Gaurav Misra

Guest: Gaurav Misra - Co-founder and CEO of Captions. Gaurav was an early employee at Snap, leading the design engineering team, and has extensive experience in building successful consumer AI products. Key Takeaways: Weekly Shipping Cadence: Every engineer at Captions is expected to ship a marketable feature weekly, focusing on cutting scope rather than quality to maintain rapid iteration and innovation. Secret Roadmap Strategy: Captions maintains a "secret roadmap" of innovative features that users haven't asked for but could revolutionize user behavior, alongside a public roadmap of user-requested features. Technical Debt as Leverage: Misra views technical debt as a strategic tool for startups to move faster than larger companies, with a focus on paying it down during specific periods like Q4. Design-Led Innovation: Inspired by Snap's approach, Captions often starts with design to uncover unique product ideas, emphasizing the importance of cross-functional understanding among team members. AI in Marketing: Misra predicts AI-generated content will dominate marketing, offering cost-effective and scalable solutions for localization and creative testing. Topics Covered: Rapid product iteration, secret roadmap, technical debt management, design-led product development, AI in video and marketing, Snap's product strategy, future of AI-generated content.