Brick by Brick: Startups are for Optimists: Uma Chingunde, fmr VP Eng at Render, Eng Leader at Stripe & VMware

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Brick by Brick

Garuda Ventures

15 episodes

3 days ago

Join us as we learn how successful startups were really built, from the people who built them. We know firsthand how much successful company building is a team sport. The founders, early employees, and first investors work together to lay the foundation for the business. In the early days chaos reigns, processes and systems are non-existent, and bold moves are required daily. It’s unglamorous. It’s blocking and tackling. It’s not for the faint of heart. Hear stories, lessons, and the 'what not to dos' from the early employees, founders, and investors from startups you know.

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Brick by Brick: Startups are for Optimists: Uma Chingunde, fmr VP Eng at Render, Eng Leader at Stripe & VMware

Brick by Brick

55 minutes 4 seconds

1 year ago

Brick by Brick: Startups are for Optimists: Uma Chingunde, fmr VP Eng at Render, Eng Leader at Stripe & VMware

Uma Chingunde is a seasoned engineering leader. She was previously the VP of Engineering at Render and engineering leader at Stripe and started her career at VMware.

In this episode, Uma shares her advice on how to balance uptime and reliability with feature release cadence, staying level-headed through engineering incidents, and how startups that are selling to the engineering function should think about showing value in the post-ZIRP era.

Topics discussed:

- Uma's background and journey into computer science and the tech industry

- Uma's time at VMware, including her transition from individual contributor to engineering manager

- Uma's move to Stripe and the company's approach to balancing uptime/reliability with feature velocity

- Advice on building high-performance engineering teams

- Thoughts on the changing landscape for startups selling to engineering teams

- Career advice and Uma's framework for evaluating new opportunities

Links:

Follow Uma on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/umachingunde

Follow Uma on X - https://x.com/umachingunde

Brick by Brick is presented by Garuda Ventures (https://garuda.vc).

About Garuda Ventures:

Garuda Ventures is a B2B-focused pre-seed and seed venture fund. Garuda is a first-check firm and aims to earn the right to be a founder's first call as they go about building their companies. To learn more, visit https://www.garuda.vc

Today's episode was hosted by Arpan Punyani. Find Arpan on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/arpanpunyani/), Substack (https://arpanpunyani.substack.com/) or X/Twitter (https://x.com/arpanpunyani)

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