Pete McCarthy is an experienced tech entrepreneur with a wealth of knowledge in various industries. In this conversation we explored the evolution of the internet, his experiences during the dot-com bubble, and his insights into agile and waterfall methodologies, crypto, bitcoin, and Earthships.
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TIMESTAMPS:
(00:00:59) Intro and Background
(00:03:31) The internet in 1995
(00:04:30) Seeing the internet for the first time
(00:05:56) Making a huge shift from entrepreneurship
(00:08:42) The decision behind shifting to different industries
(00:10:01) Going different paths and learning
(00:10:19) Enjoying travel, then deciding to settle down
(00:12:03) Why move to San Francisco?
(00:13:27) Learning the business while working with OpenTable
(00:14:05) The learning process as a beginner
(00:15:31) Silicon Valley in 1999/2000
(00:16:37) The dot-com bubble
(00:17:08) The beginning of the dot-com crash
(00:18:04) OpenTable surviving the crash
(00:18:25) Beginning a career as a tech
(00:19:19) Dot-com bubble burst aftermath
(00:19:44) Fucked Company, the pastime for most startup company employees
(00:20:39) The silver lining and resurgence of startup companies
(00:22:15) The beginning of solving problems - product building
(00:24:16) Opening up bigger opportunities
(00:25:59) Gaining experience: Working for companies before launching his own tech venture
(00:28:14) Opportunities and innovation with the release of the iPhone
(00:28:57) Experiencing big shifts in technology: Cloud and mobile
(00:30:19) Foreseeing Google and Apple taking over
(00:30:49) Agile iterative approach, ship fast: Ruby Rails, 37 signals
(00:32:20) Being comfortable with the uncomfortable: The Contrarian way of thinking
(00:34:20) Fundamentals of product management, Factors builds a great process: Great product people and design
(00:35:21) Enterprise software
(00:36:06) Waterfall project
(00:36:54) Agile methodology as the better approach
(00:38:23) A big aspect of product management: Identifying and reducing irrelevant data effectively
(00:40:16) Don't be committed to one answer
(00:40:28) Direct user feedback for making changes
(00:40:44) The difficulty of getting into true agile methodology
(00:41:29) Sprint planning
(00:42:22) Intentionally saying "no" to achieve better outcome
(00:43:02) Shipping makes it easier to figure out what to do next
(00:43:42) Living the corporate America life, working remotely
(00:45:50) Resilience: Rising better after a fall
(00:47:29) Starting CheckWise
(00:48:51) Offering a solution
(00:49:34) Learning how to code
(00:50:24) The transition from product management to the technical side of things
(00:52:49) Trying to pursue a coding career, going back to product
(00:53:52) Working with a development team in Italy, festivals
(00:54:26) Letting go of the coding dream, and enjoying building operational software
(00:56:26) Electric forest and the Blissfest
(00:58:40) Van trip
(00:59:10) Earthships
(01:02:53) Emergence of Bitcoin
(01:07:13) Crypto, Blockchain
(01:09:52) Part 2: Xero knowledge proofs, DAOs, AI and where this goes from a long-term perspective
(01:10:15) Closing
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