The Founder's Foyer with Aishwarya Ashok

Building products is so much fun—at the same time, it’s equally exhausting and challenging with so many peers to work with, the market needs to look into, and a lot of processes to go by. While frameworks and techniques can be compelling to share, they are hard to standardize for different software teams and their cultures. So what are some ways to navigate these complexities and build better soft...

If there’s one phrase we’ve heard over a thousand times in the last two years it is — remote work. Or say hybrid work. From building and iterating on ideas by pulling out chairs, to virtually looking at each other’s faces on tiles—we’ve done it all. But there’s a whole lot of stuff to think about working with folks across different geographies, time zones, interests. And so many questions to keep...

Whether it’s meeting a founder friend, a potential hire, investor, customers, or even a bunch of product team leads, there’s one thing that stands out–the ‘narrative’ you want to tell, the story of what you’re building and why you’re building that. Strategic narrative binds all the folks who are directly impacted by your ideas and in turn gives you all the clarity and helps you articulate your vis...

Often as we build our products, we feel stuck and we are on the constant lookout for the next set of action plans. We seek some form of a structure to help us unblock challenges, understand the benchmark of the market we’re building for, as well as pave the way for personal success too. This conversation is all about that mindset to step forward, with so many practical examples to help us understa...

John Koelliker is the Co-Founder and CEO of Leland, a marketplace for ambitious people to access coaching, classes, mentorship, and community, to reach their career and educational goals. From growing in your career ladder, to taking a test, finding the right school—discover a friend and mentor to guide you through. How to start a new company, building communities around the purpose, leading the c...

Launching the product you build involves massive effort—not just in terms of shipping, but also figuring out the ways in which your audience finds satisfaction with your product. Do they find value? Of course, it’s important to align your product with the market, especially with the right problems to be solved. And this conversation is all around product, market, channels, and how to achieve a fit...

Building and shipping impactful products is definitely the enjoyable part of a product manager’s journey. It’s fun to think about what problems to work on, putting on the founder’s mindset from time to time or working with fellow co-founders on the team. Of course, there are so many challenges to tackle on the way, and as someone doing it on my day job, I can’t agree enough! So, here's a fellow pe...

In today’s Foyer Feature, let’s welcome Sonia and Blake from Kernal, the community platform to connect founders, investors and startup ideas. 15,000+ members, 1,500+ startup ideas, they are doing an amazing work in helping creators and builders find success with their project journeys. Sonia, Blake, and Aishwarya sit down to discuss everything around what makes it interesting for creative folks wh...

As soon as you put your product out in the market, the one major question that gets to you from literally everyone around is - how’s your product growing. “What’s your growth strategy?” “Does your product have network effects” “Did you get more leads or was all the money spent in ads gone to drain?” There’s no end to the list of such discussions we often get pulled into as we’re building our produ...

How to stay consistent with the inputs especially when your interests are versatile? I loved chatting with Grace Gong on this topic, especially because she's been doing some amazing work with her podcast, sharing knowledge about crypto and web 3, as well as authoring two books. A LinkedIn Top Voice for Finance and also an alum of LinkedIn for Creators program, she'd be the right person to share wi...

So your product is now launched and it's out for customers to try. You know it’s awesome, but do you know whether they know? How do you ensure your potential buyers understand the value you’re providing; do they care? Often we hear about go-to market strategy—but before all that, what should you do to ensure your target customers know your secret sauce? Here’s someone, the ONLY one, who has all th...

So you’ve got a great idea and you’ve been building out your initial version of the product. With a little bit of socializing around, you see that people are starting to gain interest in what you’re building—what next? Obviously, the thought of building a community is something that’ll definitely cross your mind. But building a community and engaging with your early believers calls for so much ded...

If building a startup is an arduous journey, finding the right people to grow with you is another mountain to climb. Ideas can meet product, but both of these need to meet the right team to live the vision. But how to find the folks who are as passionate as you in helping build great ideas? What should the benchmark be like? That’s exactly what we’ll navigate in today’s conversation about building...

#FoyerFeature—a section that completely focuses on a particular project and how the founder created an impact with it. We’ll be discussing all about their journey, the way they come up with creative ideas, and patterns they follow to learn and shine through. Kicking off the first feature is someone special, who had a mission of democratizing mentorship—and, he actually went on to do that with his...

Discovering ideas is definitely an exciting phase—we wake up, walk around, and go to sleep thinking about the best ideas we can build for. But, what happens to all those ideas? Do we really have a tried and tested way to pick out just the right ones and get to implement them? I know that journey is super hard. And this conversation is all about discovering, analyzing, and validating the right idea...

When was the last time you thought of working on a new project? Choosing between ideas and actually getting to work on it are two different jobs for the ones who build stuff. Often we are left confused, exhausted, and unclear on how to manage our energy, time, and effort, leading to a stall in the journey. Well, today’s conversation is all about how to navigate such phases and get past to working...