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