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Sam Udotong
Co-founder at Fireflies.ai
Sam Udotong is the Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Fireflies.ai, a startup focused on automating meeting notes through artificial intelligence. He is based in New York and has a strong background in computer science and aerospace engineering, having graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Professional Background
Udotong has extensive experience in deploying deep learning technologies across various projects. His previous roles include:
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CTO at Fireflies.ai (June 2014 - Present): At Fireflies.ai, he leads the engineering team, focusing on developing AI that joins meetings to record, transcribe, and summarize discussions. The platform has been adopted by over 300,000 organizations and 2.5 million users, enabling efficient note-taking and information retrieval from meetings.12
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President of the MIT UAV Team: He led the team during his time at MIT, where he gained experience in autonomous systems.
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Systems Engineer Intern at Boeing and Lockheed Martin: Udotong worked on optimizing satellite maintenance systems and other engineering projects during his internships.1
Achievements
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Forbes 30 Under 30: Udotong was recognized in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Enterprise Technology in 2022, highlighting his impact and innovation in the tech industry.2
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Awards: He has received accolades such as the "20 Twenties: Tomorrow's Engineering Leaders" award from AIAA and Aviation Week, and the "STEM College Student of the Year" from the Burlington County Education Association for his contributions to engineering and technology.1
Personal Insights
Sam Udotong is driven by a desire to create meaningful change through technology. He enjoys working in small teams where he can make a significant impact and emphasizes a strong work ethic and leadership by example. In addition to his technical skills, he is passionate about using AI to enhance communication and productivity in professional settings.13
Highlights
I recently got a cat named Xeno, and as I’ve been raising my cat I’ve noticed that, as a caretaker, the framework of caretaking surprisingly parallels the ways that I interact with AI.
For example, Xeno is naturally scared of me. But as our values align towards love, she gets more and more comfortable over time. There’s also a set of rules that I enforce, which she learns and adapts to. Although we don’t speak the same language or hold the same customs, we can grow closer through our shared framework of rules and values.
This idea goes beyond just pets and touches on something bigger, like how we help children learn about the world. Even though I don't have kids of my own, the idea is the same. It's all about caring for them, guiding them, and teaching them right from wrong. This is really similar to how we create and teach AI to do things in a caring and responsible way.
Expanded more on the thoughts in the below article! Please check it out and share your thoughts.
We just hired our 50th engineer at Fireflies.ai. In Q4 2022, we shipped ~1400 stories to production, shipping 24h around the clock
A common question I receive is how to build a world-wide, world-class engineering team 🌍🌎🌏
Been thinking about this for years.....
Our approach starts with the following high level mentality:
- Reliability is foundational
- Automate as much as possible
- Quantify everything
- Make data-driven decisions
- Measure results, not time
- Build autonomous teams
- Focus on highly efficient work
- Invest for the long term
With the goal of intentionally supporting global engineering in every timezone, we built this mentality into our culture. These are the important principles that we harp on continuously:
- Ownership
- Accountability
- Asynchronous work
- Definition of "done"
- Communication
- Execution
- Quantified transparency
Here are some of the important SaaS tools that we use, which build the above culture into the team:
- Sentry (sentry.io) - error tracking
- PagerDuty - incident handling
- Shortcut - task management
- Notion - documentation
- GitHub - code hosting
- Fireflies.ai - meeting note-taking
- Zendesk - support
It's important that all of these tools have APIs, so we can extend & automate various parts of our process.
For each of our subteams, the typical structure is:
- Team lead
- Tech lead
- Strong independent contributors With each team usually being size 5-10
Other policies and processes that we adopt include:
- Quarterly review cycles
- Transparent career ladder
- Intense onboarding
- High expectations
- Low performers: warning -> probation -> fired
- Documenting everything
When it comes to hiring, we aim to raise the bar with each hire:
- Only hire top engineers
- Only promote to lead after proven track record
- Time sourcing generally correlates with hiring success
- Culture fit is just as important as technical fit
We also measure our success, focusing on results instead of time. Some important metrics include:
- Roadmap execution
- Reliability SLA
- Total velocity
- Average velocity
- Number of incidents
- Number of bugs
And that's a high level summary of our team culture! I wish I knew about this when I co-founded Fireflies after graduating from college. Hopefully this is helpful for others getting started on building an engineering team as well. Will share more learnings from the journey in the coming weeks!
