Hey, entrepreneurs. It's your Podcast, Mogul, Phil better here. I am excited for this episode as as as I know you are. Before we jump into this episode, I'm gonna ask you, if you are also a podcaster and you're looking to grow your podcast or monetize your podcast, make sure you stay till the end of the episode. I have a special deal for you or a special offer, if you will. But ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, let's jump into the episode. Welcome to Invest in Yourself, the Digital Entrepreneur Podcast. Join the podcast mogul Phil Better as he interviews successful entrepreneurs that make their living in the digital world.

Now, let's join your host, Phil Better, and his special guest today on Invest in Yourself, the the entrepreneur. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Invest in Yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. I am, of course, your host with the most Phil Better. And today, I'm very excited to talk about our guest who is the cofounder and executive chairman of Prodify. He's convinced that a product is the single most important success driver for a tech company, which is why he founded Prodify to share what he learned from being an adviser to over 50 tech companies and to continue help others realize their full potential. His our guest has led successful technical technology products for the last 25 years. He cut his teeth at a eBay during its heyday, then moved to product leadership roles at Opower, GoCanvas, and most recently at as CPO of WHOOP. He has been featured on several prod product podcasts, spoken at top product events, lectured at HBS, and coauthored the book, Phil what matters.

Please welcome our guest, Ben Foster. Ben, thank you for coming on the show today.

Hey. Thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it.

Ben, I gave you a a very nice little, intro there highlighting some key moments of your success, but I would love for you just to give us a quick introduction in your own words.

Yeah. Sure. Sounds good. You know, I've been, involved in the whole ecosystem of technology and Silicon Valley and things like that for really the entirety of my career. You know, I had the great fortune of, getting started back in 1998, I guess. So it was kind of like this perfect moment in Silicon Valley where, you know, everything was kind of, like, taking off up into the right, and that was all before the big dotcom crash. You know? So during that couple of years window, I just had all these amazing opportunities thrown at me to learn so much because nobody really had experience with the Internet. Nobody had experience with a lot of these, you know, kind of, like, technology products, etcetera.

And so, you know, I felt like I had this this amazing, just chance to get to learn so much so fast, and I was given so much more responsibility than I think anybody would ever justify giving to somebody at that age. I'm going now. And, and and I guess kind of, you know, based on that, I just learned and I tried to apply the kinds of things that I learned. You know, you learn from a lot of mistakes. You learn from your successes as well. And I had the 4 the good fortune of having some great mentors, and it really kind of took me down path of, really getting very excited and very deeply invested in the the kind of, like, product and technology community. I've stayed very involved in that because I really just love it. You know? It's it's something that I can't really break away from entirely.

And so, you know, most recently, it's transformed from being in operational roles myself as, like, the chief product officer, etcetera, into more helping early stage founders with their journey based on a lot of the kinds of principles and things like that the I wish that I had known when I was getting started myself. And, hey, I can help them to see around corners and help them be successful along the way, that's fantastic.

I love that. I love that. And I love how you're taking your time in the trenches, and you're like, okay. I'm stepping back here. I don't need to be in the trenches. I'm gonna pass on, to the other people in the trenches, making sure that they, they know what's coming around that corner so that they don't have to worry too much, and that's that's a great role to take. But I wanna know, like, you say you got it started back in its heyday, like, 98. You got were cutting your teeth.

How did you come into that role? Like, how did you stumble into the Silicon Valley world?