Jesse Stinebring has spent his career solving a problem most people assume is unsolvable: getting speed and quality out of the same system. In this episode of Speed, host Keith Lucas talks with Jesse — co-founder and CEO of Blue Rose Research — about why campaigns can't afford to wait weeks for answers, how Blue Rose centralized its modeling to get both speed and consistency instead of picking one, and what he calls the real difference between fast-but-sloppy and fast-and-disciplined. They also get into how AI and coding agents are changing what Blue Rose builds heading into the midterms, and how Jesse recovers from the highs and lows of working in a business where the stakes are, literally, elections.

Speed: Moving Fast Towards What Matters is a six-episode limited series featuring six startup founders and operators who exemplify personal speed and have wrestled with it organizationally — exploring the systematic principles of speed and the critical tactics that make it sustainable as you scale.

In this episode

• 0:00 — Welcome, and introducing Jesse Stinebring
• 2:03 — The speed Blue Rose has built, and why it matters to campaigns racing the clock
• 7:34 — Building a team and culture organized around speed
• 12:11 — Why speed and quality aren't actually in tension — and what Jesse calls the real answer: discipline
• 19:12 — Speed beyond the midterms: AI, coding agents, and protecting what makes Blue Rose's work unique
• 22:03 — Recovery: how Jesse resets after a hard day

The Guest: Jesse Stinebring

Jesse Stinebring is the CEO of Blue Rose Research, which he co-founded in 2021 after a decade working in Democratic analytics beginning with Barack Obama's 2012 reelect. Today he leads Blue Rose's 50+ data scientists, researchers, social scientists, and analysts working to radically lower the barriers to better opinion research tools for big and small campaigns.

Connect with Jesse:

• linkedin.com/in/jesse-s-b490a22b
• https://blueroseresearch.org/

The Host: Keith Lucas

Keith Lucas joined Roblox as employee #7 and later served as CPO and CTO, leading product, engineering, and operations as the company scaled. He went on to serve as COO of Instrumental and now advises leaders across AI, gaming, creator platforms, and enterprise technology. He is also the author of IMPACT and host of Speed.

Connect with Keith:

• linkedin.com/in/kvlucas
• https://keithvlucas.com/

Get the book: Impact — https://keithvlucas.com/impact/

Contact us: speed@keithvlucas.com

CREDITS

Produced by : Leah Barnum

Social Media: Julia Guagliardi - www.stillwaters-creative.com

Editor: Jon Keur - www.wayfarerecording.com

Content Designer: Natalie Leroux - www.studioeightyseven.com

Studio lighting/Setup - www.175productions.com

In this episode of Speed, host Keith Lucas talks with Yaniv Bernstein about what's actually changed for founders building with AI, why taking on technical debt aggressively is often the right call, how Vera balances speed with the trust required to help families navigate care for aging parents, and his go-to method for turning around a team that's gotten stuck.

Speed: Moving Fast Towards What Matters is a six-episode limited series featuring six startup founders and operators who exemplify personal speed and have wrestled with it organizationally — exploring the systematic principles of speed and the critical tactics that make it sustainable as you scale.

In this episode

• 0:00 — Welcome, and introducing Yaniv Bernstein
• 1:45 — Speed today vs. a year ago: the 5-10x jump from agentic coding
• 6:50 — What Yaniv wishes every startup leader understood about speed — and why technical debt is often "good debt"
• 14:05 — Delivering speed and trust together at Vera
• 18:05 — How to turn around a team that's stuck — and why more process usually isn't the fix
• 24:04 — Recovery: using AI as a thought partner to get unstuck

The Guest: Yaniv Bernstein

Yaniv Bernstein is the Founder & CTO of Vera, an early-stage startup devoted to supporting people who are looking after aging parents. He's spent nearly 20 years in tech, including a decade as a software engineer and engineering leader at Google, followed by roles as a scale-up VP of Engineering and COO. A two-time founder, Yaniv has invested in and advised numerous startups, and co-hosts The Startup Podcast.

Connect with Yaniv:

• linkedin.com/in/ybernstein
• https://vera.guide/

The Host: Keith Lucas

Keith Lucas joined Roblox as employee #7 and later served as CPO and CTO, leading product, engineering, and operations as the company scaled. He went on to serve as COO of Instrumental and now advises leaders across AI, gaming, creator platforms, and enterprise technology. He is also the author of IMPACT and host of Speed.

Connect with Keith:

• linkedin.com/in/kvlucas
• https://keithvlucas.com/

Get the book: Impact — https://keithvlucas.com/impact/

Contact us: speed@keithvlucas.com

CREDITS

Produced by : Leah Barnum

Social Media: Julia Guagliardi - www.stillwaters-creative.com

Editor: Jon Keur - www.wayfarerecording.com

Content Designer: Natalie Leroux - www.studioeightyseven.com

Studio lighting/Setup - www.175productions.com

In this episode of Speed, Matt Curtis joins host Keith Lucas to redefine what speed actually means: not raw execution velocity, but the time between a decision and the evidence that validates it. He shares the three habits behind it — clean data, cheap mistakes, and experience as a compression algorithm — and explains why small teams die of distraction while big ones die of dependencies.

Speed: Moving Fast Towards What Matters is a six-episode limited series featuring six startup founders and operators who exemplify personal speed and have wrestled with it organizationally — exploring the systematic principles of speed and the critical tactics that make it sustainable as you scale.

In this episode

00:00 – Welcome to Speed & introducing Matt Curtis

05:51 – Redefining speed: the time from decision to evidence

06:08 – Three levers for speed: clean data, cheap mistakes, and experience as a compression algorithm

10:25 – "Fail fast, fail often": removing ego from iteration

11:29 – Small teams vs. big teams: distraction vs. dependencies

13:52 – GREE's "slow is steady, steady is fast" and the limits of focus

15:51 – Vision + iteration: the one-two punch that built Roblox

19:31 – Splendid Games: how Roblox development has changed in 10 years

23:58 – Where AI fits into Splendid Games' workflow

26:13 – Is speed vs. quality really a trade-off?

29:27 – Quality as an accumulation of evidence, not perfectionism

31:51 – How Matt recovers: work hard, rest hard

The Guest: Matt Curtis

Matt Curtis has spent 15+ years at the intersection of games, platforms, and the communities that power them. Now he's getting back into his passion: building. He recently co-founded Splendid Games, a new game development studio focused on Roblox, which just wrapped its closed alpha, and he advises select companies navigating the creator economy and platform ecosystems. Previously, Matt spent six years as VP of Developer Relations at Roblox, and before that a decade at Zynga, GREE, and Kabam leading titles that collectively generated over $1B in revenue, including Words with Friends 2, CSR2 Racing, Zynga Poker, and The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth.

Connect with Matt:

• linkedin.com/in/matthewcurtisroblox
• https://www.splendidgames.gg/

The Host: Keith Lucas

Keith Lucas joined Roblox as employee #7 and later served as CPO and CTO, leading product, engineering, and operations as the company scaled. He went on to serve as COO of Instrumental and now advises leaders across AI, gaming, creator platforms, and enterprise technology. He is also the author of IMPACT and host of Speed.

Connect with Keith:

• linkedin.com/in/kvlucas
• https://keithvlucas.com/

Get the book: Impact — https://keithvlucas.com/impact/

Contact us: speed@keithvlucas.com

CREDITS

Produced by : Leah Barnum

Social Media: Julia Guagliardi - www.stillwaters-creative.com

Editor: Jon Keur - www.wayfarerecording.com

Content Designer: Natalie Leroux - www.studioeightyseven.com

Studio lighting/Setup - www.175productions.com

Harold Hughes has built companies at two very different speeds: hand-drawing wireframes on paper a decade ago, and shipping AI-generated MVPs in an afternoon today. In this episode of Speed, host Keith Lucas talks with Harold — founder of NFNTE Capital and Divi, and a 30+ company angel investor — about what it actually takes to move fast without breaking trust. They cover building critical mass in the early days, how AI has changed Divi's product cycle, why speed can be both a founder's biggest edge and their biggest risk, and how Harold recovers after a bad day.

In this episode

• 0:00 — Welcome, and introducing Harold Hughes
• 2:28 — From Band Wagon to Divi: building critical mass fast
• 5:02 — Juggling product, brand, funding, and outreach without losing focus
• 7:38 — Building Divi's product with AI — from hand-drawn sketches to AI-built MVPs
• 13:21 — Balancing speed with security and trust when the product touches people's money
• 16:06 — Advice for founders: speed as a competitive edge
• 20:59 — Recovery: how Harold resets after a bad day

The Guest: Harold Hughes

Harold Hughes is the Founder & CEO of NFNTE Capital and Divi. Through NFNTE Capital, he's built entrepreneurship and AI education programs adopted by organizations like the University of Texas and the NBA; through Divi, he's building the intelligence platform for early-stage investors. A serial entrepreneur and active angel investor, Harold has backed more than 30 startups — including Liquid Death, AG1, and Partake Foods — and authored A Kids Book About Blockchain. He holds dual degrees and an MBA from Clemson University, and lives in Charlotte with his wife and two kids.

Connect with Harold:

• linkedin.com/in/haroldphughes
• https://www.instagram.com/haroldph
• https://divi.fund/
• https://nfnte.com/

A Kids Book About Blockchain by Harold Hughes (2021) — https://a.co/d/0iiyua6S

The Host: Keith Lucas

Keith Lucas joined Roblox as employee #7 and later served as CPO and CTO, leading product, engineering, and operations as the company scaled. He went on to serve as COO of Instrumental and now advises leaders across AI, gaming, creator platforms, and enterprise technology. He is also the author of IMPACT and host of Speed.

Connect with Keith:

• linkedin.com/in/kvlucas
• https://keithvlucas.com/

Get the book: Impact — https://keithvlucas.com/impact/

Contact us: speed@keithvlucas.com

CREDITS

Produced by : Leah Barnum

Social Media: Julia Guagliardi - www.stillwaters-creative.com

Editor: Jon Keur - www.wayfarerecording.com

Content Designer: Natalie Leroux - www.studioeightyseven.com

Studio lighting/Setup - www.175productions.com

Speed: Moving Fast Towards What Matters is Keith Lucas's follow-up to his book Impact, a six-episode limited series exploring how inspiring founders think about speed: what it is, why it matters, and how they cultivate it.

The series splits into two halves. The first three founders are early-stage and building with AI from the ground up: Harold Hughes (Divi) on speed as a signal of intent, Matt Curtis (Splendid Games) on how vision and iteration together unlock rapid development, and Yaniv Bernstein (Vera) on how AI coding has changed the way he hires and scales his engineering team. The next two founders are at the scaling stage, maintaining speed and culture as they grow, with the speed of service delivery itself as a competitive advantage: Jesse Stinebring (Blue Rose Research) and Anna Shedletsky (Instrumental). The series closes with David Baszucki, who grew Roblox from a team of one to thousands, and closes with Keith's own synthesis episode pulling the whole series together.

The host: Keith Lucas

Keith Lucas joined Roblox as employee #7 and later served as CPO and CTO, leading product, engineering, and operations as the company scaled. He went on to serve as COO of Instrumental and now advises leaders across AI, gaming, creator platforms, and enterprise technology. He is also the author of IMPACT and host of Speed.

Connect with Keith:

• linkedin.com/in/kvlucas
• https://keithvlucas.com/

Get the book: Impact — https://keithvlucas.com/impact/

Contact us: speed@keithvlucas.com

CREDITS

Produced by : Leah Barnum

Social Media: Julia Guagliardi - www.stillwaters-creative.com

Editor: Jon Keur - www.wayfarerecording.com

Content Designer: Natalie Leroux - www.studioeightyseven.com

Studio lighting/Setup - www.175productions.com

"I can buy this thing and have results next week, versus I wait four months and maybe something happens. It's like, I have a problem now."

A first look at Anna Shedletsky's conversation with Keith Lucas, on how speed became Instrumental's biggest competitive advantage.

She also talks with Keith about protecting dissent, trading "leading from the front" for empowering ownership, and the pivot from consumer electronics to AI data center infrastructure.

Coming September 15, Speed: Moving Fast Towards What Matters is a six episode limited series featuring six startup founders and operators who exemplify personal speed and have wrestled with it organizationally. Each conversation explores the systematic principles of speed and the tactics that make it sustainable as you scale.

"Speed is a critical part of the intention demonstration."

That's how Harold Hughes — founder of Divi and NFNTE Capital, and an angel investor in 30+ startups — thinks about building fast without losing anyone's trust.

Coming September 15, 2026, Keith Lucas sits down with Harold Hughes, to talk about building momentum, creating with AI, and why speed can be a founder’s greatest advantage and biggest risk.