On April 1st, 2013, ProdPad promised something revolutionary: “We now take your backlog of ideas, and with highly advanced big data crunching algorithm technology, automagically render a complete and accurate product roadmap. [...] The Auto-Roadmap Tool not only builds itself, but also covers for the hardest part of the Product Manager’s job: Getting complete buy-in from your team.”Amazing! And product managers wrote in with unbridled excitement itching to get their hands on this incredible tool.Except… this was obviously an April Fool’s joke, right!? Well, fast forward to today and it ain’t a joke! ProdPad is building these automagical abilities right now. Thanks to Generative AI, this absurdist joke has become reality (though not yet the part about magically getting buy-in from your fussy stakeholders... that's in the 2.0 version :) On this episode of CRAFTED., Janna Bastow, the founder and CEO of ProdPad, founder of Mind The Product, inventor of the now-next-later roadmap, and an April Fool's prankster you need to keep your eye on describes what a great roadmap is, how AI is freeing up product people to do more meaningful work, and what the future of product management will entail (getting out of the building more!). Welcome to CRAFTED., a show about great products and the people who make them. Sign up for the CRAFTED. newsletter and explore past episodes at modernproductminds.com***CRAFTED. is sponsored by Artium, a next generation software development consultancy that combines elite human craftsmanship and artificial intelligence. See how Artium can help you build your future at artium.ai. 

Enjoy this bonus, happy hour edition of CRAFTED., recorded live during SXSW. It’s a very unCRAFTED. CRAFTED. Featuring four innovators on a rooftop in Austin talking about what struck them at this year’s SXSW. Kick back and unwind with Christie Nicholson (Founder of the Studio for Communicating Complexity), Kwaku Aning (Director, Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Thinking (CIET) at San Diego Jewish Academy and Founder, Retro Futurism Consulting), James Burdine (Founder and Principal at Bishop Linville Consulting), and CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg.Topics and tangents include: the use of AI in education and government, the data we unwittingly give platforms (e.g. Apple Vision Pro could detect when we have a great idea bc our eyes dilate when we do), the deconstruction and redistribution of SXSW, explore/exploit and the need to be bored, and much more random stuff.CRAFTED. is produced by Modern Product Minds. Sign up for the CRAFTED. newsletter and explore past episodes at modernproductminds.com***CRAFTED. is sponsored by Artium, a next generation software development consultancy that combines elite human craftsmanship and artificial intelligence. See how Artium can help you build your future at artium. ai.

Career trajectories used to be like steamships: full steam ahead. And then they became more like sailboats: lots of tacking. But now… we’re swirling in whitewater. And, as the Chief Product and Innovation Officer at BetterUp, Dr. Gabriella Rosen Kellerman helps people build the skill they need to flourish:“When you're kayaking in the whitewater. It's hard to get a sense of what could be around the bend, but if you know if what's coming up is a sudden cascade or versus another, you know, set of gentle bumps, or maybe it's a calmer space in the river, it can give you a great advantage.”On this episode of Crafted, we focus on the five key skill groups that can help you be more successful: Prospection, Resilience, Innovation and creativity, Social support by way of rapid rapport, and Mattering and meaning.And, good news! These skills can be trained!Gabriella writes about these skills in Tomorrowmind, which she co-authored with Martin Seligman. And, at BetterUp she builds products that help companies — and their people — build these skills at scale. On an upcoming episode of Crafted, we’ll explore how BetterUp does this using human coaching, backed by artificial intelligence systems. Welcome to Crafted, a show about great products and the people who make them. Crafted is produced by Modern Product Minds. Sign up for the Crafted newsletter and explore past episodes at modernproductminds.com—Key Moments:[00:00 - 01:01] Introduction[02:16 - 06:40] From psychiatry to tech[06:40 - 09:53] Key skill needed for a "tomorrowmind"[09:53 - 13:51] Developing Resilience Skills[16:55 - 18:53] Enhancing Perspective and Creativity[18:53 - 22:35] Planning and Dynamic Adaptation[22:35 - 26:05] The Role of Coaching in Skill Development[26:05 - 27:35] Outro and What's Coming in Part Two—Here’s the book:Tomorrowmind —Crafted is sponsored by Artium, a next generation software development consultancy that combines elite human craftsmanship and artificial intelligence. See how Artium can help you build your future at artium.ai

“You have to invest into change. You cannot invest into stasis.Daniel Kimerling has a keen eye for the trends, technologies, and cultural shifts that are going to be big. A decade ago, he took an insight – that developers needed powerful tool so they could embed banking services into their apps – and launched Standard Treasury, the very first banking-as-a-service (BaaS) startup. Today BaaS and "embedded finance" are huge. Now, as a VC and the founder of Deciens Capital, Dan is again looking for change:“From an ego perspective, I love being right. From a financial perspective, I love being right at the right time."The right team:"You have to be willing to embrace a level of physical, emotional, financial, psychological, spiritual pain and keep going. Just keep fucking going."And business models that actually make sense:"It's not that, like, Generative AI is not cool. As a Dweeb, it's fucking cool as hell. I got it. But then the question is: 'How the fuck are you gonna make a dime?'"This is a fun episode! Listen in for a masterclass in disruption. Also f-bombs. Lots of f-bombs. More on Crafted than ever before. Yet also mixed  with grace and humility. Dan is a mensch. :)Key Moments:[0:00] Introduction[2:07] How Dan got started in tech, as the very first employee at TechCrunch[4:58] Founding Standard Treasury, the very first banking-as-a-service (BaaS) company after meeting the founders of Twilio and Stripe and seeing the API’s and “embedding” were going to be huge[7:25] “What you kind of come to see is that to some degree everything is a financial plumbing problem.”[9:12] “You have to invest into change. You cannot invest into stasis.”[11:37] Founding Deciens Capital[12:23] The “industrial logic” of most VC firms and how Deciens aims to stay small and serve early stage founders[15:07] What Dan looks for when making an investment, including grit, variant perspective, and a MacGyver-like adaptability[18:36] Generative AI: Why VC’s are rushing in, but he’s skeptical about business models. Will all the spoils just go to the open source community + NVIDIA? [22:36] What Dan is excited about: the future of VC and building financial service products that people actually love[24:24] Personalization: “[Big banks] really serve a very median audience. And we have a number of companies [...] that are far outside of that middle lane. And thankfully, because of the power of the internet, the search and distribution costs for those opportunities is way lower than it would have been in a analog era.”[25:11] How Dan goes out of his way to help people – and how you can learn from his system[28:50] Outro[29:27] An F-bomb laced Easter Egg parting giftBooks mentioned:"A Brief History of Financial Euphoria" by John Kenneth Galbraith"Power Law" by Sebastian WallabyAbout CraftedCrafted is a show about great products and the people who make them. Hosted by Dan Blumberg, an entrepreneur, product leader, and public radio host with deep experience not only delivering major software releases, but also as the producer of the best known, and most listened-to, public radio shows. Dan has founded startups and led product releases and growth initiatives at LinkedIn, The New York Times, and as a consultant to fintechs and big banks. Before getting into tech, Dan led the team behind Morning Edition on WNYC, the most listened-to show on the nation’s largest NPR station. Dan produced, edited, reported for, and hosted this and other marquee news shows at WNYC and WBEZ and also frequently reported on national news events for NPR. Crafted is produced by Modern Product Minds. Sponsored ByCrafted is sponsored by Artium, a next generation software development consultancy that combines elite human craftsmanship and artificial intelligence. See how Artium can help you build your future at artium.ai.

A highlight reel that will will help you find great episodes in the Crafted show archive, featuring some of the incredible founders and product builders we featured in 2023. You'll hear voices belonging to the founders of Gusto, Lattice, Monte Carlo, Moov, Wevr, PS, as well as from senior leaders at AWS, Redesign Health, Betterment, Flatiron Health, Predibase, and Bauplan, and more! And we want to hear from you! We're planning big things this year and want to learn more about what you want to hear. Please take two minutes to take this short survey: https://www.tinyurl.com/craftedsurvey ---Crafted is sponsored by Artium, a next generation software development consultancy that combines elite human craftsmanship and artificial intelligence. See how Artium can you build your future at artium.ai

We're not building a set of blogs or something like that where the domain is well understood. We're really pushing the forefront of what people are doing with vessels and optimization."The effect of global shipping on the climate is hard to overstate," reports The New York Times. "Cargo shipping is responsible for nearly 3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — producing roughly as much carbon each year as the aviation industry does." So... Nautilus Labs uses AI to make maritime vessels more efficient by helping giant cargo ships optimize their routes across the oceans and suggesting when they need maintenance, saving money and reducing carbon emissions in the process. On this episode of Crafted, former CTO Todd Sundsted describes how they model ships and their routes and push the envelope with AI. He also shares his approach to organizational design and how to align teams to customer problems.Key Moments:00:00 - Intro01:53 - Helping cargo ships be more efficient04:17 - Getting the data from difficult environments06:24 - Aha moments07:37 - Improving Nautilus Labs’ organizational design12:31 - Aligning teams to the impact they have15:15 - Outro

** Please take this three-minute survey to help us create more great Crafted episodes. http://tinyurl.com/craftedsurvey **Last week, on Thursday January 18th at 4:49pm Eastern, a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on its way to the International Space Station. On board are 4 astronauts from Axiom Space, a private company that’s building a brand new space station. To celebrate the successful launch of AX-3, we’re bringing you one of our favorite episodes from the Crafted archives: an interview with Axiom’s Director of In-Space Manufacturing. Keep listening to find out why Axiom is building a commercial space station — and why microgravity is such a special environment for building things like computer chips and for doing biological research that could lead to new cancer treatments.“When we talk about future cities in space, it seems like they're really far away. The truth is, it's happening right now. We're building those.” That’s the mind-blowing reality that Jana Stoudemire works in everyday at Axiom Space, a leading space infrastructure developer based in Texas. Axiom is building a successor to the International Space Station and developing commercial opportunities in orbit that go way beyond satellites. Central to all this is the unique environment of microgravity, which allows you to do things that just can’t be done on earth.On this episode, Jana takes us to the final frontier, and shares Axiom's plans for advanced biomedical research, space-made semiconductors that could enable quantum computing, and what this means for future scientific advances. She’ll also get into the challenges of building a state-of-the-art lab that will orbit around the earth, from the equipment and personnel, to where does that exercise bike go?This is Crafted from Artium: a show about great products, and the people who make them. Crafted is sponsored by Artium, which helps startups and enterprises build incredible products, recruit high-performing teams, and achieve the culture of craft needed to build great software for years to come. Learn more at ThisIsArtium.com (and let us know you learned about us from the podcast).

“I was a pretty bad people manager and so there was a moment where I decided that this is not going to work and I really need to decide which path I'm gonna go. Am I gonna stay hands on keyboard or am I going to really help build the engineering team and scale the organization?”Edward Kim is the CTO and co-founder of Gusto, a multi-billion dollar company that helps businesses with payroll, benefits, and human resources. In this episode, we’re talking about scaling up and why Gusto’s focus on quality code and engineering mindset is so critical. Plus, Edward tells us how he learned to be a great manager, how watching his parents struggle to run their small business planted the seed for Gusto, and and what it was like recruiting top talent to work on a “boring” problem like payroll, back when Instagram and social-local-mobile startups were all the rage.Timestamps:00:00 - Intro01:50 - Why Edward loves solving problems for small businesses04:20 - Building out version one06:48 - Finding product market fit09:48 - What does Gusto offer today?11:15 - The secret to good code15:49 - Growing as an engineering leader18:44 - What’s next for Edward and Gusto?20:04 - Exploring Generative AI22:09 - Outro

“The last nine months, no matter what we want to talk about, our customers want to talk about one thing, which is Gen AI.”One year ago, ChatGPT woke the entire world up to the possibilities of Generative AI. Since then, the conversation around AI has not ceased, with constant questions being raised about its safety, accuracy, and potential implications for the tech world.In this episode, Dan hosts a panel at NYC Tech Week 2023, discussing the evolution and potential of Generative AI with Jacopo Tagliabue of Bauplan, Cat Miller of Flatiron Health, Raghvender Arni of AWS Industries, and Justin Zhao of Predibase. Together, they discuss the journey in taking Generative AI from prototype to production, delving into the need for a stable foundation of best practices in data and software development, how to overcome the challenges of evaluation and performance, and the cruciality of red teaming and guardrails to ensure the viability and usability of AI models.Timestamps:00:00 - Intro02:19 - About the guests12:58 - GOFAI vs GenAI: Should you just be using a classifier?18:54 - AI + health data23:24 - How do you make sure evaluation works?24:57 - The foundations needed to take GenAI to the next level34:22 - Is now the time for experimentation or business models?36:49 - The science fiction of today that will be commonplace tomorrow42:42 - Outro

“Nobody's going to drive as fast on the straightaway if they don't have good brakes because if that's not available, then you can't go fast confidently.” John Mileham is the CTO of Betterment, and he’s also a race car driving instructor. Though they seem like vastly different roles, he has the same focus in both: going fast but doing so safely. Betterment is a digital financial advisor that builds software that can automate your finances… so safety is key. In this episode, John describes how he empowers teams and creates conditions that foster creativity, speed, and security. In this episode, John breaks down how his experience on the racetrack has influenced his approach to innovation, drawing on the recent improvements to Betterment’s Cash Reserve product, the difficult transition to implementing GraphQL in the organization, and how performance envelopes are expanded with the confidence of safety.