Pete McCarthy: Internet Evolution, Dot-Com Bubble, and Earthships

Pete McCarthy is an experienced tech entrepreneur with a wealth of knowledge in various industries. In this conversation we explored the evolution of the internet, his experiences during the dot-com bubble, and his insights into agile and waterfall methodologies, crypto, bitcoin, and Earthships. EPISODE LINKS:

• Pete's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedromccarthy/
• Fucked Company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company

TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00:59) Intro and Background

(00:03:31) The internet in 1995

(00:04:30) Seeing the internet for the first time

(00:05:56) Making a huge shift from entrepreneurship

(00:08:42) The decision behind shifting to different industries

(00:10:01) Going different paths and learning

(00:10:19) Enjoying travel, then deciding to settle down

(00:12:03) Why move to San Francisco?

(00:13:27) Learning the business while working with OpenTable

(00:14:05) The learning process as a beginner

(00:15:31) Silicon Valley in 1999/2000

(00:16:37) The dot-com bubble

(00:17:08) The beginning of the dot-com crash

(00:18:04) OpenTable surviving the crash

(00:18:25) Beginning a career as a tech

(00:19:19) Dot-com bubble burst aftermath

(00:19:44) Fucked Company, the pastime for most startup company employees

(00:20:39) The silver lining and resurgence of startup companies

(00:22:15) The beginning of solving problems - product building

(00:24:16) Opening up bigger opportunities

(00:25:59) Gaining experience: Working for companies before launching his own tech venture

(00:28:14) Opportunities and innovation with the release of the iPhone

(00:28:57) Experiencing big shifts in technology: Cloud and mobile

(00:30:19) Foreseeing Google and Apple taking over

(00:30:49) Agile iterative approach, ship fast: Ruby Rails, 37 signals

(00:32:20) Being comfortable with the uncomfortable: The Contrarian way of thinking

(00:34:20) Fundamentals of product management, Factors builds a great process: Great product people and design

(00:35:21) Enterprise software

(00:36:06) Waterfall project

(00:36:54) Agile methodology as the better approach

(00:38:23) A big aspect of product management: Identifying and reducing irrelevant data effectively

(00:40:16) Don't be committed to one answer

(00:40:28) Direct user feedback for making changes

(00:40:44) The difficulty of getting into true agile methodology

(00:41:29) Sprint planning

(00:42:22) Intentionally saying "no" to achieve better outcome

(00:43:02) Shipping makes it easier to figure out what to do next

(00:43:42) Living the corporate America life, working remotely

(00:45:50) Resilience: Rising better after a fall

(00:47:29) Starting CheckWise

(00:48:51) Offering a solution

(00:49:34) Learning how to code

(00:50:24) The transition from product management to the technical side of things

(00:52:49) Trying to pursue a coding career, going back to product

(00:53:52) Working with a development team in Italy, festivals

(00:54:26) Letting go of the coding dream, and enjoying building operational software

(00:56:26) Electric forest and the Blissfest

(00:58:40) Van trip

(00:59:10) Earthships

(01:02:53) Emergence of Bitcoin

(01:07:13) Crypto, Blockchain

(01:09:52) Part 2: Xero knowledge proofs, DAOs, AI and where this goes from a long-term perspective

(01:10:15) Closing

CONNECT:

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