#19: Dan Gould — Fighting unconscious bias with entrepreneurship

Dan Gould is the CTO and co-founder of BiasSync, a company whose mission it is to create more fair and respectful workplaces by fighting unconscious bias. He cofounded the company in 2018 with Michele Ruiz, a 5-time Emmy award winning journalist, and Robin Richards, a prolific serial entrepreneur.

Dan has had a prolific career in technology over the last 20 years, cofounding 3 companies that have been acquired as well as being an investor, advisor and mentor to dozens more successful startups. Before founding BiasSync, Dan was the VP of Technology at Tinder, where he led all the algorithmic, infrastructure, and data science work that helped the company grow to over $1 billion in revenue. Prior to that, Dan cofounded Chill, a video discovery tool acquired by Tinder, and Newroo which acquired by Fox News Corp.

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Links & resources mentioned

• BiasSync

  • Dan Gould

  • Michele Ruiz

  • Robin Richards

• Key concepts

  • Unconscious Bias

  • Humanism

  • Diversity, Inclusion, Equity

  • Microaggressions

  • Cognitive Science

  • System 1 & 2 thinking (Daniel Kahneman)

  • The doll test

  • Information theory

  • Customer development

  • Gall's Law - complex working systems evolve from simple working systems

  • Land & expand

  • "First, ten" - Seth Godin

• Books & resources

  • Blindspot

  • White Fragility

  • Thinking, Fast and Slow

  • Harvard Implicit Bias test

  • Onlyness

  • The Lean Startup

  • Outcomes Over Output

  • Testing Business Ideas

  • Other episodes

    • Josh Seiden: How to create clarity and lead strategically with outcomes thinking

    • Holly Hester-Reilly: Building a customer-centric team and product culture

    • Rich Mironov: Building a thriving product organization

    • Nilofer Merchant: Unleashing Onlyness to benefit from the ideas and potential in every person

• People & organizations

  • BiasSync

  • Doug Englebart

  • Andy van Dam

  • Daniel Kahneman

  • Brown University Computer Graphics Group

  • Adrian Scott - Ryze

  • Nilofer Merchant

  • Dolly Chugh - "be a good-ish person"

  • Steve Blank

  • Eric Ries 

  • Emily Oster