Danielle Newnham Podcast

Today’s guest is John Maeda – famed artist, designer, technologist, author, ex MIT professor, and once President of the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, among many other accolades - most recently as CTO at Everbridge.He completed his bachelors and masters degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at MIT where he would return to become Professor of Design and Computation and Head of Research. He also earned a PhD in Design and a Master’s in Business.In this wide-ranging conversation, John and I discuss his book How to Speak Machine: Computational Thinking for the Rest of Us as well as the leadership lessons he has learned throughout his career through good times and more importantly, the bad, how we can create a world of optimism akin to the Obama era and why we should all remain curious creatures.I have learned so much from John over the years and this conversation and I am sure you will too.So here is my conversation with the utterly brilliant John Maeda.------------John Maeda Twitter / website / instagramDanielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham   / Newsletter John's book - How to Speak Machine: Computational Thinking for the Rest of UsLet us know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.

Today’s guest is Chris Sheldrick, co-founder and CEO of what3words – the startup which is quite literally mapping the world.Chris Sheldrick grew up as a gifted musician who thought his music career was all mapped out but sadly, Chris suffers from a sleep disorder which saw him sever the very parts of his body required for such an illustrious career. Not deterred by this life-changing experience, Chris started a company that would later lead to founding what3words with his some of his best and brightest friends to forge a completely new standard in a field as old as time. Chris story is one of courage, determination, naïve optimism and grit – the golden traits of all great entrepreneurs.And in this conversation, Chris talks me through how he did it.How what3words is dividing the entire world into 57 trillion 3 by 3 meter squares using a unique combination of three words to ensure there isn’t a place on earth where someone cannot get what they need whether it is a bank account, an emergency service or a way to their destination.Quite the feat for a classically trained bassoonist.This is the startup of startup stories with so many great lessons on how to get your startup from an idea to a business, how to find your first investors and commercial partners, why PR is important for businesses like this and what a tech entrepreneur learned from a musician.I thoroughly enjoyed what was rather a unique conversation and I am certain you will too.----------------Chris on Twitter / LinkedIn and InstagramWhat3Words website and on TwitterDanielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham   / Newsletter  Let us know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.

Today’s conversation is with Donna Auguste and I wanted to replay her episode from Series 2 because it’s actually Ada Lovelace Day today which is an international celebration of the achievements of women in STEM and Donna encompasses everything we are celebrating today. An incredible role model, Donna received a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Berkeley before becoming the first African-American (man or woman) to enter the PhD program at Carnegie Mellon where she researched Artificial Intelligence. She then went on to manage the Newton engineering team at Apple before building and selling her own software business for $147 million. This is incredible and all the more amazing when you learn the obstacles she had to overcome which we discuss today.But before we get into it, there is something I wanted to tell you about today’s sponsor. I am working with Ericsson to promote its Imagine Possible event next week in Santa Clara, which is in the centre of Silicon Valley. It takes place on Tuesday 18th and Wednesday 19th October and will be bringing together some extremely impressive innovators and thought leaders to discuss their vision for the future. From extended reality and the metaverse to the future of enterprise connectivity, Ericsson’s Imagine Possible event will showcase the power of this new world through lively conversations and real-world examples. Guest speakers will be from Microsoft, Nvidia, Niantic, Unity, Amazon, Google, the co-founder of Xbox and many more and, the best part? It’s completely free to attend. And if you can’t make it to California, you can view the best bits online which is what I will be doing. You can find the links to register in today’s show notesRegister here.And now, please join me in celebrating Ada Lovelace by enjoying my conversation with the fantastic  Donna Auguste. Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnhamDonna on Twitter / Auguste Research website Notes#Ad This episode is sponsored by Ericsson's Imagine Possible event - register to attend for FREE here.Mentioned in this episode: Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley 1985 - 2000 by Doug MenuezLet us know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too. -----This episode was hosted by me - Danielle Newnham, a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years - and produced by Jolin Cheng.  

Something I don’t tell many people is that when I was seven years old, two of my school friends and their family were shot dead. As you can imagine, it has had a long-lasting impact on me and all those who had the privilege of knowing them.Fast forward all these years and one of my former guests Jimmy Soni was kind enough to introduce me to Rick Smith, founder of Taser  now Axon - a company which uses technology to replace the use of guns.When I started my research, I immediately discovered that Rick started the company almost three decades ago, after two of his school friends had also been shot dead.This interview is unlike any I have done before. Rick opens up about his childhood and how his friends' death spurred him on a life-long crusade to replace guns, and how he took on a huge problem in an extremely hard field at just 23 years old. It’s the tale of an inventor, an entrepreneur and someone desperate to change the world to ensure no more innocent lives are taken.As I say in the intro of this episode,  please be warned that not all of this conversation is suitable for young ears - we discuss mass shootings and the recent horrific shootings at a school in Uvalde. And we discuss Rick’s book - The End of Killing: How Our Newest Technologies Can Solve Humanity’s Oldest Problem.I learned so much from Rick and I know you will too. Rick on Twitter / Axon websiteDanielle Twitter / Instagram / Newsletter Mentioned in this episode:Rick's book - The End of Killing: How Our Newest Technologies Can Solve Humanity’s Oldest ProblemRobb Elementary School Shooting  

Today’s guest is Jack Butcher, founder of Visualize Value, a media and product business that I like to say takes complex ideas and makes them digestible through visual design.He also sells incredible courses which helps others to learn, teach, build and sell their value more effectively. ‍‍Originally from the UK, Jack moved to NY to pursue his passion as a designer then, at the beginning of 2020 with very little money in the bank, his side project called Visualize Value took off.In this interview, we talk about how that happened– how that first year of the pandemic saw everything align for his work and for finding his audience. We also discuss his thought process behind Visualise Value’s unique visual identity and how much he learned from a tweetstorm by founder, investor, philosopher Naval Ravikant.Jack is completely a founder of our times. Someone who found his voice, niche and audience on the internet and how he leveraged all of it to build a multi-million dollar business that earns him money while he sleeps. The famous quote from Naval rings true for all of Jack’s work– Build Once. Sell Twice. In this interview, Jack shares insights into the importance of one true fan, the distribution channels and techniques which helped his audience grow massively and how experimentation and transparency are key to his success. Enjoy!-------------Jack on Twitter Visualize Value website / Twitter / InstagramDanielle Twitter / Instagram / NewsletterThe Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson and illustrated by Jack Butcher 

Hello and welcome to the Danielle Newham Podcast where I interview tech founders and innovators to learn the inspiring, human stories behind the game-changing tech we use every day.If you are a new listener, welcome. If you are a long-time listener, welcome back and thank you, thank you for sticking with me. I am really excited about Series 7 because we have some truly fantastic guests who are really candid with me which makes for great conversations. They open up about their career and life journeys, some of the harder lessons they have learned along the way and, really, lessons on how they did it. The steps it took for them to reach success because it’s never straightforward is it? It’s never linear and I hope these lessons will resonate with you as they did with me.There will be deep dives with a wide range of guests from Jack Butcher, the founder of Visualize Value to Rick Smith of Axon who is trying to make the world a safer place by using technology to replace the use of guns. We also have classical musician turned founder Chris Sheldrick of what3words who is literally mapping the world and I will also be speaking to design guru John Maeda and child prodigy turned founder Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon.To be the first to hear these new episodes, please do subscribe on your favourite podcast platform.Thank you and I hope you enjoy Series 7 of the Danielle Newnham Podcast.-----------Danielle Twitter / Instagram / Newsletter

Today’s guest is Deb Liu – CEO of Ancestry.com, the billion dollar genealogy company. Deb also serves on the Board of Intuit and is the co-founder of Women in Product. In this interview, Deb talks me through her personal and career journey from growing up in a small town where less than 1% of the community were Asian to how she overcame racism to become a VP at Facebook where she spent 12 years of her career.After studying Civil Engineering at Duke, Deb got her master’s in business at Stanford and joined PayPal where she spent 6 years, working in different leadership roles including Director of Product management, focusing on Marketplaces which, at the time, made up around 70% of PayPal revenues. After that, she went to Facebook where she spent almost 12 years working in senior product leadership positions including founding Facebook Marketplace - an idea she had presented to Sheryl Sandberg years earlier.We also talk about Deb’s new book Take Back Your Power: 10 New Rules for Women at Work which is a great read for women who wish to climb the ranks like Deb did but also for men who want to understand the obstacles women face at work, how they can be better allies and to learn the stories of some incredible women that Deb features in the book.There are lots of fantastic lessons in this episode on leadership, product management and overcoming the dreaded imposter syndrome.Enjoy!Deb  Twitter / Instagram / Substack Ancestry.com,  Women in ProductPre-order Take Back Your Power: 10 New Rules for Women at Work here. Out in US 9th Aug, UK 13th OctDanielle Twitter / Instagram / Newsletter Huge thanks to Jimmy Soni – author of The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley for making the intro.

What can I say about today’s guest? He started life in London before being sent to live with his grandmother in Ghana at a just a few months old. He was a young boy when he returned to live on a London council estate with his father and it was then that he said he realised that they were poor but that also his life thus far had not been down to his own doing. That he had found himself in these circumstances but he could also get himself out of them."At 19 years old, I said, I'm going to start this business, and in five years I'm going to sell it for tens of millions... and I did exactly that."Today’s guest is Timothy Armoo, co-founder and CEO of Fanbytes – a tech powered social media and influencer marketing agency which helps massive brands reach Gen Z on social media and which was recently acquired by Brainlabs for a reported 8 figure deal.Timo’s story is one of grit, resilience and an incredible entrepreneurial spirit which saw him start his first business at 14 and sold his second at 17 for six figures. He then went on to start Fanbytes when he was studying for a degree in Computer Science and with co-founders Ambrose Cooke and Mitchell Fasanya, grew Fanbytes into a multi-million-pound company.Last year Fanbytes started a Fanbytes Impact Fund which is £250,000 fund dedicated to addressing the pay gap between black and non-black influencers which also provides funding and agency expertise to black-owned businesses. In its first year, the fund supported 14 black-owned businesses and more than 85 black creators which is incredible and a testament to what these three founders are building in the long run.In this interview, Timo talks us through how he did it – from working out where the industry was going to how he strategically built a business with the goal of an exit in mind.This is a special conversation with an incredible founder.Enjoy! Timothy Armoo Twitter / Instagram / WebsiteFanbytes website Danielle Twitter / Instagram / Newsletter

50 years ago today, Atari was born! So I am celebrating with a REPLAY of Series 2 episode with the legendary Atari founder  Nolan Bushnell – serial entrepreneur and a pioneer of the video games industry.After an early interest in engineering, Nolan went on to study Electrical Engineering before setting up Atari with Ted Dabney and Al Alcorn (I interviewed in Series 1, EP 8 - listen here). Atari experienced huge success with Pong which was one of the first computer games ever created but whilst it was hugely popular, Atari was born at a time when venture capital didn’t really exist, IP could not be protected and so the journey to keeping the company going was much tougher than it is today and by the time Warner Communications made an offer for the company, Nolan was ready to sell.In this interview, we look back at gaming history, Nolan talks me through the highs and lows of building Atari, the traits he looks for when hiring, and why one of his biggest regrets was turning down an offer from Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to own a third of Apple.Enjoy!NB This episode was recorded January 2021.------Let us know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.------Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnhamNolan Bushnell on Twitter @nolanbushnell-----This episode was hosted by me - Danielle Newnham, a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years - and produced by Jolin Cheng. 

This is a re-released episode from Series 1 with Second Life founder and High Fidelity co-founder Philip Rosedale.As a child, Philip Rosedale dreamed of creating a fully-fledged virtual society and that’s exactly what he did with Second Life. Despite it being conceived many years before, Second Life was launched in 2003. Almost two decades later, and with one million active users and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transactions, Second Life experienced a boom during the Covid-19 pandemic as the world went into lockdown and more of us spent more time online.In this wonderfully wide-ranging conversation, Philip opens up about his early influences, his ability to see into the future and how he executes when the tech, not always the world, is ready.He also tells me about his latest company – High Fidelity which specialises in spatial audio -  and where he envisions the field going, as well as the future of virtual reality, education, crypto, live music, how tech can and should be harnessed for good, and how closely he believes the link is between virtual reality and reality.NB This interview was recorded February 2021. Mentioned in this episode:Oxford Uni panel talk with Elon Musk and Baroness Susan Greenfield:  https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/silicon-valley-comes-oxfordPhilip’s Writing/blog: https://www.highfidelity.com/blog/author/philip-rosedale NB At 52:13, I asked Philip, “What do you wish your legacy to be? The words which are inaudible at 52:32 are “be together” so his answer was, “It’s what I am continuing to work on. I’d like to continue to use technology to build these places which allow people to be together.” Let me know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram: @daniellenewnhamPhilip on Twitter: @philiprosedaleHigh Fidelity https://www.highfidelity.com/Second Life https://secondlife.com/This episode was hosted by me - Danielle Newnham, a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years - and produced by Jolin Cheng.  Series 1 was sponsored by Sensate.