Episode 3 | Tapping into the AI Developer Community with Ozzy Johnson (Director of Solutions Engineering, NVIDIA)

Fund/Build/Scale

I wanted to learn more about how inception-stage AI founders can tap into developer ecosystems, so I spoke to Ozzy Johnson, Director of Solutions Engineering for NVIDIA Developer Programs.

In his role, he leads a global product team that accelerates its own work by interacting with outside developers who use the company’s technology. Johnson also works with NVIDIA’s Inception program, a virtual accelerator for AI and deep-learning startups.

“It's kind of necessary to know the shape of the world to have a sense of where things are headed,” he said.

“We ideally want to see around corners, we want to try to get there first, or at least, meet developers where they are.”

Here’s what we talked about:

• Why more AI founders should focus on fundamentals (1:50)
• How AI is leveling the playing field for non-technical founders (4:28)
• How to (and not to) recruit talent from the developer community (7:26)
• The dangers of digging your moat too early (9:41)
• Finding scalable problems customers want solved (11:30)
• Prioritize early spending on "saleable differentiation" (14:36)
• Top traits of successful AI founders (17:21)
• Benefits of NVIDIA’s Inception program (22:11)
• Balancing customer feature requests with roadmap control (25:21)
• Why the rise of Gen AI is a transformational moment (28:21)
• Ozzy’s advice for anyone interviewing at an AI startup (31:36)

Thanks for listening!
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