KORY JEFFREY: Greetings everyone and welcome
to on-site of Founder World in San Francisco.
I'm joined in studio by Shanea King-Roberson,
a fellow Googler, a program manager
and the curriculum director of the Tech Entrepreneur
Nanodegree.
SHANEA KING-ROBERSON: Yes.
KORY JEFFREY: Yes, welcome.
SHANEA KING-ROBERSON: Thank you--
KORY JEFFREY: Welcome.
SHANEA KING-ROBERSON: --for having me.
KORY JEFFREY: Yeah, no problem.
So tell me a little bit about yourself.
What did you do before Google?
SHANEA KING-ROBERSON: Prior to Google,
I started a digital marketing agency with a business partner.
We exclusively helped women authors, entrepreneurs,
and speakers develop online presence
and create social media strategies.
We also executed for them.
It's been really an amazing experience
being able to help entrepreneurs really craft their message
and really get it out there for the world to be able to hear.
KORY JEFFREY: That's really cool.
Did you do it in the San Francisco area?
SHANEA KING-ROBERSON: No, I actually
did it in the San Diego area, and then I
moved around a little bit.
However, what makes internet and tech businesses so great,
you can be remote from anywhere and still run your business.
KORY JEFFREY: How did you transition from that to Google?
SHANEA KING-ROBERSON: We were growing.
We still have clients.
If a old client calls, I'm still definitely there for them.
But an opportunity came up to be a part of Google.
And Google calls, so you kind of go.
KORY JEFFREY: How did you end up within Nanodegree?
SHANEA KING-ROBERSON: Well, I was actually
part of the developer relations release team.
When we decided to do a restructuring,
they asked me what I was really passionate about,
and I ended up being on the Google Developer Training Team.
It just so happens that they needed a program manager
for the Tech Entrepreneurship Nanodegree.
And I told the lead, Peter, about it
and my experience with my own company,
and my passion for helping get businesses started.
And he goes, I think you'll be perfect.
And it's gone on from there.
KORY JEFFREY: Tell me about the Tech Entrepreneur Nanodegree.
What does that entail?
SHANEA KING-ROBERSON: Yeah.
So a Nanodegree, just to give everyone context,
is a collection of courses.
And Google has partnered with the online learning platform
Udacity to provide a collection of courses.
And the Nanodegree itself is all project-based, interactive
learning experience where you have two to three minute videos
followed by immediately an assessment,
so that you're constantly engaged
and constantly learning.
And then at the end of each course, you do a project,
and then you do a final capstone project.
However, all of the courses and all
of the content that make up the Nanodegree
is available for free.
So the additional services that Udacity provides,
which is one-on-one coaching, job placement
services, a community, that aspect has an additional fee.
But from Google, we want everyone
to be able to experience our content.
KORY JEFFREY: And is this Google created content?
SHANEA KING-ROBERSON: Yeah.
We did it in partnership with Google
so you'll be able to see not only a lot of Google faces,
such as the program manager of Google's Launchpad program,
you'll also be able to see a lot of developer advocates,
myself, my face.
But you also get a chance to meet other amazing minds that
are in the Silicon Valley area.
Like we've partnered with the startup company Envision
to produce rapid prototyping.
We've also done a bunch of interviews,
such as the CEO of Optimizely.
We've worked with Aaron Harris from Y Combinator.
We've interviewed venture capitalists.
We've interviewed Nir Eyal of the book
"Hooked-- How to Build Habit-Forming Products."
Amazing.
Geoffrey Moore from "Crossing the Chasm,"
we've interviewed him, and it's absolutely amazing.
So it's not just Google, but brilliant minds
from all over the tech industry are able to give entrepreneurs
the knowledge that they need to really start their businesses.
KORY JEFFREY: So if we dive into the content,
it sounds like a little bit of rapid prototyping,
obviously some marketing with Geoffrey Moore, some finance
stuff.
Are there other pillars that this degree covers?
SHANEA KING-ROBERSON: Yeah.
So we actually start off with product design.
And product designing goes back even further than that
by starting off with ideation.
So even if you haven't solidified your idea yet,
we actually teach you how to come up with an idea
and validate it in the market before you ever build anything
so that you're not wasting your time.
So we start off with that.
How to build products, accessible products,
for markets, global markets, how to design your products
for local markets as you expand globally.
Then we go into monetization.
So you actually build a monetization strategy
before you build a prototype because your UI is affected
by how you decide to monetize.
And what happens to a lot of entrepreneurs
is they build this amazing product
and then have to go back and change their interface
to add ads or new payment buttons or anything like that.
We want entrepreneurs to start thinking about those things
before they ever build anything so that they are not
wasting valuable time or valuable dollars.
KORY JEFFREY: All right.
So looking at the roadmap for the program, it exists today.
Where is it available?
How do you sign up?
SHANEA KING-ROBERSON: Yeah.
The current roadmap is product design, monetization,
rapid prototyping, then marketing, and then
how to get your startup started, which is all the businessy,
finance stuff.
All of those courses are available
at Udacity.com/Google.
You'll see, when you go to that page,
you just scroll down to the Tech Entrepreneur section.
You'll be able to see the additional services, which
is called the Tech Entrepreneur Nanodegree,
but right beside it, you'll be able to sign up
for all of the courses that I just mentioned
and take all of the content for free.
KORY JEFFREY: Very cool.
SHANEA KING-ROBERSON: Yeah.
KORY JEFFREY: So you're here today at Founder World.
SHANEA KING-ROBERSON: Yeah.
KORY JEFFREY: What is it that you're trying to accomplish?
SHANEA KING-ROBERSON: Well, we really
want to empower entrepreneurs to be able to not only tell them
about this amazing content, but then they can ask me questions.
They can ask my partner Clark about questions,
who's from Udacity as well.
And people are just here experiencing,
meeting other people, networking, getting
encouragement, learning what's working for other platforms.
And that's really what you need as an entrepreneur.
You need a lot of support, because it definitely
gets tough along the way.
So just being able to support people and answer the burning
questions that they may have has been really valuable.
Everyone's been really, really responsive.
KORY JEFFREY: That's really cool.
SHANEA KING-ROBERSON: Yeah.
KORY JEFFREY: Thank you so much for joining me.
SHANEA KING-ROBERSON: Of course.
KORY JEFFREY: Thank you guys for joining me on-site
at Founder World in San Francisco.
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