Andrew First

Co-founder & CTO @ Plannery, aiding healthcare workers' financial challenges. Previously co-founder @ Leanplum (raised $125M VC). Duke, ex-Google. Forbes 30U30

[Andrew First @afirst]

@aleks_madry It was great working with you, and I’m excited to see what you do next!

[Andrew First @afirst]

@sidjavvaji Literally pitched this idea to my friend yesterday. Let me know if you want to chat.

[Andrew First @afirst]

@POTUS shouldn’t we actually call it Gulf of Florida so it helps people know better where it’s located within America?

The USA has the largest coastline of the countries bordering the Gulf, and Florida has the largest coastline out of the states that border it.

[Justin Wolz @justinwolz]

New NY Seed Round is out!

This week, I spoke to @afirst, a second-time founder and CTO.

I wanted to learn more about the company he's building (@planneryapp) and what his first successful exit at Leanplum taught him.

A few of the topics we got into:
- What mistakes did he make?
- What did he spend too much time on?
- How to build products in highly-regulated industries?
- Picking the right CTO as a founder
- Is @Forbes 30 Under 30 all it's made out to be? Hint: Yes!

I might be biased, but this is must-watch material for founders.

Check out the full episode below and let me know what you think!

[Andrew First @afirst]

It was a privilege to be featured on @rhobusiness’s podcast and share my experience at @planneryapp and Leanplum!

[Rho @rhobusiness]

[NEW EPISODE] This week’s NY Seed Round just dropped!

This week, @justinwolz, interviews @planneryapp CTO & Co-Founder @afirst—a Forbes 30 Under 30 and second-time founder.

First-time founders are prone to making mistakes that can be costly. Given Andrew exited his first company LeanPlum in a multi-million dollar deal, we wanted to know how he's approaching his second company based on his learnings from the first venture.

Other things covered in the episode include: product testing, building in regulated industries, picking the right CTO as a founder, @Forbes 30U30, getting backed by top VCs like @NextViewVC and more.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro
00:23 - Plannery and how it's helping healthcare workers address mountains of medical debt and medical burnout
08:59 - Mistakes he made as a first-time founder
10:27 - A/B product testing best practices
12:43 - Building in regulated industries
22:50 - The art of the pivoting from B2C to B2B
29:07 - The value of Forbes 30 Under 30
32:01 - How founders can find the right CTO
42:22 - UNC vs. Duke 🏀

Catch the full episode below!

PS: if this was helpful, share it with a first-time founder you know! Bonus points if they’re based in NYC 🗽

[Andrew First @afirst]

@siglesias Why is it unhealthy?

[Andrew First @afirst]

@andruyeung @NYCTechWeek 👋

[Andrew First @afirst]

Having an amazing time meeting awesome people at the @ForbesUnder30 summit in Detroit! #RMSweepstakes #RocketMortgageLounge #RM235

[Andrew First @afirst]

Congrats @KishoreBytes and team!

[StarTree @startreedata]

Excited to build and deliver a SaaS version of the popular @ApachePinot analytics platform that has helped LinkedIn, Stripe, Uber, Walmart, Weibo, WePay and many more to create value from their massive and growing data! #analytics #SaaS
https://t.co/MBEuiKa4H3

[Andrew First @afirst]

I watched the year in review of @ApachePinot, a realtime distributed analytics database, and am impressed by their progress and excited about the potential applications. @KishoreBytes and team are super friendly and supportive. Worth checking out! https://t.co/upf86ssqKP

[Andrew First @afirst]

Eng Mgmt has been more art than science. Excited to see @OkayHQ got funded and working towards solving this problem. Congrats @tomasrb & team!
https://t.co/1DtvICWi2s via @techcrunch

[Andrew First @afirst]

I’ve never been one to post @Yelp reviews, but I started doing it to support the restaurants I like so they don’t close!

[Andrew First @afirst]

@dwr I’ve been thinking something similar. We’re using @greenchef which is really good, but I’d like to see a version that uses locally sourced ingredients. We like going to the farmer’s market, but it’s hard to shop there as cooking novices.

[Andrew First @afirst]

@ApachePinot Really interesting technology. I'm playing with it, and found a mistake in the docs - should be "MILLISECONDS", not "MILLSECONDS". Took awhile to figure out and debug.
https://t.co/6esctXmQas

[Andrew First @afirst]

Also, make sure you erase the SOS when you get rescued.

[Andrew First @afirst]

If you are a shucker, the oyster is your world. 🤯

[Andrew First @afirst]

Learn about how I led Leanplum's API Migration, migrating a service handling billions of requests/day from App Engine to Kubernetes on @GCPcloud @platohq
https://t.co/wKBoYrS2tq

[Andrew First @afirst]

Migrated https://t.co/rIl1k4PeTN from GAE to the LB in 2 days and works great! We were able to remove reverse proxy services going to Wordpress and K8s. Anyone else try it?

Global HTTP(S) Load Balancing and CDN now support serverless compute @googlecloud https://t.co/Ga9qjl9QoH

[Andrew First @afirst]

In less than 1 hour from now, I'm leading a circle for underrepresented communities around challenges experienced as a technical cofounder. Join here: https://t.co/MgU8I0LX4d

[Andrew First @afirst]

I'm leading a circle for under-represented communities about challenges being a technical co-founder. Check it out! https://t.co/MgU8I0LX4d