S5 Bonus: Andrew Childs, Shortcut (formerly Clubhouse.io)

Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Noah Labhart - Startup Founder & CTO

Tech News, News, Business, Technology, Entrepreneurship, Careers

4.6 • 216 Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Andrew Childs doesn't have a computer science background. He grew up in Philly, and is currently based in NYC with his wife and 6 year old. His first computer experience was in 1984, with a Macintosh plus. He was immediately hooked on this extraordinary machine, that felt like it was made by humans. With no internet, it was just a playground in the beginning, but on it, he was able to explore design and learn pascal. He attended RISD, an arts school in providence, and studied painting. His goal was to go into contemporary art, but he quickly realized he didn't know anything about how to approach the art world. Throughout the program, he did learn a lot about how to think, how to look at things, and how to be creative. Post that, he ran a few web design and development agencies, before being pulled into the startup world. At a prior startup, the opinionated nature of project tools his team was using started to get in the way of their productivity... not to mention, it was not possible to get a birds eye view of direction, progress, etc. across multiple projects. During a hack day project, Andrew built a way to aggregate their tool into one single view. It was then that it clicked, and he and his co-founder thought maybe they were on to something. This is the creation story of Shortcut (formerly Clubhouse). Our Sponsors: * Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com * Check out Red Hat: https://www.redhat.com * Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORY Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Transcript

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0:00.0	I wanted to build something that was going to be stable that allowed us to work on the product itself.
0:05.0	That's what led to my decision to build something very custom and very lightweight.
0:10.0	Another decision was like, let's do some things that we know isn't going to scale.
0:15.0	An example of that is loading almost all of your data up front,
0:20.0	and then just keeping it in memory.
0:22.2	So that once you've taken that kind of cold load hit, everything after that is basically
0:27.2	instant.
0:28.2	That decision, like it allows us to put an extremely fast product out there.
0:33.1	And I think that the speed of it was like kind of our secret weapon.
0:37.9	My name is Andrew Childs.
0:39.5	I'm the co-founder and chief design officer of Shortcut.
0:47.7	This is Code Story, the podcast bringing you interviews with tech visionaries who share in the critical moments of what it takes to change in industry
0:57.3	and build and lead a team that has your back.
1:02.3	I'm your host, Noel Appart, and today how Andrew Childs built the best tool to bring the flow
1:08.7	to your software team's workflow.
1:13.5	All this and more.
1:15.1	OnCote Story.
1:20.3	Andrew Childs doesn't have a computer science background.
1:23.6	He grew up in Philly and is currently based in New York City with his wife and six-year-old.
1:28.3	His first computer experience was in 1984 with a Macintosh Plus.
1:32.3	With no internet, it was just a playground in the beginning, but on it he was able to explore design and learn Pascal.
1:38.3	He attended RISD in Rhode Island, an art school.
	...

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