New pod drop!! Was so fun to walk Yerba Buena (mostly) with Spenser Skates (@spenserskates), CEO of Amplitude (@Amplitude_HQ). We talk about: - The 2 a.m. StarCraft habit he hid from his co-founder - When to kill a startup vs. grind it out - "Most engineers are extraordinarily risk-averse" - Learning to become the exec he used to make fun of Single until Series B - The real cost of his 20s - The CEO who fires early because he's insecure - Rebel → ruler - Why he'll never be the 5am cold-plunge CEO The Luba Show · full ep ↓ (put Spotify / Apple / YT in the first reply) TIMESTAMPS (00:00) Trailer (01:08) Spenser Skates, Co-Founder & CEO, Amplitude (01:36) Why video games stopped feeling like real achievement (08:50) Growing up in Cambridge and hating a life scripted by other people (15:04) The Norman Borlaug story that convinced him to bet on tech (20:14) Convincing Curtis to leave Google and co-found a company (24:55) Playing StarCraft until 2am while pretending to build the startup (29:04) The exact test for knowing when to kill a startup (32:30) Why half a founding team's time should go to customers, not code (35:02) The identity crisis of going from founder to CEO of 800 people (40:35) Burning the boats on the old Amplitude to go all in on AI (42:33) Wave: the AI engine that rewrites products using their own data (48:49) Why insecurity, not confidence, drives the most ambitious operators (56:01) Betting on his partner Anne and being "single until Series B" (1:05:00) Outro