like the product and the people, that's often enough to take the leap.
Generalists Thrive in Early-Stage Startups: Being decent at multiple disciplines is more valuable than being an expert in one, especially when you're part of the first 10 engineers.
Culture Evolves with Growth: As startups scale, culture often shifts from being vision-driven to data-driven, requiring a balance between intuition and analytics.
Embrace Chaos: Early-stage startups are inherently chaotic, but that chaos is where learning and growth happen. Firefighting and quick decision-making are part of the journey.
Trust the Journey: Yash's advice to engineers considering startups is to trust their instincts, avoid overthinking, and suggests a “2-Question Test” to help you come to a decision.
Do listen to the simple but eye-opening "2-Question Test" that Yash recommends for deciding whether or not to join an early-stage startup!
Chapters:
00:00 Introductions and icebreakers
07:04 From Symantec to Silicon Valley: Yash's Early Struggles
12:19 The Pinterest Journey: Coding in an Apartment and Scaling Chaos
21:00 2012 Was The Year Everything Broke (and Grew!)
29:28 Building Culture: From Visionary to Data-Driven
34:13 MakersPlace: The Christie's of NFTs?
40:19 Advice for Engineers And Opportunities at MakersPlace
Quotes:
"I had to get decent at everything [rather] than really be good at something." - Yash Nelapati (11:36)
"Gut can only take you to a certain spot but from there you've got to have a much better picture of what's happening underneath the hood." - Yash Nelapati (27:36)
"You want your engineers to be very involved in the decision-making, yet there's got to be a line where you don't want to bring a whole lot of emotion..." - Yash Nelapati (30:21)
"Optimize for 'Do I believe in this vision?' [and] 'Do I like these people that I'm sitting around?' And just base that decision on these 2 things." – Yash Nelapati (41:25)
Episode links:
Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/1st10podcast
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7e8ec9af-f38c-4cd9-8c68-1c1dd4516b 27/1st10-podcast
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1st10-podcast/id1760411207
Podcast: https://www.1st10.com/podcast
RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/f951319c/podcast/rss
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@1st10podcast
Links:
Maker’s Place: https://makersplace.com/
Yash Nelapati on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yashh/
Music by Roman Senyk from Pixabay
Producer: Shrikant Joshi