Don Pottinger - Engineering Leader & Entrepreneur

Engineering Leader & Entrepreneur

Co-founder of LanguaTalk. Software Engineering Manager at Google. Building technology that makes people's lives better.

Blog

Three Job Seekers. Same Desperate Question. Here's What I Told Them

From 15 Tools to One: My Week with Claude Code

Workplace Competition: Multiple Paths to Success

Travel Chaos to Startup Wisdom: A Midnight Bus Story

The Wrong Question Every Founder Asks About Tech Stacks

Four "Oh Shit" Moments That Changed How I Build Software

The Career Question That Changed Everything

How AI Transformed My Non-Technical Workflow

Why Mental Health "Disorders" Are Entrepreneur Superpowers

The AI Revolution in Language Learning

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The Best Founders Aren't Always the Most Technical

My 9-Year-Old's Brutal Product Review

When a YouTuber Validates Your Product Vision

From Tough Times to 10x Growth

The Unconventional Path to $100K MRR

Building Startups in the AI Era

The Million Dollar Lesson in Deal Structure

50K Downloads, $300 Revenue: The Vanity Metrics Trap

Stop Overthinking Your Startup Ideas

Design Your Business Around Your Life

The $100K Legal Mistake Every Founder Should Avoid

When Everything Falls Apart, Go Back to Basics

The Prediabetic Myth: Why A1C Misleads Athletes

Manifesting 100x Personal Brand Growth

Work-Life Balance is a Myth (And That's OK)

40 Lessons at 40: What I'd Tell My 20-Year-Old Self

Family, Founders, and AI: Building Resilient Teams

What My Daughter's Soccer Loss Taught Me About Leadership

Yellowstone Taught Me Everything About AI Strategy

One Insight That Changed How We Build Langua

#IRunWithAhmaud

A Case of Mistaken Identity

Between Damian and Me: A Letter to My Son

The Genesis of Body Boss

Our Closet Door and the Compounding Effect of Procrastination

How Kevy uses Elasticsearch to Build Real-time Reporting

Take a Long Walk in Your Customer's Shoes

Today was a Good Day

Tears for Charleston

The Power of Storytelling

The Homeless Man, the Prostitute, the Jamaican with 8 Fingers, and My Mom

Do You Want Money Or Do You Want Power?

Alterconf: How a Conference on Diversity Made Me Feel Uncomfortable

You Are Good Enough / Eres Lo Suficientemente Bueno

Passing as Black

Hidden in Plain Sight

An Honor and a Privilege

The Best Entrepreneur I Know

Different Setting, Different Problems and Different Solutions

2014 In Review

Lessons Learned from Failure: How I Didn't Become the CTO of a Promising Startup

Farewell Big Nerd Ranch

Cron Job for Postgres Backups with Dokku

Bye Bye Heroku, Hello Dokku: Migrating a Rails App from Heroku to Dokku (Part 2)

Bye Bye Heroku, Hello Dokku: Migrating a Rails App from Heroku to Dokku (Part 1)

Understand the Problem

Context

Work Experience

Co-founder

LanguaTalk

2021 - Present

Software Engineering Manager

Google

2020 - Present

Founder & CEO

Kevy

2015 - 2019

Lead Software Engineer

Big Nerd Ranch

2013 - 2015

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