A conversation with Rich Rudzinski, Fractional Product and Engineering Leader and Startup Founder

On this episode of the HabitStack Podcast, host Scott Ward talks with Rich Rudzinski, fractional product and engineering leader at Apollo Fractional and founder of event-networking startup Veery. Rich explains why AI has made product validation more important than ever, even as tools like Claude make founders feel overconfident enough to skip fundamental research. He introduces the idea of "comprehension debt," a new form of technical debt where teams ship AI-generated code they don't fully understand, and explains why the last 10% of polishing an AI-built feature can now take more effort than building it. Rich and Scott debate how to resolve the classic tension between business deadlines and engineering timelines, how fractional leadership lets early-stage founders access senior expertise without an expensive full-time hire, and what his startup, Veery, is all about.