Between Two COOs is hosted by veteran COO Michael Koenig and brings together Chief Operating Officers, executives, and business leaders to share real insights on operations, leadership, scaling, AI, and execution. Featuring COOs from companies like LVMH, Vodafone, Automattic, Lime, JumpCloud, Grafana Labs, and Cotopaxi, plus top VCs like Brad Feld and Seth Levine. Whether you're a COO, VP of Ops, founder, or aspiring operator — this is the podcast for people who actually run companies. New episodes weekly. betweentwocoos.com | b2coos.com
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Données mises à jour le 26/09/2026
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The AI Bubble Has a Due Date. It's 2029 | Paul Kedrosky, SK Ventures
Épisode 68
mardi 22 septembre 2026 • Durée 40:19
Paul Kedrosky of SK Ventures says AI capex is driving up to 70 percent of US GDP growth, and most of it is now borrowed. He walks through the money map, the 2029 maturity wall, why AI tokens are a deflationary commodity, and three ways the AI bubble reaches companies that never touch a data center.
In this episode, Paul and Michael discuss:
Why AI capex now accounts for 30 to 70 percent of US GDP growth, and the historical moments that looked the same
The money map: how the buildout moved from hyperscaler cash flow to more than 60 percent external financing
The 2029 maturity wall, and why it rhymes with the mortgage resets of the financial crisis
Tokens as the first hyper-deflationary industrial commodity, and the growth math that follows
Why developers are a misleading signal for how the rest of the economy will use AI
Circular financing: when one company is customer, supplier, investor, and lender at once
Whether anyone is safe building on top of the frontier models, and what quant funds do instead
Three things operators should do now: guard your signal, vet your vendors, and stop extrapolating from coders
About Paul: Paul Kedrosky is co-founder and managing partner of SK Ventures and a fellow at MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, where his research focuses on AI and the future of work. A former Wall Street technology equity analyst, he consults with major asset managers, is a regular contributor at CNBC and Bloomberg, and co-hosts a weekly show with former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.
Lior Eldan, Moburst COO on Reinventing the Marketing Agency Before AI Eats It
Épisode 67
mercredi 16 septembre 2026 • Durée 54:36
Lior Eldan, co-founder and COO of Moburst, has reinvented what his agency sells three times, from app store optimization to AI products. He explains why replacing people with AI is backwards, why managers have to do the work, and why automating a broken process just gets the AI blamed.
In this episode, Lior and Michael discuss:
Why Moburst has moved off its winning product three times since 2013, and what each move broke
Build vs. buy for services: why an acquisition brings a founder, and what the day after actually looks like
Managers do the work: the rule that keeps middle management from becoming a layer of measurers
Why replacing people with AI is backwards, and what Moburst now requires of every junior hire
Forward-deployed: what an embedded team found inside a mortgage company's operations
Answer engine optimization and why an LLM reads your whole digital footprint, not your website
Fix the process before you automate it, and the cadence underneath a company that keeps reinventing itself
About Lior: Lior Eldan is co-founder and COO of Moburst, the digital marketing agency he started in 2013 with Gilad Bechar after the two met as HR officers in the Israeli army. Moburst began in app store optimization, grew through acquisitions including Uproar and Kitcaster, and now sells AI products alongside its services. Adweek has named it one of the fastest-growing agencies in the world.
In part 1, Joe Yaffe explained how an orbital data center works. This time, the question is
whether it works as a business.
In this episode, Joe and Michael discuss:
Why Cowboy Space measures itself in cost per GPU hour, not cents per kilowatt hour
Why a lot of new space companies are run by technologists who aren't asking if it's a business
What has to go right to raise the billions this needs beyond the first $365 million
Why the perfect rocket engine is designed to sit on the balance point of failure
How being your own only customer changes what a failed launch costs you
Six-year chip life, and why you stop caring that you can't reach them
The seven-year wait for a data center in Northern Virginia
Which agencies regulate an orbital data center, including the FDA
Why hiring, not physics, sits at the top of his list
The December 2028 launch date the whole company runs against
About Joe:
Joe Yaffe is COO and chief legal officer at Cowboy Space, which is building data centers
that run in orbit. He spent 31 years practicing law in Silicon Valley, fifteen of them at
Latham & Watkins and the rest at Skadden, where he was managing partner of the Palo Alto
office. He studied ancient Greek in college.
Joe Yaffe (Cowboy Space): From Big Law to Orbit, Part 1 of 2
Épisode 65
mardi 11 août 2026 • Durée 52:42
Part 1 of 2. Part 2 drops later this week.
Joe Yaffe had climbed as high as the ladder goes. Fifteen years at Latham & Watkins,
then Skadden, managing partner of the Palo Alto office, 31 years advising founders and
CEOs. By his own account, his idea of a midlife crisis was moving from one mega law firm
to another. Then Baiju Bhatt stepped away from Robinhood, Joe asked what was next, and
the answer was space lasers.
In this episode, Joe and Michael discuss:
Why switching law firms counted as a midlife crisis, and what that says about risk
The three traits Joe saw in every successful founder across 31 years of client work
The easy button for a lawyer, and why he calls it second grade lawyering
One way doors and two way doors, with a real one from Cowboy Space
Getting to an undergraduate understanding of rocket science in about a year
How data centers in space actually work, explained without an engineering degree
Why the second stage of the rocket becomes both the data center and the radiator
Why none of it breaks the laws of physics
About Joe:
Joe Yaffe is COO and chief legal officer at Cowboy Space, which is building data centers
that run in orbit. He spent 31 years practising law in Silicon Valley, fifteen of them at
Latham & Watkins and the rest at Skadden, where he was managing partner of the Palo Alto
office. He studied ancient Greek in college.
Chapters
00:00 Cold open
01:11 Introduction
02:27 Thirty-one years, and a very small midlife crisis
04:03 Meeting Baiju Bhatt
05:13 "I thought I would die at my desk"
05:31 Space lasers
06:34 "If you do it, I'll come join you"
07:32 What twenty years beside founders teaches you
09:13 The eight billion people rule
11:46 Second grade lawyering
13:26 Tapping the brakes and hitting the accelerator
14:33 One way doors and two way doors
17:14 "Be careful with the rations"
18:13 Zero to rocket science in a year
19:45 "I'm the liberal arts guy in the room"
22:03 Acronyms, and blowing a fastball by you
23:27 Advice for anyone standing at the fork
26:37 The best advice he got before he jumped
29:29 How Cowboy Space works, explained for the rest of us
31:05 Asimov wrote about this in the 1940s
35:27 Turning the second stage into the data center
36:30 The radiator epiphany
37:50 Cheaper than Earth, or it's a science project
39:29 Why they're building their own rocket
43:54 Chips, cooling, and NVIDIA
45:54 "We're not breaking any laws of physics"
47:50 Four companies at once
50:37 Nuclear reactors on the moon
Riikka Söderlund, Katana COO, on Why AI Won't Know Your Product Exists
Épisode 64
mercredi 29 juillet 2026 • Durée 45:18
Riikka Söderlund is the chief operating officer at Katana Cloud Inventory, a Finland-based platform that helps small product businesses run inventory, manufacturing, and multi-channel sales. She and host Michael Koenig discuss how AI search is affecting product discovery, why an out-of-stock product is invisible to an AI chat, and why she thinks marketing is an underused path to the COO seat. Along the way: six-week sprints instead of quarters, why Katana opened its API while SAP closed theirs, and the brand that discovered it had been selling at a loss.
Why marketing is an underrated path to the COO seat, and what narrative building does for an operator that sales training does not
The six-week sprint, why four weeks is too short and eight is too long, and how she bridges the gap between a key result and an actual plan of execution
Product metadata as the new SEO, and why an out-of-stock product does not get surfaced by AI search at all
The Shopify earnings-call number: AI referral traffic to Shopify stores grew 13-fold quarter over quarter
Why Katana opened its API to any AI the customer chooses while SAP closed theirs, and why she frames that as a values choice about who owns inventory data
The brand that did not know its cost of goods sold was negative, and the one that found $40,000 of inventory it had misplaced
Riikka Söderlund is the chief operating officer at Katana Cloud Inventory, where she runs the commercial side of the business. She spent two decades in marketing, starting in Helsinki ad agencies, then a decade in consumer marketing, before joining Katana as VP of marketing and later CMO. She studied communications, and she credits narrative building as the skill that carried across from marketing into operations. Katana serves merchants in over 70 countries, with more than $3 billion in gross merchandise value flowing through the platform.
Chapters
0:00 Cold open
1:04 Introducing Riikka Söderlund and Katana
2:12 From Helsinki PR to Vogue and Oprah
3:55 Why old-era marketing skills became rare
Rick Marini on the Day-One Speech That Turned Grindr Around
Épisode 63
mardi 21 juillet 2026 • Durée 38:16
Rick Marini, co-founder of Rails and former COO of Grindr, joins Between Two COOs to explain why he would rather be a great COO than a good CEO. He and host Michael Koenig cover the CFIUS-forced sale that put Grindr in play, the day-one culture reset that ended two and a half years later in a $2 billion New York Stock Exchange debut, the three-months-of-cash pivot that saved Tickle in the dot-com crash, and how he evaluates moats now that AI lets anyone stand up a company in a weekend.
Why he says he is a good CEO but a great COO, and the honest question behind it: where do you add the most value?
The vision gap: great CEOs see ten years out, he sees two, and the COO executes
Buying Grindr for roughly $600 million after CFIUS forced the Chinese owner to sell
The day-one speech: equity for everyone, transparency, and earning a burned-out team's trust
Fight or flight at Tickle: the PhD-validated IQ test that turned three months of cash into the fastest-growing site on the internet
Moats in the AI era: network effects plus a product people will pull out a credit card for
Rick Marini has founded and operated consumer technology companies for 26 years. He co-founded Tickle in 1999, founded and led BranchOut to 800 million profiles and $49 million raised, and served as COO of Grindr from its 2020 acquisition through its $2 billion NYSE debut. He has been an angel investor in 60 companies, 15 of them unicorns, started Protocol Ventures, the first crypto fund of funds, and is now co-founder of Rails, a crypto perpetuals exchange.
Zapier CEO Wade Foster on Why AI Is a People Problem, Not a Tech Problem
Épisode 62
mercredi 15 juillet 2026 • Durée 50:30
Michael Koenig talks with Wade Foster, co-founder and CEO of Zapier, about running the company for 14 years without a CEO safety net and without ever naming a COO. Wade explains why he thinks hiring a chief operating officer from outside a company is a coin flip, why Zapier put AI transformation inside the chief people officer role instead of naming a dedicated AI executive, and why he believes AI adoption is fundamentally an organizational and people problem rather than a technology problem. The conversation covers Zapier's “code red” response to GPT-4, the pricing decision that traded short-term revenue for long-term customer trust, and what changed in Wade's own leadership style over 14 years in the same seat.
Why Zapier has never had a COO and why Wade calls external executive hiring a coin flip
Why AI sits inside the chief people officer's role at Zapier instead of a dedicated AI leader
The 2023 “code red” triggered by the jump from GPT-3.5 to GPT-4
How Zapier decides when a workflow needs deterministic software versus AI judgment
Why Zapier delayed its mid-market and enterprise push, and what that delay cost
Advice for non-tech companies on building an AI adoption mindset without a hackathon culture
Wade Foster co-founded Zapier and serves as its CEO. Zapier is a workflow automation platform that connects thousands of software tools and now powers billions of automated actions each month. Under Wade's leadership, Zapier grew to roughly 850 employees and a multi-billion dollar valuation while raising only a small seed round after Y Combinator.
Zulema Quintans, COO of Noda, on Why Your OKRs Don't Get Done
Épisode 61
jeudi 2 juillet 2026 • Durée 37:54
Zulema Quintans runs operations at an energy company, and she has a clear theory about why goals fail. This is a conversation about making OKRs actually work, and how AI is changing the operator's job.
In this episode, Zulema and Michael discuss:
- Why most OKRs never get done, and the one link that fixes it
- Running OKRs as an operating system, not a quarterly ritual
- Aiming for 70 percent completion, and the Federer mindset behind it
- Being directive without micromanaging
- The $200 billion commercial buildings spend on energy, and how much is wasted
- How Noda connects to legacy buildings and cleans messy data
- Automated demand management, and the knob that quietly saves energy
- Why AI makes this a golden age for operators
- Where the human still has to stay in the loop
Chapters
00:00 Cold open: the energy waste problem
01:05 Meet Zulema and Noda
01:45 From Juilliard ballet to COO
03:30 Holding focus and flexibility
06:01 Why OKRs fail, and the 70% rule
08:41 Top-down meets bottom-up OKRs
13:09 Making OKRs the operating system
15:55 Inside Noda: climate tech for buildings
19:19 Turning messy building data usable
20:39 The modular path to automation
22:50 AI cuts onboarding from weeks to hours
Peter Rojas, New Products at Mozilla, on Why Ideas Don't Decide Success
Épisode 60
mardi 16 juin 2026 • Durée 46:00
Watch on YouTube.
Peter Rojas has built new things at almost every scale there is, and he planted the seed for this show years ago in an email to Michael.
In this episode, Peter and Michael discuss:
How building new products inside a big company differs from a startup, and why you have to invest ahead of traction
Why corporate product development is a harder numbers game than a venture portfolio
AI, vibe coding, and the Mozilla Pioneers program for widening the top of the funnel
Why incumbents keep losing the next technology wave
Why coordination breaks down at scale, and the clarity that fixes it
About Peter: Peter Rojas co-founded Gizmodo and Engadget, two publications that changed how people understand technology. He has been an operator and investor across AOL, Meta, and BetaWorks, where he was a founder and VC. Today he leads new product development at Mozilla and runs Mozilla Pioneers.
00:00 Cold open
01:46 The email that started the show
03:33 Startup vs building inside a company
06:57 The corporate product numbers game
11:03 Vibe coding and Mozilla Pioneers
15:13 When a trusted brand is the advantage
18:04 Why incumbents lose the next wave
21:58 Meta's metaverse bet vs AI
25:44 If I were running Meta
29:02 Was the VR bet a failure
30:27 Why coordination breaks at scale
35:07 Fear, focus, and the CEO filter
38:56 How Mozilla runs on KPIs
40:30 The founder who hid his idea
AI Agents Need Logins Too: Identity, Security, and the Future of AI | Greg Keller, CTO, JumpCloud
In this episode, Michael Koenig speaks with Greg Keller, co-founder and CTO of JumpCloud, about identity access management and why it’s becoming one of the most important operational systems in the age of AI.
Greg explains how traditional identity systems were designed for office-based companies running Microsoft infrastructure and why that model broke as companies moved to SaaS, cloud infrastructure, and remote work.
The discussion then turns to the next big shift: the rise of AI agents and synthetic identities inside organizations.
As companies deploy more AI tools, the number of machine identities may soon outnumber human employees. Managing what those systems can access will become a critical security and operational challenge.
Topics Covered
What a CTO actually does
Greg explains the different types of CTO roles and how technology leaders help companies anticipate where the market is headed.
Identity Access Management explained simply
IAM answers three core questions inside every company:
Who are you?
What can you access?
How is that access managed?
Why the old IT model broke
Traditional identity systems were built for on-premise offices and Microsoft infrastructure. Modern companies now operate across:
Zulema Quintans is the chief operating officer of Noda, an energy and building intelligence platform for commercial real estate, where she leads product, operations, and customer success. Before Noda she held leadership roles at Arcadia, American Express, and Bain & Company. She began her career as a professional ballet dancer trained at Juilliard.
JumpCloud was built to manage identity across devices, applications, and infrastructure regardless of platform.
Where Okta fits in the ecosystem
Okta helped modernize browser-based authentication through Single Sign-On, while JumpCloud focuses on broader identity infrastructure.
AI, Security, and Synthetic Identities
Why COOs should push AI adoption
Greg argues AI adoption is no longer optional. Companies must encourage teams to improve productivity and efficiency using AI.
The rise of synthetic identities
AI agents, bots, APIs, and service accounts are becoming new actors inside companies that require identity governance.
Bots may soon outnumber employees
Organizations will soon manage more machine identities than human ones.
AI as a potential insider threat
AI systems can become security risks if they are granted excessive permissions or misinterpret policies.
The API key governance problem
Many AI integrations rely on API keys, which are often poorly managed and can create hidden security risks.
Key Takeaway
As companies adopt AI, identity access management becomes the control layer that determines what both humans and machines are allowed to do inside the organization.
The companies that manage identity well will move faster and operate more securely.
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