Emily Bahna a Managing Director at thoughtbot who leads the Lift Off team, where they focus on really leaning into the core of the company. The team works with new founders to launch new products or they work with existing companies that want to build out a new service or open up a new area to generate revenue for their business. But, the thing that ties Lift Off together, is that they start at ground zero to build upon an idea and actually build the first version product to get it out live into the marketplace.
Follow Emily on Twitter (https://twitter.com/emilybahna) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ebahna/).
thoughtbot's Lift Off team (https://thoughtbot.com/lift-off)
Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/)
Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots!
Transcript:
CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Emily Bahna, Managing Director of thoughtbot's Lift Off team. Emily, thanks for joining me.
EMILY: Thank you.
CHAD: So at this point, we've talked with a few of the different managing directors at thoughtbot about their teams. And Lift Off is one of the largest teams that we have. And so what is it that Lift Off actually does?
EMILY: Lift Off is focused in on really leaning into the core of thoughtbot. We work with new founders launching new products or work with existing companies that want to build out a new service or open up a new area to generate revenue for their business. But I think the thing that ties Lift Off together is that we are starting at ground zero building upon an idea and actually building the first version product and getting it out into the marketplace.
CHAD: And oftentimes, those are pretty significant endeavors. The last episode that came out was with Dawn at Ignite who is more on the validation, early stage, getting things that are fairly straightforward into market as quickly as possible usually in a matter of months. But Lift Off the endeavors are usually quite a bit more significant than that, right?
EMILY: Yeah. I would say that the difference between validation...we're beyond the stage of validation. We're working with clients who are ready to build a foundation. They really need to put in the infrastructure that's going to take their product and get it ready to scale into the future. So they really need to make that investment into the longer-term strategy. They need to know what's realistic to build first. But they also have to keep an eye on the long road ahead of building something that can be something that can set out to grow down the road as well.
CHAD: I guess another way of putting it is that Ignite often works with brand new teams, brand new companies creating something for the first time. And Lift Off typically works with existing companies who have existing significant revenue who want to do something new, either a new business or a new product, or maybe they have an existing web product and they're going into mobile for the first time. That's another way of putting it, right?
EMILY: It could be. I think that when people are ready to move into the Lift Off space, it's about having the investment, the right kind of funding to move in that direction. Sometimes we do work with new founders that have a significant amount of funding, but a lot of times it is folks that are at the enterprise level that are building a new service line. They've got validation and market research already done. And they're building out a completely new line of business that they need to explore and set a new foundation in place.
CHAD: Do you have some examples of clients that have been projects of Lift Off?
EMILY: Yeah. We've been doing a lot of really interesting work in the health tech space, a lot of interest in improving patient experience. So we w