Code Story episode
S7 Bonus: The Empathy Bot: Engineering Psychological Safety and Burnout Analytics in Slack with Andrew Zhou, Co-Founder & CTO of Kona
Sep 22, 2022 · Season 7 · 30 min
Bring team empathy back into Slack.
Andrew Zhou grew up in the Bay Area, which he claims was a great place to grow up in. However, he noticed that it was sort of in authentic - as in, no one really did things for themselves. Eventually, he dropped out of college to build something based on authenticity. Outside of tech, he highly values authenticity, has been doing art for more than a decade, and he loves to ski and rock climb as well. In regards to art, he actually finds it challenging to be creative in an artistic way, because his creative brain is mixed with being highly analytical.
Andrew and his co-founders were inspired to build something around workforce management. The knew something needed to change, but wasn't sure where to start. After building solutions and pivoting, they landed on their current venture, around mental health check ins.
This is the creation story of Kona.
Sponsors
AirbyteDopplerHost.ioIPInfomablLinks
Website: https://heykona.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-zh/
Checkout our episode stacks on Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
More episodes
Keep listening
S7 E6: Rethinking the MVP: Spending 2.5 Years in Stealth to Build a Maximum Viable Product with Jon Darbyshire, Founder of SmartSuite
Sep 27, 2022
S7 E5: The Real-Time Creative Studio: Engineering Collaborative Ad Infrastructure for Distributed Teams with Vicki Duben, Co-Founder & CEO of Viewst
Sep 20, 2022
Topics
Explore related conversations
Technical due diligence checklist for startups
A technical due diligence checklist for founders and investors: what reviewers examine across architecture, security, team and process, and how to prepare before a raise.
CTO vs VP of Engineering: how the two roles actually differ
CTO vs VP of Engineering explained: who owns architecture, who owns delivery, when to split the roles, and how to avoid the overlap that breaks engineering teams.
Scaling an engineering team from 5 to 50
How to scale a startup engineering team from 5 to 50 people: when to add managers, how communication breaks, what process to add at each size, and what to leave alone.