The Reasoning Show

The Reasoning Show - Reasoning through the AI Revolution

The industry's leading AI podcast, explores how leaders think through AI, technology, and transformation. Each week founders, investors, and operators unpack the decisions behind the systems shaping modern business.

Hosts: Aaron Delp and Brian Gracely

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The Reasoning Show

Building Customer-First Products

May 14, 2025 • Massive Studios

0:00 | 26:30

Siqi Chen (@blader, CEO/CFO @Runwayco), talks about his journey from JPL developer to Founder of a financial planning and analysis (FP&A) startup. We focus on how to build products that customers crave and how a customer-centric view differs from traditional product management.

SHOW: 923

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #923 Transcript

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SHOW NOTES:

Topic 1 - Welcome to the show, Siqi. First, your combination of technical and business/financial background is fascinating. How did you go from coding at NASA to Head of Product at Zynga to CEO/CFO for a finance platform startup? Give everyone a quick introduction.

Topic 2 - One thing I’ve noticed as a trend in your background is the core concept of building. What has been your philosophy in building products? How do you build products that customers demand?

Topic 3 - Let’s talk about AI and AGI for a moment. We hear all the time how disruptive this will be. What are your thoughts here, and how do we develop both adaptability and resiliency to new technologies?

Topic 4 - Let’s talk FP&A (financial planning & analysis). Our core listeners out there tend to skew more towards the tech and infrastructure side, but a core theme of this show is always to be learning as much of the business as possible to apply those concepts. As someone with a background in both worlds, plus now running an FP&A startup, what do you wish folks on the technical side of the house knew more about to make their jobs easier?

Topic 5 - We posted a link in the show notes for a video you did on the “overnight success” of Runway. It was a good representation and origin story of how something can go viral with the right mindset and product-market fit. Tell everyone about that as Runway approaches 5 years now.

Topic 6 - What is your biggest challenge in the FP&A space today? Is it AI? We’ve seen a lot of AI disruption in coding, legal, and other areas requiring deep data pool insights. Is this any different?

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