This week I managed to land an interview with Max Wong after hitting up my network connections for months. Dude’s schedule is crazy packed but finally squeezed me into his calendar between investor meetings. Honestly felt like winning the lottery when his assistant emailed me the Zoom link.
Prepping for the Call
Spent three nights digging through his old talks and social posts. Made bullet points about his tech migration strategy patterns – guy loves using containerization for legacy systems. Practiced all my questions out loud while walking my dog. Even wore my “lucky” hoodie that survived three startup failures.
The Actual Interview Flow
Started super awkward when my cat knocked over a coffee mug mid-introduction. Max just laughed and said, “See? This why I keep liquids away from machines.” He dove straight into discussing recent failures though:
- Over-automating analytics – Built these beautiful dashboards that no product team actually used
- Hiring specialists too early – Needed T-shaped people who could handle multiple hats
- Ignoring tribal knowledge – Lost months rebuilding tools engineers already had
His Mindset Shift Around Innovation
This part hit different. Max kept emphasizing that chasing tech trends like AI agents this year? Often leads teams off cliffs. “Stop looking at what’s shiny,” he said. “Solve actual bleeding problems users complain about daily.” Shared how his team cut feature deployment time 60% by fixing document storage bottlenecks everyone ignored.
Ended with me asking about his morning routine. Guy actually meditates with Tony Robbins’ app before coding sessions. Wild contrast to the Twitter version always yelling about blockchain.
Whole experience changed how I’m approaching documentation now. Instead of perfect structure? Just getting things recorded while fresh. Learned more from his “what tanked” stories than any keynote.
