Fortune's Path Podcast

Teja Yenamandra, CEO of gun.io , a staffing and placement firm for software engineers, talks about why he took money after boot strapping his business successfully. Tom and Teja discuss the future of software engineering, automation, and ChatGBT. Teja sees automation being used for invoicing and other parts of running his business, but not for writing code just yet. Tom talks about how insight has...

Long time product manager Cooper McGoodwin talks about priotizing features, delegation, and potty training his two and half year old. He and Tom also discuss the pitfalls of scrum and agile, why roadmaps are necessary but overblown, why the only roadmap that matters is the one you can keep in your head, and how prioritization should follow moral principles. Tom makes a case that bad user experienc...

Ben tells the story of how he started his sales consultancy. Ben talks about getting laid off and how he helped his team, many of whom were also laid off, through the process. Ben says if you're not getting pulled into working for yourself then maybe you shouldn't do it. Tom talks about how anyone who is in the arts like an actor or a writer is in business for themself. Ben and Tom talk about how...

Katie Reilly, long-time product management leader, describes how product management is the glue between technology, sales, and go-to-market and how any organization can benefit from product management. Katie and Tom discuss how the discipline of product management is needed to make sure a product meets the needs of the market. Tom asks Katie how she applies product management to her own life. Kati...

Robert Carroll, successful entrepreneur and product leader, tells Tom about his journey as a father and how he’s approached different stages of his career based on his personal needs. Robert tells about an early digital video product he built that sold for $300,000 a unit, and then discusses how a technical advantage can evaporate quickly. Tom asks if it's better to be consistently bad in software...

John Farkas, founder of Golden Spiral Marketing, tells how his first job working in a hardware store prepared him for a career in marketing. According to John, marketing is largely about helping people find the right tools to get a job done. John talks about how his first career in theater led to the founding of his digital agency. From theater John learned there are many different ways to get an...

Chris Gann started in product development when he was very young, working in healthcare EDI at the dawn of HIPAA while promoting his punk band. Chris taught himself to use the resources available and "read recipes" to make new products. "I learn through doing," says Chris, "and it can be hard to give direction to others when you learn through doing." Today Chris is a leader of other product manage...

Bob "Batch" Batcheler shares his secret for growing his consultancy and finding great companies. He gives his services away, and that makes people want more. Batch tells how his initial conversations lead to one of three outcomes: he has no interest (almost never), he knows someone who can help more than him, or he knows how he can help. Batch tells how his free exploration leads to a request for...

Ann Howard, product and technology leader, talks about how leaders need to share information widely and make decisions publicly. Ann says leaders are charged with predicting the future. She lays out her method for making decisions, knowing that there are very few decisions that are irreversible. Ann describes how to scale decisions down, test them, and get information about risks, describes the di...

What makes a great sales person? And how do you pick a company to invest your money and talent with? These are some of the questions we ask old friend of Fortune's Path Adam Zais. Adam is a longtime technology leader with many early stage successes and positive exits to his name. Tom and Adam discuss what the early days of the PC were like, and how Adam created a product that integrated both hardw...

Carm Huntress, CEO of Credo Health and four-time company founder, talks to Tom about improving access to medical records and other things digital health. Carm explains what Credo does, and why it's good. Tom and Carm disagree about why healthcare systems spend money. Carm tells why he believes transparency and data will lead to cannibalization in not-for-profit healthcare as expensive procedures a...

Eric Caroll grew up in an entrepreneurial household. His father did the “grind” of running his own business but always made time for his family, even if it meant burning the midnight oil once the kids were asleep. Eric appreciated his dad’s clear-eyed focus on what mattered most. In his career as a product leader, Eric has strived to be equally clear in his vision - for his products, for his perso...

Bill Horne built the foundation of his career in sales at IBM and realized his dream of becoming an executive at age 40. He is a committed lifelong learner who believes in active listening - and it shows. Bill follows staffing advice he learned from a rug merchant on a flight from Atlanta to Salt Lake City in the 1980s. And credits his mentor with teaching him how to gather and be discerning about...

Anne Chaconas likes vanilla, but she doesn’t want to be vanilla. She’s visually “out there” in most tech leadership spaces and wears her beliefs on her sleeve. Anne explains that knowing yourself and being honest alienates some people but keeps the people who matter most close, forming your tribe. She hopes that her visibility in tech spaces invites other people like her to see themselves in the s...

Shannon Hooper talks about how she stays inspired by looking at what's happening on the bleeding edge of technology, particularly writing about the Metaverse – our shared digital reality. Tom asks Shannon if we behave the same way in virtual worlds as we do in the real world, and Shannon says it depends on generations. Shannon also talks about how virtual reality could be applied to therapies for...

What makes a good leader? Does it change with the size of an organization? How do you find your safe place when you have to make an important presentation? And why did Michael Bloomberg have a hard time connecting with voters when he ran for President? These are some of the questions we ask Church Garcia, professional speaker, executive coach, and bestselling author. Chuck tells what he learned ab...

Tom talks with innovation leader and brand builder Gavin Ivester. Gavin is the former Vice President of Design for Bang & Olufsen, the beloved maker of artful audio equipment and televisions. Gavin talks about creating a principle driven design strategy that delivered double-digit growth in a painfully competitive market, how he started at Apple where he was employee number 2,454, and how he made...

Back in November Tom talked with Chris Boyd, start-up advisor, mentor, and one of the wisest people we know working in product management. For over five years Chris has been the head of product for Built Technologies who recently announced a series C round worth $88M.   Tom and Chris talk about Chris's transition from project manager to product manager and play a game of "spontaneous product devel...

Back in September Tom talked with Mohit Pureby, long-time food production executive, entrepreneur, and expert in the Asian market. Mohit is a 24 year veteran of Cargill, a giant in food production, and is now the Director of Distribution and Business Development, Asia at Bunge, an American agribusiness and food company. Tom and Mohit talk about how we can feed 9 billion people, Earth's estimated p...

Tom explains how he wrote his book Fortune's Path: How to Use the Principles of Recovery to Find Fortune and Happiness, why he wrote it, and how he feels now that it's done. Tom also reads the 12 Steps of Product Management (we all have to manage the products that are our lives), the Forward (written by his son Joe Noser, 23) and the Introduction. Fortune's Path: How to Use the Principles of Recov...

Dan Hogan, founder of Barrel Stock Trading Company, a fund that invests in Kentucky Bourbon, talks about learning from failure and success and why we shouldn't try to choose between achievement and enjoyment. Dan believes money is the lifeblood for any entrepreneur. Dan's first investor was his father, who bought a 1984 Cadillac Fleetwood with 410,000 miles to support Dan's limousine business. Dan...

Jonas Fridrichesen, long-time sales leader and Chief Revenue Officer for VerityStream, a healthcare credentialing and verification Software-as-a-Service platform, talks about leading sales teams, rising above the noise in healthcare, and why the challenger sales model appeals to him. Jonas describes how his teams have grow revenue by building awareness before demand, why he prefers sales to market...

What is performance marketing, and how do you incorporate data into your marketing? What are the jobs of marketing and sales? What’s it like to enter the workforce during an economic downturn? These are some of the questions we ask Joshua Oakes, Creator and Founder of the Who First Framework, an audience understanding, product development, and customer acquisition process for executives, investors...

Tom talks with multi-award winning Broadway producer Bonnie Comley, co-founder of BroadwayHD, an on-demand video streaming service for Broadway quality live theater. Tom and Bonnie talk about Bonnie's career as an actor, an on-air television personality, Broadway producer, technology start-up founder, and parent. Growing up the daughter of entrepreneurs, Bonnie learned how working in an elevator r...

Tom talks to Cyndee Sugra, serial entrepreneur, creator, musician, founder and Chief Strategy Officer of the Werck Group, a values-driven strategy and product consultancy firm in the Netherlands. Cyndee started, grew, and sold a successful digital agency in Los Angeles before following her dream to live in Amsterdam. Cyndee talks about how she got to Amsterdam, recovering from founder burnout, why...