Fractional by Swarm

Everyone says AI will 10x your dev team. But what does the data actually say? In this episode of Fractional, Simon Obstbaum—Stanford researcher and former CTO of Crunchyroll—walks us through one of the most grounded conversations on developer productivity with AI you’ll hear. Simon’s team at Stanford built a model trained on expert code reviews to study the actual impact of AI coding tools. What t...

Everyone’s shipping copilots. Ragde Falcis built something else: a real agentic system —used daily by thousands of customers. In this episode of Fractional , we break down how ChatGenie: → Hit 90%+ accuracy without model fine-tuning → Uses multi-agent orchestration with reasoning and memory → Built eval loops and guardrails that actually scale → Tracks token-level usage to make the business work →...

"Most OKRs Are Just Tracking Failure"OKRs are supposed to drive success. But here’s what actually happens instead:1. Teams track effort, not results.2. Leaders set goals based on gut feeling.3. When things go wrong, strategy isn’t questioned—the team is."If your OKRs aren’t tied to behavior change, they’re just noise."Jeff Gothelf and I break down:1. How OKRs expose bad leadership assumptions2. Wh...

AI without strategy is just hype—Wardley Maps fix that. Governments, businesses, and enterprises follow AI trends without mapping the landscape, leaving them blind to risks and opportunities. That's why I sat down with Simon Wardley , the inventor of Wardley Maps, and one of the UK’s top 50 most influential people in tech, to break down why most AI strategies fail—and how mapping can give you a re...

Rajiv Ayyangar is the CEO at Product Hunt. He was previously co-founder / CEO of Tandem. He also studied bioengineering at Princeton and subsequently worked at Fairchild and Yahoo. In this episode of Fractional, we discuss the Product Hunt AI roadmap, what AI products are getting the top spot, Rajiv's journey from Tandem CEO to ProductHunt CEO, and why build velocity is very important. If you&...

"AI in healthcare isn’t just hard—it’s life or death." In this episode of Fractional by Swarm , we sit down with Evelyn C. Goh —PhD candidate at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and founder/CEO of Megrez —to explore the toughest challenges in healthcare AI. Evelyn is pioneering research on the integration of AI into healthcare solutions. Through her work at Megrez, an agency specializing...

Tomithy plays the role of seeker and investor at ST Telemedia - a VC/PE fund that invests in telcos, data centres, growth stage tech companies in AI, Cybersecurity and Cloud IT . He actively works with target and existing portfolio companies in terms of technical diligence, business strategy and commercial evaluation via their CTO, product & engineering teams. He has a deep interest in governa...

Anand Krishnan is the Founder and Managing Partner of thinkbridge , a digital technology and business consulting firm that specializes in helping clients build and deploy tech-forward business strategies that drive outsized value creation. He is also the co-founder of Sensorscall , a senior care platform that helps seniors age-in-place. He was a former CTO of IBM and is one of the leading hives on...

Dr Bernard Leong is currently the founder and CEO of Dorje AI, an enterprise AI startup focusing on building the next generation business operating system that enables companies to be productive, efficient, and adaptive. He held regional business roles as the Head of Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning in Amazon Web Services for ASEAN, Vice President of Airbus Aerial specifically on sat...

Dominic Ligot is a data analyst, researcher, software developer, entrepreneur and technologist. He’s the Founder of CirroLytix, a social impact AI company, and Data Ethics PH, an online community focused on social issues such as data privacy, data security, AI-driven discrimination and more. He represents the Philippines as Member of the Expert Advisory Panel of the International Scientific Report...

Indi Young is a solution strategist who uses purpose-focused qualitative data science.  She created her method over a 30-year span, and teaches that method in courses, coaching, workshops, books, talks, and through working with teams on research studies. She was one of the founders of Adaptive Path, the pioneering UX consultancy. Indi has written three books, Time to Listen, Practical Empathy and...

Don Norman was the founding Director of The Design Lab at the University of California, San Diego; is co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group; a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and former VP of Apple. His latest work expands the notion of being human centered to consider the impact upon the environment, upon all cultures, and upon quality of life—Humanity centered. This is explained...

Rachel Gogel (she/her) is a Parisian creative director, speaker, mentor, and educator. She runs her own consultancy as a fractional design executive. She’s led major brand initiatives at GQ, The New York Times, Meta, Godfrey Dadich, Airbnb, and Dropbox. As a solopreneur, Rachel has been launching editorial publications from scratch, leading org design efforts, designing TV show pitch decks, and bu...

John Paul Alcala is a Fractional Solutions Architect and Chief Technology Officer who has managed over PHP 2 Billion of cloud budget in the Philippines. Recently, he was a Partner Solutions Architect for ASEAN at Amazon Web Services (AWS). Before that, he was an Associate Vice President, Head of Infrastructure and Special Projects at GCash. A builder at heart, he is passionate about making people’...

David Fallarme is the VP of Marketing at Owner.com. At the time of recording, he was a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer and Marketing Advisor for Series A and B startups. He's built and led marketing teams at companies big and small, from public companies like HubSpot and Electronic Arts to venture-backed startups like On Deck, ReferralCandy, and App Annie. David has seen versions of the &qu...

Andrei Gonzales, is a multi-disciplinary design mentor, human-centered design evangelist, and current Senior Manager for Service and Experience Design for Deloitte Digital Canberra. He has 20 years of professional experience in the digital industry across design, consulting, and digital innovation.  He held roles as an Experience Architect, Manager, and Designer at Salesforce, Fjord, BCG Digital V...

Joshua Arvin Lat is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of NuWorks Interactive Labs, Inc. He is also an AWS Machine Learning Hero and he has been an international speaker on machine learning, engineering, security, and management.  He’s the author of three books — “Machine Learning with Amazon SageMaker Cookbook," "Machine Learning Engineering on AWS," and "Building and Automati...

Tim Santos is the Director of Product for AI Cloud Solutions at Graphcore, He leads the product strategy and vision for enabling developers, plus AI & ML software organisations to build and deploy cutting-edge AI models in production. Tim also leads the AI Hive on Swarm . With over 13 years of experience in data science, AI, and MLOps, Tim has a strong background and passion for delivering imp...

Grace Walker is an independent web designer and Webflow developer building marketing sites that are visually stunning and technically sound. She has launched over 90 marketing sites in Webflow and has become a client favorite not only for her designs, but also her organization and project management. Her deep understanding of Webflow allows her to create custom solutions that are tailored to the u...

Matthias Cordes is a Web Designer and Webflow Developer. He runs his own freelance business and creates high converting websites for fast growing technology startups. Matthias had his first freelance “gig” as a designer after highschool and while traveling around Australia and Bali. After graduating with a degree in Creative Technology at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, he pursued his...

Lex Roman empowers early stage solopreneurs to find their clients without playing Google and Instagram’s games. A former Silicon Valley growth designer turned small biz growth marketer, Lex has been crafting winning conversion strategies for companies like Nissan, Macys, Gusto and The Black Tux since 2010. She popularized the term “growth design” and built a community of over 2k practitioners that...

Sergio Pereira has been a Software Engineer and CTO for 13 years. Sergio has built tech products for several fast growing startups, such as Bulk MRO , StudentFinance and Candidly . For the last 7 years, Sergio has managed fully remote teams, either full time or working as a Fractional CTO . He is also a public speaker on remote work and managing tech teams, having spoken at major tech conferences...

Karthik Puvvada, often called 'KP', is the founder & CEO of Build In Public Fellowship . It's an online program and community to help founders and creators put themselves out there and build in public fearlessly. He also runs a SaaS startup “ LeaderBird ” which helps people be more consistent on Twitter by gamifying the journey. He previously ran programs at Day One (funded by Gary...

Frances To is an Independent Designer who specializes in creating bespoke websites, digital products, and interactive stories on Webflow. Since the start of Frances’s independent design practice, her work has been recognized by Awwwards, CSS Design Awards, Typewolf, and Buried Signals. We talk about Frost Condensed Sans , a typeface made by the Frost Design team, which Frances is part of; the bene...

Angela Salud Chua is the founder of  Toffeenut Design Studio , an independent collectives studio based in the Philippines. She has been designing products with tech leaders for over a decade, helping with ideation and strategy, and building award-winning products that scale. We talk about fostering relationships and referrals, defending design decisions as a female Asian senior designer in Western...