David Ledgerwood
David is a Managing Partner at Add1Zero where his team provides lead-to-close sales execution for tech-enabled B2B services companies ready to leap from 6 to 7 digits of revenue. He is also a co-host of the Leaders of B2B podcast. When David isn’t working, he spends time with his five kids and frequently travels between Dallas and Nashville to keep his interstate marriage alive.
How customer empathy drives better engineering performance with Ravi Sahu of Strayos
Ravi Sahu is the founder and CEO of Strayos, a VC-backed computer vision and deep learning company that’s improving the mining industry by using 3D aerial intelligence to reduce costs, and to improve safety by providing highly accurate data. In this episode Ledge and Ravi discuss the importance of creating a culture of customer empathy, […]
Building a Recruiting Pipeline for Engineers Who Want to Win with Steve Prosser of Guaranteed Rate
“Engineers want to win.” says Steve Prosser, VP of Software Development at Guaranteed Rate, one of the largest retail mortgage lenders in the US, responsible for more than $20B in annual loan volume. Ever worked at a company that tries to hide engineering from executives? Not this one. Steve and Ledge discuss how their organization […]
AI could be your new legal assistant with Lars Mahler of LegalSifter
Ever had to parse through an absolutely awful contract? How about a 60-page MSA from one of those big company procurement departments? One of the promises of AI is that the happy robots will start taking away the drudgery of tasks like parsing our 4-page IP transfer clause. In this episode, Ledge sits down with […]
China, Huawei and the future of global technology with Chris Short of DevOpsish
How will Chinese companies like Huawei affect the future of cyber security? How does our relationship with China affect the open source community and the future of AI? These are big questions for big thinkers like Chris Short. Chris runs the newsletter DevOpsish and is also a Principal Product Marketing Manager for Redhat. In this […]
Winning in a new industry with best practices from another sector with Dave Ugan
How can best practices from one industry change another industry? 25-year Technology Executive, Dave Ugan joins Ledge in the episode to deep dive into a real example: how he spent 6 years bringing UX, CX, and technology from the hospitality and attractions industry to the end-of-life (yes, funerals) industry. Dave talks about the importance of […]
Killing off unplanned work for Frictionless Development with Shawn Kuenzler of Zen Planner
Unplanned work blows up estimates, kills team morale, and drives down productivity, which makes it no surprise that the best agile engineering leaders target operations improvements as a core value. Today’s guest Shawn Kuenzler takes that mission even deeper. Scaling engineering teams is what Shawn does, and he joins Ledge to discuss balancing efficiency with […]
Put your DevOps through P90X with Bob Chen of Beachbody
You’re one of the largest exercise brands in the world. How do you get your DevOps in shape? Ledge sits down with Bob Chen, Senior Director of Technical Operations at Beachbody to chat DevOps, deployment, working with multiple distributed teams, and knocking off technical debt. See it turns out software teams often want to do […]
Integrity and quality in engineering, and leadership as an art with Merlin Quintin of Redbox
Software quality is like integrity – it’s doing the right thing even if no one is watching. That’s according to Merlin Quintin, Director QA Engineering at Redbox. Merlin joins Ledge in this episode to discuss her unique approaches to engineering leadership as a veteran team member at a disruptive media company. Merlin says engineering is […]
Making yourself an indispensable engineering hire with Steve Beyatte
Is recruiting engineering talent similar to courting professional athletes? That’s been our experience at Gun.io, and Steve Bayette agrees. After traveling the world as a digital nomad, and successfully navigating two big-name exits, Steve now advises startups on how to hire world-class engineers and build industry-leading products. He’s also an investor in early stage technology […]
Using a F.A.I.L. Mindset in Scaling Organizations with David Shapendonk of IMAX and Maestro Games
No stranger to screens big (very big) and small, David Shapendonk was the Direct of Technical Ops for IMAX before flexing his entrepreneurial muscles. He’s now the CTO of Maestro Games, a startup helping to build technologies that incorporate music therapy with VR gaming to help people with anxiety, PTSD, autism, and other stress-related ailments. […]
We’ve been acquired; we’re laying off your entire team with Philipp Svehla of Workday
You’ll hear a lot of stories on The Frontier about starting, growing, and enhancing engineering teams. In this episode, Philipp Svehla, helps us explore the other side of the coin: bringing a team to a close. At the time of recording, his company had been acquired by a larger firm that decided to wind down […]
Separating The Noise to Simplify Multi Cloud Strategy with Leon Thomas of Jelecos
As companies move more and more workloads to the cloud, sometimes the number of new questions can seem to grow more quickly than the number of answers. In this episode Ledge talks to Leon Thomas, CEO of Jelecos, about their AWS services practice, using it as a lens into the changing world of cloud, secops, […]