Today, we are continuing our series, entitled Developer Chats – hearing from the large scale system builders themselves.

In this episode, we are talking with Pavel Shchekotov, Founding Engineer of specializing in voice-first, conversational AI products. Pavel is going to take us through his experience as an agency founder, leading into building voice driven, consumer AI.

Questions

• Today you’re building AI-native consumer products around conversational interfaces and user engagement. How has that journey shaped the way you think about product engineering?
• What did those agency years teach you about product development that most engineers never learn?
• What convinced you that voice could be the primary interface rather than just another feature?
• What are the hardest engineering and product challenges that emerge when conversation itself becomes the product?
• What’s one problem that seemed trivial on paper but became surprisingly difficult at scale?
• What did you learn about technology adoption, trust, and user behavior from building for a demographic that much of the tech industry tends to ignore?
• How do you decide whether a startup problem should be fixed, optimized, or completely reimagined?
• What does being a Founding Engineer actually look like day-to-day, and how is it different from being a senior software engineer?
• Where do you think people are overestimating AI today, and where are they still underestimating it?
• Looking forward three to five years, what do you think the most important category of AI-native consumer product will be—and what capabilities will those products need that don’t exist yet?

Sponsors

• Unblocked
• TECH Domains
• Mezmo
• Braingrid.ai

Links

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavel-shchekotov/