Danielle Newnham Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Today’s guest is Simon Brading who works at App Agency Brightec and is the co-founder of Mentora Money which he started in 2022 with his wife, Anna – a financial education instructor. Their mission is simple but important - to create a platform to help as many people as possible learn basic financial principles so that they can make money, look after their money and reduce money stress. 

In this conversation, we discuss Simon’s strong faith and how that has guided him through his life and career especially around community building, we also talk about how Covid left him with depression and how he managed to get out of that dark hole and, we ponder on what a financially literate society might look like.

But, before we get into today’s episode, a quick word from our sponsor. Paddle - and this is especially for the all the mobile devs in my audience. Paddle has produced an invaluable web monetisation guide which you can download for FREE here. As they say, selling your app on the web isn't just about avoiding hefty app store fees, it actually gives you the freedom and opportunity to leverage a direct-to-consumer model where you can reach a bigger audience, enhance your marketing efforts, and experiment with different ways to monetize and grow your app. So, if you are interested in learning more, then do head to here to get your FREE web monetisation guide from Paddle.

Please enjoy my conversation with Simon Brading.

Today’s guest is the wonderful Doug Menuez – a documentary photographer, director and photojournalist whose incredible career has seen him cover the AIDS crisis, the Ethiopian famine, the birth of the digital revolution in the 1980s where he documented founders like Steve Jobs, Marc Andreessen, Bill Gates, the Adobe founders and more and that is how he came on my radar.

His book, Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley 1985-2000 which highlights just a snippet of the over two million images which he took of that time is a such an incredible homage to the people that built the future we live in now.

And in today’s episode, we talk about it and the people he shot in his career– from the three years he had exclusive access to Steve Jobs to the time he got kidnapped in Sudan. We also discuss the three most pivotal moments in Doug’s life which include meeting his wonderful wife Tereza and the moment she was diagnosed two years ago with Alzheimer's.

There are some incredible stories of hope in this episode and some heartwarming lessons on the importance of patience and persistence and the ability of founders to keep going, despite the odds stacked against them.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Here is my conversation with Doug Meneuz.

Doug website / Instagram / Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley 1985-2000

Danielle Twitter / Instagram / Substack Newsletter / YouTube

Image of Doug by Christopher Michel

Today’s guest is founder and VC Brett Martin who I first started following ten years ago when we were both in the mobile space.

Brett is currently Co-Founder of Kumospace and co-founder of Charge Ventures. Kumospace is a venture backed virtual office space platform that provides immersive and interactive virtual spaces for hosting team meetings, and social gatherings. Charge Ventures is a venture capital firm based in New York that invests in pre-seed to seed early stage tech startups.

In this episode of the podcast, we discuss Brett’s first taste of business as a kid, what lessons he learned about entrepreneurship from sailing 6,000 miles on a 50 year old, 30 foot sailboat which involved dodging water spouts, pirates and drug runners, what it felt like to shut down his first proper startup, and what he looks for in the founders he invests in.

Apologies that this is a shorter than normal episode but Brett and I spent some time catching up before we got started so I will have to get him back on the show another time.

But saying that, this was a fun episode with someone who has done it all, so please enjoy my conversation with Brett Martin.

Brett on Twitter / Charge VC / Kumospace

Danielle on Twitter / Instagram / Newsletter / Sponsorship

Mentioned in this episode:

Sonar Post Mortem by Brett Martin

Scar Tissue by Brett Martin

On Giving Up by Adam Phillips

I am back! And I have an incredible lineup for Series 3 including Alvy Ray Smith, the co-founder of Pixar, Guy Kawasaki, Yodit Stanton, founder of OpenSensors, serial entrepreneur Clarence Wooten, who, among other roles, is currently Entrepreneur in Residence at X – Google Alphabet's Moonshot Factory - and Nicolas Cary, co-founder of Blockchain.com, among others.

As always, we will be digging deep into the lives of each founder and innovator – from the pivotal experiences in their childhoods through to their career journeys, highs and lows, and what the lessons they learned along the way.

These stories are a wonderful way to document history in one of the most exciting fields of our time but they are also TRULY inspirational. And I feel extremely lucky that I get to share these amazing stories with you. I know they will inspire you and hopefully help you on your own career journey.

The first episode will be with Pixar co-founder Dr Alvy Ray Smith where he will describe what he saw that others didn’t, how he helped pioneer the field of computer graphics and how Steve Jobs played the part of both saviour and tyrant in the Pixar story.

So don’t forget to hit the subscribe button to make sure you’re the first to hear each episode as it is published. I can't wait to share them with you.

Have you ever seen a picture of someone you've never met and wanted to know their story?

I first saw a picture of Donna Auguste in Doug Menuez's great book –Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley 1985 - 2000 …and I had to know more about her. A black woman leading an engineering team at Apple – her photo stood out – for all the right reasons, among a sea of pictures of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, John Sculley et al.

Two years later, and I got the exclusive chance to sit down with Donna who shares her inspiring story for this podcast – from being the first African-American (man or woman) to enter the PhD program at Carnegie Mellon researching AI, to managing the Newton engineering team at Apple to selling her software business for $147 million. It’s all the more amazing when you learn the obstacles she had to overcome.

With a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Berkeley, Donna went on to research Artificial Intelligence at Carnegie Mellon where she spent the holidays interning at Xerox PARC in the early 80s before heading to IntelliCorp as a software engineer working on products which incorporated AI. She then went on to Apple before co-founding her own company - Freshwater Software.

This episode is one of my favourites – Donna’s story is one of grit, faith, determination, ignoring the naysayers and ultimately, a story of success.

As Donna says when discussing the VC’s reaction to her when fundraising, “They had a whole model of what they were looking for and I fit none of it.” Donna proved them wrong. And the lessons she shares shows that you can too, whoever…wherever you are.

As this is the final episode in Series 2, I wanted to thank you dear listeners for coming on this journey with me. I have so enjoyed speaking to my incredible guests: 

Dan Bricklin, Rana el Kaliouby, Nolan Bushnell, David Byttow, Avery Wang, Megan Smith, Ed Smith and of course, Donna Auguste.

I look forward to welcoming you back for Series 3.

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Let us know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.

Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham

Donna on Twitter / Auguste Research website

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This episode was hosted by me - Danielle Newnham, a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years - and produced by Jolin Cheng. 

Mentioned in this episode: Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley 1985 - 2000 by Doug Menuez

Today’s guest is the incredible Ed Smith - one of only two known African American engineers who worked on the design of video games in the 1970s and the first African American to work in the design of a personal computer, and the only hybrid video game/personal computer ever released. 

In this episode, Ed talks me through his childhood, growing up in one of the toughest neighbourhoods in Brooklyn, New York and his desire to create a better life which he found through tech. A voracious reader and into electronics, Ed studied Computer Science before getting a job working on traffic control signals at Marbelite. Whilst there, Ed got the opportunity to go to Fairchild and learn early microprocessor-based circuit design which put his skills in high-demand. He soon landed at APF Electronics where he immediately starting work on the hardware design and built the prototypes, joystick and port design for the MP1000 video game – one of very few cartridge-based video game systems at the time. Two years later, Ed and the APF design team leveraged the processing power of the MP1000 and Ed’s hardware designs to create the Imagination Machine personal computer which was the first combined home video game console and personal computer.

This episode is inspiring and uplifting with many lessons from Ed on how to strive, thrive and find your role in tech.

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Mentioned in this interview:

Ed's book  Imagine That!: The story of one of the first African Americans to work in the design of video games and personal computers can be bought from Amazon UK here and Amazon US here.

Benj Edwards Fast Company interview with Ed Ed Smith And The Imagination Machine: The Untold Story Of A Black Video Game Pioneer

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Let us know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.

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Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham

Ed website / Twitter @slicer114

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This episode was hosted by me - Danielle Newnham, a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years - and produced by Jolin Cheng. 

Today’s guest is the incredible Megan Smith - award-winning entrepreneur, engineer, and tech evangelist. It would take me an hour to talk through Megan’s illustrious career but some of what we discuss in this episode includes working on multimedia products at Apple Japan, working on early smartphones at General Magic, 11 years at Google where she held a VP position, leading new business development including acquisitions of Google Earth, Maps, Picasa, she led Google.org, and later co-created Women Techmakers, and Solve for X before serving as the third U.S. Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to President Obama from 2014-2017, working on issues from AI, data science and open source, to inclusive economic growth, entrepreneurship, structural inequalities, government tech innovation capacity, STEM/STEAM engagement, workforce development, and criminal justice reform. 

Megan is currently founder and CEO of Shift7, a company working collaboratively on systemic social, environmental and economic problems -- finding opportunities to scout and scale promising solutions and solution makers and engage proven tech-forward, open, shareable practices to drive direct impact, together. 

Finally, Megan holds a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT where she is now a board member and Megan is also co-founder of the Malala Fund and UN Solutions Summit. She is also a board member of Vital Voices, LA Olympics 2028 and Think of Us, and is Algorithmic Justice League advisor and member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Academy of Engineering.

I told you she was impressive! But before we learn more about Megan’s story – a couple of quick notes. Firstly, we recorded this episode during the pandemic and so there are a few background noises we couldn’t eliminate. Secondly, I wanted to talk to you about sponsorship - if you want to sponsor this podcast, please do reach out and you can have your ad read by me, each week, at this point of the podcast and have your message reach over 120,000 founders and business leaders.

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did.

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Mentioned in this Interview:
Megan talks about her time at General Magic - worth watching this documentary on the now-famous company

Listen here to my interview with General Magic co-founder Andy Hertzfeld 

Megan mentions Dr Sue Black and her work at Tech Mums

and Sherry Coutu and her work at Founders 4 Schools

Coded Bias documentary

The Hōkūleʻa story can be found here

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Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham

Megan on Twitter  @smithmegan

Shift 7 website / Twitter @shift7 / Instagram @shift7

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This episode was hosted by me - Danielle Newnham, a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years - and produced by Jolin Cheng. 

Let us know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.

My guest today is Avery Wang – co-founder and Chief Scientist at music recognition app Shazam and now Principal Research Scientist at Apple.

Almost ten years ago, I conducted my very first interview for my first book and it was with the Shazam founders. The story of Shazam is one of pure innovation, foresight, and friendship. In 1999,  Chris Barton dreamed of a seemingly impossible solution to ambient music recognition and created the team — including friend Dhiraj Mukherjee, classmate Philip Inghelbrecht and engineer Avery Wang — to make it a reality. Even after 20 years post launch, Shazam currently has over 200 MILLION monthly active users and was acquired by Apple in 2018.

For regular listeners of this show, you will know that I spoke to fellow co-founder Dhiraj Mukherjee back In Series 1 but in today’s episode, Avery Wang talks me through the invention process – going all the way back to how as a child, he fell in love with science and maths and how his parents encouraged him to experiment, up to how he managed to invent the Shazam algorithm which every "expert" had said was impossible.

I am so over the moon to share this interview with Avery – a first of its kind because Avery doesn’t do interviews. Everyone who knows him refers to him as a genius and it’s easy to see why. He holds over 150 US and international patents, has a Bachelor of Science degree and a Masters in Mathematics and a Masters and PhD in Electrical Engineering, all from Stanford. He also went to Germany as a Fulbright Scholar and studied Computational Neuroscience.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

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Let me know what you think of this episode by rating, reviewing and sharing - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.

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Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham

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This episode was hosted by me - Danielle Newnham, a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years - and produced by Jolin Cheng. 

Today’s guest is David Byttow – a self-described engineer by trade and, very much an artist at heart. David is most famous for his role as co-founder of mobile app Secret which allowed people to share messages anonymously.

Whilst there was a lot of hype around Secret when it officially launched in 2014 - lauded by the press and tech industry, and with the company raising millions of dollars within just a few months – the company abruptly closed down a little over a year later. 

Some of the very public criticism David faced at the time was around the three million dollars that he and his co-founder each took off the table as part of their Series B deal. And, of course, there was the red Ferrari that David bought and which got a lot of column inches when things didn’t work out.

In this episode, we dig deep into the rise and fall of Secret and some of what David went through during that time from the exciting high - post launch - to the crushing low he felt in having to close the company down. We also discuss how he dealt with the backlash that came with Secret’s closure and how his pre and post Secret career has seen him work at many of the top tech companies from Google to Medium, Square and Snap.

I really appreciate David’s candour in this interview, he opens up about a lot of things which many founders would prefer to keep out of public conversation. And, in doing so, I believe David will enable others to do the same – to talk about the hard times which come with entrepreneurship. It also gives an insight into David – who he is as a person, not just a founder, and that’s exactly why I do these interviews. 

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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Mentioned in this Interview:
David talks about Andy Hertzfeld who appears in Series 1 - listen here.

David's ABC: Always be Coding article can be found here. 

Jim McKelvey interview can be found here.

Tweet about creator economy can be found here.

Philip Rosedale interview can be found here.

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Let us know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.

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Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham

David on Twitter @davaidbyttow / YouTube  David Byttow

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This episode was hosted by me - Danielle Newnham, a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years - and produced by Jolin Cheng. 

Today’s guest is the legendary Nolan Bushnell – serial entrepreneur, co-founder of Atari and a pioneer of the video games industry.

After an early interest in Engineering, Nolan went on to study Electrical Engineering before setting up Atari with Ted Dabney and Al Alcorn (I interviewed in Series 1, EP 8 - listen here). Atari experienced huge success with Pong which was one of the first computer games ever created but whilst it was hugely popular, Atari was born at a time when venture capital didn’t really exist, IP could not be protected and so the journey to keeping the company going was much tougher than it is today and by the time Warner Communications made an offer for the company, Nolan was ready to sell.

In this interview, where we look back at gaming history, Nolan talks me through the highs and lows of building Atari, the traits he looks for when hiring, and why one of his biggest regrets was turning down an offer from Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to own a third of Apple.

Enjoy!

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Let us know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.

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Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham

Nolan Bushnell on Twitter @nolanbushnell

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This episode was hosted by me - Danielle Newnham, a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years - and produced by Jolin Cheng.