Code Story episode
Developer Chats – Pavel Shchekotov
Jun 15, 2026 · Season 12 · 16 min
Developer Chats – Pavel Shchekotov
Today, we are continuing our series, entitled Developer Chats - hearing from the large scale system builders themselves.
In this episode, we are talking with Pavel Shchekotov, Founding Engineer of specializing in voice-first, conversational AI products. Pavel is going to take us through his experience as an agency founder, leading into building voice driven, consumer AI.
Questions
Today you're building AI-native consumer products around conversational interfaces and user engagement. How has that journey shaped the way you think about product engineering?What did those agency years teach you about product development that most engineers never learn?What convinced you that voice could be the primary interface rather than just another feature?What are the hardest engineering and product challenges that emerge when conversation itself becomes the product?What’s one problem that seemed trivial on paper but became surprisingly difficult at scale?What did you learn about technology adoption, trust, and user behavior from building for a demographic that much of the tech industry tends to ignore?How do you decide whether a startup problem should be fixed, optimized, or completely reimagined?What does being a Founding Engineer actually look like day-to-day, and how is it different from being a senior software engineer?Where do you think people are overestimating AI today, and where are they still underestimating it?Looking forward three to five years, what do you think the most important category of AI-native consumer product will be—and what capabilities will those products need that don’t exist yet?
Sponsors
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavel-shchekotov/
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