Interview with Kohsuke Kawaguchi - co-CEO Launchable Inc and creator of Jenkins

Gradient descending through life, work, and entrepreneurship

"Sell, Design & Build" – evergreen advice for aspiring entrepreneurs

An investigator walks into a murder scene only to find that it is a case of multiple homicides and that murders aren't the handiwork of a single murderer, but there are numerous murderers involved.

The investigator has a series of questions.

• Were the murderers in cahoots?
• What evidence do we have?
• Where is the forensics team that should've provided him with the evidence?
• His boss isn't known for his patience.

He wants the murder solved in the next hour or two.

Where does he start?

< superman theme > ...Is that a bird or a plane?... </ superman-theme>

In enters Kohsuke, the creator of Jenkins, and the co-founder of Launchable.

...

Wait, wut?

What does Kohsuke have to do with solving murders?

...

Last week, I interviewed my friend Kohsuke Kawaguchi, co-founder and co-CEO of Launchable and the creator of Jenkins.

He described the above scene as the one that every engineer or QA person faces every single work morning. They walk into work to discover hundreds of failed tests—Kohsuke talks about each test as a "dead body," and they are responsible for solving the mystery so the software can reach customers' hands.

We also discussed other topics for a couple of personas.

1. Engineers: Kohsuke provides insights on the general trend and the impact of AI in the software development space. He has advice for engineers wanting to expand their wings to other functions.

2. Aspiring Entrepreneurs: His singular advice for entrepreneurs is "Sell, Design & Build." John Vrionis at Unusual Ventures gave us this advice as we started Launchable, and it forms the backbone of our new product development.

We touched upon a novel take on approaching life using an essential concept from machine learning.

Navigating life through Gradient Descent: It is about taking one optimal step at a time (for those unfamiliar with Gradient Descent.) Kohsuke uses this algorithm to excel at a plethora of interests in addition to work.

Please explore this philosophy; it can have a transformative impact on your life, and it is so easy to get started.

So what about the murder scene...

Kohsuke uses AI/ML/Generative AI to provide engineering teams with crucial evidence to fix issues faster. He is delivering this through Launchable.

Come check out the podcast. If you found it interesting, share to just one person who you think will resonate with it.

-- Harpreet