Engineering Founders

Jake Schwartz (Co-Founder @ Endorsed) joins us to talk about de-risking the co-founder relationship! We cover how they built in stress-tests to validate co-founder fit, how to host a hackathon to stress-test your partnership, and why reference calls are an important component of finding a co-founder. Plus the story behind Jakes's transition from Life360 to co-founding Endorsed, prioritizing which projects to focus on, early-stage product strategy considerations around AI, and why you need to approach your customers with a genuine sense of curiosity.

ABOUT JAKE SCHWARTZ

Jake is an engineering leader, entrepreneur, and technology investor based in San Francisco. From building his first website at age 8 to shipping large-scale software at Apple and overseeing the development of the flagship Life360 app, Jake has tackled engineering challenges at every scale. At Life360, he jump-started the European engineering office, helping scale the company from 50 to 500 people and reaching an audience of 70M users worldwide. He is now the co-founder of Endorsed.com, an AI recruiting platform that helps teams hire better and faster.

SHOW NOTES:

• The origin story behind Endorsed (1:59)
• What inspired Jake to dive into the world of hiring (6:05)
• The whiteboarding conversation between Jake & his co-founder (7:12)
• Jake’s transition from Life360 to starting Endorsed (9:24)
• Insights on experimentation & stress-testing the co-founder relationship (11:23)
• Deciding what experiments to pursue further or toss (13:16)
• Strategies for de-risking the co-founder relationship & transition to a startup (14:30)
• Organizing a hackathon to test the co-founder relationship (16:50)
• What Jake learned from the co-founder hackathon & tips for trying your own (18:07)
• Main objectives for co-founder reference calls (19:59)
• Dissecting Jake’s decision-making process behind the different pivots (21:27)
• Why they decided to commit to selling direct vs. building an API layer (24:38)
• Recommendations for sorting through problems & deciding which to solve (25:57)
• Approach your customers with curiosity (29:31)
• Early-stage considerations for AI in terms of product strategy (30:33)
• Rapid fire questions (33:34)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• Steve Jobs “Keeper of the Vision” quote
• The Three-Body Problem - Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.

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/