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Engineering FoundersAuthor: The Engineering Leadership Community (ELC)
The show for engineering leaders making the leap to start their own company! We dive into the stories, pivotal moments and critical insights from former eng leaders turned founders, that helped them take those early leaps to launch their own company! Language: en Genres: Business, Entrepreneurship, Management Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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Hiring top-tier talent, the importance of adopting an evolutionary mindset, and taking critical feedback to solve technical problems w/ Sergiy Nesterenko @ Quilter
Episode 66
Thursday, 20 August, 2026
In this episode, Sergiy Nesterenko (CEO @ Quilter) joins the pod to share how he turned a personal technical challenge into his own company, even before the market caught up. He shares his unique journey from SpaceX to Quilter and addresses common eng leader / founder challenges, including taking critical feedback to solve tough technical problems, knowing when your most important role is educating the market / customers, and choosing the right customers. Sergiy and Jerry also dissect insights into principles around building circuit boards, and common misconceptions around hiring top-tier talent, finding investors, and procuring customers as an early-stage company. ABOUT SERGIY NESTERENKO Sergiy Nesterenko is the Founder and CEO of Quilter, the first physics-driven AI platform that fully automates PCB layout design. Under his leadership, Quilter has pioneered autonomous board design – creating the missing automation layer for hardware and compressing weeks-long layout cycles into hours. Backed by Index, Benchmark, Coatue, and Tony Fadell, Quilter is redefining what's possible in hardware development. Previously, Sergiy spent five years at SpaceX as a Senior Radiation Effects Engineer, building electronics for the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. Sinch is the communications infrastructure the AI era runs on. There's a layer of infrastructure behind every text, call, and login code your product sends, and it works exactly like plumbing: nobody thinks about it until it's the reason something broke. Most providers route through 4-6 intermediaries; Sinch connects in 1-2 hops, direct carrier relationships across 600+ connections, handling 900 billion interactions a year across 60+ countries. Routing, compliance, fraud prevention handled automatically rather than manually managed by the business sending the message! Sinch is the reliability layer underneath AI-driven customer communications; the infrastructure that determines whether an AI agent's output actually reaches a real person as a delivered text, connected call, or verified interaction. Check it out here! SHOW NOTES: Introducing Sergiy Nesterenko & the inspiration behind Quilter (1:43) Why now is the right time to tackle this technical challenge (3:37) The technology landscape during Quilter’s early days (6:05) Sergiy’s fundraising journey & key takeaways (8:26) The importance of adopting an evolutionary mindset (10:52) Early problems that Quilter aimed to solve (13:08) Navigating the balance between technical problems & consumer readiness (15:59) How negative feedback can lead to solving a key problem (18:34) Knowing which feedback to incorporate into product iterations (20:08) Lessons learned from choosing the wrong customers (27:33) First principles approach to circuit board building (29:31) Signals that it’s the right time to tackle a hard technical challenge (34:04) Advantages to solving really hard problems & tackling entrepreneurship (36:32) Common misconceptions surrounding early phase companies (38:17) Sergiy’s experience working with Eric @ Benchmark (39:46) Why investors like founders who spend time in the “idea maze” (42:19) Strategies for convincing high-profile talent to join your org early on (43:22) Rapid fire questions (45:10) This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
