Engineering Founders

Today, we’re talking about the intersection between the software eng & hardware eng communities with Jessie Frazelle, Co-founder & CEO @ Zoo. She shares her founder story with us, along with what the early days of building a hardware and hardware-adjacent company looked like. Jessie dissects the differences between building in software & hard tech and what those differences mean when it comes to VC fundraising, identifying building models, and more. Additionally, we speculate on what the future of this world looks like, tips for selling a product in a sector you’re unfamiliar with, and how to identify / address unexpected areas of toil for your customers.

ABOUT JESSIE FRAZELLE

Jessie Frazelle (@jessfraz) is the Co-Founder and CEO at Zoo, the world's only company to develop advanced tools for hardware design Frazelle acts as lead engineer and architect for the Zoo ecosystem alongside other co-founders Jordan Noone and Jenna Bryant.

With an impressive background including over ten years in the tech industry, Frazelle is also a software engineer and advisor to Embedded Ventures – a next-generation venture capital firm investing in early-stage deep tech startups. With a thesis that takes a commercial-first approach to investing in early-stage startups with applications that can serve the Department of Defense, Embedded has a first-of-its-kind partnership with the United States Space Force.

Previously, Frazelle was co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Oxide Computer Company and has also held roles at Google, Docker, and Microsoft, among others, and has spoken at many conferences including CERN, QCon, and LinuxConf AU.

"Chips today aren't optimized for a single-thread. They are optimized for multi-thread. So every time you upgrade your computer, you're going in the opposite direction. You want a computer from 30 years ago to run this thing. I was like, 'This is so messed up. If no one cleans this up, we will be stuck with the coolest technology in 10 years, but still these shitty old computers have to run CAD and it makes no sense.’”

- Jessie Frazelle

SHOW NOTES:

• Why Jessie made the transition from GitHub to Oxide (1:49)
• Experiences that prepared Jessie to start her first company (4:47)
• The origin story of Zoo & differences between building the two orgs (7:05)
• Strategies for deciding which pathway to pursue when you’re between options (8:55)
• Differences between building a company in software vs. hardware space (11:20)
• Building the first product at Zoo vs. Oxide (13:06)
• How to accelerate when you get stuck in the process during early dev stages (16:09)
• Addressing CADkernel from a first principles approach (17:07)
• Gaining conviction that they could build & ship a product on a faster timeline (20:46)
• Why Jessie wanted to begin with CADkernel as the first product area (22:44)
• Jessie’s perspective on business models in software vs. hardware (25:03)
• Lessons learned while building for / selling to a sector you’re less familiar with (26:55)
• Using the discovery process to identify unexpected areas of toil (30:29)
• Fundraising in the hardware & hardware-adjacent space (31:34)
• Key elements of a pitch to hardware VCs that result in a yes (33:47)
• Emerging opportunities at the intersection of hardware & software (35:50)
• Rapid fire questions (37:54)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology - Economic historian Chris Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life, how the U.S. became dominant in chip design, how its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power, and how China is catching up.

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/