The Engineering Leadership Podcast

Benny Chen, Co-Founder @ Fireworks AI, joins the show to discuss his founder journey and share valuable insights on navigating common founder / product dev challenges in today’s agent-first landscape. He and Jerry cover strategies for creating effective messaging, staying competitive in a crowded market space, hiring top-tier talent / what qualities to look for in high-performing engineers, navigating the cultural shift to managing agents, creating data flywheels & how this can help your customers, and more.



ABOUT BENNY CHEN

As co-founder and early product architect, Benny Chen shaped Fireworks AI’s infrastructure strategy, spearheading the design of scalable systems to support high-throughput AI model serving. Benny’s contributions established the technical foundation for Fireworks AI’s robust and cloud-native architecture, which underpins its ability to meet enterprise demands.

Formerly Meta’s Ads Infrastructure Lead, Benny optimized large-scale ad-serving pipelines and developed significant expertise in distributed systems and cloud infrastructure. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University, bringing both leadership and technical depth to the Fireworks AI management team.



Sinch is the communications infrastructure the AI era runs on.

There's a layer of infrastructure behind every text, call, and login code your product sends, and it works exactly like plumbing: nobody thinks about it until it's the reason something broke.

Most providers route through 4-6 intermediaries; Sinch connects in 1-2 hops, direct carrier relationships across 600+ connections, handling 900 billion interactions a year across 60+ countries.

Routing, compliance, fraud prevention handled automatically rather than manually managed by the business sending the message!

Sinch is the reliability layer underneath AI-driven customer communications; the infrastructure that determines whether an AI agent's output actually reaches a real person as a delivered text, connected call, or verified interaction.

Check it out here!



SHOW NOTES:

Moving from an early idea to a rocket ship (1:13)

Insights on developing / communicating your core message as an early founder (2:40)

Role of open source & inference @ Fireworks AI (4:24)

How Firework AI’s company messaging evolved over time (6:07)

Popular customization features today (7:25)

Strategies for staying competitive in a crowded market (9:11)

Defining the customer data flywheel & how it helps users (11:25)

Common types of data that companies can collect to train their AI models (13:53)

The customer’s next steps after creating a data flywheel (15:53)

Benny’s perspective on acquiring engineering talent as a founder (16:43)

Common traits shared by high-performing engineers @ Fireworks (19:05)

How AI has altered which traits founders prioritize when hiring (20:45)

Navigating the shift from engineering work to managing agents (22:40)

Frameworks to ensure agents are doing the right thing (25:23)

Aligning your metrics with the outcome you’re trying to follow (27:37)

What a typical day looks like for Benny as a founder (28:31)

Advice for founders / eng leaders looking to embrace AI adoption (29:19)

Rapid fire questions (31:15)



This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Pooja Brown (Founder @ Inventry.ai) shares her insights on balancing being a founder & technologist, especially within the mid-market manufacturing industry. We cover why founders need to lead with curiosity as they seek out customer problems to solve, strategies for solving complex problems related to supply chain, and strategies for selling your products. Pooja also dissects important fundraising tactics, how to identify areas that AI tooling can enhance within your business, reading customer signals, and bolstering your engineering skills by leveling up business capabilities.

 

ABOUT POOJA BROWN

Pooja Brown is a technology executive and founder focused on building AI-native platforms that power real-world operations across industries. She has led engineering at scale at companies like Stitch Fix and DocuSign, building systems that combine data, workflows, and machine learning to drive everything from personalization and supply chain to digital agreements used by hundreds of thousands of businesses.Her experience spans multiple verticals including retail, enterprise SaaS, education technology, and real estate, where she has consistently focused on embedding AI directly into core business systems rather than layering it on top.

Pooja is currently the founder and CEO of Inventry.ai, where she is building autonomous AI agents that help mid-market manufacturers run procurement and supply chain operations more effectively. Across her career, she has focused on turning complex operational data into systems that don’t just generate insights, but actually drive decisions and execution.

 

Sinch is the communications infrastructure the AI era runs on.

There's a layer of infrastructure behind every text, call, and login code your product sends, and it works exactly like plumbing: nobody thinks about it until it's the reason something broke.

Most providers route through 4-6 intermediaries; Sinch connects in 1-2 hops, direct carrier relationships across 600+ connections, handling 900 billion interactions a year across 60+ countries.

Routing, compliance, fraud prevention handled automatically rather than manually managed by the business sending the message!

Sinch is the reliability layer underneath AI-driven customer communications; the infrastructure that determines whether an AI agent's output actually reaches a real person as a delivered text, connected call, or verified interaction.

Check it out here!

 

SHOW NOTES:

What shaped Pooja’s entrepreneurship journey & background (3:20)

Looking for the right problem & leading with curiosity (6:47)

Insights on solving problems related to supply chain (10:42)

Building systems for chaos / complexity (12:46)

Adopting a beginner’s mindset when solving complex problems (15:40)

Dissecting fundraising strategies & decision making (19:28)

Emerging business patterns that eng leaders need to capitalize on (26:32)

Understanding how customers make decisions on what products to adopt (29:09)

Selling strategies for the mid-market manufacturing industry (37:08)

Integrating AI tools to augment current business capabilities (41:03)

Engineering skills that enhance sales processes (44:43)

Communication frameworks when working with customers (47:21)

Rapid fire questions (50:06)

 

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Sergiy Nesterenko (CEO @ Quilter) joins the pod to share how he turned a personal technical challenge into his own company, even before the market caught up. He shares his unique journey from SpaceX to Quilter and addresses common eng leader / founder challenges, including taking critical feedback to solve tough technical problems, knowing when your most important role is educating the market / customers, and choosing the right customers. Sergiy and Jerry also dissect insights into principles around building circuit boards, and common misconceptions around hiring top-tier talent, finding investors, and procuring customers as an early-stage company.

 

ABOUTSERGIY NESTERENKO

Sergiy Nesterenko is the Founder and CEO of Quilter, the first physics-driven AI platform that fully automates PCB layout design. Under his leadership, Quilter has pioneered autonomous board design – creating the missing automation layer for hardware and compressing weeks-long layout cycles into hours. Backed by Index, Benchmark, Coatue, and Tony Fadell, Quilter is redefining what's possible in hardware development. Previously, Sergiy spent five years at SpaceX as a Senior Radiation Effects Engineer, building electronics for the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.

 

SHOW NOTES:

Introducing Sergiy Nesterenko & the inspiration behind Quilter (1:43)

Why now is the right time to tackle this technical challenge (3:37)

The technology landscape during Quilter’s early days (6:05)

Sergiy’s fundraising journey & key takeaways (8:26)

The importance of adopting an evolutionary mindset (10:52)

Early problems that Quilter aimed to solve (13:08)

Navigating the balance between technical problems & consumer readiness (15:59)

How negative feedback can lead to solving a key problem (18:34)

Knowing which feedback to incorporate into product iterations (20:08)

Lessons learned from choosing the wrong customers (27:33)

First principles approach to circuit board building (29:31)

Signals that it’s the right time to tackle a hard technical challenge (34:04)

Advantages to solving really hard problems & tackling entrepreneurship (36:32)

Common misconceptions surrounding early phase companies (38:17)

Sergiy’s experience working with Eric @ Benchmark (39:46)

Why investors like founders who spend time in the “idea maze” (42:19)

Strategies for convincing high-profile talent to join your org early on (43:22)

Rapid fire questions (45:10)

 

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tomas Reimers, Co-Founder & CPO @ Graphite, reveals his journey to becoming a founder and some of the major moments from Graphite’s product development story. He dissects frameworks for determining when it’s time to quit your full-time job to pursue becoming a founder and analyzing the costs vs. benefits of that decision. We cover how to decide what customer problems to solve, understanding how software development trends impact what you’re building, and product market fit and selling considerations. Lastly, Tomas shares valuable strategies when it comes to selling to developers.

 

ABOUT TOMAS REIMERS

Tomas Reimers is the CPO and co-founder of Graphite, the a16z and Anthropic-backed AI code review platform that Cursor acquired in December 2025. Previously, he was an engineer at Facebook. Passionate about advancing developer velocity, Tomas holds a BS in Computer Science from Harvard University.

 

SHOW NOTES:

The origin story behind Graphite (1:05)

Signs that it’s time to quit your job / found a company (4:03)

How Tomas & his co-founders knew it was time to break up with their jobs (5:40)

Understand what leaving your job will mean career-growth wise (7:33)

Embracing regret minimization (9:28)

Pros & cons of developing in blue ocean vs. red ocean areas as a founder (11:49)

Strategies for determining what software to build / how is software dev evolving (14:00)

Tomas’s framework for determining bets (15:50)

Recommendations for selling as a founder (17:52)

Identifying if sales isn’t working or if product market fit is off (20:35)

Using customer insights to experiment & make a PMF pivot (23:05)

Why developers don’t want to be sold to, they want to be taught (24:42)

How to apply teaching vs. selling into early GTM strategy (27:20)

Utilizing demonstrations to gain developer buy in & trust (29:24)

What Tomas is looking forward to in Graphite’s future / software dev in general (32:04)

Rapid fire questions (33:34)

 

LINKS AND RESOURCES

The Mom Test - Rob Fitzpatrick’s quick, practical guide that will save you time, money, and heartbreak.

Founding Sales - The Startup Sales Handbook - rhe distillation of Pete Kazanjy’s experience at his first software startup, TalentBin going from a founder with a product marketing and product management background to early sales guy, early sales manager, and eventual post-acquisition sales leader at Monster Worldwide in addition to his later experience founding Modern Sales, the nation’s largest sales operations, enablement, and leadership community.

Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts - Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned business consultant, draws on examples from business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Vivek Raghunathan, SVP of Engineering @ Snowflake, joins the Engineering Leadership Community Podcast to discuss all things AI – most importantly, how Snowflake is utilizing AI internally to iterate faster with smaller, focused teams. Vivek shares how AI and lower coding costs ultimately help Snowflake implement tighter feedback loops between customer & eng teams to speed up product development rollout and how Snowflake empowers their orgs to upskill when it comes to AI. Jerry & Vivek also break down what quality leadership looks like across the board and the role of AI in shaping today’s eng leaders.

 

ABOUT VIVEK RAGHUNATHAN

Vivek Raghunathan is Snowflake's SVP of Engineering. Before joining Snowflake, Vivek co-founded Neeva, one of the first AI-native search engines for consumers, which was acquired by Snowflake in 2023. Prior to that, he spent more than a decade at Google, where he led YouTube monetization and helped launch Google Now.

 

ABOUT SNOWFLAKE

Snowflake is the data and AI platform that many of the world's largest organizations rely on to power their most critical operations. Whether a bank is approving a loan, a retailer is optimizing its supply chain, or a hospital is bringing together patient data, Snowflake helps organizations unify data, apply AI, and make faster, more informed decisions. Today, over 13,900 companies rely on Snowflake to turn their data into business value, with enterprise-grade security, governance, and scale built-in.

 

SHOW NOTES:

Where Snowflake is on their AI adoption journey (0:57)

Using AI to help eng orgs meet maximum velocity (3:04)

Defining traits of engineers who successfully leverage agentic tools (5:55)

The benefit of cross collaborative skillsets for eng leaders (8:53)

How AI is helping orgs test infrastructure rewrites effectively & less expensively (10:09)

Discovering AI patterns @ Snowflake (11:44)

Why Snowflake gives teams a week off to learn the necessary AI tools (16:37)

Compressing the product dev cycle with the help of AI (18:28)

Simplify eng teams / encourage fluidity of roles (19:49)

Vivek’s perspective on leveraging AI to best support customer needs (22:45)

Building control planes to support enterprises (24:30)

Methods for consolidating data / making it accessible to the entire org (27:18)

How AI shapes what a quality leader looks like (30:39)

The role of empathy in leadership (33:49)

Rapid fire questions (35:08)

 

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.