Nelson Cheng

Startup Advisor, Film Producer, and Actor

Nelson Cheng is a former Product Manager and Product Marketing Manager for Google and Amazon with experience in product development, strategic planning, and marketing. He has been an advisor to several startups and is a mentor at MuckerLab, a startup accelerator in Los Angeles. Originally from the East Coast, Nelson holds an A.B. in Economics from Princeton University. He directed “The Magic Life”, a documentary about the business side of being a magician, which was a selection of the International Documentary Association’s DocuWeeks Showcase. It’s distributed by Gravitas Ventures and is available on iTunes, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. As an actor, you can see him in “Catherine” — a web series starring Jenny Slate and an official selection of Sundance 2014. He can also be seen in Adult Swim’s “For-Profit Online University”, HBO’s “The Newsroom”, Funny or Die’s “HUVr” (15 million+ views), and in Hulu’s upcoming series “Difficult People”.

Articles by Nelson Cheng

How Shaun Merritt Vibe-Coded Karrot.ai As A Solo Builder

I recently had the opportunity to chat with Shaun Merritt, cofounder and CTO of Karrot.ai, a LinkedIn ABM tool. Shaun was kind enough to share a comprehensive breakdown of how...

7 Steps to Build a Product That Sells Itself

Learn the 7 steps to product-led growth (PLG) to build a product that sells itself. Drive activation, boost conversions, and scale efficiently with Wes Bush from ProductLed....

The Founder’s Mental Health Playbook: What I Learned After Nearly Burning Out

A hard-won guide to staying mentally healthy while building a startup I founded Stitcher, the podcast platform, in 2007 and ran it for seven years until we sold in 2014....

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) for Early Stage Companies

In our latest session from the Mucker Growth Series featuring Ethan Smith from Graphite, we explored AEO, a significant new approach for optimizing visibility in AI-driven search, particularly relevant as...

Startup Guide to AI Visibility: Be the Brand ChatGPT Recommends

Introduction Today, users aren’t just searching on Google. They’re asking ChatGPT, Claude, Google’s Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI systems for advice. AI visibility is the new frontier of brand awareness....

Practical Uses of AI & Automation for Startup Operations

In a recent Mucker Growth Series session, we invited Rock Vitale, Founder & CEO of Easie, to share how he’s helped early-stage teams move from manual, fragmented workflows to streamlined,...