Building Customer-First Products

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May 14, 2025

Siqi Chen, CEO & CFO of Runway and former NASA developer, shares his journey from coding rockets to shaping financial technology. He emphasizes the importance of customer-centric product design over traditional methods. Siqi discusses the transformative potential of generative AI in finance and its impact on product development. He also highlights how blending technical and business insights can nurture innovation and enhance decision-making. Tune in for insights on navigating the complexities of AI and achieving product-market fit!

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ANECDOTE

Siqi Chen's Career Journey

Siqi Chen transitioned from math major to NASA JPL developer to CEO of a finance startup by following what he found fun.
His path shows how diverse experiences can shape innovative product leadership.

INSIGHT

Build What You Crave

Building products starts by creating what you personally want and improving existing options drastically.
The market rewards significantly better products across nearly all industries, driving product success.

INSIGHT

AI's Incredible Growth Curve

AI is the most important invention since fire and will exceed past technological revolutions.
Early imperfections are expected and AI's progress resembles a steep upward curve of capability improvement.

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Siqi Chen (@blader, CEO/CFO @Runwayco), talks about his journey from JPL developer to Founder of a financial planning and analysis (FP&A) startup. We focus on how to build products that customers crave and how a customer-centric view differs from traditional product management.

SHOW: 923

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #923 Transcript

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SHOW NOTES:

Topic 1 - Welcome to the show, Siqi. First, your combination of technical and business/financial background is fascinating. How did you go from coding at NASA to Head of Product at Zynga to CEO/CFO for a finance platform startup? Give everyone a quick introduction.

Topic 2 - One thing I’ve noticed as a trend in your background is the core concept of building. What has been your philosophy in building products? How do you build products that customers demand?

Topic 3 - Let’s talk about AI and AGI for a moment. We hear all the time how disruptive this will be. What are your thoughts here, and how do we develop both adaptability and resiliency to new technologies?

Topic 4 - Let’s talk FP&A (financial planning & analysis). Our core listeners out there tend to skew more towards the tech and infrastructure side, but a core theme of this show is always to be learning as much of the business as possible to apply those concepts. As someone with a background in both worlds, plus now running an FP&A startup, what do you wish folks on the technical side of the house knew more about to make their jobs easier?

Topic 5 - We posted a link in the show notes for a video you did on the “overnight success” of Runway. It was a good representation and origin story of how something can go viral with the right mindset and product-market fit. Tell everyone about that as Runway approaches 5 years now.

Topic 6 - What is your biggest challenge in the FP&A space today? Is it AI? We’ve seen a lot of AI disruption in coding, legal, and other areas requiring deep data pool insights. Is this any different?

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