EPISODE 12

From building gravity-defying camera rigs for Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity to sending drones into live nuclear reactors and, most recently, designing job-site robots that can survive the dust and chaos of construction, Asa Hammond’s career shows how precision engineering and artistic vision can coexist. In this conversation, Asa explains how the exacting pixel-perfect discipline of Hollywood VFX became the blueprint for ultra-reliable industrial robotics, why safety and repeatability always come before flashy features, and how new UX layers—voice, LLMs, demonstration learning—are finally making complex machines feel like familiar tools. Along the way, we hear tales of full-scale “stunt-double” reactors, the reality of folding-laundry robots, and what it takes to assemble a world-class, T-shaped engineering team that thrives at the edge of possibility.

CHAPTERS

00:29 – From Film Sets to Founders: Show Intro

02:12 – Asa’s Hollywood-to-Hard-Hats Origin Story

05:57 – Engineering Robots for Gravity

09:05 – Reinventing Construction with Industrial Arms

15:56 – Flying Drones Inside Nuclear Reactors

LINKS

Connect with Asa Hammond

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EPISODE 11

From hand-carving a single silicone spatula in her kitchen to running a portfolio of revived consumer brands, Sam Rose walks Kevin and Jason through the through-line of her career: obsess over the customer, build a brand (not just a product), and make logistics as lovable as design. She explains how a “collision with the customer” on Kickstarter forced her into customer-service mode before she even had inventory, why color stories beat strict SKU rationalization, what the GIR sale to Pattern taught her about single-channel risk, and how vertical integration led to Manifest’s 3PL and the launch of Endless Commerce. Sam also breaks down AI’s role in just-in-time inventory, predicts an LLM-powered shopping future that both excites and unnerves her, and offers two free months of her commerce OS to fellow founders.

CHAPTERS

00:00 – Collision with the Customer & Kickstarter Lessons

02:44 – Scaling GIR: Color Stories vs. SKU Discipline

07:32 – Acquisition Insights: Building a Balanced Brand Portfolio

09:54 – Manifest & the Cost of Learning Curves

13:03 – Endless Commerce and AI-Driven Supply Chains

OFFER

Get two months free on any tier and free onboarding to Endless Commerce when you mention the Founder Mode podcast or that Jason & Kevin sent you!

LINKS

Connect with Samantha Rose

endlesscommerce.com • LinkedIn • X/Twitter

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EPISODE 10

Serial CTO and Acompli co-founder JJ Zhuang joins Kevin and Jason to explain why the next generation of great products will be built by tiny, AI-super-powered teams. He unpacks lessons from taking Acompli’s first line of code to a $200 million Microsoft exit, steering Instacart through pandemic hyper-growth, and relearning to code with tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor and Devin now writing the majority of his team’s code. Along the way JJ outlines the shift from hiring stack specialists to adaptable generalists, the rise of agentic “AI teammates,” and his mantra of “fast software” that lets founders prototype, test and ship at the speed of imagination—while still cutting through the 2025 hype cycle around agents and other buzzwords.

CHAPTERS

00:00 – Shots Fired: Surprising Start & Show Kick-off

01:52 – From Acompli to Outlook: Building All-Star Teams

06:11 – Instacart’s Pandemic Sprint & Early AI Adoption

11:50 – Pair-Programming vs. Agentic Devs: Devin, Cursor & More

22:12 – Fast Software & Filtering the 2025 AI Hype

LINKS

Connect with JJ Zhuang

LinkedIn • X/Twitter

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Connect with Kevin

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Connect with Jason

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RESOURCES

GitHub Copilot

v0

Devin

Cursor

Windsurf

Augment

OpenAI Codex