What is a good money habit in 2025? And how do you actually help someone build one—without boring them, shaming them, or losing them in the first five seconds? Chief Product Officer Tim Hong shares how MoneyLion designs for emotion and creates content and products that inspire people to take action. MoneyLion is a personal finance platform used by …

Fun news! The Webby Awards have honored CRAFTED. for the third year in a row as a top tech podcast. Thank you — yes, you! — for listening! This episode features the highlight reel we gave the Webbys. It features great moments from 2024 episodes, including (listed in the order mentioned): Powering the World’s Hackathons | Brandon Kessler (Founder & …

On a rooftop at SXSW, fellow startup advisor and podcaster Rob Kenedi joins me as we discuss why: AI models are becoming commodities… AI companies need to differentiate at the application layer, with brand, and by earning trust… B2B creators are all the rage Podcasts are so intimate and how video changes things We’re in the “fart app” era of AI… En…

Linda Liukas is a programmer, children’s book author, and the creator of Hello Ruby, a whimsical series that teaches computing concepts through stories and play. She’s also the force behind a one-of-a-kind playground in Helsinki—designed to teach kids how computers work without them ever touching a screen. In this episode, Linda shares why, especia…

Educator, innovator, super-connector, and conference champion Kwaku Aning and I have coffee and discuss a few things that struck us at SXSW, including: Why we’re in a “pre-mainframe” moment in quantum computing — and why you should prepare for what comes next Bioengineering: are we headed for a Westworld-style mix of human musculature and AI? Robot…

How do you build a system for turning wild ideas into world-changing innovations? Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots at X, The Moonshot Factory, has spent over 15 years leading Google’s audacious innovation lab—the birthplace of Waymo, Google Brain, and other breakthrough projects. In this special episode, recorded live in Austin at SXSW, Astro sha…

What if we could deliver supplies anywhere, no roads or runways needed? Elroy Air has built a really big drone. One that can carry 300 pounds of stuff 300 miles or more. And it takes off like a helicopter, but flies like a plane, meaning it can get in and out of all sorts of hard to reach places. In this episode, we sit down with David Merrill, co-…

CRAFTED. host Dan Blumberg will be at SXSW this year. Will you? If so, please reach out! DM me on LinkedIn or go to crafted.fm where you can email me. Let's get a taco! — Software, hardware, and biotechnology are playing an increasingly transformative role in our mental health and wellness. On this episode of CRAFTED., recorded live on the “Next” s…

Software is eating the world, right? We've all heard this phrase by now, but inventor and investor Pablos Holman has something important to add: “The world can't eat software.” That’s why Pablos focuses on “deep tech”, i.e. how to invent new solutions to real world problems like energy, water, waste, construction, and sanitation. Pablos says we’re …

Deepfakes are getting easier and easier to make. So, how will we be able to believe that what we see and what we hear is real? And what can software makers do to help? Sam Gregory is an expert on deepfakes, AI, and trust. He advises governments and tech companies on how they can protect human rights and how we can preserve our shared reality. Sam i…

Accounting may not be the sexiest part of running a business, but according to Sasha Orloff, it’s the key to understanding your company’s financial health—and ultimately, its success. At his previous two startups, Sasha was frustrated that he didn’t have a real-time view into his company’s financial health. And he realized the problem wasn’t accoun…

AI democratizes things. It's enabling designers to be developers, and developers to be designers… And in this episode, Aaron Walter and Eli Woolery explain how AI “changes the game” for designers. As co-founders of Design Better, Aaron and Eli advise companies on how to incorporate AI into their design process. We’ll explore how AI can help designe…

Amir Nathoo is reimagining the future of education by building products that put students at the center of their learning experience. As the Founder and CEO of Outschool, Amir has created a marketplace for remote, personalized, interest-based learning that’s challenging traditional K-12. In this episode of CRAFTED., we explore how Amir founded and …

Hilary Mason is a world-builder. She’s a serial entrepreneur, machine learning expert, and now, as the founder and CEO of Hidden Door, she’s creating immersive experiences where fans can interact with their favorite characters from books and movies. The choose-your-own-adventures style games are an amazing blend of AI and human creativity — and Hil…

As AI models grow larger and more powerful, they promise incredible capabilities — but at what cost? Karen Hao is a journalist and former engineer who writes about the impact of artificial intelligence on society for The Atlantic and other top publications. On this episode of CRAFTED., we discuss whether the largest AI models are worth their hefty …

Russ Somers has tripled his productivity by building a “GPTeam” of AI “employees.” In this episode, from Beyond the Prompt, the head of marketing for Quantified reveals how he’s done it, and how you can build your own virtual team to be more productive and creative. Russ’s virtual team helps with tasks ranging from webinar content creation to speci…

Kira Radinsky is the CEO of Diagnostic Robotics, which uses AI to make predictions that help patients get better healthcare. She’s also the co-founder of Mana.bio which is using AI to automate drug discovery. On this episode of CRAFTED., Kira will share more on why she believes that, of all the industries that AI will change, it’s those involving c…

Matt Flannery and Branch have done something the banks have not: learned how to profitably lend to people who have little to no credit history. Matt is the founder and CEO of Branch, which issues small loans to millions of people in India, Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania. He's also the founder of Kiva, a microfinance pioneer that skyrocketed from a sm…

Nithya Ruff is an expert on open source. As the head of AWS’s Open Source Program Office and the Chair of the Linux Foundation, she has a wide view on all things open source. On this episode of CRAFTED., we discuss: Why Open Source AI is so tricky, but also so essential, to define How open source needs to evolve for the next generation of developer…

Mario Rodriguez is GitHub's Chief Product Officer. And he believes that Copilot and other AI advances will unleash a wave of creativity and enable a billion people to be software developers. Mario says the definition of “software developer” will have to change as non-professionals discover that they can make apps, too. And the way they do so will l…

Henrik Werdelin is on an AI-fueled mission to launch thousands of startups a year. He is the founder of BARK, which went public, and prehype, a studio that has incubated several unicorns. With Audos, Henrik is building AI agents that can coach founders how he would — if he had infinite time to do so. And Audos is not just for the cliche founder loo…

Sports, and the way we experience them, is changing. And AI, 5G, 3D, and all the other buzzy acronyms are why. Behshad Behzadi is the CTO and Chief AI Officer of Sportradar and on this episode of CRAFTED., we explore ways sports and technology are intersecting in novel, weird, and amazing ways. Sportradar creates immersive experiences and data prod…

Jeff Birkeland is the SVP of Product and Platform at Included Health, a company that aims to be the app on your phone that you first think of when you have a healthcare need. On this episode of CRAFTED., we explore why “the integration itself is the innovation.” Included Health has more than 2,000 employees across both technology and clinical care,…

April Dunford is an expert at product positioning. She’s advised hundreds of B2B companies on how they can make their products Obviously Awesome — that’s also the title of her bestselling book on positioning. On this episode of CRAFTED., April shares tips on how you can make your product standout and how you can drive more sales — that’s the focus …

Making media is hard. Distributing it to the right audience even more so. GenAI can help. Matt Monahan is the president of Arc XP at the Washington Post. On this episode, we're digging into the core technology of any media company: the content management system (CMS), why they’re so hard to build right and how new GenAI tools can reduce the toil re…

Dr. Kristen DiCerbo is Khan Academy’s Chief Learning Officer, where she sets the company's product, teaching, and learning strategy — with AI at the forefront. Khanmigo is amazing. It’s the GenAI-powered product from Khan Academy that helps students learn and teachers teach — and could revolutionize education. Khan Academy is used by 12 million stu…

Kelsey Hightower is a legend. He regularly gives live software demos in front of tens of thousands of people, improvising them like it’s jazz. He’s a master storyteller and a master craftsman. He helped evangelize and establish Kubernetes and recently retired (at 42!) from Google where he was a distinguished engineer. Kelsey loves to level people u…

Colin Nederkoorn is the founder and CEO of Customer.io, a top customer engagement platform that enables companies to send the right message to the right user at the right time on the right channel. The platform is used by Notion and lots of other top SaaS companies to personalize user onboarding and more. When Customer.io was founded in 2011, there…

DevPost powers most of the world’s hackathons. And, according to founder and CEO Brandon Kessler, lately there is one overarching directive: “Executives from the top down are saying: `We need to do hackathons to uncover the value of ai.`” Nearly every one of the 1,200 hackathons DevPost powered last year was AI-centric. On this episode of CRAFTED.,…

Wonder aims to be a “super app for mealtime”, with people turning to it for everything from delivery to groceries to meal kits and more... It’s a very ambitious food-tech startup founded by Marc Lore, the legendary founder who previously built, scaled, and sold Diapers.com and Jet.com (to Amazon and Walmart, respectively). Wonder is rapidly opening…

When Docker restructured, the company went back to its roots: super-serving developers. CTO Justin Cormack says that’s why the company is developer-obsessed, not customer-obsessed: “We really wanted to focus on the fact that it's the developer who loves Docker. It's the developer who is going to be using Docker every day…” Over the past decade, Doc…

Software, hardware, and biotechnology are playing an increasingly transformative role in our mental health and wellness. On this episode of CRAFTED., recorded live on the “Next” stage at SXSW, we discuss what investors look for in these new companies and how they separate what’s real — and what’s near-term — from what’s hype. On stage with host Dan…

Dr. Gabriella Rosen Kellerman is the Chief Product and Innovation Officer at BetterUp, a multi-billion dollar startup that helps people and companies level up. Through a combination of human coaching and AI, BetterUp is able to offer the kind of executive coaching that used to be reserved for... executives. On this episode of CRAFTED. we dig into h…

Diaa El All is the founder and CEO of Soundful, which enables anyone to create brand new music in just a few seconds with AI. And on this episode of CRAFTED., we are literally making music. We’re also talking about the ethics of using AI to make music. Diaa has been very outspoken about what he sees as the misguided practices of other AI+music comp…

Paige Costello is the the head of AI and co-head of product at Asana and on this episode of CRAFTED. we're exploring what it means to ship products with AI, how AI will change the way work gets done, and how to organize your teams for success in this brave new world. We explore: How the future of work – and communicating about work – is changing Wh…

“So if you take any great startup and look backwards, you'll see that 90 percent of their growth came from like 10 percent of the stuff that they tried. So how do you find that 10 percent as quickly as possible?” Matt Lerner has advised hundreds of startups on how to grow. Now, the CEO of SYSTM has written a book called Growth Levers and How to Fin…

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: Getti…

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 Innovat…

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. I…

“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 bank…

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…

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 greenh…

** 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 …

“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 …

“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 implica…

“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. Bet…

“The lean startup and MVP model is absolutely the right mindset to have, but that doesn't mean that you have to throw spaghetti at the wall.” Neil Caron, Product and Design Leader at Gartner, is doing something hard: helping a big company to innovate. Gartner is the company many technology buyers turn to for advice when they’re looking to buy missi…

“Being a part of financial services for the last 15 or 20 years, it seemed like we were always putting lipstick on the pig”. Wade Arnold was tired of putting a nice UI on creaky infrastructure and he saw how insufficient payment systems are for today’s internet-based businesses. So Wade founded Moov, a fintech that's building systems for the way mo…

“We just experienced these pains of people feeling unsatisfied, they didn't necessarily feel like there were easy opportunities to be listened to by the company.” CEO Jack Altman is determined to help make work meaningful, and founding Lattice is a big part of that goal. Lattice is an employee performance and engagement software company that wants …

“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 Sta…