Lone Geniuses

This episode's guest and Huddle member, Laura Gao, is a Silicon Valley Product Manager turned artist. She's best known for her short comic "The Wuhan I Know," which she wrote in response to the growing sinophobia due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The comic took off, going viral on social media, and later became the basis for her graphic memoir, Messy Roots, released in March 2022.

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This episode's guest and Huddle investor, Stephanie Engle, is best known for role as a product designer at Snapchat, and as an angel investor into product driven companies. Before Snapchat, where she works mostly on AR experiences, she worked at Airbnb, she was the first product designer at Cruise automotive, where she designed interfaces for self-driving cars, and she started her career in Silicon Valley at Facebook designing VR experiences. 

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Our next guest is Emily Grubman. Emily is the Founder of Title Case, a consulting company that focuses entirely on naming. Before starting her own business, Emily spent nearly six years at Red Antler working on some of the biggest DTC brands in the world. She became the firm’s naming expert, naming companies like Prose, Burrow, and more. What I love about Emily’s career path is her focus on work that’s fun. She picked naming because it’s the thing she liked doing the best. And as you’ll learn, Emily has a knack for finding the right rooms to be in and keeping it honest and real with the people she meets. Her story is also about persistence and grit. She lied about her address being in NYC to get her first job, before moving to the city, and paid the bills in her early career days as a tasker on Task Rabbit, waiting in line for people who wanted to go to Shakespeare in the Park.  

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Our first guest is Dan Batten, who's the Creative Director at Hims & Hers. Dan started off as an amateur photographer, and then quickly fell in love with motion graphic design. He spent years working at Gin Lane, a venture studio in New York, that gave birth to brands like Sweetgreen, Hims & Hers, and Harry's.

During this episode, we talk about everything from his early life, his career path, and the people that helped him get to where he is today. We also talk about how Dan unlocks space for creativity & how he uses anxiety as a tool to unlock creativity. 

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