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In Episode 6, Han and Hitesh sit down with Marty Abbott, whose unconventional path took him from Army officer and paratrooper to CTO at eBay during its most explosive scaling period, and eventually to co-founding AKF Partners nearly two decades ago. Since then, he's worked with organizations ranging from high-growth startups to the White House—including helping fix healthcare.gov after its infamous launch failure. In this episode, Marty shares the discipline-driven principles that guided eBay through internet-scale challenges, why today's "black box" approach to technology creates dangerous vulnerabilities, and how the fundamentals of leadership and cross-functional engineering knowledge matter more than ever in the age of AI.

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In Episode 5, Han and Hitesh sit down with Balki Kodarapu. Balki has built his career across 20+ years in fintech, analytics, and healthcare, evolving from individual contributor to fractional engineering leadership. In this episode, he discusses the critical decisions that shaped his transition from hands-on engineering to leading multiple companies simultaneously, and shares essential advice for engineers adapting to today's rapidly changing landscape.

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In Episode 4, Han and Hitesh talk with Steve Heyman, CEO of SnowOwl, who discovered that true scale comes not from solving impossible problems yourself, but from creating systems where entire teams can tackle them together.

From writing web servers that handled a billion daily requests to building organizations from 0 to 80 people, Steve shares how he evolved from elite engineer to CEO over 25 years in Silicon Valley.

In this episode, he reveals why he chose to move beyond individual technical challenges to focus on organizational problem-solving, how he breaks down complex problems into tractable pieces for teams, and his framework for balancing engineering excellence with business reality.

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