Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

S12 Bonus: Yoni Avital, ControlUp

Thu, 14 May 2026 10:00:50 +0000

Yoni Avital lives in Tel Aviv, Israel, with his wife and 3 older children. The oldest kid is a boy, so Yoni and he try to see as many football games as possible. He enjoys shopping with this girls, though it's cause he is their Dad, not because he enjoy shopping. He likes to travel, hike, and enjoys a nice white wine in warmer weather. His most memorable hike was at Yosemite, when he started at 4 am and came across a lot of wildlife.

Yoni was in the virtual desktop space in the past. What he and his team realized was that troubleshooting these virtual experiences were incredibly complicated. They started to build an enterprise task manager, to centralize a task management UI to control the endpoints. When customers started asking to use it daily, Yoni figured out they had something unique.

This is the creation story of ControlUp.

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S12 E18: Brooke Hipps, Weekend Will

Tue, 12 May 2026 10:00:55 +0000

Brooke Hipps currently lives in Fort Worth, TX but grew up down the road in DeSoto. She is entrepreneur through and through, from the early years of learning from her parents, to starting three businesses of her own, in fashion, construction and estate planning. Outside of tech, she has three kids - one out of college and 2 still in college. Brooke is an outdoorsy person, enjoying spending time in nature, hiking, camping and playing a round of golf every now and again.

Recently, Brooke's sister passed away. Obviously, this was a difficult moment for her and her family, but what made it more difficult was that her sister didn't have a will. Brooke started asking the question "why bit?", and exploring building something to help Texan's with writing a love letter to your surviving loved ones.

This is the creation story of Weekend Will.

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Making AI Deterministic for Developers and their Agents, with Patrick Vuong of Moderne

Thu, 07 May 2026 10:00:32 +0000

Today, we have a special guest on the Code Story podcast - Patrick Vuong, Director of Product at Moderne. Moderne is the agent tools company, building the. Knowledge, discovery and execution tools that AI agents rely on - so they can operator faster, more accurately, and at far lower cost.

In today's episode, Patrick is going to tell us about the company, and how Moderne is enabling developers to build software faster, and with the best context - using agents and agent tools. Their approach to semantic models produce deterministic over probabilistic, or inference driven, tools, which for this engineer/host, has been a point of skepticism for AI since the beginning.

Questions

Tell me and my audience a little bit about you.
What is Moderne?
Moderne is enabling developers to operate software systems at the speed of agents. Tell me about this product suite.
Why do Agents need tooling? Where do we see AI in ROI
Something jumped out at me... you mentioned you are not only building tooling for agents that are deterministic.
As we peer into tech stacks across the industry, where does Moderne fit?
OK so this is clearly a pivot for Moderne. With this, who are your customers now?
What does the future like for your product - what you offer - and your team?
For you personally, you are entering into a new chapter with Moderne. What makes you most excited, going from Microsoft to entering the startup world with the company?
In your journey, who has influenced the way you work? Tell me about a person, or many persons, or something you look up to and why.
So you worked at Microsoft for 8 years, and are now transitioning to Moderne. Say you were getting on a plan and sitting next to someone about to make this same transition - what advice would you give them?

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S12 Bonus: Aron D’Souza, Objection AI

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 10:00:46 +0000

Aron D'Souza is originally from Australia, the son of a Chinese mother and an Indian-Portuguese father. He is a graduate of Oxford, and got his PhD from the University of Melbourne. A lawyer by training, he has built 12 companies and has had 5 exits - working with folks like Peter Thiel, the New York Stock Exchange and the Enhanced Games. In general, he's a problem solver, and turns all of his fun into work.

Aron made the stark realization that we are a divided society, and do not have a trusted, unbiased media source. He attempted to build a rudimentary version of a solution for a tribunal of truth 20 years ago, but the tech wasn't ready for it. That is, until the most recent advances in AI.

This is the creation story of Objection AI.

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S12 E16: Nikunj Bajaj, True Foundry

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 10:00:16 +0000

Nikunj Bajaj was born in India, and completed his undergraduate studies there. The intrigue of Silcon Valley in 2013 brought him to the Bay Area, where he got his masters degree from Berkeley. His studies and his time after school supremely informed what he is building now, at his current venture. But outside of tech, he is an outdoorsey person, enjoying running, biking and scuba diving, with his favorite place to dive being Bali. He enjoys playing board games with his friends, and listens to a lot of audiobooks from a wide range of genres.

After joining Meta, Nikunj realized that building machine learning models for the company is different than using public ecosystems. The realized early on that machine learning models will hit an inflection point, where the stacks will need to change and adapt. He and his team decided to take on this challenge ahead of that inflection point.

This is the creation story of True Foundry.

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S12 Bonus: Tyler Hochman, FORE Enterprise

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 10:00:30 +0000

Tyler Hochman got started early in the world of entrepreneurship. In Middle School, he got into Gemology, fascinated by the formation of gems, becoming a young GIA certifier. This taught him to get out of his comfort zone, from which he started his first business as a junior at Stanford. Past that, it's been a similar process of identifying a problem and looking at how to build a solution. Outside of tech, he is married with a 1 year old son, and another child on the way. He loves spending time with his son, enjoying all of the things parenthood throw at you.

Tyler built a workforce turnover solution half a decade ago, in the space of predicting employee turnover in a business. It got a lot of solid traction, but what he and his team noticed was that though people wanted to use the solution, they didn't have the infrastructure necessary to provide data to the tool. This led he and his team to swim a bit downstream to build that data pipeline for customers.

This is the creation story of FORE Enterprise.

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S12 E15: Meghan Joyce, Duckbill

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 10:00:19 +0000

Meghan Joyce comes from a long line of people living life to the fullest. She takes a lot of influence from her grandmother, who was an entrepreneur, making and selling dresses in the early 1900's, influencing her to take a hold of every moment in life and capitalize on the time you have. She's led groups at Uber and Oscar, prior to starting her current venture. But outside of tech, she is the mother of 3 children. Her favorite hobby is to spend time with the people she loves, meeting them where they are. But when she has spare time to herself, she enjoys being in nature, hiking or walking on a beach, and staying active.

Meghan was sitting on a bed in Amsterdam, and experienced a problem with parental technology (IE a breast pump) that was keeping her from running things at Uber. While sitting on hold with the company, trying to get another one available, she started to wish she had a solution that would help her with this, while she attended her meetings at Uber.

This is the creation story of Duckbill.

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The AI Ultimatum: Preparing for a World of Intelligent Machines and Radical Transformation with Steve Brown

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 10:00:56 +0000

Today we have a special guest and author on the Code Story podcast, Steve Brown. Steve is a former DeepMind futurist, and recently published a book called The AI Ultimatum: Preparing for a World of Intelligent Machines and Radical Transformation. In the book, he provides a step by step framework to guide leaders in identifying use cases for AI, turning it into business value, and obtaining buy in from employees.

In our conversation, Steve is going to elaborate on why AI is a teammate (not a threat), the top AI rollout mistakes, leadership and management tactics that need to go, and much more.

Questions:

What led you to write this book? Ultimately, what were you trying to accomplish?
We often hear that AI is coming for our jobs, but you argue it’s actually our newest teammate. Can you elaborate on this more?
Let's double back on something you said, around the flavors of agents. What are those 3 different flavors of agents?
Over time, leaders can fall into operating out of their experience - IE assumptions about a particular endeavor. With the advent of AI, what assumptions need to be retired, and what needs to replace them?
In the same vane as the last question, you mention that old-school management fails in the age of AI. What do you mean by this, why does it fail and what needs to be changed?
In the book, you talk about the AI wins you can use today, effectively pointing at immediate impact teams can feel from using AI. Can you talk to 2-3 of the most important ones?
Can you explain why reinvention beats reduction? If this is the case, how can leaders and employees move into this way of thinking?
Today, people are trying to rollout AI and getting it wrong - from the startup to the enterprise. What are the top AI rollout mistakes for companies to avoid?

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S12 E14: Catalina Turlea, Lovelaice

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 10:00:28 +0000

Catalina Turlea is originally from Romania, growing up in the countryside there. Post getting her bachelors, she moved to Austria for her masters, and landed in Germany for 13 years. She is married with a 3 year old daughter and many, many pets. She loves to spend time with her family, in nature and the mountains. She used to do a lot of sports, but being a startup founder doesn't really allow for as much running or hiking. She also is into calligraphy, which she calls her hidden superpower.

Catalina has been building products for 14 years, and recently was running a small tech consultancy for startups. What she observed was that a lot of products contained an AI feature, but the "feature" was based on a prompt, didn't work well, and wasn't a good fit for the users. Eventually, she and her co-founder realized they saw the same problem, and built a platform to support products teams in building valuable AI features.

This is the creation story of Lovelaice.

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S12 Bonus: Dr. Aqib Rashid, Glasswall

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 10:00:07 +0000

Dr. Aqib Rashid was born and raised in London. He spent a lot of time around computers and tech growing up, and his parents pushed him towards becoming an expert in a discipline, being a positive influence on society. But he maintained his balance in life by playing sports, which inspired him to want to lead a team in the future. But outside of tech, he is a Dad to a one year old boy. He enjoys spending time with him outdoors, and finds that the real beauty in life is watching him grow up.

In Sept 2023, Aqib had completed his PhD around the subject of using AI to detect malware. His current venture was looking at how to implement this sort of approach into their products. Quickly, he got to work building a new product to detect malware in your files.

This is Dr. Rashid's the creation story of Glasswall.

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S12 E13: David Matalon, Venn

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:00:23 +0000

David Matalon grew up in Great Neck, outside of New York City. He's always been interested in tech, way back in the early days of PCs, DOS, Windows and even Novell. In fact, he was the high school kid with an IT Consulting business on the side (yes, he wore a beeper to school). He graduated from NYU, and started his first company Offyx. Outside of tech, he is married with 4 kids. When asked about what he does for fun, he says that enjoys the all compassing nature of work and family life.

David's whole career has been centered around helping companies deliver distributed applications. In most of recent history, virtual desktops or VDI has been the de facto solution for businesses, with lots of issues and pains baked in. David and his team heard the cries of their customers, and decided to build a better solution - one, with a blue border.

This is the creation story of Venn.

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Founder Chats - Vadim Dedov

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 10:00:33 +0000

Today, we are dropping another episode in our "chats" series, specifically on the Founder side, - hearing from those scaling the companies themselves.

In this episode, we are talking with Vadim Dedov, CEO at Catchers. Vadim is going to walk us through what problem he wanted to solve with Catchers, and how his product development journey took him through architectural decisions, product optimization, team building and more.

Questions

Before we talk about Catchers, I’d love to understand you a bit better.
What experiences or responsibilities earlier in your life shaped how you think about work, systems, and accountability today?
What problem were you dealing with before Catchers existed? Not as a product idea yet, but as a real operational pain you kept running into.
At what point did you realise this couldn’t be solved with people, spreadsheets, or manual coordination anymore and that technology was the only way forward?
How did Catchers actually start taking shape as a product? What was the very first version you built, and what did “good enough” mean in a business where mistakes affect people’s income and compliance?
How long did it take to get to something usable, and what constraints defined your MVP?
Looking back, what were the most important trade-offs you made early on?
Things you consciously postponed or simplified, knowing they might come back later.
Let’s zoom in on the product itself. What is the core product insight behind Catchers — the thing you believe differentiates it from a typical HR or staffing platform?
How did your thinking about architecture evolve as scale increased? Was there a moment when you had to stop moving fast and redesign parts of the system properly?
How did you approach building your core team around such a complex, operations-heavy product? What qualities mattered most in the people you trusted with this system?
Can you share a decision that didn’t go as planned and how you and your team dealt with the consequences?
When you step back and look at what you’ve built today, what are you most proud of not in terms of features, but in terms of reliability, impact, or how the system holds under pressure?
As you look ahead, how do automation and AI change the way you think about workforce platforms — and what advice would you give to someone building infrastructure-heavy products today?

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S12 Bonus: Yoav Crombie, Pragatix by AGAT Software

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 10:00:39 +0000

Yoav Crombie was born and raised in Israel, serving in the army for 6 years as an engineer. He's been in the tech industry of 35 years, but doesn't see this work as work. He thoroughly enjoys what he is doing, especially with what is going on with AI right now, specifically around the quick creation process. Outside of tech, he has been married for 30 years. He loves water sports - kite surfing, regular surfing and paddle boarding. In addition, he loves to cycle, and was the Israeli road champion many years ago.

Yoav realized that companies were struggling that businesses were struggling to implement and adopt AI. In particular, he noticed that there was risk in publicly sharing your data. But alongside that, other companies wanted more control to how AI functioned for their country. So his company started to build a solution to solve both of these problems.

This is the creation story Pragatix, a product of AGAT Software.

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S12 E12: Robert Brennan, OpenHands

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:30 +0000

Robert Brennan grew up in Boston and loved it so much that he ended up calling it home again. He spent time in New York between his bookend times, but he enjoys the chill pace and great music of Boston over the fast pace of the big apple. Outside of technology, he likes to read nonfiction and fiction, specifically science fiction. He loves music, and. Has been playing guitar for 25 years now. He frequents the live music scene around Boston, and even lives near a jazz club.

Robert observed the release of the first version of Devin a few years ago, which was very exciting to see agent driven development. But he and his co-founders were concerned with who was going to govern how this software was going to get written - and they hypothesized that it should be open source and community driven.

This is the creation story of OpenHands.

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S12 Bonus: Tobias "Tobi" Konitzer, Growthloop

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 10:00:26 +0000

Tobi Konitzer was born in Germany, and studied cultural studies as an undergraduate student. Eventually, he went to Duke to get a PhD in political science. And that eventually changed to be a PhD in computational social science at Stanford - which is basically writing code to answer social science questions. After graduating in 2017, he joined Facebook Research for a year, then founded two AI startups. Outside of tech, he has 2 young daughters, who he likes to spend time with and take to the park. He used to be an avid trail runner, but his favorite to do is think... and to do so as often as possible.

For the last 10 years of his career, Tobi has been chasing optimized decisioning and outcomes using AI. Five months ago, he decided to join his current venture, and use AI to shift the conversation from "tooling for marketers" to using AI to build an autonomous decisioning system, that learns and improves over time.

This is Tobi's creation story at Growthloop.

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Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
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S12 E11: Brian Carbaugh, Andesite

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 10:00:55 +0000

Brian Carbaugh has a non-standard path to being a CEO in the startup world. He was in the marine core for 5-6 years in active duty, before attending Georgetown for school. Eventually, he joined the CIA and spent 23 years, serving the country in multiple different roles and facets, primarily in para military and covert operations. While he was there, he also started to see areas where the agency could innovate, and got curious about how they could partner with private companies. Outside of tech, he is a father of 3 girls and a boy. He enjoys working out, skiing and riding on road bikes. He used to do triathlons in the past, but startup life has taken up any time he could dedicate to that.

Shortly after he retired from the CIA, Brian got a call from some prior folks he knew still in the industry. He started digging into the cybersecurity world, specifically into why there was so much attrition amongst the employees themselves. He was asked the question about how he could 10x this workers, and optimize these individuals using the latest tech?

This is the creation story of Andesite.

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S12 Bonus: Reannah Wyatt, The Real Time

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:00:46 +0000

Reannah Wyatt is from Bandera, TX, raised on a 4th generation cattle and horse ranch. Eventually, she went to West Texas for school, rodeoing for Howard University, specifically barrel racing. She eventually started selling residential real estate, and fell in love with the industry. Outside of tech and real estate, she is a mom and still loves horses and cattle. She doesn't ride anymore, but leans more into the breeding side of the animals.

Reannah was in residential real estate for over a decade, and was in the mix when Zillow was launched. The platform helped her grow her business, and she knew this was where the industry was headed. But what she couldn't understand was... why wasn't there something built to track the end to end real estate process and transaction?

This is the creation story of The Real Time.

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Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
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S12 E10: Dane Witbeck, Pinwheel

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:00:34 +0000

Dane Witbeck grew up in Georgia, and has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. He was the kid selling ripped CD's in school, along with other odds and ends. He went to Georgia Tech to study engineering, and eventually went on to join a startup called Meshify, in the iOT place - which eventually was bought by a large insurance company. Outside of tech, he is married with 4 kids. He is involved in many entrepreneurial groups around Austin, and is the proud owner of a 1969 Ford Bronco - which he enjoys getting out of town in and camping.

Post his prior startup, Dane was on the lookout for problems to solve. He observed his son's friend getting a hand-me-down iPhone, and it hit him that he was going to have to monitor this as his children got phones. As he started to dig into what was available, he realized there wasn't a good solution... and decided to build his own.

This is the creation story of Pinwheel.

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Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
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S12 Bonus: Martina Zrnec, Stacklist

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 10:00:51 +0000

Martina Zrnec is located in Croatia and grew up playing basketball, spending every minute she could on the court. And when I say every minute, I mean it - she would even skip the last few hours of school and hit the court for some practice. Eventually, her mother decided for her that she should not pursue it professionally, and should focus on her schooling. Outside of tech, she's married with 2 kids. She notes that she is not just a coding person - she likes to socialize! She plays piano, and as a family, they spend a lot of time outside, biking, playing sports and being in nature.

Martina's co-founder, Kyle, had this idea that he wanted to create - a platform that allowed people to organize the products, services and experiences they love into stacks. He found Martina on a freelancing platform, and they instantly connected on the idea - and got to building.

This is the creation story of Stacklist.

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Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
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S12 E9: Mitesh Agrawal, Positron

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 10:00:37 +0000

Mitesh Agrawal has a background in Mechanical Engineering. He was one of the co-founders of Lambda, a company in the supercomputing space, where he spent 8.5 years working on everything under the sun. He's very grateful to be in an industry that is booming, but also aligns with his personal interests. Outside of tech, he is married to an ultra supportive wife, and is enjoying being a new father. He enjoys playing tennis, when he can find time to get to the court, and enjoys a good sci-fi book. He mentioned the Foundation series was one of his favorites, but admits it changes depending on the season.

In 2023, the officers at Mitesh's current venture noticed all of the advancements of AI - in particular, model sizes getting larger. What they realized was that when it comes to inference, memory capacity quickly became a problem... and with this, he and the team got excited about building a new architecture to make it better.

This is the creation story of Positron.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
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S12 Bonus: Ashwin Agrawal, MobiusEngine

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 11:00:19 +0000

Ashwin Agrawal came to the US when he was 17, to Rochester for school. He now lives in the Bay Area, and admits he misses his friends on the east coast, as they all stayed back in that area - but he does NOT miss the winters. He has been building his current venture for 3-4 years, and prior to that, he was as at Google for a decade, apart of Google Cloud's huge growth trajectory. Outside of tech, he has a family with 2 middle school sons, with whom he likes to spend a lot of time with, hiking or eating good sushi.

Ashwin was laid off from a few jobs in the past. After experiencing this, he vowed to build a solution that would help people going through this sort of experience. After the last layoff, he formed his company at 4:30 am in the morning, to help anyone in point A wanting to go to point B.

This is the creation story of MobiusEngine.ai.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)

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Developer Chats - Oleksandr Piekhota

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 11:00:42 +0000

Today, we are continuing our series, entitled Developer Chats - hearing from the large scale system builders themselves.

In this episode, we are talking with Oleksandr Piekhota, Principal Software Engineer at Teaching Strategies. Oleksandr helps to show us at what point of scale platform approaches are required, when to run experiments and when to stop, and perhaps more importantly - engineering ownership beyond the code.

Questions

You’ve moved from hands-on engineering into principal and technical leadership roles, working on architecture and platforms.At what point did you realize your work was no longer about individual features, but about the system as a whole
Across several projects, growth didn’t break functionality — it exposed architectural limits.Can you recall a moment when it became clear that shipping more features wouldn’t solve the problem, and a platform approach was required?
You’ve designed and supported APIs end-to-end, from architecture to real customers. How do you distinguish between an API that simply works and one that can truly support business scale?
Internal systems like invoicing and HR workflows began as automation, but evolved into real products.What tells you that an internal tool is worth developing seriously rather than treating as a temporary workaround?
In R&D, you explored CI/CD automation, server-less, and infrastructure experiments — not all reached production. How do you decide when an experiment should continue, and when it’s no longer worth the engineering cost?
You’ve hired teams, set standards, and shaped long-term technical direction. At what point does an engineer stop being a contributor and start owning business-level outcomes?
You contributed to open-source tools that later became part of your company’s infrastructure. Why do you see open source contributions as part of serious engineering work rather than a side activity?
Looking across your projects, how do you now recognize a truly mature engineering system? Is it code quality, process, or how teams respond when things go wrong?
If we look five to seven years into the future, which architectural assumptions we treat as “standard” today are most likely to turn out to be naive or limiting?

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
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S12 E8: Satya Mishra, Waylit

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 11:00:06 +0000

Satya Mishra was born and raised in India, in one of the smaller tech hubs on the eastern coast. He came to the states 25 years ago on an H1B visa, working in semiconductors. In 2015, he decided he wanted to do something entrepreneurial and set out to do so. Outside of tech, he is married with 3 kids, which takes up most of his time. When he lived in CO, he did lots of skiing and hiking, including snowshoe hiking. Once he went to California, he switched to beaches. Finally, when he moved to St. Louis, he took up improv, enjoying connecting with people and thinking on your feet.

Satya and his co-founder, Raj, both when through the immigration process in all of its forms. They realized that no one group owns the process, as it's highly specialized, and usually fell onto the employee to keep track of. One day, they set out to solve this problem, to assist business teams to take ownership of the entire process.

This is the creation story of WayLit.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
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Founder Chats - Max Denevich

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 11:00:26 +0000

Today, we are dropping another episode in our "chats" series, but expanding the audience set to include more folks. This episode is Founder Chats - hearing from those scaling the companies themselves.

In this episode, we are talking with Max Denevich, Co-founder and CRO of LoyaltyPlant. Max is going to share with us to road he travelled, entering into this industry, his go to market strategies, scaling across geographic region - and much, much more.

Questions

Before we talk about products and scale, tell us a bit about your path to this point. What experiences shaped the way you think about business and leadership before LoyaltyPlant?
At what point did you realise you wanted to work with complex, traditional industries rather than consumer apps or “easy” tech?
Why foodtech, and specifically Quick Service Restaurants? What made you believe this industry had deep structural problems worth solving with technology?
What made you decide to join LoyaltyPlant, and what potential did you see that others might have missed?
You’re often referred to as a co-founder today. How did the transition happen from an executive role to shaping the company’s future at that level?
LoyaltyPlant was close to running out of investment at one point. What were the first decisions that fundamentally changed the company’s trajectory?
What were the key milestones that turned LoyaltyPlant from a struggling company into a global enterprise business, from the first major client to scaling across 30 countries?
You’ve worked across the US, UK, MENA, Europe, and CIS. What did you learn about scaling the same product across very different markets, and what absolutely doesn’t translate?
You built new go-to-market strategies that now generate over 90% of new sales. What did you change compared to a classic SaaS sales playbook, and why did it work in enterprise QSR?
Margins are shrinking, aggregators dominate, and costs are rising. What’s actually happening on the ground right now in QSR and foodtech, and how should companies adapt?
Tell us about a decision you got wrong. What did it cost the business, and what did it teach you as a leader?
What advice would you give founders building B2B products for traditional industries today, especially around scale, partnerships, and staying relevant?

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)

Links

S12 Bonus: Nouran Farouk, Dosy

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 11:00:57 +0000

Nouran Farouk grew up in Egypt, which she notes the culture has a deep root in family. She and her sister have always been drawn to social entrepreneurship, being drawn to building but also positively impacting the world. In addition, Nouran has a medical background, which taught her that good intentions are not enough - you need good systems. Outside of tech, she loves to travel and visit cities. She frequently observes how people move throughout the world, and how systems influence their daily life.

Nouran and her sister wanted to learn to drive scooters. In doing so, they were immediately greeted with inequitable opportunities for women in this arena. They wanted to change this situation, and deployed a back of the napkin idea into a fully operational platform.

This is the creation story of Dosy.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)

Links

S12 E7: James Davies, Kinetic Data

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 11:00:53 +0000

James Davies lives in the Maryland area, and started his career at the crossroads of tech and the auto industry. His first girlfriend's father owned some car lots - so he went to work there, wrote some software, and propelled his success at those dealerships. He notes that the auto industry was fun and has a lot of moving parts, but was pretty taxing personally. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids. He grew up around construction, so he enjoys getting his hands dirty and building things. In fact, he is fixing up the barn of the recent home he bought - framing, doing the plumbing, and making it livable.

James was working for the state department as a consultant, and was a customer of his current venture. He was chosen to implement the solution, which turned out to be a successful project. Post that project, he was approached by the company to lead projects on the east coast and eventually landed in the CEO role.

This is James' creation story at Kinetic Data.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)

Links

S12 Bonus: Daniel Shnaider, Warmy.io

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 11:00:03 +0000

Daniel Shnaider came from a family that worked 9 to 5 jobs - engineers, doctors, etc. He was a military officer in Isreal, and while he was there, he met the son of the founder of Waze. After learning about that journey, he knew he wanted to build something meaningful, and started building businesses. Outside of technology, he loves pushing himself to the limits. But to relax, interestingly enough he does adrenaline activities - sky diving and racing cars.

As I mentioned, Daniel started and ran many businesses in the past. One of them was centered around physical products, and led him to send emails to the mom and pop' shops they wanted to work with. To fight the spam trap, he and his team built a solution to solve the problem for themselves... and then took the next step.

This is the creation story of Warmy.io.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)

Links

S12 E6: Michael Fester, 14.ai

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 11:00:45 +0000

Michael Fester grew up in Denmark, the son of a French mother and a Danish father. He was always interested in tech, math and the arts, initially wanting to go into design. However, he did research in number theory at Cambridge, and founded his first startup in Paris, which eventually was acquired by Sonos. Outside of tech, he enjoys reading, in particular the classics - like Dostoyevsky - and biographies - like that of Einstein. He enjoys eating and living healthy, and promotes this lifestyle at his current venture.

Michael and his team noticed that despite the continual improvement of models, the process of maintaining systems using AI was tedious. Not only did this impact support operations, and building software for this area of a business, but negatively impacted the customers themselves. He and his wife wanted to build the new standard for how support operations are run.

This is the creation story of 14.ai.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)
Alcor (https://alcor.com)
Equitybee (https://codestory.co/equitybee)
Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.

Links

S12 Bonus: Prashanth Tondapu, Innostax

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 11:00:54 +0000

Prashanth Tondapu was born and raised in India, now living in New Delhi, the capital there. He claims to be a textbook nerd, loving technology and information. He reads a lot, primarily eastern philosophy and stuff on being enlightened, basically pointing him to skills in accepting reality. He's married with two girls, 9 and 4 years old, along with a Labrador and a German shepherd. He says that having 3 girls in the house means he has 3 supreme leaders.

Prashanth has worked for companies in the past focused on products - companies like McAffee and the Advisor Board Company. Outside of that, he started to build product after product, but no one wanted to buy his product. Eventually, he was tasked to advise a company in product delivery, which then changed everything.

This is the creation story of Innostax.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)
Alcor (https://alcor-bpo.com/)
Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)
Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.

Links

The Gene Simmons of Data Protection - AI Inference-time Guardrails

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 11:00:09 +0000

The Gene Simmons of Data Protection: Protegrity's KISS Method

Today, we are releasing our final FINAL episode from our series, entitled The Gene Simmons of Data Protection - the KISS Method, brought to you by none other than Protegrity. Protegrity is AI-powered data security for data consumption, offering fine grain data protection solutions, so you can enable your data security, compliance, sharing and analytics.

Episode Title: Navigating the Future of Data Management: Type Systems, Quantum Computing, and Protegrity's Innovations

In our final-FINAL episode, we are speaking with Ave Gatton, Director of Generative AI. We talk about how AI safety doesn't end with training, it begins with inference. We explore the overlooked frontier of AI security, from prompt-injection, data leakage, and model manipulation. Ave helps to understand how you can build guardrails that operate in real time, and adapt to evolving threats.

Questions

What are inference-time threats and why are they becoming a critical focus in AI security?
How do inference-time risks differ from training-time risks?
Why is inference-time protection critical for safe, scalable AI adoption?
How do inference-time threats vary across industries? Is there any industry where these attacks are most prevalent?
Why are traditional security models insufficient at inference?
What is the impact of inference-time breaches on AI adoption?
What role does compliance play in shaping inference-time guardrails?
What practical steps can organizations take to secure inference today?
How can businesses balance performance with security when adding guardrails?

Links

S12 E5: Marc Gyöngyösi, OneTrack

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 11:00:15 +0000

Marc Gyöngyösi has had a lifelong passion for building and technology, shaped early on by time spent crafting wooden projects and tinkering with remote-controlled vehicles... before progressing to constructing a full 737 flight-simulator cockpit in their parents’ basement as a young teen. His interests have consistently centered on blending the physical and digital worlds, from open-source flight-simulator development to modern explorations in AI, which now occupies most of his free time. Outside of tech, he enjoys running, skiing, golf, and staying active, and although he has spent time flying, he's stepped back from it due to time constraints. He's especially fond of a well-made Austrian Wiener Schnitzel — an elusive treasure in the U.S., but one they happily track down whenever possible.

In 2017, Marc launched his company Intelligent Flying Machines, which was a college project focused on building autonomous drones for warehouses. After dealing with crashes, and 12 stitches from said crashes, Marc shifted his focus from flying robots to a broader, computer vision platform capturing real world data.

This is the creation story of OneTrack.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)
Alcor (https://alcor-bpo.com/)
Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)
Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.

Links

S12 Bonus: Johnny Halife, Southworks

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 11:00:34 +0000

Johnny Halife was born and raised in Argentina. As such, he takes soccer very seriously. He is a die hard fan of Boca, and has taken his family to live games in Miami and Nashville. He is the father of 2 young boys, which he notes completely changed his life. He has been slowly introducing them to soccer, as an Argentina after would do, and they love the roar of the stadium during a game. He also claims to be a really bad golfer, which I can relate to.

Twenty one years ago, Johnny started working for Microsoft Engineering behind the scenes, helping them shape products. Eventually, he and his team started asking the question - if we are helping Microsoft, why don't we help other companies?

This is Johnny's creation story at Southworks.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)

Links

Impact: How to Inspire, Align and Amplify Innovative Teams with Keith Lucas

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 11:00:13 +0000

Today, we have a special guest on the podcast, Keith Lucas, a startup advisor specializing in product, growth, people and culture. Keith led product and engineering at Roblox, helping scale its infrastructure, product offerings, team and business. Most recently, Keith published a book entitled Impact: How to Inspire, Align, and Amplify Innovative Teams. All book proceeds go to charities to help young entrepreneurs, so make sure you check the link in the notes and grab the book today.

In our chat, Keith is going to walk us through key concepts in the book, surrounding centering your team around the vision and mission of what you are driving towards, from recruiting to execution to "coaching out".

Questions:

What was your goal in writing this book? What were you hoping to accomplish?
In Chapter 1, you mention purpose inspiring action. How does aligning to purpose drive urgency, without resulting in burnout or being an "antiquated mandate", like you mention in Chapter 2?
You state "Culture is what you do, not what you say"... How does a leader's daily behavior - especially around micromanagement or decision-making speed - define the team's realized values, overriding the company's codified ones?
I found the idea of The Cascade (Chapter 5) interesting, mapping core beliefs to execution alignment. In terms of feedback, what is the difference between "belief busting" and "hypothesis busting" feedback? How should leaders respond to each in order to maintain trust and agility?
How often should entrepreneurial teams deliberately challenge and re-org autonomous pods to optimize for agility and opportunity, over long term stability?
Now this is interesting - the "okay contributor", you define as a person who meets standards in all areas but shows no exceptionalism. Why is this person more damaging to a culture of mastery, than the high talent disrupter?
What is a Mission Athlete? When recruiting, how does preparing a vision doc for a role shift the recruiting conversation from transactional to one focused on strategic alignment and ownership?
You mention in Chapter 8 that compensation can be a distraction. What core mistakes do scaling startups make with compensation that turn it from a non-issue into an energy-sapping problem that erodes retention?
You define Coaching Out as the intentional process of protecting the productive from the disruptive, treating an exit as a non-personal assessment that maintains decency and clarity. Can you describe the GYOR continuum?
Why should leaders avoid formal PIP's when dealing with a struggling team member? What must replace it to ensure accountability and decency?

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)
Alcor (https://alcor.com/podcast)
Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)
Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.

Links

S12 Bonus: Marlena Sarunac, The Company Advice

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 11:00:17 +0000

Marlena Sarunac is a first generation American, her family being from Croatia. She started her career at Mastercard, left to travel around Europe (before it was cool to do so), and then came back to join her first startup. During her travels, she figured out that she was truly an American, as she prefers the entrepreneurial pace of life. Her path has been in marketing, but she also has an engineering degree, which gives her a unique edge. Outside of tech, she is married to a chef, with a 2 year old daughter and a rescue dog. They live in Rhode Island, in the Bristol area.

Marlena and her now co-founder met at a prior company, and worked well together promoting that brand. The built a playbook, and always dreamed of starting their own thing to push those playbooks. The stars aligned later in life, and they decided to give it a go.

This is the creation story of The Company Advice.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)
Alcor (https://alcor.com/podcast)
Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)
Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.

Links

S12 E4: Arto Minasyan, Krisp.ai

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 11:00:41 +0000

Arto Minasyan is originally from Armenia. He's a serial entrepreneur, having started 7 companies, selling 4 of them. He used to be into the sciences, having his PhD in Mathematics and Machine Learning. But outside of tech, he's married with 2 kids. He loves to read novels, and in fact writes books himself (mainly his memoirs). He loves to ski, and aligned with his Armenian heritage, he loves to spend time with his big family.

Arto and his colleague got breakfast together, and started talking through an idea around clean audio for conferencing and beyond. They built a prototype, and then COVID hit - which made their tool very popular.

This is the creation story of Krisp.ai.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)
Alcor (https://alcor.com/podcast)
Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)
Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.

Links

S12 Bonus: Dmytro Ovcharenko, Alcor

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 11:00:55 +0000

Dmytro Ovcharenko lives in Palo Alto, CA. He graduated from Berkeley in 2015 - not as an engineer, but as a lawyer. His first connection to tech was in his first role, as an attorney at a tech company. But outside of technology, he loves good sushi and burgers. In addition, he does a bit of hiking - some for fun, but also some for business. He's been known to take a meeting or two on the hiking trail.

Dmytro very much enjoyed working at his prior company. But he noticed the large gap between what his business was charging, and what the engineers themselves received. He thought he could close this gap, to provide a better wage for the workers while saving businesses money.

This is the creation story of Alcor.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)
Alcor (https://alcor.com/podcast)
Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)
Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.

Links

S12 Bonus: Arjun & Tito, Teambridge

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 11:00:17 +0000

Arjun Vora was born and raised in Mumbai. He grew up in a family that wasn't financially stable, which drove him to come to the states for new opportunities. He came for school, landing in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and immediately loved the environment. Post school, he worked for MicroStrategy and Salesforce, eventually landing at Uber - where he met Tito. Outside of tech, he's married to his girlfriend from 9th grade with 2 kids.

Tito Goldstein was introduced to technology when he was 8 years old, building simple games in Q basic. Since then, he ha s been tinkering and creating things. He graduated from USC, and continuing tinkering in web design and building products around the messaging world. Eventually, he came to Uber and met Arjun on day one. Outside of tech, he enjoys projects where he finds something scary and then digs in to become a true expert.

While Tito and Arjun were at Uber, they quickly understood that the reason people drove for the company was not the pay, but the flexibility and self service aspect of the platform. With this, they started to wonder... why can't we give this to everyone else?

This is the creation story of Teambridge.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)
Alcor (https://alcor.com/podcast)
Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)
Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.

Links

S12 E3: Arsham Ghahramani, Ribbon

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 11:00:39 +0000

Arsham Ghahramani lives in Toronto, but grew up in rural countryside of UK, out in the middle of nowhere on a farm. He was surrounded by tractors, chickens, and other animals. Over time, he moved to bigger and bigger cities, until 6 years ago, he jumped across the pond to Canada. Outside of tech, he loves team sports, playing a lot of soccer and starting to get into hockey. When he transitioned to hockey, he immediately enjoyed how fast paced it was, and how many tactics carried over from soccer.

In the past, Arsham was the head of machine learning at a prior company. His now co-founder and he worked closely together, and they were both pressured to hire good people quickly. They started to notice some patterns in how they were hiring... including the regular submission of AI generated resumes.

This is the creation story of Ribbon.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)
Alcor (https://alcor.com/podcast)
Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)
Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.

Links

S12 Bonus: Sharad Kumar & Harshit Omar, FluidCloud

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 11:00:32 +0000

Sharad Kumar lives in Pleasanton, California with his wife and 2 kids. He enjoys playing all musical instruments, and spending time with his family. He has a 2 year old daughter, and a 14 year old son into robotics. He is also passionate about giving back to the community, through their company foundation.

Harshit Omar lives in San Francisco, and is married with a 4 year old son. He used to be a street racer in his college days, loving fast cars and taking risk. Nowadays, he is a big marvel and comic book fan, along side his son. In fact, his son thinks he is Captain America, regularly wielding his shield and mask.

A fun fact about both of these gentlemen: this is their third company to work together in, their second startup, and their wives are sisters. So they are connected by wives, and united by startups.

In their previous startups, Sharad was leading sales and ops and Harshit was leading on the product side. When the company got acquired, it took them 8-9 months to integrate to a different cloud provider. They realized the model was broken, requiring expensive consulting services, and not convenient at all - and they wanted to figure out a better way.

This is the creation story of Fluidcloud.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)
Alcor (https://alcor.com/podcast)
Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)
Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.

Links

S12 Bonus: David Sztykman, Hydrolix

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 11:00:10 +0000

David Sztykman lives in Paris, but used to live in New York for a time. He has always been into video, streaming and photography. For the latter, as a kid, his Dad had a film developing lab in their basement, so he spent many hours doing that before digital changed it all. As a student, he used to tinker with open source video streaming libraries, and eventually worked for Alkamai, responsible for the streaming media for Europe (think the Olympics or Super Bowl). Outside of tech, he has 2 kids and they like to do a lot of legos together. But in general, they are outside kids so usually, they like to get out of the house and do active things.

In his prior role, David was consistently alerted about poor performance on the video streaming. He started to dig into the data streaming portion of, to be alerted on shifts in the stream itself. After a few other opportunities, he was approached to build real time CDN observability, for distributed infrastructure.

This is the creation story of Hydrolix.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)
Alcor (https://alcor.com/podcast)
Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)
Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.

Links

S12 E2: Pukar Hamal, SecurityPal AI

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 11:00:56 +0000

Pukar Hamal was born in 1991, and is originally from Katmandu, Nepal. He grew up with no plumbing and no electricity, prior to moving to the states to grow up in Queens. Eventually, he moved to the Bay Area to attend Stanford, and fell in love with the area and the forward thinking culture. Outside of tech, he's been married for a few years. He enjoys listening to podcast about tech, finance, and economics, along with playing tennis every now and again.

In his past venture, Pukar was on the one yard line for making a deal on his company. Before it could close, his team was hit with a security due diligence questionnaire that halted the process. Having that experience drove him to build something to speed up the execution and experience of customer assurance.

This is the creation story of SecurityPal AI.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)
Alcor (https://alcor.com/podcast)
Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)
Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.

Links

S12 Bonus: Harman Narula, Canary Technologies

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 11:00:12 +0000

Harman Narula lives in NYC with his wife and 2 young kids. He was born in the states, from parents who immigrated to the country from India. The "immigrant household" was one that focused on hard work and ethics - and it was fueled by the lore of his grandfather's entrepreneurial adventures. He's a big Knicks fan, and likes to take in a game when he can. And prior to NYC, he lived in San Francisco for 10 years or so, and picked up bike riding. Though he hasn't picked it back up just yet, he hopes to eventually.

Harman spent a lot of his early career in hospitality. His now co-founder worked in this space as well, but primarily on the technology size. So all the conversations he and his friend were having were referencing this eco-system. Eventually, they landed on a thesis that the "hotel tech stack" or operating system - should be customer facing.

This is the creation story of Canary Technologies.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)
Alcor (https://alcor.com/podcast)
Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)
Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.

LInks

S12 Bonus: Niko Papademetriou, Qu

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 11:00:59 +0000

Niko Papademetriou lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and son. He has had an interesting background professionally. He got into finance, and experienced all the downside that 2008 had to offer. Post all of that, he started a restaurant at the age of 26 with some folks, and quickly realized how difficult it was. After 4 years, he met some guys and wanted to start a new thing. Outside of tech, he and his wife spends a lot of time watching his son play hockey, and engaging with the team at the hockey rink.

Niko has observed the restaurant business change, moving towards many different ordering methods - mobile, web, in person, etc. At the end of whatever method, the order needed to land inside the black box of the POS system. He wanted to create the plumbing, better yet the ultimate system to connect it all.

This is the creation story of Qu.

Sponsors

Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)
Alcor (https://alcor.com/podcast)
Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)
Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.

LInks

S12 E1: Dylan Ratcliffe, Overmind

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 11:00:05 +0000

Dylan Ratcliffe lives in San Francisco (for less than a year), but grew up on a farm in the bush in Australia, riding motorbikes and playing video games. He fondly remembers the days whenever you could get a free version of Age of Empires from a cereal box. He was always into computers, and earned a scholarship to head into Melbourne for University. He left his first job as an auditor with KPMG to join a startup called Puppet. Outside of tech, he still rides motorbikes, and has a super small one now (it's actually meant for kids). He loves all food, but prefers Asian and Indian cuisine.

Dylan was deploying Puppet at a financial services company, and was pushing to get a win. When a late Friday afternoon deployment went haywire, he decided to leave his company and set out to build something to automatically discover dependencies on a network, to prevent deployment outages.

This is the creation story of Overmind.

Sponsors

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Season Favorite - Sam Partee, Arcade.dev

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 11:00:24 +0000

Sam Partee started out his love for tech/engineering by working on cars. After many y ears of working on cars, and even starting his own car stereo installation business, he decided that cards were finite and moved onto computers. He fell in love with the space, and the rest is history, filled with super computers, AI, distributed training, Redis and the lot. Outside of tech, he loves to take long hikes with his snowy husky.

Sam and his team built a prior solution, an agent to solve bugs for you. They ran into a litany of problems, but eventually figured out that there was a dire need for an authorization for the activities that agents wanted to do on your behalf. Fast forward, and they are working with Anthropic to define these auth protocols.

This is the creation story of Arcade.

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Season Favorite - Jens Neuse, Wundergraph

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 11:00:56 +0000

Jens Neuse grew up in Germany, originally planning to be a carpenter. In his 2nd year as an apprentice, he was in a motorcycle wreck that thrust him into a process of surgery and healing. Eventually, he decided he wouldn't be doing carpentry, and got into sysadmin work. Once he got bored with this, he moved into startups, learned how to code, and starting digging into programming, API's and eventually - GraphQL federation. Outside of tech, he is married with 3 young kids. He loves to sit ski on the mountain - which is the coolest carbon fiber chair on a ski, where you steer with your knees and hips.

After chasing building a better Apollo, Jens and his team ran into a point where their prior product and company was doomed to go under. When they accepted this fact, they started to think about what people actually wanted - and started to dig into the federation of GraphQL.

This is the creation story of Wundergraph.

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S11 E30: Brandon Card, Terzo

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 11:00:14 +0000

Brandon Card has always been involved in sports. In High School, he was a 3 sport athlete and still plays today, along side working out, doing yoga and pilates. He's heavily interested in holistic healing and alternative medicine, mentioning a big interest in quantum frequency healing, using the sun and ocean to add voltage to the body. He has also started a foundation around mental health, as sadly, he lost his co-founder to suicide, and wishes to remove the stigma from the mental health conversation.

Brandon and his co-founder realized that all software platforms around contracts were directed towards lawyers - not towards finance. This was mind blowing, as negotiations are mostly finance driven, not based on the paragraphs of legal jargon. Brandon wanted to build something to serve this need.

This is the creation story of Terzo.

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S11 Bonus: Juan DeAngulo, Inselligence

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 11:00:28 +0000

Juan DeAngulo was born and raised in South America - then eventually, came to the status in 2017 for college to play Tennis. He kept playing throughout college and into his 40's, at which point he switched to golf and never picked up a racket again. He's been married for 25 years, with 2 older kids - one in law school, and one studying software development. As a family, they enjoy comedy, which funny enough was an acquired taste for Juan. They also love being outdoors, anywhere they can get out and about.

At a prior company, Juan and his team created proprietary algorithms to intelligently predict and tie revenue. These models were based on tried and true processes. While Juan was obtaining an advanced degree at Harvard, his current venture was incubated around predictive revenue, and these algorithms.

This is the creation story of Inselligence.

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Developer Chats - Petr Petrenko

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 11:00:15 +0000

Today, we are continuing our series, entitled Developer Chats - hearing from the large scale system builders themselves.

In this episode, we are talking with Petr Petrenko, Senior PHP Backend Engineer. Petr will take us through his developer journey, in working on large scale backends, managing the tension between stability and innovation, and designing systems to interact with culturally different economies.

Questions

You’ve worked on large-scale backends that serve millions of users. At what point do systems start to outgrow the teams that built them?
At some point, every mature backend reaches a stage where rewriting is no longer realistic. How do you recognize when a system has crossed that line, and what’s the right way to handle it?
There’s always this tension between stability and innovation. How do you decide when a system needs refactoring versus when you just need to live with the technical debt?
Let’s talk about the human side of legacy systems — what have you learned about culture, documentation, and knowledge transfer that keeps old systems alive and reliable?
You’ve also built and maintained complex payment systems for global users. What’s something most engineers underestimate about cross-border transactions?
When you’re designing systems that deal with different currencies, laws, and tax regulations, how do you balance the technical with the ethical — for example, user privacy or data sovereignty?
For engineers listening who want to build something durable — not just fast — what advice would you give about writing code that will still make sense years from now?
One of your most impressive projects is a high-performance image-matching system you built yourself, capable of scanning tens of millions of images with sub-second results. Can you walk us through the moment you realized you needed to redesign the system — and what engineering choices made that level of performance possible?
You’ve also worked on billing systems and fraud mitigation at scale. Was there ever a moment when you had to choose between a technically “clean” solution and a solution that better protected users or the business? How did you make that call?

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/petr-petrenko-006534150/

S11 E29: Sarah Lucena, Mappa

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 11:00:08 +0000

Sarah Lucena lives in San Francisco, and starts here day at 4:30 am to lead her LATAM team. She's originally from Brazil, born and raised on the north east side of the country. She studied in South Paulo, and spent 5 years in Uruguay, which was a huge influence in her career today. Outside of tech, she is a big cat lover, having 2 at her home. When it comes to Brazil, she recommends people visiting Rio, which condenses everything good about Brazil into one city.

In the past, Sarah felt empty at her job. In other words, she was not happy with the legacy she was leaving. She built her team many times over, but was not able to create a team with the chemistry she was looking for. And the solutions for recruiting were supremely focused on the wrong signals for these types of connections.

This is the creation story of Mappa.

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S11 Bonus: Tucker Callaway, Mezmo

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 11:00:14 +0000

Tucker Calloway grew up in Alamo, California, in the Easy Bay Area. And has returned to that area to raise his family - 25-30 minutes outside of the San Francisco area. He studied computer science at Cal, but eventually moved into sales engineering - and then sales. But outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids - one in college, and one in the latter years of high school. There is lots of change going on his family's life right now, but Tucker finds time to do woodworking and build his own cabinets.

Ten years ago, a couple of co-founders built a solution to make log management easier for developers. Tucker joined that company in the past, and observed the dynamics of the industry and the company. They all decided that to take the business of the next level, they needed to change the physics of observability.

This is the creation story of Mezmo.

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S11 E28: Hojjat Jafarpour, DeltaStream

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 11:00:17 +0000

Hojjat Jafarpour lives with his family in California. He got his PhD in databases and data streaming, back when the landscape was different and data streaming wasn't "cool" yet. He was an early member at Confluent, but also spent time at Quantcast, Informatica, and NEC Labs. Outside of tech, he has a family with young kids. He enjoys traveling, and can't wait until the kids are old enough to take on big trips.

Hojjat joined Confluent in their early days. He was on a project that built out kSQL, which was a key cornerstone of Confluent. As these were the early days of stream processing, he started to think about ways to make it easier - to make this sort of tech available without all the infrastructure.

This is the creation story of DeltaStream.

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Developer Chats - Svyatoslav Babinets of Meta

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 11:00:49 +0000

Today, we are kicking off a new series, entitled Developer Chats - hearing from the large scale system builders themselves.

In this episode, we are talking with Svyatoslav Babinets, Engineering Manager at Meta. Svyatoslav helps to illuminate teh approaches he takes when building larger scale systems, connecting millions of users, and motivating users and developers alike.

Questions

You’ve worked on everything from large-scale multiplayer worlds to social technologies that power digital presence — how did that journey shape the way you think about engineering today?
You’ve worked on systems that connect millions of users across different platforms and products. How do you design architecture that supports high development velocity in large teams while still delivering experiences that delight users?
In your experience, what helps large companies move faster without sacrificing quality? Can you share how approaches like Virtual mission squad enable cross-functional collaboration across different disciplines and tech stacks?
As systems and teams grow, platform solutions often become the glue that holds everything together. How do you approach designing and implementing platform architecture that supports autonomy while keeping the whole ecosystem consistent?
From your experience, where do culture and infrastructure intersect? What kinds of engineering decisions are really decisions about trust, not technology?
You’ve worked both in games and in metaverse projects. What do these worlds teach us about building systems that feel alive — where motion, identity, and emotion all need to synchronize?
Large-scale systems evolve constantly. How do you design for long-term adaptability — ensuring that architecture remains flexible and scalable as product and user demands grow?
Looking ahead, how do you see the future of human–digital interaction? What should the next generation of engineers focus on — performance, presence, or empathy?

LInks

S11 Bonus: Spriha Baruah Tucker, Buildkite

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 11:00:41 +0000

Spriha Baruah Tucker has spent time in a number of places - growing up in India, attending boarding school in Singapore, and now living in San Francisco. She spent many years at Google, before founding her own startup called Aviator. Outside of tech, she really likes music, having a soft spot in her heart for Bollywood, but really digging into the jazz world these days. She enjoys the guilty pleasure of trashy romance TV, and tends to travel to get the best food - her favorite being Nashville.

Spriha was a founder at Aviator, and was made aware of her current company while serving her customers. He noticed that all of her customers who used this platform absolutely adored it, to the tune of making infomercials for the platform. She reached out to the founder to let him know... and the rest is history.

This is Spriha's creation story at Buildkite.

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S11 Bonus: Gajus Kuizinas, Contra

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 11:00:20 +0000

Gajus Kuizinas lives in Mexico City, and travels between there, New York and San Francisco. He had a non-traditional upbringing for an engineer, as all of his family were into the arts - so he had to make his own way. He started in Lithuania, and eventually was recruiting to setup computers and networks for dating platforms. Eventually, he got into freelancing, and started his first startup in the UK. Outside of tech, he has a garden, which doubles as an ecosystem for his free roaming hedgehog and bunny.

Gajus started to think about the arc of becoming a freelancer. He realized that everyone who goes through a journey as a freelancer feels like a cog in the machine, and falls off the marketplaces out there. He realized that there was a massive vacuum and gap in the internet for these folks that needed to be filled.

This is the creation story of Contra.

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The Railsware Way - Mistakes & Lessons in Product Evolution, with Oleksii Ianchuk

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 11:00:41 +0000

Today, we are dropping our final episode in the series "The Railsware Way", sponsored by our good friends at Railsware. Railsware is a leading product studio with two main focuses - services and products. They have created amazing products like Mailtrap, Coupler and TitanApps, while also partnering with teams like Calendly and Bright Bytes. They deliver amazing products, and have happy customers to prove it.

In this series, we are digging into the company's methods around product engineering and development. In particular, we will cover relevant topics to not only highlight their expertise, but to educate you on industry trends alongside their experience.

In today's episode, we are speaking with Oleksii Ianchuk, Product Lead at Railsware, specifically for Mailtrap. Thought he doesn't like to limit his activities to product development, Oleksii has spent six years in product and project management, and is keen on searching for insights and putting them to work, as well as gauging the effects of his input.

Questions:

The story of Mailtrap starts with accidentally sending test emails to real users in 2011. How did Mailtrap evolve from an internal "fail" to a platform serving hundreds of thousands of users? How did that mistake spark the creation of Mailtrap, and what lessons did you learn about turning problems into opportunities?
What made you decide to expand from email testing into Email API/SMTP delivery - and why was it harder than expected? What specific challenges around deliverability, spam fighting, and infrastructure caught you off guard?
Can you walk us through the "splitting the product" mistake and its long-term consequences? Your team decided to separate testing and sending into different repositories and isolated VPC projects. What seemed like a good engineering decision at the time - how did this create problems as you scaled, and what would you do differently?
You spent a year struggling with Redshift before switching to Elasticsearch - what did that teach you about technology decisions? You ran tests, evaluated alternatives, and still picked the wrong database for your use case. How do you balance thorough research with the reality that you can't always predict what will work until you're in production?
When do you buy external expertise versus rely on your internal team? How do you decide when to hire outside knowledge, and how do you find the right consultants for niche problems?
Why didn't existing Mailtrap users immediately adopt the Email API/SMTP feature, and what did that teach you?
You expected current users to quickly transition to the new sending functionality. What did you learn about switching costs, user perception, and the challenge of changing how people think about your product?
What business insights around deliverability, spam prevention, and compliance surprised you most?
Email delivery isn't just about infrastructure - there's a whole ecosystem of postmasters, anti-spam systems, and compliance requirements. What aspects of this business were most unexpected, and how did they shape your product strategy?
Looking at Mailtrap's 13-year journey, what's your philosophy on "failing fast" versus "building solid foundations"?

Links

S11 E27: Raj Dosanjh, Paid

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Raj Dosanjh grew up in Coventry, which he calls the Detroit of the UK. He still enjoys following the football team, and hopes they rejuvenate the city some. He eventually left for University and moved to London. He likes to dig into how people think and how things are built. Outside of tech, he is engaged to be married in 2026. As such, he has recently taking up physical training - which results in a lot of working out, and meals filled with chicken.

In the past, Raj's now co-founder reached out to him, post shutting the doors on his prior startup. After they had felt out the market to see if a solution for billing could fit, they moved forward and eventually started enabling revenue streams for AI agents.

This is the creation of Paid.

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Season Favorite - Emmanuel Straschnov, Bubble

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 11:00:57 +0000

Emmanuel Straschnov grew up in rural France, which is interestingly enough where he started doing computer stuff (he mentioned there wasn't much else to do in the 90's). He grew up sailing, as he lived next to the shore in Normandy. He never really thought he would end up coding, but after obtaining his MBA, he ended up doing just that. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 children. He mentions that most of his hobby time is devoted to them, but on occasion, he likes to travel, continue sailing, and to sing.

Many years ago, Emmanuel noticed that there were a lot of people searching for technical founders, and using services to find technical founders. He thought this to be wrong, as many people have product ideas and just need a product to help them build it... so, he created something just for them.

This is the creation story of Bubble.

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Unbreakable: How to Thrive Under Fear-Based Leaders with Kate Lowry

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 11:00:04 +0000

Today, we have a special guest on the podcast, Kate Lowry, CEO coach, author and comedian. She is a long time startup founder, spent time in VC, is leading a values driven coaching and advising firm called Scaleheart, and recently, just published a book. The title of the book is Unbreakable: How to Thrive Under Fear-Based Leaders, and is a tactical guide to help smart, caring people get unstuck to they thrive under fear based leadership.

In our conversation today, Kate is going to enlighten us on what fear based leadership is, how to use the predictability of fear based leaders to your advantage, and why its having (another) moment in the tech ecosystem today.

Questions:

Tell me about your startup journey as a serial founder.
You've been around the block in the tech industry. From your vantage point in startups, big tech, and VC, why is this new leadership style hitting now?
How does this type of culture show up in startups, versus larger companies like Meta?
How does it manifest in investing?
Why is fear-based leadership antithetical to innovation?
If it's so bad for innovation, why do people keep choosing it anyway?
What makes leaders like this so predictable?
How can people use that predictability to their advantage?
How has the type of issues you work on with your CEOs changed as this leadership style comes into vogue?
What are the most common ways that you help founders in your coaching practice?
What are three ways CEOs can make sure fear-based leadership doesn't take root in their corner of the tech ecosystem?
How has the AI boom affected all of this?

Links

The Railsware Way - How an MBA Helps (or doesn't) Product Mgmt, with Julia Starun

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 11:00:21 +0000

Today, we are another episode in our series, sponsored by our good friends at Railsware. Railsware is a leading product studio with two main focuses - services and products. They have created amazing products like Mailtrap, Coupler and TitanApps, while also partnering with teams like Calendly and Bright Bytes. They deliver amazing products, and have happy customers to prove it.

In today's episode, we are chatting with Julia Starun, Product Director at Railsware with over 17 years of experience in product management, business process automation and optimization. Julia will share her insights into where an MBA helps you manage a product team - and where it doesn't.

Questions:

What was your story before MBA, and what motivated your decision to pursue it?
What real-world gaps between MBA theory and product management practices did you discover at Railsware?
Does MBA training help with the "people management" side of leading product teams?
How can the tools and frameworks you learned during your MBA help with uncertainty – or overcomplicate things – when creating products?
How does understanding "business stuff" – like P&L, unit economics, financial modeling, etc. – change how you approach product decisions?
Does MBA business strategy training help product managers think beyond features to market positioning?
For someone already managing product teams, when does pursuing an MBA make sense versus other learning paths?
What's your biggest surprise about how MBA education did (or didn't) change the way you approach the realities of product team leadership?

Links

S11 E27: Marco Rodrigues, Exaforce

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 11:00:46 +0000

Marco Rodrigues was born and raised in Canada, but now lives in the Bay Area. His tech genesis was around the time when the internet came out, when he spent an entire summer indoors, worrying his mother. He eventually attended university in Toronto, and went to work for Juniper Networks. Past that, he went towards the startup world - running product teams, and taking part in the ownership and selling of solutions and service offerings. Outside of tech, he is married with twin girls in the Naval Cadet Core. He is a big hockey nut, rooting for the Edmonton Oilers, and enjoys taking his kids to hockey rinks all over the world.

Marco spent many years watching his teams drown in data and tooling. The situations were more complex, but the outcomes weren't getting better. He started to consider the advent of AI, and asked the question - how do we solve these sorts of problems with an agentic SOC platform?

This is the creation story of Exaforce.

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Fraud Awareness Week - How SEON is your Fraud & AML Command Center with Husnain Bajwa

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 15:00:03 +0000

Today, we have a special episode correlated with Fraud awareness week, and brought to you by our friends at SEON - the command center for fraud prevention and AML compliance. SEON connects first party data signals to show you what other solutions can't - by enriching data, understanding context, and taking action from one place... to prevent fraud.

In this episode, we are talking with Husnain "HB" Bajwa, SVP of Product & Risk Solutions. He has been a fraud and risk leader for 30+ years, and leads innovation in fraud prevention and compliance at SEON. HB is going to touch on important topics in the fraud detection and prevention space, such as AI, regulatory pressures, and the perspectives of startups that can get them into trouble.

Questions:

You’ve spent a lot of time in the world of fraud and compliance. What first drew you to solving these kinds of problems?
Startups often focus on growth first and worry about fraud later. What’s the hidden risk in that mindset?
Why do you believe fraud prevention and AML compliance are converging, and what are the benefits of them living in the same system?
AI gets talked about a lot, but in your view, what are the real, practical ways it’s improving fraud and AML work today?
We’re seeing more regulatory pressure globally. How can organizations prepare for 2026 to ensure they are taking a risk-based approach to compliance?
I know your team’s been working on some big innovations, including a new compliance suite built on top of your fraud prevention stack and new AI-driven tools. How are these helping investigators connect the dots faster and uncover hidden relationships, especially when it comes to complex cases?
What advice would you give to early-stage startups that might think they’re ‘too small’ to be targeted by fraudsters?

Links

S11 Bonus: Praveen Ghanta, Fraction & DevHawk

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 11:00:22 +0000

Praveen Ghanta recently turned 47 and started to look at the things he wanted to do - but potentially couldn't do in the future. He's married with 3 teenage kids, and has been into running for quite some time. So much so, that he attempted to run a 5 minute mile... and almost made it. Also, he recently signed up for soccer classes, after having been beat by some eighth grade kids, who helped him realize he needed training in his ball handling skills.

In his prior startup, Praveen and his team stumbled upon a new approach to hiring that fueled the building of this startup, all the way through exit. After that success, he decided to make this approach available to others, and form a business around this very thing - fractional talent for your startup.

This is the creation story of Fraction and DevHawk.

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The Railsware Way – Conversational Analytics & Data Focused Products, with Nika Tamayo Flores

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 11:00:19 +0000

In today's episode, we are speaking with Nika Tamayo Flores, Product Lead at Railsware, specifically for the Coupler product. She's been leading complex data-driven products for over eight years, and will enlighten us on conversational analytics, and how they can change a data focused product.

Questions:

Before we jump to the topic, let’s define what exactly conversational analytics is. How does it differ from traditional dashboard-based data analysis?
You’ve been integrating AI capacities into Coupler, Railsware’s product focused on data analytics. How would you describe data analytics in pre-AI and AI era?
What were the key challenges to embedding conversational analytics into Coupler?
And what’s the result? You’ve already released AI Insights – how do they transform user experience for data exploration?
How do you ensure conversational analytics provides accurate and reliable insights?
How does conversational analytics change who can be a "data user" in an organization?
What's the learning curve like for organizations adopting conversational analytics?
Where do you see conversational analytics heading - will it eventually replace traditional BI tools, or complement them?

Links

S11 E25: Chris Wallis, Intruder

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 11:00:05 +0000

Chris Wallis lives in London, and grew up on a farm in the UK. He was the kid running around the countryside climbing trees - until his parents bought a computer when he was 15. Past that point, he didn't leave the house much, learning to code and digging into ethical hacking. Outside of tech, he is into tennis, swimming, alpine skiing and surfing. He finds himself in phases with these sports, and rotates them often.

In the past, Chris was an ethical hacker, and spent a long time busting into big name systems. Eventually, he moved into one of those companies - and he realized that the tooling out there to discover attack surface weaknesses were lagging. He decided to build a platform that got the job done.

This is the creation story of Intruder.

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S11 Bonus: Erez Druk, Freed

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 11:00:42 +0000

Erez Druk grew up in Israel, but has been in the Bay Area for many years. He has a common theme in his life of obsessing over his current thing. In the 4th grade it was the saxophone, and later on it was being Israel's board game champion, and then - he became obsessed with startups. Outside of tech, he is married and expecting his first child. He's into exercising, reading and coffee. His favorite is going to a coffee shop with his wife, and having a cappuccino and a pastry - but at home, he leans towards his aeropress.

Eight years ago, Erez met his wife who was heading into medical school. He got to see first hand how folks in the healthcare system work, and how hard their jobs are. After wrapping up his prior startup, he started down the path of building a solution that improved the lives of these clinicians.

This is the creation story of Freed.

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The Railsware Way - Delivering Value through BRIDGeS, with Sergiy Korolov

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 11:00:53 +0000

In today's episode, we are talking again with Sergiy Korolov, Co-CEO of Railsware and Co-founder of Mailtrap. In my conversation with Sergiy, we dive into how Railsware delivers value - not just features - by following their BRIDGeS framework, enabling their team to focus on value delivery.

Questions:

Railsware is proud of its product development approaches, so let’s pave the way to our topic through one of your prominent cases. In its early days, Calendly reached out to you to deliver their product – with a tight budget and a large set of requirements. You’ve said earlier that several of those initial expected features remained unfulfilled. This leads me to the question: to you, what's the difference between shipping features and delivering value, and why do so many product teams get this wrong?
You’ve been working on several client products, as well as on Railsware’s own. How do you identify what "value" actually means for different stakeholders?
Railsware is known for its BRIDGeS framework, a useful tool to bring the team on the same page and set the product process straight. Can you walk us through the BRIDGeS framework and how it helps teams focus on value delivery?
What role does user research and validation play in the BRIDGeS approach?
Can you share a specific example where applying BRIDGeS helped a team pivot from building the wrong features to delivering real value?
What's the biggest challenge teams face when transitioning from feature delivery to value delivery?

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S11 E24: Mrinal Wadhwa, Autonomy S11

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 11:00:27 +0000

Mrinal Wadhwa grew up in India with a Dad in the Armed Forces, so he moved around a lot. His mother was a teacher for 40+ years, and greatly influenced his love for teaching. In addition to this, he grew up loving to build things. He was introduced to computers and the internet by his cousin - and at that point he was hooked. Outside of tech, he is married and enjoys attending concerts in the Bay Area. He plays pool, very seriously. In fact, he is the guy carrying the little bag into a party with his own pool stick.

Mrinal is one of the minds behind Okham, a popular open source Rust toolkit to build secure communications between applications. Late last year, he observed people desiring to build the layer between agent communications... and decided to build something to do it the right way.

This is the creation story of Autonomy.

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https://autonomy.computer/
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S11 Bonus: Shamba Chowdhury, DeForge

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 10:00:54 +0000

Shamba Chowdhury got his first computer at an early age. He was the kid that explored every button and every setting, trying to figure out how it all worked. His curiosity exploded when he was 15 and the internet came around. Post that, his first foray into programming came from his love of playing video games. Outside of tech, he loves to read, in particular crime thrillers. He noted that his favorite is A Minute to Midnight by David Baldacci.

Shamba and his co-founder have participated in many hackathons, and they noticed how difficult it was to stitch together ideas, utilizing AI technology. It was at that point they decided to build a no code builder to wire up AI agents together.

This is the creation story of DeForge.

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The Railsware Way - Vibe Coding vs. Traditional SDLC, with Sergiy Korolov

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 10:00:24 +0000

Today, we are kicking off a new series, sponsored by our good friends at Railsware. Railsware is a leading product studio with two main focuses - services and products. They have created amazing products like Mailtrap, Coupler and TitanApps, while also partnering with teams like Calendly and Bright Bytes. They deliver amazing products, and have happy customers to prove it.

In today's episode, we are talking with Sergiy Korolov, Co-CEO of Railsware and Co-founder of Mailtrap. In this conversation, we are bringing up a popular - but somewhat controversial topic - vibe-coding vs. traditional software development approaches.

Questions:

You’ve been in tech for over two decades, and have definitely seen many trends come and go. How would you define "vibe-coding" and how does it differ from traditional software development approaches?
What drove the emergence of vibe-coding? Could it be a response to overly rigid development processes that many companies have? Or it’s a fundamental shift in engineering?
What do engineers on your team think about vibe-coding? Have you practiced this approach on some of your products?
What types of products or development contexts are best suited for vibe-coding?
Is it possible to create successful and scalable products through vibe-coding? For instance, can people balance vibe-coding with business requirements, deadlines, and stakeholder expectations?
To wrap up, is vibe-coding actually sustainable long-term, or is it just a trendy reaction to over-engineering?

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S11 E23: Dr. Zohar Bronfman, Pecan AI

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 10:00:47 +0000

Zohar Bronfman spends most of his time in Tel Aviv, Israel these days. He has a focused academic background, specifically in philosophy and neuroscience. He was always intrigued by the question - how do we know what we know? - which led him to get a PhD in Philosophy. While doing that, he also became fascinated with he human mind and empirical decision making, which took him down the road of obtaining another PhD in AI & Neuroscience, essentially emulating brain processes. Outside of tech, he has 3 kids and a startup. He loves a good book in the philosophy or neuroscience space, and is a big fan of sports. Specifically, he loves the NBA and claims to be a Knicks fan.

Zohar and his now co-founder were digging into predictive models, as an extension of their academic studies. They were curious as to why companies, though they were running predictive models, were not making accurate predictions. They soon realized that this was because the AI modeling expertise was centralized at couple of well known companies.

This is the creation story of Pecan AI.

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S11 Bonus: Tanmai Gopal, PromptQL

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 10:00:47 +0000

Tanmai Gopal is a repeat guest on the podcast. Back in Season 7, he came on to tell the creation story of Hasura, which is a universal data access layer for next generations apps. He talked through he and his colleagues frustration with building API after API, and taking steps to ensure people wanted to not do that work anymore.

As Hasura started to take off, Tanmai started to ask the question around what was the right method for developers, in particular their applications, to access data. With the advent of AI, he and his team dug into what the right problems were to solve - and they identified the main problem with this type of tech was accuracy and trust.

This is the creation story of PromptQL.

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S11 E22: Ryan Wang, Assembled

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 10:00:18 +0000

Ryan Wang has had a winding set of paths to get to where he is today. He studied economics and statistics, with the intent of going to grad school and becoming a professor. After talking with his boss at the time, Steven Levitt (also one of the authors of Freakonomics), he was convinced that was not the best path. Eventually, he joined stripe via nepotism, and became a software developer via data science. Outside of tech, he loves to read about different topics. Right now, he is reading about owls, and also loves to read fiction and poetry. In fact, he drops poetry occasionally at his current venture.

While at Stripe, back when it was an 80 person company, Ryan noticed people doing support tickets on their own. After he spent some time there, he and his now co-founder started to tinker in machine learning for support. As he made progress, a leader pointed out that the real problem was around workforce management.

This is the creation story of Assembled.

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S11 Bonus: Sam Partee, Arcade.dev

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 10:00:16 +0000

This is the creation story of Arcade.

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S11 E21: Raja Tabet & Synopsys: The Future of AI & How We Are Building It

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 10:00:17 +0000

Raja Tabet lives in Austin, TX, but grew up overseas in Lebanon. When he migrated to the states for his education, he did not speak English, and had to go through the process of learning the language to fully integrate. He studied computer science for undergrad, and computer engineering for graduate school. And eventually, went to work for companies like IBM, Freescale, and others, prior to landing in his current role. Outside of tech, he has been married for 35 years, and has 3 kids. He and his wife are empty nesters, so they love to travel, hike and explore new areas.

In 2019, Raja joined Synopsys, specifically in their custom design and manufacturing group. A few years ago, and alongside the advent of AI, he changed roles and began building an AI powered solution for electronic design automation, or EDA.

This is Raja's creation story at Synopsys.

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A Startup Field Guide in the Age of Robots & AI - with Oliver Mitchell

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 10:00:21 +0000

Today, we are talking with Oliver Mitchell, Partner at ff Venture Capital, the most engaged technology venture capital firm in New York City since 2008. They have an extensive portfolio, and have created billions of dollars in market cap value.

Recently, Oliver has released a book titled A Startup Field Guide in the Age of Robots and AI. In the book, he sets the stage to mentor - and provide mentors - around building a hardware startup in modern day times. The book is full of advice, real life stories from the trenches, and practical information to help you succeed.

Questions:

Tell me about the book - what was the main goal of you writing it, what were you trying to accomplish?
In the book, you discuss what it takes to launch a business in this industry. What are the five essential rules for launching a successful automation company?
How do you attract investors, given their visceral reaction to hardware sensors and robots? How do you prepare, circumvent or comfort these investors when they spot the red flags?
Hardware startups require the right people, the right R&D, etc. - just to get to MVP. What are some strategies for validating product-market fit in hardware startups?
At times, the government creates roadblocks through over-regulating and slow pace of play. But how can these partnerships be used for funding and even potentially customer acquisition channels?
In your book, you've interviewed some of the most respected luminaries in the space. Can you elaborate on these real world case studies? What were the significant challenges they overcame?
If you could give one piece of advice to someone heading down this path, what would it be?

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S11 E20: Alex Halkin, Competera AI

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 10:00:46 +0000

Alex Halkin can't remember a time where he wasn't doing tech. Funny enough, he does remember a time before internet was common place. In 6th or 7th grade, he got a computer and immediately disassembled it. And eventually, he built an internet service provider for his community, eventually dropped out of university, and sold his internet provider. Outside of tech, he has always been into sports - cycling, motorcycles, etc. And though he doesn't have much time for it anymore, he is big into Brazilian Jujitsu.

At his old role, Alex started to pitch subscription pricing for their products. The timing wasn't right for deep machine learning for pricing, so his boss turned him down. Several years later, he and his team are leveraging the power of Contextual AI to calculate and optimize price combinations.

This is the creation story of Competera AI.

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S11. Bonus: Harish Chandramowli, Flaire

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 10:00:45 +0000

Harish Chandramowli grew up in a small town in India. The goal was simple early on - study well, go to university, and get a job. After undergrad, he realized he can do so much more, eventually coming stateside to get his masters, and meet a ton of really smart people over the last 10 years. Outside of tech, he is a broadway show fanatic, seeing 1-2 on a regular basis. He also follows Manchester United, which can be difficult watching the lose on the regular.

Harish used to work for MongoDB, and spent some time on call and in the weeds. At that time, he realized how much data is used by a business. When he eventually supported the fashion industry, specifically the back office, he wanted to build a solution to make the lives of those back office individuals as easy as possible.

This is the creation story of Flaire.

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S11 E19: Madhavan "Maddy" Malonan, Reclaim Protocol

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 10:00:28 +0000

Madhavan "Maddy" Malonan has always been in - and around - technology, and fell in love with building things early on. He got a video game console early on, and found it a little boring. BUT, when his Dad got a computer and he played Age of Empires, he got excited about all the possibilities, trying to tinker with building things that mimicked these computer games. Even these days, he writes a lot of code, building side projects with Claude Code. When he's not coding, he's playing sports, primarily tennis.

Maddy and his team identified that verification of age, credentials, employment history, etc. was a big, big problem. So much so, that it was difficult to do so in a tamper proof, zero knowledge proof manner. They set out to create a solution - and protocol - to solve this problem.

This is the creation story of Reclaim Protocol.

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S11 Bonus: Chris Kline, BitcoinIRA

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 10:00:13 +0000

Chris Kline grew up in Aurora, Colorado, and went to school in Boulder to study finance and leadership. He has lived through several significant events that led him to take a risk, and spend some time in small business and entrepreneurship. And eventually, he took a leap of faith, sold everything he had, and flew to California. Outside of tech, he is married with a 12 year old daughter. He is fascinated by macro economics, and loves to dig into alternative assets like real estate and gold.

Chris started to get into crypto back when it was still in the fringes, and people didn't really know what Bitcoin was. Ten years later, his company is solving the retirement process with alternative, crypto assets.

This is the creation story of BitcoinIRA.

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S11 E18: Theodore Bergqvist, Turbotic

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 10:00:08 +0000

Theo Bergqvist is an entrepreneur who enjoys working a lot. He started his first venture in 1999 in the gaming industry, building Paradox, which is now listed on the Nasdaq. Of all his ventures, the common core to them all was technology. Outside of tech, he lives a life dedicated to Japanese martial arts. He practices 5-6 times a week, and have made several trips to Japan with his Sensei, focusing on the art 10 hours a day.

At one point during his career, Theo was working for Ericson around their transformation. He noticed how difficult it was for enterprises to adopt AI tooling and automation. He decided to raise some funds and get started trying to create something to help... and started the build and pivot game.

This is the creation story of Turbotic.

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Wed, 03 Sep 2025 10:00:31 +0000

We are bringing you a special episode, as our friends at Strata return to the podcast. You might remember our interview from Season 8 with Eric Olden, Co-founder & CEO of the company. Eric took us through the creation story of the company. Today, we will be talking with Granville Schmidt, Chief Architect at Strata, who has been instrumental in architecting and building identity orchestration for AI agents from the ground up. In our chat, we are going to be discussing how the enterprises need to take advantage of identify for agents, and can do so seamlessly, no matter their level of tech debt, disconnection, or complex migration path.

Questions

Let's break down Identity Orchestration for our audience. Can you explain what it is and walk us through a real customer scenario where it made a huge difference
Enterprises have accumulated decades of identity tech debt. What are the main problems identity orchestration solves for companies trying to modernize?
I noticed you work with customers in what you call DDIL environments - disconnected, disrupted, intermittent, and limited bandwidth scenarios. Can you help us understand what these environments look like in practice and why identity becomes such a critical challenge there?
You've pioneered Identity Orchestration for AI Agents. What was the moment when you realized AI agents needed a fundamentally different approach to identity management?
Imagine a company with 1,000 employees but 50,000 AI agents running autonomously. How does your platform handle identity for all these agents differently than traditional systems?

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S11 E15: Derek Ting, TextNow

Tue, 02 Sep 2025 10:00:13 +0000

Derek Ting grew up in Canada-land, enjoying all the things of the area but especially hockey. He mentioned he has a bit of ADD, which made it hard for him to make it through a chapter in school. Nowadays, he has 2 kids. His oldest son plays hockey, and he and his family enjoys rooting on the Toronto Maple Leafs. When asked about food, he claimed to be one of lives to eat, as he loves food. In fact, the more exotic food the better - but not as far as insects or something.

When Derek figured out that carriers wanted to charge for texting, on top of the fees he was already paying for his phone and associated services. He found this atrocious, and he wanted to figure out a way to text for free - and eventually, all phone service.

This is the creation story of TextNow.

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S11 Bonus: Dr. Alex Kihm, POMA AI

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 10:00:40 +0000

Alex Kihm just turned 40, and has been into computers for 36 years. He was given his first hand me down computer at the age of 4 by his parents, and also grew up with lego bricks and building things. He is an engineer by training, but eventually switched to econometrics on the big data side. Outside of his professional life, he is married and describes himself as water affectionate. He enjoys swimming, diving - and free diving. In fact, he studied diving during his semester abroad. His free diving is mainly a hobby, but he has deep respect for the professional free divers of the world.

At his original startup, Alex started to dive into LLMs and immediately ran into RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation). When he observed the wrong information being returned, along with a ton of resource consumption in the process - IE cost - he set out to solve the problem, and figured out the solution was in the chunks.

This is the creation story of POMA AI.

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What Founders Need to Know - with Dan Eyman of Meld Valuation

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 10:00:16 +0000

Today, I'm talking with Dan Eyman, the Managing Director at Meld Valuation, specializing in independent, audit ready valuations for VC backed startups and VC firms. He is an expert in the valuation of complex instruments such as convertible debt and SAFEs. Dan is going to illuminate the common mistakes of founders, how valuations differ, and what founders should understand about dilution and how fundraising affects their cap table.

Questions

What are the most common mistakes you see founders make when it comes to valuations or equity structuring?
Can you break down how SAFEs and convertible debt actually work—and how do they impact ownership over time?
At what point should a startup bring in a valuation firm, and what are the risks of waiting too long?
How do 409A and ASC 820 valuations differ, and why do they matter for venture-backed companies?
What should founders understand about dilution and how fundraising rounds affect their cap table long-term?
What are your general observations around venture capital investing, and the market for investment right now?
You’ve worked with thousands of startups—what separates those who scale successfully from those who stall?

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The Gene Simmons of Data Protection – Navigating the Future of Data Management

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 10:00:22 +0000

The Gene Simmons of Data Protection: Protegrity's KISS Method

Today, we are releasing another episode from our series, entitled The Gene Simmons of Data Protection - the KISS Method, brought to you by none other than Protegrity. Protegrity is AI-powered data security for data consumption, offering fine grain data protection solutions, so you can enable your data security, compliance, sharing and analytics.

Episode Title: Navigating the Future of Data Management: Type Systems, Quantum Computing, and Protegrity's Innovations

In our final episode, we are speaking with Michael Howard, CEO of Protegrity. We talk about how traditional type systems often fail short in modern data management, as well as potential threats posed by quantum computing to current encryption methods, as well as how Protegrity's product embeds context and security into the data itself, in order to repel any threat.

Questions

Tell me and my audience a little bit about you.
I know that you’ve referred to type systems as “lame.” Can you explain the concept of type systems in databases, why they’re lame, and why they pose challenges for modern data management?
How is quantum computing poised to impact the current landscape of data security and encryption?
What are some of the limitations of traditional type systems in databases, and how can they be improved to handle modern data challenges?
Can you share insights on how Protegrity's approach to data classification and protection differs from traditional methods?
Looking ahead, how do you envision the role of type systems evolving with the advent of quantum computing and other emerging technologies?
One of Protegrity’s talking points has been how far behind legislation for data privacy and security is compared to today’s rapidly accelerating data landscape. What do you think needs to happen – in quantum and AI – for conversations to turn into action?

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S11 E10: Brennan Pothetes, Infinity Constellation

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 10:00:14 +0000

Brennan Pothetes grew up in Louisiana, but went to High School in Portland, Oregon - two very different places. He started his career in internal audit, before he eventually helped launch Simple, the first bank on the iPhone. He has built a lot of companies since, and continues to do so. Outside of business and tech, he likes food and enjoys whipping up some cajun or greek cuisine. Recently, he picked up surfing, but also likes to sit down with real time strategy games like Civilization.

Brennan was one of the first customers of Invisible, which was one of the biggest trainers of LLMs. After he sold his last company, he was approached by the board to help then spin businesses out, but in a strategic way with a hold co, allowing them to work together with them zero to one, and beyond.

This is the creation story of Infinity Constellation.

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S11 Bonus: Ben Lerner, Espresso AI

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 10:00:29 +0000

Ben Lerner was a fan of tech growing up, along side being into math and science. Right out of school, he joined a startup called Data Nitro, which attempted to integrate python into excel. Ever since then, he has been jamming in the tech and startup world. Outside of tech, he married to a computational biologist. He enjoys padel, which is kind of like Pickleball meets Tennis, and of course ping pong. Though, with his full time job as a CEO, he often finds his hobby is going home to write code.

Ben realized that LLMs are really good at understanding code, leaps and bounds better than prior ML models. While he was at Google, he was also digging into how to apply LLMs to coding in general. Applying both of these things, he and his co-founders are seeing where this can be applied to the real world, starting with Snowflake compute.

This is the creation story of Espresso AI.

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The Next Iteration of Gremlin – with Kolton Andrus, CEO

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 10:00:11 +0000

Today, I'm talking with Kolton Andrus, CEO and Founder of Gremlin. You may remember previously when we spoke with Matt, the prior CTO of the company. Since that time frame, a lot has changed at the company, going through several arcs and foundational changes that are leading to not only assessing weaknesses in your infrastructure, but walking you through how to fix it (and eventually, fixing it for you).

Questions:

Tell us a little bit of an overview about you.
Your time at Amazon & Netflix were big influences on the importance of chaos engineering and reliability testing. Can you tell me what was so foundational about your time there?
What is next iteration of Gremlin? What has changed in the platform primarily? Tell me about the arcs of the company here.
In 2022, there was a leadership transition and you increased your focus on the product. What are some of the most exciting developments that came from these last 3 years?
Where does AI fit into Chaos Engineering? And where does it not fit? Can you unpack your viewpoint here?
What are you most excited about in the next chapter for Gremlin, and for the broader SRE space?
What advice would you give a founder just getting started?

Sergiy Korolov also started coding when he was young, though 4 years later than Yaroslav. He went to a technical university, and as his career in leadership grew, the number of lines of code he contributed to decreased. He is located in Poland, and loves to snowboard in the winter, and bike in the summer. He has 3 kids, and recently started teaching coding to his oldest son.

Yaroslav & Sergiy were building software for clients, the typical Ukrainian software route. Over time, they realized that building their own products was the best way to make an impact - so much so, that they decided to start building their own.

This is the creation story of Railsware.

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S11 Bonus: Yaroslav & Sergiy, Railsware - Part 1

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 10:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Railsware.

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S11 E3: Rob Duffy, Healthedge

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 10:00:00 +0000

Rob Duffy lives in New York with his family. He moved to the states to go work for a small online bookstore that we know today as Amazon. He's married with 2 kids, and enjoys to cook. But, his main passion is flying, as he has is pilots license and enjoys flying small planes. He recalls training on a simulator with a rendering of the Seattle space needle, which he got to fly next to in the real world once he got his license. He admits his wife has a love/hate relationship with his flying - IE she prefers when the flight is over.

Rob's has a track record of successfully building platforms - IE figuring out how to do things once instead of multiple times. His current company was growing through acquisitions, and Rob was brought on to unify these and create a converged platform for what the company had to offer.

This is Rob's creation story at HealthEdge.

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Wed, 23 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000

The Gene Simmons of Data Protection: Protegrity's KISS Method

Episode Title: Are You Ready For the GenAI Data Frontier? Exploring GenAI Security

In this episode, we talk with Anthony Cammarano, CTO & VP of Engineering, as he breaks down and simplifies GenAI for companies struggling in the new frontier. There is a flood of unstructured data pouring into workflows - thanks to GenAI - and traditional security methods aren't prepared to cover this expanded attack surface. The good news is that companies already have what they need to fix this, and it's a simple mindset shift.

Questions

What are some of the most common misconceptions or trends about GenAI, as it relates to data protection and privacy, that organizations face today?
What are the primary business challenges facing the adoption of GenAI today?
How do modern GenAI systems create data security vulnerabilities and what are the potential risks?
What is crucial in the implementation of GenAI-security solutions, and how can it accelerate AI adoption?
Can you provide examples of how attackers are targeting data during its use and the importance of securing this data?
What are some best practices for robust data governance and how can organizations stay ahead in the rapidly evolving GenAI landscape?

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S10 E29: Lucas Lovell, Paddle

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000

Lucas Lovell grew up in Adelaide, Australia, before eventually landing where resides now, in London. He studied law, but he eventually decided that he didn't want to become a lawyer. During his time in law school, he and his crew built an app - and he was hooked on the wild ride that tech is. Prior to London, he spent 4 years in Paris, and indeed loves to travel. He also enjoys skiing, and when asked about snowboarding, he said he tried - but eventually reverted back.

Four and a half years ago, Lucas joined a company solving end to end payments, while being the merchant of record. What was missing from the platform was some function around invoicing - which started him on his journey of product creation.

This is Lucas' creation story at Paddle.

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S10 Bonus: David Young, Federated Computer

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000

David Young spent many years in California, but lives in Colorado Springs now. He mentioned that things outside of work are very important to him, as they are the soil from which he brings fruit to bear in his work. He's married and loving living in the Rockies. He and his wife love to ski hike and camp - but most interesting, they are both endurance athletes. They run marathons, bike rides, and triathlons - in fact, David himself has run 10, which includes a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, then a marathon - all in succession. All in one day.

David noticed that that problem with SaaS today is that it's expensive, and adds up as you compile solutions. Right alongside that, open source software is free - but requires more setup and maintenance to keep it up and running. He decided that there must be a better way to purchase software, while getting the best price on a bundle of solutions.

This is the creation story of Federated Computer.

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The Gene Simmons of Data Protection – Are Your Systems Smarter Than a Threat Actor?

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000

The Gene Simmons of Data Protection: Protegrity's KISS Method

Episode Title: Are You Smarter Than a Threat Actor? Maybe Your Current Methods Are Obsolete

In today's episode, we are talking with Eve Rajca, Senior Solutions Engineer, as she dives into the ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity. As threat actors become more sophisticated, its critical to reassess and simplify security strategies. She will explore outdated methods, which can leave your data vulnerable, and discuss the importance of adopting straightforward security methods.

Questions

What are some common signs that an organization's current cybersecurity methods might be outdated?
How have threat actors evolved in their tactics over the past few years?
Can you explain the concept of "security through simplicity" and why it's important?
How can organizations balance the need for robust security with the need for simplicity?
What role does employee training play in maintaining effective data security?

Links

S10 E28: Kavitta Ghai, Nectir

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000

Kavitta Ghai realized at an early age that she thought different than everyone else. She grew up neurodivergent, with autism and ADHD but was a lucky kid, having parents that helped her see the silver lining in her learning challenges, making sure she had outlets in extracurricular activities. She is a creative person always looking to build something that doesn't exist. In her off time, she enjoys turning off all the tech, learning a new language, and reconnecting with the real, analog world.

Kavitta and her co-founder found themselves frustrated with the classroom in college. For paying such an exorbitant amount of money, they were confused why the educational classroom was so ineffective. It came to a head - to the point, where Kavitta was going to change it or drop out of school.

This is the creation story of Nectir.

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S10 Bonus: Darko Fabijan, Semaphore

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000

Darko Fabijan is originally from Serbia, and splits his time between their and the US. He got is first computer in 1994, and eventually started tinkering and playing with Linus. He went to university in 2003, and then started a company with a college friend, which was a rails consultancy. Outside of tech, he is married, with 2 kids - ages 3 and 9. The older one is into athletics, and the younger one is more into art. He enjoys spending time in nature with his family, and got into trail running a few years ago - recently running a 64km trail. He enjoys business books because he likes to see how other people "did it", when it comes to their successes and failures.

In 2011, Darko was running his consulting shop with 7 or 8 people. As they were developing applications, they couldn't find anything for continuous integration where you just "signed up" and it worked. That was enough for them to get out there and build it on their own.

This is the creation story of Semaphore.

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The Gene Simmons of Data Protection - Fortifying Your Data Defenses

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000

The Gene Simmons of Data Protection: Protegrity's KISS Method

Episode Title: Fortifying Your Data Defenses: The Conversation that Should have Happened Yesterday with Clyde Williamson

In this episode, we will be talking with Clyde Williamson, Senior Product Security Architect. Clyde is going to help us see how we've created a broken systems - and it's OK, we are willing to take the necessary steps to fix it. Business face immense pressure to safeguard data, ensure compliance, follow regulation, and make data easily available when needed. This is the conversation we should have heard yesterday, when it comes to our data.

Questions

Why is consumer privacy more critical than ever in today's digital world, and what role do businesses play in protecting and consuming data?
How that concern translates to regulatory requirements and changes for businesses. What does it mean to “future-proof” consumer data in terms of regulatory compliance, and why should businesses care?
How can businesses effectively balance the need for data accessibility with the need to protect consumer privacy?
What role does data de-identification play in helping businesses secure sensitive data while minimizing risk, and what are the tangible benefits?
What are some common pitfalls businesses face when implementing privacy measures, and how can they avoid them?
Can you provide an example of a company that improved consumer trust by adopting stronger data protection strategies?
What are some emerging technologies in data protection and cybersecurity that are making, or will make, a significant impact?
Can you share any real-world examples of data breaches that could have been prevented with better security practices?

Links

S10 E27: Gino Ferrand, Tecla.io

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000

Gino Ferrand is originally from Peru, and moved to the United States when he was 12 years old. Now, he lives in Seattle, and is enjoying all that the Northwest has to offer. He's very much into sports, specifically soccer, and plays in an indoor league with a great community. He loves to travel, and gets to often with the world he does. And when it comes to food, he is very evangelistic about Peruvian food, and encourages people to try every chance he gets.

Gino attend the University of San Diego, and was really into startups. He was building mobile games for the iPhone in 2012, while living back in Peru for a short time. He hired a few engineers from back home, and this started him on the journey of understanding the great talent in South America.

This is the creation story of Tecla.

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S10 E23: Ivan & Nick, Archetype AI (Part 2)

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000

Ivan Poupyrev grew up in the Soviet Union, studying rocket science. He moved to the US in 2013 to pursue the early days of VR. He has worked at Disney and Google, and has been focused on merging the physical and digital world for many years. Prior to this latest revolution, Ivan was one of the skeptics towards the idea of AI. But at Google, he was convinced by one of his now co-founders, the value in this tech.

Nick Gillian has been working in real time Machine learning for nearly 2 decades - but path here was a bit different. His background is in music and audio engineering - think the math behind amps, studios, mixers, etc. During his masters studies, he fell in love with sensors, and participated in early development and advancement of this tech alongside machine learning. He built a toolkit, which eventually got the attention of Ivan.

Ivan was working at Google, and one of his team members began utilizing the toolkit built by Nick. Upon discovering this, Ivan reached out to Nick to see if he wanted to join the top secret team - and eventually, Nick convinced Ivan of the power of machine learning and AI.

This is the creation story of Archetype AI.

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The Gene Simmons of Data Protection – KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid): A Data Security Dilemma

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000

The Gene Simmons of Data P rotection: Protegrity's KISS Method

Today, we are kicking off a new series on the podcast, entitled The Gene Simmons of Data Protection - the KISS Method, brought to you by none other than Protegrity. Protegrity is AI-powered data security for data consumption, offering fine grain data protection solutions, so you can enable your data security, compliance, sharing and analytics.

Episode Title: KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid): A Data Security Dilemma with James Rice

In this episode, we are talking with James Rice, VP at Protegrity. He is going to help us strip away the nonsense, when it comes to securing data, and help us understand why we don't need a fortress... just a kill switch. While companies throw billions at firewalls, AI driven threat detection, and fortress like defenses - attackers still find their way in. James reminds us to keep it simple, with Protegrity's KISS Method which stands for Keep It Simple Stupid - and how when data is useless to attackers, breaches become mere inconveniences instead of existential threats.

Questions:

What exactly is the KISS method, and how does it apply to cybersecurity?
Why are traditional cybersecurity approaches failing to stop breaches?
What are some of the biggest myths about security that lead businesses to waste money on ineffective defenses?
How do encryption, tokenization, and de-identification work together to make stolen data useless?
Can you share an example where a company’s focus on complex security backfired, and how a simpler approach could have helped?
What’s the biggest pushback you hear from companies hesitant to adopt a simpler, data-first security model?
If a company wanted to implement the KISS method tomorrow, what are the first three steps they should take?

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 10:00:00 +0000

Hello Listeners.

Today is going to be a special episode, a bit out of the ordinary to our normal programming. I'm participating in Podcasthon, which gives Code Story the opportunity to dedicate one episode to a charity of choice. Hundreds of podcasts are participating in this, releasing their episodes simultaneously in a coordinate effort, with the goal of creating a massive and international wave of inspiring audio content.

Whats the point? The point is to raise awareness for a huge number of charities worldwide.

The charity I've chosen is the American Cancer Society.The American Cancer Society is fighting cancer through research into cures and support for existing patients in their family. This not for profit organization, and is enabled to do its work through donations, grants and other sources.

If you feel led to help fight cancer and support patients, go to the cancer.org website and click Donate. You can even give in Honor & Memorial of someone who's life has been impacted by cancer.

If you want to learn more, go to cancer.org. That C A N C E R.org.

Big thanks to the American Cancer Society for the work they do, and to Podcasthon, for coordinated this effort for charity.

And thanks again for listening.

Sponsors

Podcasthon

Links

https://www.cancer.org/

S10 Bonus: Shahar Azulay, Groundcover

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Shahar Azulay has had many opportunities to get into tech throughout his life. He started digging into cyber security when he was 17 years old, where he learned the basics of deep tech that he still utilizes to this day. He's a startup guy, and has had the opportunity to be the first employee many times over. Outside of tech, he's married with 3 boys and a dog. He lives in the country side, and loves to spend time in nature and cook, as he was a semi professional chef at one point.

Shahar and his co-founder are veterans when it comes to using observability platforms for their systems. They wanted to build a platform that balanced the needs of the system, with a lower cost of a fully functional platform.

This is the creation story of Groundcover.

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Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, with Imad Gharazeddine, CEO of Mamo

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Today, we are releasing another episode in our series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai.

Dubai is the new global center of gravity, connecting the world in a way few places can. As a hub for trade, tourism, innovation, and finance, Dubai offers the ideal environment for startups and scale-ups to thrive. Entrepreneurs find a home here, whether in health-tech, fintech, AI, or renewable energy, supported by SME-focused programs that empower high-potential companies to scale globally. From flexible regulations to tax incentives, world-class infrastructure to access to global investors managing $1 trillion, Dubai understands what businesses need to scale fast.

In this episode, we are excited to speak with Imad Gharzeddine, the visionary CEO and Co-Founder of Mamo, a pioneering fintech platform simplifying payments and empowering businesses in the MENA region.

Questions:

Tell us and our audience a little bit about yourself and the journey that led you to founding Mamo.
What is Mamo, and what specific problem are you solving in the fintech space?
Mamo is often described as a company simplifying payments for businesses and individuals in the region. What inspired this mission, and how has the journey been so far?
What fundamental principles guided the creation of the product, and how has it evolved over time?
Why did you choose Dubai as the base for Mamo? What advantages does the city offer to startups in the fintech space?
What opportunities have you capitalized on that you believe are unique to Dubai or the MENA region?
Mamo is known for promoting financial inclusion. How do your products and services cater to underserved communities in the region?"
How does Mamo incorporate cutting-edge technologies, like AI or blockchain, into its offerings to stay ahead of the curve?
As a leader, what’s your approach to building a strong and innovative team at Mamo?
What lessons have you learned as a CEO scaling a fintech startup in such a competitive and rapidly evolving market?
With Dubai emerging as a fintech hub, where do you see the industry heading in the next decade?
What advice would you give to fintech startups or entrepreneurs looking to expand into Dubai or the broader MENA region?

Links

S10 E19: Simmi Singh, Hook Music

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Simmi Singh grew up in Australia, when her parents migrated from India. She studied law and finance at university, and then went into investment banking during some tumultuous times. Eventually, she got interested in tech, and worked for teams at Intuit, Saavn, and Spotify, during the times of the Anchor acquisition and launching features around video podcasts. Outside of tech, she is married with 2 kids. She loves to travel, watch movies, and to do craft projects, as building is a key theme in her life.

While Simmi was at Spotify, a prior colleague of hers approached her about a product he was building. When she heard the details of what was being built, she felt that it was the culmination of all of our professional experiences and she had to jump on board.

This is the creation story of Hook Music.

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S10 Bonus: Nikita Shamgunov, Neon

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Nikita Shamgunov is a native of Russia, coming to the US for grad school in 2005. Eventually he worked at Microsoft on the SQL Server product. A fun fact - Nikita quit business school on the first day, and decided to join Facebook and find his future co-founder. All of this worked out, and he and his co-founder built SingleStore, which is one of the highest valued companies at YC. Outside of tech, he was a semi-professional athlete in Ping Pong, achieving the status of Top 10 in Washington State back when he was at Microsoft.

Nikita completed his "tour of duty" at SingleStore, and post that, he joined a venture fund. He pitched incubating an idea of his at the fund, which was rolling up all Postgres instances in the world. He started to engineer an approach, the team, and the architecture - and did so in some very unique, and deliberate ways.

This is the creation story of Neon.

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Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, with Mohammad Albalooshi, CEO, DIFC Innovation Hub

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Today, we are releasing another episode in our series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai.

For today’s episode, we are speaking with Mohammad Albalooshi, CEO of the DIFC Innovation Hub, a driving force behind Dubai’s innovation ecosystem and a key player in empowering startups and scaleups across the MEASA region.

Questions:

Tell me and my audience a little bit about you.
What is the DIFC Innovation Hub, and what role does it play in driving innovation in Dubai and the broader region? How did it come to be, and what vision does it fulfill?
Can you tell us more about the Dubai AI Campus? What is its mission, and how does it support the development of AI-driven innovation?
So I’m an entrepreneur looking to build the next big thing in fintech — how does the DIFC Innovation Hub support startups and scaleups in this space? Can you share some examples of companies that have benefited from your ecosystem?
Dubai is positioning itself as a global hub for fintech and innovation. How does the DIFC contribute to making this vision a reality?
Is it necessary for entrepreneurs to be physically located in Dubai or the MEASA region to join the DIFC Innovation Hub and its programs, or can global innovators participate from anywhere in the world?
What are the Dubai AI License and the DIFC License? How do these frameworks support entrepreneurs and businesses within the innovation ecosystem?
How is DIFC planning to expand its role in the innovation ecosystem over the next 5-10 years?
What new programs or initiatives can we expect to see from the DIFC Innovation Hub to attract global talent and businesses?
What advice would you give to startups and entrepreneurs, particularly those from outside the UAE, who are considering Dubai as a base for their operations?

Links

S10 E18: Cory O'Daniel, Massdriver

Tue, 04 Feb 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Cory O'Daniel has had an interesting path to technology, growing his career in a number of cloud architect roles at Ripple, DealScience and The RealReal. He has rich experience in DevOps, the cloud and platform engineering. But outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids, living in Southern California. He loves driving (and destroying) RC cars - like the ones that go 65-70 miles per hour. He jumps them off a lot of ramps, his highest jump behind 20 feet upwards... which of course, he landed.

Cory noticed that there is a huge knowledge gap regarding the cloud, especially during his time doing professional services. He would leave a project post completion, and see a major gap in how the client understood what was built. He and his co-founders had the idea to build a product to allow platform engineers to diagram their infra - and fuel developers engineering process.

This is the creation story of Massdriver.

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S10 Bonus: Torrey Leonard, Thoughtly

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Torrey Leonard lived in Maryland prior to moving to New York City. In 7th grade, his claim to fame was building the world's largest Minecraft server in the world. In early high school, he had over a million users, made 6 figures, and was fueled by open source software that still runs on most Minecraft servers today. Outside of tech and gaming, he loves to play pickleball and really enjoys skiing - though he confesses that in New York, it's harder to do these hobbies, financially and logistically.

Last summer, Torrey built a platform that allowed you to build out voice agents. After doing so, he realized that there wasn't a good way to do this through a UI, and he realized this was an obvious thing that needed to be built. He decided to leave his prior company to pursue this vision - which headed towards the Zapier for call center agents.

This is the creation story of Thoughtly.

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Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, with Dr. Marwan Al Zarouni, CEO of AI

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Today, we are releasing another episode in our series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai.

Today, we are speaking with Dr. Marwan Al Zarouni, CEO of AI for the Dubai Department of Economy & Tourism. Dr. Marwan. He is going to help walk us through how Dubai is creating a foundational hub for AI, Blockchain, and the intersection of both.

Questions:

Tell me and my audience a little bit about you.
You are CEO of AI for the DET. What does that entail? What are you driving in this position, leading your department?
It feels like blockchain is still trying to find its place in the mainstream, i.e., utility, security or currency, while AI is settling in some - where are both of these areas going?
While AI is a major focus, Dubai has also exceedingly been adopting blockchain. How do you see these two technologies interacting in various sectors, especially since you're also the CEO of Dubai Blockchain Centre.
How is Dubai addressing ethical challenges in AI adoption, especially in areas like data privacy and transparency?
AI is rapidly evolving globally, but how do you see Dubai positioning itself as a leader in the AI space?What’s your outlook for the city’s AI ecosystem in the next 5-10 years, and how are you working towards it today?
What is Dubai doing to attract promising and leading AI and blockchain companies to Dubai? What does the city offer companies in this space from a competitive advantage standpoint?

Links

Website: https://www.getunleash.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/egilconr/

S10 Bonus: Matt Pierce, Immediate (Replay)

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Matt Pierce has been a tech guy for his entire 17 year career. Coming out of grad school, he started out in healthcare tech for a decade or so. Eventually, he started down the path of being an entrepreneur. He is married with 3 daughters - 2 in third grade and one that is a 2 year old. He mentioned the entrepreneurial dilemma of picking 3 of the 5 life choices - family, business, sleep, exercise and friendships - and notes that his three are family, business, and sleep.

After spending nights and weekends burning the midnight oil on a healthcare tech solution, Matt sat down with a prospective client and did the best pitch ever. The client's feedback was that it didn't solve her real problem which was turnover, which boiled down to money. After chatting with the client and a mentor, Matt uncovered the best potential solution to financial stress - on demand pay.

This is the creation story of Immediate.

Sponsors

Links

Website: http://joinimmediate.com/codestory
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/piercmb/

S10 Bonus: Reed McGinley-Stempel, Stytch (Replay)

Tue, 24 Dec 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Reed McGinley-Stempel grew up in Las Vegas, but went to school on the East Coast. Frankly, he didn't know what he wanted to do and "stumbled" into management consulting. When I dug into how someone stumbles into this profession, he mentioned that early on he got some sage advice from his older brother about not rushing to law school because... being a lawyer isn't that fun. So, he followed some friends to Bain & Company.

The more projects he was involved in, the more he got interested in technology. Candidly, one of his motivations for going in tech was the fact that his was moving out to San Francisco to support his wife through law school at Stanford. He considered continuing to do consulting with Bain, but decided tech was the best route and eventually, joined Plaid. Outside of his professional career, he is into the outdoors, loving hiking and taking his very active dog outside. He mentions that living in San Francisco makes the outdoors super accessible.

Reed and his Co-founder both came from Plaid, and worked on the adaptive authentication team. There, they explored how to secure bank authentication to maintain security, but also do it in such a way that reduced friction and created an amazing experience. They found that the biggest problem to be solved was the combination of security issues with passwords, and the low conversion rate of sign up / sign in forms requiring passwords. They wanted to fix this.

This is the creation story of Stytch .

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Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, with Raakin Iqbal, Nucleus AI

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Today, we are kicking off a new series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai.

In this episode, we are speaking with Raakin Iqbal (aka Rock N Roll), CEO & Co-founder of Nucleus AI. Raakin is not only going to tell us about how Nucleus is building pre-AGI, but also how the ecosystem in Dubai is supporting their growth and success.

Questions:

What is Nucleus AI? What do you do?
Nucleus AI is often described as a Pre-AGI platform. Could you explain how this sets you apart from other AI solutions currently available in the market?
I am interested in how your system manages to "comprehend operational intricacies" instead of simply automating tasks.
How does your company’s approach to advanced AI strategies align with organizations like OpenAI, Anthropic and DeepMind? Can you name some proof-of-concepts to illustrate to this end?
What is the difference between Generative AI and AGI in your view, and why is Nucleus AI focusing on AGI?
Talk to us about the biggest challenges and opportunities in the development of AGI, and how is Nucleus AI approaching them?
Could you share some concrete examples of how your platform has enhanced efficiency for enterprises and government bodies within Dubai?
Dr. Marwan of the Dubai Blockchain Center spoke about the convergence of blockchain and AI. How do you foresee this synergy advancing within Dubai and potentially on a global scale? What role do you see Nucleus AI playing in the broader AI and blockchain ecosystem of Dubai?
How does Nucleus AI play a role as a possible use case using advanced AI for H.H. Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum's 0 Bureaucracy Government Vision?
How would you describe Dubai’s ecosystem for artificial intelligence and machine learning innovation and product development?
With Dubai’s advanced AI initiatives like the AI Campus and other licensing programs- how has Nucleus AI benefited from this environment esp. in your pursuit of AGI?
What advice would you give to the U.S.-based AI startups considering Dubai for expansion?

Links

S10 E8: Jason Harbert, Flowspace

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Jason Harbert grew up in the middle of nowhere, Ohio. He got into video games, which led him into programming... which led him to Linux and internet security and joining the hacking club. He studied computer science at the University of Cincinnati, but left his senior year to hit the startup scene in the Bay Area. Outside of tech, he lives in Ohio, and is married with a 13 month old son. He loves to travel, and spend time with his family, trying new restaurants.

Jason and his co-founder, Ben, were having a beer, coming out of their prior startup life. Over the beer, Ben was sharing some stories about tight warehouse space and product distribution. They started to ask the question - how can you add flexibility to warehousing? They decided to set out and build something to create this solution.

This is the creation story of Flowspace.

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The Haunted House of APIs - A Portal to the Beyond with Allison Averill

Wed, 30 Oct 2024 10:00:00 +0000

The Haunted House of API's

Today, we are releasing another episode for Cybersecurity Awareness month, in our series entitled the Haunted House of API’s, sponsored by our friends at Traceable AI. In this series, we are building awareness around API’s, their security risks – and what you can do about it. Traceable AI is building One Platform to secure every API, so you can discover, protect, and test all your API's with contextual API security, enabling organizations to minimize risk and maximize the value API's bring to their customers.

A Portal to the Beyond: Securing Gen AI and other Third-Party APIs in Your Applications

Today’s episode is titled A Portal to the Beyond: Securing Gen AI and other Third-Party APIs in Your Applications, with Allison Averill. Developers are building exciting new features with Gen AI, often leveraging 3^rd party APIs. Doing this isn’t new, but are these integrations secure? These APIs open a portal to the beyond – and introduce supply chain risk to your applications. Allison is a Generative AI and product management expert at Traceable, and she will explore the risks lurking in generative AI and other 3^rd party APIs, sharing best practices for securing these integrations, so you can ensure they don’t become the stuff of security horror stories.

How are application developers leveraging 3rd party APIs today, and how is the landscape changing?
How do third-party APIs introduce risks to applications and what are some common mistakes organizations make when integrating with third party APIs?
How are generative AI APIs different from other third party APIs? What unique risks do they introduce?
Have you encountered any 'nightmare' scenarios where an insecure third-party API caused a security incident?
What best practices should organizations follow to ensure secure integrations?
How can organizations balance the need for innovation with the necessity of maintaining strict security controls when working with external partners?

Sponsors

Traceable

Links

The Haunted House of APIs - Phantom Threats with Adam Arellano

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 10:00:00 +0000

The Haunted House of API's

Phantom Threats: The Ghosts Haunting Your API Security

Today’s episode is titled Phantom Threats: The Ghosts Haunting Your API Security, with Adam Arellano. API security threats often go unnoticed, hiding like ghosts in your infrastructure. Bots, sophisticated fraud attempts, account takeovers and attackers disguising themselves within legit traffic… these all pose risk to your organization, and can bypass traditional security measures, wreaking havoc without detection – until it’s too late. Adam is a tech advisor, Global CISO at Traceable, and will guide listeners through the world of phantom threats haunting API security.

What are "phantom threats" in the context of API security, and how do they go undetected?
Can you explain how advanced botnets and fraud attempts exploit APIs while blending into legitimate traffic?
Do you have a real-world example of a phantom threat that caused significant damage to an organization?
What makes detecting these phantom threats so challenging, and why do traditional security measures often fail?
What are the best strategies or technologies organizations can adopt to detect and eliminate these hidden threats before they cause harm?

Sponsors

Traceable

Links

S10 E8: Shashwat Sehgal, P0 Security

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Shashwat Sehgal has been in the tech industry broadly for 15 years. He started out as an engineer, but eventually, worked his way towards product and the business side. Outside of tech, he enjoys spending time with his family. He's into sports, loves to play tennis, but admits he hasn't played pickle ball yet because the courts are always booked. He also enjoys reading, in particular historical narratives or autobiographies.

In his prior years, Shashwat noticed that developers spend a large amount of time securing business assets in the cloud. He dreamt of a world where this was just an abstraction layer on top of the cloud, making it easier for developers to complete the task.

This is the creation story of P0 Security.

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The Haunted House of APIs - The Haunted Web of APIs with Richard Bird

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 10:00:00 +0000

The Haunted House of API's

The Haunted Web: Navigating API Sprawl and Creepy Crawlers

Today’s episode is titled The Haunted Web: Navigating API Sprawl and Creepy Crawlers, with Traceable’s Chief Security Officer, Richard Bird. As organizations scale and evolve, so does the complexity of their APIs. API sprawl, the uncontrolled expansion of APIs, creates a tangled web where vulnerabilities linger in the shadows. These unseen APIs become “creepy crawlers” of your digital infrastructure, creeping through your systems and posing security risks. Richard will discuss how unmanaged and undocumented APIs contribute to blind spots in security, the risks they create for organizations and the best strategies for securing a sprawling ecosystem.

Discussion questions:

Can you explain what we mean by "unknown APIs" and the different types, like shadow, rogue, zombie, and undocumented?
Why do these APIs often go unnoticed, and how do they become security risks?
What makes these APIs such an attractive target for attackers, and can you share an example of how one has been exploited?
How can organizations begin to uncover these hidden APIs, and what tools or strategies are effective in doing so?
In your experience, what are some common mistakes organizations make that lead to these unknown APIs being created or overlooked?

Sponsors

Traceable

Links

The Haunted House of APIs - The Dark Corners of APIs with Katie Paxton-Fear

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 10:00:00 +0000

The Haunted House of API's

The Dark Corners of APIs: Uncovering Unknown APIs Lurking in the Shadows

Our episode today is titled The Dark Corners of APIs: Uncovering Unknown API’s lurking in the shadows, where we speak with Katie Paxton-Fear. APIs are the gateway to your digital infrastructure, but hidden deep in the recesses of your system are unknown APIs – shadow, rogue, zombie, and undocumented API’s. Each of these present a unique threat to your organization and can be exploited by hackers. Katie is an API hacker and researcher, and today, she will take us on a journey through the API graveyards, where hidden APIs lurk, waiting to be exploited – sharing real life examples of how these API’s have been attacked, and best practices for ensuring they don’t become your companies next security nightmare.

Discussion questions:

Can you explain what we mean by "unknown APIs" and the different types, like shadow, rogue, zombie, and undocumented?
Why do these APIs often go unnoticed, and how do they become security risks?
What makes these APIs such an attractive target for attackers, and can you share an example of how one has been exploited?
How can organizations begin to uncover these hidden APIs, and what tools or strategies are effective in doing so?
In your experience, what are some common mistakes organizations make that lead to these unknown APIs being created or overlooked?

Sponsors

Traceable

Links

The Haunted House of APIs - The Witch’s Brew with Jayesh Ahire

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 10:00:00 +0000

The Haunted House of API's

The Witch’s Brew: Stirring Up OWASP Vulnerabilities and API Testing

Today, we are kicking off an amazing series for Cybersecurity Awareness month, entitled the Haunted House of API’s, sponsored by our friends at Traceable AI. In this series, we are building awareness around API’s, their security risks – and what you can do about it. Traceable AI is building One Platform to secure every API, so you can discover, protect, and test all your API's with contextual API security, enabling organizations to minimize risk and maximize the value API's bring to their customers.

In today’s episode, we will be talking with Jayesh Ahire, an expert in API testing and OWASP, will guide us through the "brew" of common vulnerabilities that haunt API ecosystems, focusing on the OWASP Top 10 for APIs. He’ll share how organizations can use API security testing to spot and neutralize these vulnerabilities before they become major exploits. By emphasizing proactive security measures, Jayesh will offer insights into creating a strong API testing framework that keeps malicious actors at bay.

Discussion questions:

What are some of the most common vulnerabilities in APIs that align with the OWASP Top 10, and why are they so dangerous?
Why is API security testing crucial for detecting these vulnerabilities early, and how does it differ from traditional security testing?
Can you share an example of how an overlooked API vulnerability led to a significant security breach?
How can organizations create an effective API testing framework that addresses these vulnerabilities?
What tools or methods do you recommend for continuously testing APIs and ensuring they remain secure as they evolve?

Sponsors

Traceable

Links

https://minotaurtradingsystems.com/

S10 E4: Brendan Wood, SnapTrade

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 10:00:00 +0000

In August of 2021, we interviewed Brendan Wood on the podcast to tell the creation story of Passiv. After the recording, the company decided to pivot into a new market, focusing on solving their biggest pain point for other platforms. They were running into the problems surrounding integrations into brokers. In fact, they were spending 80% of engineering time on integrations. People started to reach out to his team to ask if they could use the integrations... and they started ideating about making this its own product.

This is the creation story of SnapTrade.

Sponsors

Links

S10 Whats New with SWOB - Alex Florio

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Hello listeners.

Today, I have an awesome follow episode from our friends at Swob. You may remember our episode with Stephanie Florio in Season 6 over 2 years ago, where she clued us in on the creation story of the company. Today, I'm speaking with her co-founder and brother, Alex, to hear the update on Swob and what the team has been up to since then. Have a listen now

It's very cool to hear the successful update with Swob, adding over 7 million jobs to the platform, scaling for businesses and candidates, and ensuring they have the right team in place to carry out the vision.

If you would like to learn more about Swob, go to swobapp.com.

Sponsors

Links

S10 E3: Kevin Hurley, Lightspark

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 10:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Lightspark.

Sponsors

Links

S10 Turso Update with Pekka Enberg

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Hello listeners.

Today, I have an incredible follow episode from our friends at Turso. You may remember our episode with Glauber Costa in Season 8, where he told us the creation story of the platform. Today, I'm speaking with his co-founder, Pekka, to hear the update on Turso and what the team has been building over the past year.

Now with Turso, you can not only have embedded replicas on your device or browser, with multi-tenancy and syncing to Turbo's edge network - but now the tool powers vector search from on the device itself, leading to natively server less, low latency sql lite production loads. Turso continues to push the envelope with their product, and expanding use cases for developers.

If you would like to learn more about Turso, go to turso.tech. If you'd like to learn more specifically about vector search, go to turso.tech/vector.

Sponsors

Speakeasy

Links

S10 E2: Matt Van Itallie, Sema

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 10:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Sema.

Sponsors

Speakeasy

Links

S10 Bonus: Anurag Goel, Render

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 10:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Render.

Sponsors

Speakeasy

Links

S10 E1: Sagar Batchu, Speakeasy

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Sagar Batchu was born in Sacramento, but moved to Bangalore after a decade. He has always been interested in how things work, and majored in Physic at his University. Towards the end of his studies, he crammed in a ton of CS classes and fell in love with the craft. He's worked on firmware, enterprise software, and eventually went to LiveRamp, building new experiences for them. Outside of tech, he loves pickleball, enjoys growing coffee and loves readying about historical events.

In his past, Sagar and his team took on API initiative to invest in internal API experience. Through this project, he spent a lot of time thinking about how to make this happen. He immediately saw the need across the industry, with the absence of time and money to fill the need. He decided to take it on and start a company.

This is the creation story of Speakeasy.

Sponsors

Speakeasy

Links

Trailer

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 10:00:00 +0000

What if you had a window into the digital startup world? What if you could ask the tech veterans what it feels like to create a world class product? How to recover from critical mistakes... how to scale your solution to the masses... How do you get from an idea on the back of a napkin, to a fully functioning product? What if you could hear the human stories about how they delivered technology? What if there was a show where you could hear those stories?

S9 Bonus: Mark Porter, MongoDB (Replay)

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Mark Porter has always been fascinated with puzzles, so tech just fit for him and a great journey for him. He got his first 4k computer in middle school, and then moved into doing programming for the Department of Education. His big learning from this was that you can use tech to do social good. He's married with 5 kids, and as he puts it, they put up with his deep tech obsession.

Mark joined the board of MongoDB in 2019. What got him excited about the company was the world changing nature of the product. So much so, that he asked to step off the board to be CTO - and carry the banner to the developer community about the power of their doc based, distributed system performing DB transactions.

This is Mark's story with MongoDB.

Links

Website: https://www.mongodb.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklovestech/

S9 Bonus: Egil Østhus, Unleash (Replay)

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 10:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Unleash.

Links

Website: https://www.getunleash.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/egilconr/

S9 Bonus: Matt Cowell, Quanthub (Replay)

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Matt Cowell didn't start out in tech. In fact, he studied the chemical world heavily in school, getting his Bachelors in Chemistry and Masters in Chemical Engineering. So - by trade, he was clearly a chemist. However, when he joined Accenture, he started in with programming and establishing the SDLC methodology for the company. Matt is married with 2 kids, loves sports - specifically Illinois basketball - loves to play music and golf. He likes to travel with his wife to see family, and make frequent visits to their lakehouse.

In his professional past, Matt had held several roles in SaaS companies and startups. He met a company that was an artificial intelligence consultancy, which had a POC around assessments. They wanted to start up a separate company to support launch this POC and take it to market. This is when Matt got involved.

This is the creation story of QuantHub.

Links

Website: https://quanthub.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcowell/

S9 E29: Umaimah Khan , Opal Security

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Welcome back listeners.

Today we have a return guest on the podcast, Rene Morkos, the Founder & CEO of Alice Technologies. If you recall our conversation with Rene from Season 7, April 6th 2023, he and his team are building algorithms to disrupt the construction industry, through project optioneering and construction optmization. Today, he returns to the show to update us on Alice Pro and Alice Core, their latest innovation to the sector, which boasts a 100X reduction in setup time. Listen in now.

In any industry, if you can build something that reduces setup time 100X - you have achieved something great. Rene and his team are changing the game, when it comes to project optioneering, bringing the solution into the backyard of the construction industry, while making it faster and easier to manage your scheduling.

You can learn more about Alice Tecnnologies, Alice Pro, and Alice Core - by visiting https://www.alicetechnologies.com/.

And thanks again for listening.

Sponsors

Links

https://www.alicetechnologies.com/

S9 E20: Michael Hummel, Establish

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Michael Hummel has a different perspective on tech and startups than most people in this realm. His background dis in marketing, and prior to his current venture, he was running a lead gen marketing firm. Outside of his professional life, he is married, living in Puerto Rico, and has a miniature husky. He has picked up spearfishing - which sounds wicked fun. When I asked what was the biggest fish he caught, he laughed - and mentioned that he sticks to the reefs and the smaller fish.

Starting out, Michael founded his current venture focused on PR - IE public relations - and they did this because it was aligned with his background. Fast forward, his company is aiding startups raise capital, by focusing on three key pillars.

This is the creation story of Establish.

Sponsors

Links

S9 Bonus: Alon Arvatz, Pointfive & Author of Battle for Your Computer

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Alon Arvatz has been in tech for a long time. Fun fact, he loved technology but hated computer science. After getting introduced to the industry by his father, he discovered that tech is not just computer science - which was a big relief. He is the author of a book called The Battle for your Computer, which highlights Israel and the growth of the global cybersecurity industry. Outside of tech and cybersecurity, he is married with 4 kids, and highlights that all things in life - family, startup, etc. - is a partnership between he and his wife. Their family is a big fan of history, and looks to learn the stories of the places they visit.

Through his time in the military, Alon was exposed to the difficulties of managing cloud cost. Alongside his 15 years in cybersecurity, and writing his book on the topic, he figured out that a focus on efficiency could help businesses with their cloud costs - starting with a minimum integrate-able product.

This is the creation story of Pointfive.

Sponsors

Links

S9 E19: Linus Hakansson, Gravitee

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Linus Hakansson finds that he has been in the tech industry so long, that it is difficult to separate himself from what he does professionally. He's a family man, with a 2.5 year old son, and enjoys spending time with them and raising is kid. Outside of that, he enjoys soccer, sports, and cooking Italian food. In fact, recently he bought a pizza oven and started making his own dough and pie.

Linus has been working with API's since he started in the industry. In 2019, he was introduced to his current venture, as they wanted to create an open source API management software. After a couple of years, he partnered with the team, and then eventually - joined the company, to build something good.

This is Linus' creation story at Gravitee.

Sponsors

Links

S9 Bonus: Erin & Jesus, MSquared

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 14:46:40 +0000

Erin Marie has been in tech for 20 years. Prior to tech, she was a history major but became more passionate about building websites and technology. She went from web developer to programmer analyst to cloud engineering, and met her current business partner at Boeing. Outside of tech, she is into amateur photography, capturing landscapes and portraits. She is also passionate about passion and film, with her favorite grind core film titled "They call her one eye".

Jesus Maria comes from the Caribbean, and enjoys beaches and being near the water. When he is not coding or coming up with crazy tech ideas, he describes the amount of heavy metal he listens to as obscene. He has 6 guitars, all tuned differently, and loves to take breaks from his tech and throw down a new riff. He's also passionate about art, and into doing illustrations. He shares the same favorite film as Erin Marie.

Erin and Jesus are stationed in Denver, Colorado. During the pandemic, they were hanging out at the back yard picnic table, with wine and smokes. They were ideating over building a digital strip mall, to help local businesses build their platforms. Eventually, they started up a platform engineering company and when Lionsgate called, their pandemic picnic table idea started to grow.

This is the creation story of MSquared.

Sponsors

Links

S9 E18: Jai Ranganathan, Motive

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Jai Ranganathan is a typically middle aged man, living in Austin, TX with a couple of kids and a Tesla. He moved to the US when he was 17, to attend the University of Texas. Post that, he spent 25 years in California at different tech businesses. Outside of tech, he enjoys doing activities with his daughters, rock climbing, and playing sports.

In 2013, Jai's current CEO saw a huge opportunity for the millions of heavy freight vehicles on the road. He built an app to track service hours, around the time that Jai joined - but, they didn't plan on stopping there.

This is the creation story of Motive.

Sponsors

Links

S9 Bonus: Amy & Whitney, Disruption Advisors

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Links

Season 9 Trailer

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 11:00:00 +0000

What if you had a window into the digital startup world?

What if you could ask the tech veterans what it feels like to create a world class product?

...how to recover from critical mistakes...

...how to scale your solution to the masses?

How do you get from an idea on the back of a napkin, to a fully functioning product?

What if you could hear the human stories about how they delivered technology?

What if there was a show where you could hear those stories?

Sponsors

S8 Bonus: Puneet Gupta, Amberflo (Replay)

Thu, 23 Nov 2023 11:00:00 +0000

For Puneet Gupta, his professional work and personal hobbies collide. He has been enamored with tech since his early days, and finds coding to be quite therapeutic. He spent many years launching prominent cloud solutions, and has a track record for success there. Outside of tech, he is a family man with 2 boys, living in the Bay Area with his extended family. He is into motorcycles, and is falling in love with reading again.

The story of Puneet's current venture goes back over 10 years, when he found himself in the middle of the dawn of cloud computing at AWS. During that time, he was introduced to SaaS models, and how these models can grow exponential growth. Fast forward to 3 years ago, and through observing industry progression, he decided to create a solution to aid in usage based pricing models.

This is the creation story of Amberflo.

S8 Bonus: Glauber Costa, Turso (Replay)

Tue, 21 Nov 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Glauber Costa is a family man, with three kids at home. So he admits, that with a startup and kids, there is not much space for anything else. He made mention that the jump from 2-3 kids was hard, and we joked that he playing zone defense now over man to man. AS of this recording, he had already seen the Mario movie 3 times with his kids, and enjoys playing video games with them. But, his game to play is Civilizations, which he is highly addicted to.

Glauber comes from a heavy database and systems programming background, as does his co-founders. They noticed that the buyer persona of database tech is changing. More and more frontend developers or full stack developers were responsible for these decisions. After iterating on a few projects, they figured the pillar of their data edge solution... which was SQLLite.

This is the creation story of Turso.

S8 Bonus: Sefi Genis, Firefly (Replay)

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Sefi Genis lives in Tel Aviv, and started in with technology early on in his life, maintaining the school website when he was younger. He served in the Israeli military, specifically in the cybersecurity unit, followed by working at some interesting and successful startups. Outside of tech, he loves to travel, ninja warrior, and scuba diving. One of his favorite places to dive was Thailand, which I've added to the list for my family.

Sefi understood all things related to infrastructure as code (IAC). Once he was introduced to his co-founders, they set out to build a solution that helped platform and DevOps teams manage their entire cloud footprint - and do so at scale.

This is the creation story of Firefly.

S8 Bonus: Naré Vardanyan, Ntropy (Replay)

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Naré Vardanyan has a statistically unlikely story. She grew up in Armenia, without electricity during a war. She recalls that her parents gamified the experience, which allowed her to experience it much differently than the hardship it was. Her upbringing was very community driven, focused on caring for others. Eventually, she went to work for the United Nations, in her words, so she could save the world - though eventually she was disillusioned by how slow things moved. It was at this point, where she shifted over to tech. Outside of tech, she used to love reading, but now that she has a child, she sticks to audiobooks. And, she thoroughly enjoys art, specifically, 20th century Russian-Jewish artists.

When Naré started to travel abroad, she noticed that for some folks, the ability to obtain things in life, like a Visa or Passport, was a given. Yet, others were not enabled to obtain these types of things, as the process was much more difficult or unavailable. She set out to create the great equalizer, through enriched financial data.

This is the creation story of Ntropy.

S8 Bonus: Alex Yarotsky, Hubstaff

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Alex Yarotsky got into tech as a little kid. In fact, he remembers watching the movie Toy Story, and wanting to learn how to build the tech that drove its creation. He got into University, but eventually, dropped out, and went the standard Eastern European software route, by joining a consultancy. Post that, he joined his first tech startup, and hasn't looked back since. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 fat cats. He and his wife enjoy MMA, and traveling.

Twelve years ago, the founders of Alex's current venture noticed that the demand for freelancers was growing in the market. They also noticed that very few time tracking solutions existed, and they wanted to tackle this niche. Later, Alex joined the crew to take the product to the next level, as CTO.

This is the creation story of Hubstaff.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://hubstaff.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayarotsky/

S8 Bonus: Pato Echague, Split.io

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Pato Echague was born and raised in Argentina, and as such, is a huge soccer fan. He played soccer and tennis growing up, and enjoys following the Boca Juniors. He also admits to being influenced by the Messi effect as well, liking Barcelona and now the States. He is a father of 2 young kids - who also play soccer - so there are a lot of nets and practice tools in his backyard.

At his prior startup, which was acquired by Salesforce, Pato and his co-founders observed that the faster they shipped things, they faster they broke production. After giving into his co-founders persistence, he decided to jump in and build a feature flagging to fix the problem.

This is the creation story of Split.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.split.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricioechague/

S8 E30: Moti Rafalin, vFunction

Tue, 07 Nov 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Moti Rafalin was born and raised in Israel. He spent half of his life there, and the rest of his life in the states. He is a father of 3 kids, 2 of which are in college. His family and he lives in the Bay Area, and he likes to play tennis and travel. In fact, he has been to over 65 countries in his life, and has lived in 2 continents.

After attending AWS re-invent, Moti left with the knowledge that the amount of innovation happening continued to grow and grow. At the same time, there wasn't a good way to ensure that applications weren't just "lifting and shifting" but were fully taking advantage of proper functionality during their modernization process.

This is the creation story of vFunction.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://vfunction.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrafalin/

S8 Bonus: Shaun Ritchie, nClouds

Thu, 02 Nov 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Shaun Ritchie has lived in Salt Lake City for 20 plus years. He grew up in Phoenix, but decided it was too hot to live there. He started his first company 20 years ago, and has had some major successes, selling later ventures to WeWork. Outside of tech, he is married with 4 kids. He loves the mountains and outdoors, enjoying snowboarding, skiing, and hiking.

In 2022, Shaun set out to accomplish a new goal. He put together the financial resources to acquire an organization, with the goal of transforming it into a premier services company - by leading and growing people to the next level.

This is Shaun's creation story at nClouds.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.nclouds.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunritchie/

S8 Bonus: Arunabh Dastidar, RealSage

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Arunabh Dastidar has a background in engineering, starting his coding years in his teens. In fact, he was building and selling web products even prior to college. He spends most of his free time thinking about tech and startups, but when he is not, he plays acoustic guitar and attends music festivals. He enjoys traveling and trying food across the world, mentioning that Tokyo ruined Sushi for him.

Arunabh was on a very important call, and his excel sheet was crashing. He looked left and right, and couldn't find anything to support what he needed. He found some co-founders, and built the solution he wished he had for the industry.

This is the creation story of RealSage.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://realsage.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arunabhadastidar/

S8 E29: Zach Wasserman, Fleet

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Zach Wasserman lives near Vancouver, but grew up a child of the 90's in Berkeley, California. The .COM boom was happening around him, so he found himself fascinated with this era in tech, with little understanding of the details. He was a skater kid, riding around the Bay Area, typically on a short board over long board. Nowadays, he is more into the outdoors, as a mountain biker, rock climber and back country skier. He enjoys the vast selection of Chinese food at his home near Vancouver.

In 2014, Zach was working at Facebook. During that time, a team member wanted to build a platform where they could know what was going on with all of their assorted machines. They ne eded a way to ask questions without writing code, and more quickly get answers about their community of devices.

This is the creation story of Fleet.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://fleetdm.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacharywasserman/

S8 Bonus: Steven Schkolne, MightyMeld

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Steven Schkolne has a standard tech story. He was good at math, and loved computers - so, he got into programming. What sets him apart in the industry though, is his passion for design, art and creativity. He is a self taught designer, but really jams when his right and left brains are firing at the same time. Outside of tech, he is married and enjoys gaming and digging into YouTube.

Steven was working on a VR project in the past, and a component required some web development. What he immediately noticed was that although Unity Game Engine development was visual, but web development required you to build visually in the realm of code. He started to wonder if there was a way to bring this sort of thing to web dev.

This is the creation story of MightyMeld.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.mightymeld.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schkolne/

S8 Bonus: Somak Chattopadhyay, Armory Square Ventures

Wed, 25 Oct 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Somak Chattopadhyay lives 30 minutes outside of Syracuse, NY, where he enjoys the great outdoors vibe of the area. He studied engineering at MIT, but spent the bulk of his career in investing. He has been in venture capital for nearly 18 years, spending time at Edison and Tribeca. Outside of tech, he is married and passionate about food and music. He's actually a classically trained violinist, and enjoys cooking or consuming Tandoor cuisine.

In 2013, a group of professors and business people noticed that early stage companies in Syracuse were required to move to NYC - primarily because there was lack of capital and access to talent. A year later, Somak and his team stepped out to solve this problem in New York regions... and beyond.

This is the creation story of Armory Square Ventures.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.armorysv.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/somak-chattopadhyay-7662a/

S8 E28: Maxim Fateev, Temporal

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Maxim Fateev grew up in the Soviet Union, and witnessed its collapse. He left in 1995, and moved to Brazil, where he got his Masters in Computer Science. In the late 90's, he moved to the US, eventually landing in Seattle, which loves. He's been married for 27 years, with 3 boys, and loves to hike, play ice hockey, and snowboard. He mentioned there were a number of choices, but he prefers Whistler in Canada, when he can make the 5 hour drive.

During the development of open source services at Amazon, Maxim came across the idea of durable execution. Eventually, at Uber, he launched an open source library that eventually would become the basis of his current venture.

This is the creation story of Temporal.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://temporal.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fateev/

S8 Bonus: Ibrahim & Jay, Astera

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Ibrahim Surani grew up in Pakistan, dropped out of high school and in his words, stumbled around for a while. Eventually, he stumbled onto an IBM mainframe, taught himself to code, and has been in tech ever since. He moved to the states in 1988 and has been here ever since. Outside of tech, he is an avid hiker, and enjoys a good fantasy read, like Lord of the Rings.

Jay Mishra studied mathematics and computer science. He started out at his current venture right out of college, post his masters program. Outside of tech, he is a Dad of two boys who love sports. He enjoys playing chess and golf, and likes to hike and travel. His favorite book is the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.

Going back several years, Ibrahim started a consultancy in 2005 or so, and mentions working on successful products in the area of mortgage banking. In 2008, the financial meltdown happened, and all of their customers (save 1) went out of business. After struggling for while, they decided take a foundational utility they had built and bridge the gap to 2.0 of their business.

This is the creation story of Astera.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.astera.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ibrahimsurani/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaymishra/

S8 Bonus: Jason Radisson, Movo

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Jason Radisson had a tough childhood, being born to a 16 year old single mom. He grew up on a rural place, and his journey required him to work jobs to get ahead and figure the world out at a young age. He was always interested in math and sports, which led him down the path to study economics and applied mathematics, eventually working for McKinsey. Today, he is married with small kids, and enjoys an active, outdoor life, specifically participating in distance sports (IE biking or running).

Through his career, Jason gained great experience in the gig economy, through his time at Uber and other ventures in Latin America. He saw many shifts run the market through his time, and throughout the pandemic, and he saw that people were looking to maximize the productivity of the workforce they currently had.

This is the creation story of Movo.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://movo.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-radisson/

S8 E27: Valeriy Bykanov, Prodigy

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Valeriy Bykanov studied computer science in the Ukraine, and eventually in 2009, decided to start his own software development agency. After doing this for some time, he wanted to expand his horizons and moved to Berlin to join a startup. Outside of tech, he is married, and loves to be active outdoors - hiking, snowboarding and cycling. In fact, one of his favorite things to do is listen to a podcast or audiobook while hitting a biking trail.

Valeriy had some past experience in recruitment, having had run his own agency. He found great reward in placing people, but eventually wanted to build a solution for the process. After he met his co-founder, they both decided to attack the creation of a new kind of recruiting tool.

This is the creation story of Prodigy.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://prodi.gg/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valeriybykanov/

S8 Bonus: Massoud Alibakhsh, Omadeus

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Massoud Alibakhsh was born in Iran, but grew up in the states. He has always been curious about machines, computers, robots - and as such, studied electrical engineering and computer science. He built his career on hardware and software, and witnessed all the tech changes throughout the past decades - from mainframes to GUI's to pcs to distributed systems to the cloud. Outside of tech, he used to be a competitive soccer player, but after he hurt his knees, he switched to swimming daily. He swears by intermittent fasting, but makes sure to carry walnuts and dates on him when he travels.

Massoud held a strong desire to find a solution to the complex communication problem between people and systems. He decided to approach this with deep AI integration, smart objects, and an object messaging model. And in doing so, he put AI in project management, and discovered the next development paradigm.

This is the creation story of Omadeus.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://omadeus.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/massoud-alibakhsh-7b139753/

S8 E26: Josh Purvis, Assembly

Tue, 10 Oct 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Josh Purvis grew up in Missouri, on a lake in the Ozarks. He spent most of his time outdoors, and became a professional wakeboarder. Eventually, an injury took him out of the circuit and he went to entertainment school. During his time there, he and his roommate built a website - and he has been into tech ever since. Outside of tech, he reads a ton, owning about 400-500 books, and enjoys street tacos, wings, and a good plate of pasta.

In the past, Josh and his current co-founder started to discuss employment engagement. They also noticed that sharing information across a large company was, well - inefficient, with many points of failure. On the side, they started building something that would improve both of these areas together.

This is the creation story of Assembly.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.joinassembly.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuapurvis/

S8 Bonus: Max Rudman, Prodly

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Max Rudman grew up in Soviet, Moscow - then moved from Russia when he was 16 years old. He spent his early years programming and exploring engineering, and it just continued on as he got older. He got the entrepreneurial bug in early 2000's when he was hired at a marketplace .COM startup. Outside of tech, he is married with 3 kids. He loves to travel and considers himself a foodie, stating that his favorite restaurants were in the wine country and in Spain.

Within his last startup, Max discovered that deploying configuration rules on Salesforce was clunky and took a long time to do so, even for a seasoned engineer. Eventually, he decided to build a tool to focus on this process alone.

This is the creation story of Prodly.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://prodly.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxrudman/

S8 Bonus: Kaj Pedersen, AstrumU

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Kaj Pedersen was born in Zambia, Africa, and has travelled all throughout his life - through Africa, Europe, but has now landed in the United States. He has had tons of exposure to cultures and countries, which he is fond of. Outside of tech, he married with a family, and loves climbing, being a proclaimed mountaineer. When he isn't climbing he likes to read a broad array of books, and scuba dive - of which, he mentioned Fiji was the coolest dive.

In 2017, the founders of AstrumU kicked off the idea to build a company focused on creating equity to the value of education for everyone, by tracking hard and soft skills at the individual level. Though he couldn't join the company at that time, Kaj eventually joined in 2019 to take the initial idea to 1.0 conception.

This is the creation story of AstrumU.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://astrumu.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kajpedersen/

S8 E25: Andrew Colombi, Tonic

Tue, 03 Oct 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Andrew Colombi is a 38 year old tech guy from way back. At 12 years old, he wanted to play a computer game, but lacked the RAM to load it. After digging into the internal configuration to delay the load of peripherals, he was hooked on computers and eventually, coding. Outside of tech, he is picking back up learning piano, and really enjoys biking. He mentioned he just got a new gravel bike, which is a street bike with a front suspension.

In the past, Andrew frequently worked with data that was private, with other users not having access. So, he had to create fake data, for multiple different projects. When he tried to do this, it took him much longer than anticipated, and it was incredibly valuable for multiple uses (stress testing and demos to name a few). This was key to eventually building a real tool for this, and starting a new adventure.

This is the creation story of Tonic.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.tonic.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-colombi-9a52aa5/

Dev Interrupted: Assembling & Nurturing Engineering Teams

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Our host, Noah Labhart, couldn't be more excited about being featured on Dev Interrupted, whom we have followed for a long time, and have learned a ton from. Check out the post below, and subscribe to Dev Interrupted!

Check out the original post here:

https://linearb.io/dev-interrupted/podcast/career-journey-3-assembling-and-nurturing-engineering-teams

S8 Bonus: Max Howell, Tea

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Max Howell did well in school, and was presented with the problem that - he didn't know what to do with himself. At that time, software wasn't cool, so he studied chemistry and started out a job in that industry. After he mastered his work environment within 3 months, he was disenchanted with the career path, and decided to stop going to work. Post installing Linux on his home computer, he started coding - and fell in love with it. Outside of tech, he is married with a young son. He enjoys a good beer, cooking a steak, and seeing how new everything is interpreted through his son's eyes.

Max is the creator of Homebrew, the widely used package manager which is probably installed on your computer right now. After the success of the tool, he wanted to figure out a way to continue to bring value to open source, and power digital money in the web3 space.

This is the creation story of Tea.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://tea.xyz/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mxcl/

S8 Bonus: Shirshanka Das, Acryl Data

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Shirshanka Das grew up on the eastern side of India, near Calcutta. He did well in school, and got into IIT, choosing Computer Science as his major. Post undergrad, he got his PhD at UCLA, eventually working at PayPal and Yahoo on massive architectural systems. Outside of tech, he's married with 2 kids, he's an accomplished Indian vocalist, and has a passion for swimming, which he states is his therapy.

After spending over a decade at LinkedIn, Shirshanka had led the teams supporting all things data. He created a unified approach to data discovery, governance, and observability - while he was at the company. He open sourced the product, called DataHub, and eventually created a managed version.

This is the creation story of Acryl Data.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.acryldata.io/
Website: https://datahubproject.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirshankadas/

S8 E24: Jon Ricketts, Writerly

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Jon Ricketts lives in Knoxville, TN with his wife and kids. He notes that he has had an unconventional route to being a tech startup founder. He has an MBA and JD, but knew during law school he didn't want to practice. Throughout his career, he has continually fallen in love with building. Outside of tech, he enjoys spending time on the beach, staying physically fit, golfing, and working on his private pilots license.

Jon observed the maturation of AI, in the creation of tooling like ChatGPT and generative AI. He envisioned building an application to extend the progression of natural language processing to enable work productivity.

This is the creation story of Writerly.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://writerly.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-ricketts-639187267/

S8 Bonus: Tim Tutt, ClearQuery

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Tim Tutt grew up in the military, and travelled around following his father. An interesting fact he shared was that he attended three different schools in the 1st grade. He learned how to make friends and fit in quickly. Outside of tech, he loves the marvel cinematic universe, from which he states that Tony Spark is his spirit animal. He also loves to play poker, which he got into during college. He actually got to play in a smaller event within the World Series of poker this past year.

In the past, Tim played the role of the middle man between the data and those who needed answers from the data. Like a good engineer, he always automated the repeat things he was asked to do. He asked his co-founder one day... wouldn't it be nice if we could just get out of the way?

This is the creation story of ClearQuery.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.clearquery.io/
Website: https://www.nightshiftdevelopment.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timtutt/

S8 Bonus: Alfredo Ramirez, Vyopta

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Alfredo Ramirez is the son of Ecuadorian immigrants, which instilled in him positive beliefs around faith, family, community and hard work. Way back, his father bought him an Apple 2 computer, which started him on his software development journey. Outside of tech, he is married with kids, and loves spending time outdoors with them - hiking, water sports, snow skiing and shooting trap. All of these things allow him to relax, recharge and clear his head.

Fifteen years ago, Alfredo and his co-founders started their current venture during the 2008 financial crisis. After relying on the services side of their business, they headed towards building a single platform around digital collaboration, one that is reliable, a better user experience, and the analytics to go with it.

This is the creation story of Vyopta.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.vyopta.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alfredo-ramirez-7131175/

S8 E23: Will Gaviria, Coactive AI

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Will Gaviria was born and raised in Columbia, immigrating to Florida at 11 years old. His family seta off in a single bedroom together, and worked hard for their life and successes. He got a full ride to MIT, and funny enough, he had to convince his mother that it was a legit school. Through all of his studies, he got to see the rise of AI and focused on neo-morphic computing. Outside of tech, he is married with a cat named Chipotle. He lives in the Bay Area, and loves playing Magic the Gathering and doing Crossfit.

Will and his co-founder observed first hand the explosion of visual content. At the same time, artificial intelligence had reached a mature state, such that you could use it to learn from unstructured data. They set out to build the next big thing, specifically in context of unstructured visual data.

This is the creation story of Coactive.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://coactive.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamgaviria/

S8 Bonus: Andrew Kahl, BackBox

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Andrew Kahl has spent 30 years in tech, and has had many wonderful experiences. He graduated in 1992, and actually accidentally entered the industry, when he came across a job ad for Compaq. He's been in tech ever since, all around the building of things. Outside of tech, he is marred with 2 daughters - one of which he just sent to college, and one in high school. Along side of that, they have 3 overly energetic German shepherds.

Andrew was part of a private equity group, which acquired BackBox in late 2021. He stepped in as CEO, maintaining the technology team in Israel and bringing the GTM team to the US. Taking over a fantastic product, Andrew set his sights on growing the company.

This is the creation story of BackBox.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://backbox.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewkahl/

S8 Bonus: Pete Hunt, Dagster

Wed, 13 Sep 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Pete Hunt grew up in NE Massachusetts, which he mentions was culturally New Hampshire. He wasn't into Hockey, but did a lot of swimming, in particular the 200m butterfly. He has a 2 year old daughter, and loves to play guitar in his cover band.

Pete was one of the founding team members of React, and his friend and colleague, Nick, was one of the creators of GraphQL. Post Facebook, they wanted to figure out what was next, and wanted to build something impactful. After interviewing some folks, he realized that managing data and data pipelines was a challenge that needed to be solved.

This is the creation story of Dagster.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://dagster.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pwhunt/

S8 E22: Eric Olden, Strata Identity

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Eric Olden grew up in the Bay Area, as one of the few local natives, but enjoys the mountains of Colorado now, outside of Boulder. He and his family love to ski, mountain bike, and even visit the reservoir to do some surfing. Outside of these things, he is passionate ab out landscape architecture, and does it for fun on the side.

Prior to his current venture, Eric was running a large division at Oracle, surrounding identity. He saw that most cloud customers were utilizing multiple clouds, but most tooling didn't allow for those cloud identities to play nice together. He saw this opportunity sitting in plain sight, and decided to step out and attack it.

This is the creation story of Strata.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.strata.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boughtnotsold/

S8 Bonus: Barak Glanz, Coddy.tech

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Barak Glanz is 26 years old, and has done quite a few things in his life. He served in the Israeli Navy prior to jumping into the professional world. He worked for Meta as a student, and has has a few impressive startup failures in different sectors. Outside of tech, he is a rock climber, weight lifter, and likes to play chess. He mentioned that he beat someone in 10 moves before, but attributed it to mistakes of his competitor.

A year and a half ago, Barak and his childhood friends shared the personal struggle of learning how to code online. What they noticed was that the current solutions didn't offer helpful ways to practice building real world projects. So they built their own.

This is the creation story of Coddy.tech.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://coddy.tech/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barak-glanz

S8 Bonus: David Hurwitt, Troove

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 10:00:00 +0000

David Hurwitt lives in Burlington, Vermont, and is a married father of 3. And, those kids hav already grown and flown, per Dave's words. Their journey out of the nest into college was a driver behind starting his current venture. Outside of current venture, he is an avid photographer and really enjoys taking pictures, but ensuring there is people in them - cause, he states it's just better that way.

Dave spent some time in college admissions in the past. And, as his kids grew up, he started to look into the process again. He found that when visiting a school in person, there wasn't solution that utilized preferences of the graduates, helping them identify patterns to help match them to their perfect school.

This is the creation story of Troove.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.troove.me/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davehurwitt

S8 E21: Jared Ward, Luminous

Tue, 05 Sep 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Jared Ward grew up in a sporty family, participating in wrestling and football. His background is in supply chain and eCommerce, but outside of this and tech, he is a family man and loves spending time with his kids. With his 7 year old son, he is sharing his love of Zelda, and with his 3 year old daughter, he enjoys taking her to the park and the occasional tickle fight. For himself, he enjoys watching MMA, running marathons, and getting outside to hike.

Jared has spent a lot of time in the eCommerce world, serving numerous different roles. What he noticed is that with evolution of eCommerce companies, it is difficult for them to develop a system of record early on. Jared wanted to change all that, and take on the juggernauts head on.

This is the creation story of Luminous.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.joinluminous.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jared-ward-bb96a115b/

S8 Bonus: Vikram Chalana, Pictory

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Vikram Chalana grew up in India, but has been in Seattle over 30 years. He graduated from the University of Washington, and actually met his wife in college. In fact, his kids now go to the same school, so his whole family are Huskies. Outside of tech, he loves anything outdoors - skiing, biking, and kayaking. In fact, at the recording of this episode, he just got back from climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Vikram noticed that content marketing has shifted from text to images to videos. In a prior organization, they only had 1 person who was trained to create videos, though the demand for assets was high. After attempting to learn tools to make these videos, he wanted to find a better way to generate this type of content.

This is the creation story of Pictory.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://pictory.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vikramchalana/

S8 Bonus: Dor Laor, ScyllaDB

Wed, 30 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Dor Laor lives North of Tel Aviv, Israel, but travels 4 times out of the year to the states. He loves tech, which drives 200% of his day. Outside of tech, he is married with two teenage kids, and enjoys extreme sports. At the time, he does snowboarding and mountain biking, mentioning that the best place to mountain bike was a ski resort in France. He would love to do surfing, but hasn't found the time to hit the waves around Israel.

Dor and his co-founder met long ago at another startup. Post acquisition, they listed ideas of what to start building next. They decided to build an operating system like to Linux, and noticed that databases still didn't run faster within their system. They decided to tackle distributed NoSQL databases instead.

This is the creation story of ScyllaDB.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.scylladb.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dor-laor/

S8 E20: Artem Koren, Sembly AI

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Artem Koren is now based in Amsterdam, and has been a techy since his early years. He was programming Q-basic and C in 5th grade, and building web applications in High School. Post school at Columbia, he started working at .COM businesses, but found himself dis-enchanted with the state of AI. Outside of tech, he loves chess, attending running club, Jui Jitsu, and cosmology - the study of space, black holes, and things like that.

Artem and his co-founder have years of experience in digital transformation. With the latest innovations in AI proving useful, they decided to make digesting, and utilizing, information from meetings easier - using said AI.

This is the creation story of Sembly AI.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.sembly.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akoren

From Tools and Weapons: Putting AI in the Hands of People Everywhere

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Hello Listeners. This week, we're sharing another episode of the Tools and Weapons podcast, brought to you by our friends at Microsoft.

Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer, Kevin Scott, believes that for AI to benefit everyone, humans must be at the center of its development. His philosophy was shaped by his rural Virginia roots, where he belonged to a hardworking community that used creativity, perseverance, and curiosity to support each other and tackle practical challenges.

In this episode, you'll hear about how a culture grounded in human values can lead to safer products, how AI can increase access to critical services like education and medicine, and what Chopin’s G Minor Ballade can teach us about AI and human connection.

You can find more Tools and Weapons at codestory.co/toolsandweapons.

Links

Website: codestory.co/toolsandweapons

S8 Bonus: Adam Nathan, Almanac

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Adam Nathan was born and raised in New York. His parents were small business owners, his brother is entrepreneur, so starting a business was just in his blood. He has always been interested in complex systems, working in the government and in the airline industry. Outside of tech, he is a big skier, cyclist and works out every day. He's also a big reader, and reads 60-70 books a year.

Adam found himself inundated with messages and emails, all surrounding the workflow of reviewing and approving documentation. Keying off what Github accomplished for developers, he wanted to became a centralized, beautiful place, for business users to collaborate on documents.

This is the creation story of Almanac.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://almanac.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adampnathan/

S8 Bonus: Idan Plotnik, Apiiro

Wed, 23 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Idan Plotnik is a half Russian and half Moroccan, which mainly shows up in the way he cooks. First and foremost though, he is a geek, having worked in computer security from his early days. Outside of tech, he is married to a professional surfer, so he and his wife surf Israel's waves regularly. He is a dad as well, and stays busy putting together lego sets, or cooking delicious fish dishes, in traditional moroccan style.

In the past, Idan sold two companies, one of which to Microsoft. At Microsoft, he felt the challenge and the pain of talking to risk management and security folks, begging them to integrate their tooling into the development process - which slowed down delivery. After spending so much time on non-value add activities, he decided to set out and optimize this process.

This is the creation story of Apiiro.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://apiiro.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/idanplotnik/

S8 E19: Yann Ravel-Sibillot, Flowie

Tue, 22 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Yann Ravel-Sibillot lives in France, and has a lot of hobbies. Ones that he mentioned was kayaking and rock climbing, which he has been doing for more than 10 years. He is passionate about AI, and built his first robot 15 years ago. Outside of tech, he is happily married and really enjoys Italian food. When I asked him what I should do when I come to France, he mentioned trying all the different food genres, regionally across the country.

When Yann was a CTO of a group of restaurants, he was pursued by the accounting department, to ensure he was validating invoices. Though he tried to build a system for this, it wasn't enough to alleviate the pain of the problem. Eventually, he set out to build the right solution to solve this.

This is the creation story of Flowie.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.get-flowie.com/en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannravelsibillot/

S8 Bonus: Danielle Shaul, Nilus

Fri, 18 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Danielle Shaul was born and raised in Tel Aviv, as an only child with a dog she dearly loved. She has always been passionate about building and creating things, often assembling and disassembling things in her home. She loves to travel, and spent many years in Asia, Europe and in the US. Outside of tech, she likes ceramics and reading - specifically, biohacking, mindset books, or learning to become a better leader. When asked her favorite food, she says her Mom's - who can cook anything well.

Prior to her current startup, Danielle had to create home grown solutions for financial workflows - cause back then, when she was at Fundbox, software for these workflows didn't exist. Her and her co-founder clicked over the idea to build the software that she wished she had.

This is the creation story of Nilus.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.nilus.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-shaul-735b1b92/

S8 Bonus: Dan & Caroline, Overplay

Wed, 16 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Caroline Strzalka is a Philadelphia native, born and raised. She is a first generation American, and is grateful to be in a place where she can run her own company. Her parents are from Argentina, with a Polish heritage - so she pointed out that they speak a lot of languages in her home. Outside of tech, she loves to hike and be in the trees. And, she calls herself the MacGyver of the kitchen, meaning she can take anything from the fridge and make a stellar meal out of it.

Dan Projansky is a country boy, only moving to NYC when he was 11 years old. He is a father of a 14 year old, whom he adores, and is an avid mountain biker and motorcyclist. In fact, he has owned over 50 different motorcycles across different brands over the years. Originally, he attended to school for film, but after working at Sesame Street, he started to work in computers and development - and that is where he met Caroline.

One day, Dan was watching some videos online. He had a thought, a desire, a want - to play the video like it was a game. And eventually, this idea turned into a business, which he started with his co-founder Caroline.

This is the creation story of Overplay.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://overplay.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolinestrzalka/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-projansky/

S8 E18: Ritukar Vijay, Ottonomy

Tue, 15 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Ritukar Vijay has been in tech for around 16 years. He has always been fascinated with new things above and beyond the normal day to day grind. During his studies, he was interested in robotics - which he describes as the culmination of computer and physical sciences. Outside of tech, he is married with a 6 year old son. He mentioned that his son is inquisitive, and is requesting robot features from home, preparing to build his first robot in the future.

Prior to COVID and during lockdowns, Ritukar started ideating about the autonomous delivery for an industry that was overlooked for automation. They started to created robots to service the industry, and did so - from their guest rooms.

This is the creation story of Ottonomy.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://ottonomy.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritukarvijay/

S8 Bonus: Mike Long, Kosli

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Mike Long describes himself as near really sitting still. He was born in Australia, but when he was 9 years old, he moved to Scotland. Post school, he worked in England, then Norway, then China... and now back to Norway. Early on his career, he worked in the Oil & Gas building larger robots for the industry. Outside of tech, he enjoys spending time with his family and taking long walks in the forest with his dog.

At his previous company, Mike was the CTO of a DevOps consultancy company. He realized that they would see the same problem over and over again in regulated environments - businesses needed a process to follow to ensure changes were tracked, and they could in turn, "keep the receipts" for proof of changes.

This is the creation story of Kosli.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.kosli.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikelongoslo/

S8 Bonus: Suman Kanuganti, Personal AI

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Suman Kanuganti is married with a 5 year old daughter, which he greatly enjoys. He loves robots, as a robotics major, but describes himself as a human oriented person - one who wants to elevate the experience of people. Outside of tech, he enjoys playing volleyball and is a foodie with his wife. They enjoy yellow tail sashimi and modern Mexican fusion, but at home, they enjoy remixing cuisines with different spices.

In his previous company, Suman built solutions around augmenting the human experience for blind people. Moving forward, he wanted to expand this to allow people to use AI to create long term memory, personally for you and your loved ones.

This is the creation story of Personal AI.

Sponsors

Links

Website: http://www.personal.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kanugantisuman/

S8 E17: Jay Sarmaz, Truve.ai

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Jay Sarmaz studied operations research in college, which he describes as the science of solving problems and maximizing value with limited resources. His studies led him to learn computer science to utilize in solving this problems, and eventually, he got his PhD from Georgia Tech. He is driven by curiosity to solve big problems, but outside of tech, he is a soccer fan, plays musical instruments, and spends time with his wife and 5 year old son.

Jay and his team were doing consulting, prior to launching their current startup. During COVID, law firms were going through significant digital transformation, and didn't know what to do with all of their data. Wanting to scale their consultancy, they wanted to find a better way to provide analysis at scale.

This is the creation story of Truve.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://truve.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaysarmaz/

S8 Bonus: Reza Farahani, WFHomie

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Reza Farahani has a background in engineering, and was heavily influenced by his family. In particular, his Uncle was a fighter jet engineer, which he thought was the coolest job in the world. He graduated from Waterloo, and became a data scientist - but eventually moved towards entrepreneurship. Outside of tech, he lives in Ontario and loves to rock climb and boulder. He enjoys the community aspect of the sport, and has access to gyms and outdoor boulders where he lives. He also passionate about food, enjoying Greek and Turkish food in Greek Town where he lives.

Reza and his co-founder wanted to engage workers who were working remote - productivity, mental health, etc. And they believed that these parameters were vectors in measuring the performance of remote teams.

This is the creation story of WFHomie.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.wfhomie.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reza-farahani-/

S8 Bonus: Alex Bovee, ConductorOne

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Alex Bovee is first and foremost a family man. Time outside of his life as a founder is dictated by his family. He's married with 2 kids, and can be found shuttling kids to soccer or dance practices in his spare time. During COVID, he was able to pickup guitar, using YouTube to teach himself. His family got him a super nice Taylor acoustic that he plays on today.

Alex spent some time at Okta, and what he noticed was cloud forward companies struggled with managing identify access and governance. This left companies wasting money on users, and in an insecure state. He saw a big opportunity in this space, and with his co-founder, decided to tackle this problem head on.

This is the creation story of ConductorOne.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.conductorone.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexbovee/

S8 E16: Job Rietbergen, Alphadoc

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Job Rietbergen lives in Amsterdam, which he says is awesome because there are so many types of amazing cuisine. He has always been a creator of things - art, photography, product and technology, to name a few. He finds its an odd trait to create art and be in tech, as there are not a lot of people who lead from a designers mind. He has been supporting early stage startups for the last 13 years. Outside of tech, he loves to do anything boarding, and mentioned he loves to snowboard in Austria every year.

In his last role, Job was in charge of marketing and growth, of an integrations platform in healthcare tech. He dreamt of a way to enable developers and users of this platform to easy understand and implement their system. Once he met up with his co-founder, who was passionate about solving the same thing, they set out to solve this problem.

This is the creation story of Alphadoc.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://alphadoc.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/developer-experience/

Beyond Bots - Daniel Jordan, Wayflyer

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Today we are dropping another special episode of the Code Story podcast, as part of our series entailed Beyond Bots: the REAL impact of AI on financial services, brought to you by our friends at Ntropy. As a reminder, Ntropy is the most accurate financial data standardization and enrichment API. They can take in any data source, any geography, and understand / enrich a financial transition in milliseconds. Made for developers, for fast, easy implementation. Check out their product at Ntropy.com.

Guest: Daniel Jordan, Product & Data at Wayflyer

Questions:

Tell me and the audience what Wayflyer is.
How long have you been a customer of Ntropy? When did this come into play?
You mention on your website that you exist to provide funding and insights, essentially helping eCommerce companies grow faster and achieve their potential. Why focus on eCommerce?
Is the “software layer” - IE fintech - on top of finance going to make this better? How?
Generative AI and LLMs are the talk of the town, are you using these approaches within Wayflyer? How?
How do you prioritize what is important to your eCommerce business customers?
What matters to your customers.... do eCommerce businesses expect the funding process to be easy and like magic?
What is the real impact of AI on finance going to be?

Links

Website: https://www.ntropy.com/
Website: https://www.wayflyer.com/

S8 Bonus: David Frank, Stonehaven

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000

David Frank grew up in Denver, CO, and as expected, he grew up loving skiing. He mentioned that Vale was his favorite mountain, and continues to love it today. He graduated from the University of Michigan, and did investment banking in San Francisco, before starting his own firm. Outside of tech, he has two kids and by the time this episode releases, he will be a married man! His family loves to ski, especially his son, who races down the mountain competitively.

From his experience in the industry and in the market, David saw a gap for small and medium size organizations to have a system to run financial businesses on. He and his team set forth to build the next generation, broker dealer platform - one that is better than they could build themselves, and better than what the large institutions have.

This is the creation story of Stonehaven.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://stonehaven-llc.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-frank-cfa-68897a5/

S8 Bonus: Max Walker, Piton Labs

Wed, 26 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Max Walker lives in Eastern Upstate NY (or Vermont light, as he calls it), with his grumpy, elderly cat. He comes from a tech background, graduating with a computer science degree, and working as a software engineer. Along the way, he fell in love with entrepreneurship, and dove into the startup world. Outside of tech, he is an avid rock climber, hiker, and loves super spicy food as a vegetarian.

Max is a startup veteran, and given he had gone down the building and fundraising route, he wanted to do something a bit different. What he really loved was the building, messy beginning - so he built a business around that early stage.

This is the creation story of Piton Labs.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://pitonlabs.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxwellwalkerwindrush/

S8 E15: Alex Louisy, Upflow

Tue, 25 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Alex Louisy is 37 years old, and came from a non tech family. In the past, he worked in investment banking, and then a small telco company. But, he was always drawn to tech entrepreneurship and eventually, he stepped into the possibilities in this world. Outside of tech, he is married with two kids, and enjoys being outside, gardening, and hiking through the forest outside of his small house.

Alex spent many years in investment banking, financing large companies. He set out to try to provide B2B lending, and discovered that most people needed to borrow money because they weren't getting paid on time. He and his team decided to focus on this very simple problem, which uncovered huge opportunity.

This is the creation story of Upflow.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://upflow.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlouisy/

Beyond Bots - Bryce Crawford, Meow

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Guest: Bryce Crawford, CTO & Co-founder at Meow

Questions:

Remind the audience what Meow does.
How long have you been a customer of Ntropy? When did this come into play?
Last we talked about passing on revenue to customers in banking. It’s hard given the tight margins. How is Meow thinking about that today?
Is the “software layer” on top of finance going to make this better? How?
Generative AI and LLMs are the talk of the town, are you seeing any use cases? Or, are you working on an in-house solutions?
There are many new decisions you have to make as a CTO. How does you prioritize around what will make a difference in the market?
What matters to your customers.... are people expecting finance to be magical or simply reliable?
What is the real impact of AI on finance going to be in your eyes?

Links

S8 Bonus: Matthew O'Riordan, Ably

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Matthew O'Riordan is originally from South Africa. He left school and sort of fell into engineering, cause he just loved it. In fact, the craft brought him to the UK, where he saw more opportunity. Outside of tech, he likes adrenaline sports. He was a competitively skydiver, participating in free style routines, free-fly and vertical formation. He pointed out that it's a great way to clear your head, cause you can't think about anything else when you're skydiving.

Matt unearthed interesting things as he was building prototype after prototype to solve real time experiences. He wanted to build a new generation of real time communication developer tools, that provide collaboration opportunity... and that just work.

This is the creation story of Ably.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://ably.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattoriordan/

S8 Bonus: Ali Nichols, Getaway

Wed, 19 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Ali Nichols has been obsessed with real estate since she was a little kid. She has always wanted to marry whatever she was doing with real estate, and is pretty stoked to have achieved that. Outside of tech, she loves to spend time with her family and friends, hiking, golfing or boating. In fact, when she and her significant other were living in San Fransisco, they boat a sailboat and were obsessed with the craft. But now that the live in Miami, they've switched over to power boating, to better enjoy all that Florida water has to offer.

Ali and her Co-founder previously worked together at a real estate startup, specifically in the single family rental space. They both really struggled with the idea that their friends were priced out of the market, and wanted to make opportunities available to more people.

This is the creation story of Getaway.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.getaway.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicnichols/

S8 E14: Dan Lines, LinearB

Tue, 18 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Dan Lines is married, with a 3 year old daughter and a baby on the way. He has lived all over the US - 7 years in Boston, 5 years in LA, and he now lives in Upstate New York. He has always been into the creation of things, being the kid in high school burning and selling CD's, building computers on the side, or creating an early sports streaming platform, before streaming was a thing.

Before Dan founded his current company with his co-founder Ori, he was an engineering leader, with 100 engineers reporting to him. During that journey, he catalogued all of the pains he felt as a VP of Engineering. Post acquisition of his prior company, he decided to build a system to solve those pains.

This is the creation story of LinearB.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://linearb.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-lines/

Beyond Bots - Ilia Zintchenko, Ntropy

Fri, 14 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Guest: Ilia Zintchenko, CTO & Co-founder of Ntropy

Questions:

We talked with Nare about Ntropy and LLM's. But let's dig in more.... what is your LLM stack? How did you choose it, what were the considerations?
What are the system costs in doing this?
How do you optimize on reliability - what sort of lever are you pulling to ensure reliability?'
How are you thinking about predictive vs generative learning?
You guys have been using small and large LM's since the beginning - why is this significant?
What data sources have you been using, and are there some that are better than others?'
Have you had to scrub these data sources in any way to prep them for your LM?
What is the major benefit that Ntropy is providing by using LLM?
What would you go back and change if you could?

Links

Website: https://www.ntropy.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iliazintchenko/

S8 Bonus: Einat Sitbon, iFocus Health

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Einat Sitbon has always been intrigued by nature, and all of its parts. She studied biology in school, all the way through getting her PhD in Computational Biology. This field also introduced her to computation in general, and programming. Outside of tech, she is married with 2 kids, and loves to hike. Her and her family share a love of fiction and fantasy books, and made mention her love of NK Jemision and JRR Tolkien.

Einat's and her sister are very close, and at one point, her sister mentioned that her son was ADHD. They found it difficult to understand how there wasn't a tool to help measure the concentration of a person with this diagnosis. They both started digging into how to solve this problem.

This is the creation story of iFocus Health.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://ifocustest.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/%F0%9F%87%BA%F0%9F%87%A6-einat-sitbon-b70a7b/

S8 Bonus: Sharekh Shaikh, CleverX

Wed, 12 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Sharekh Shaikh has an interesting background, having grown up (almost) on a farm in India, within a small town. He spent most of his time with animals and pets, more than people, and followed his father around as he travelled for work. He is big into motorbikes and reading philosophy, specifically stoics, and tends to read the older books over newer podcast or material. He's also trying to learn piano, but admits he's struggling in that arena.

When Sharekh was working for Gartner, he faced a problem around fraud, using online services for research. When he thought more about this, he decided he wanted to build a platform fueling market research... built on transparency and trust.

This is the creation story of CleverX.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://cleverx.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharekh-shaikh-4591874/

S8 E13: Colleen Schnettler, HelloQuery

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Colleen Schnettler was a stay at home Mom for many years, taking care of her 3 children. When she was looking to return to work, she was looking for remote - and it seemed that programming was the best avenue. She taught herself rails development, with the goal of starting her own company. Outside of tech, she spends time with her family outdoors, and claims she is a meat and potatoes kinda gal, with some bark thins for desert.

Recently, Colleen and her co-founder did a pivot of their previous offering, which was a package to solve reporting problems by embed them into your application. They are now focused on a SaaS tool, to provide this functionality for you.

This is the creation story of HelloQuery.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://helloquery.com/
Website: https://hammerstone.dev/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colleen-schnettler/

S8 Bonus: Eduardo Abeliuk, Teselagen

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Eduardo Abeliuk is originally from Santiago, Chile, where he spent the first few decades of his life. From early days, he had a deep curiosity to understand the world around him, which led him to study physics and electrical engineering. Post school, he joined an MIT startup, prior to obtaining his PhD from Stanford. Outside of tech, he likes to read books about longetivit, and listen to the Lex Friedman podcast. He also walks for at least an hour a day, and enjoys hiking, biking and time with family and friends.

Together with some colleagues from Stanford, Eduardo felt the pains of planning research projects. This process contained several processes that could have been automated through software. So, they decided to set out and build an enterprise solution for R&D projects.

This is the creation story of Teselegen.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://teselagen.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eduardoabeliuk/

Beyond Bots - Naré Vardanyan, Ntropy

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Today we are kicking off a special and new series entailed Beyond Bots: the REAL impact of AI on financial services, brought to you by our friends at Ntropy. As a reminder, Ntropy is the most accurate financial data standardization and enrichment API. They can take in any data source, any geography, and understand / enrich a financial transition in milliseconds. Made for developers, for fast, easy implementation. Check out their product at Ntropy.com.

Guest: Naré Vardanyan, CEO & Co-founder of Ntropy

Questions:

Tell me what a large language model is. Is there any difference between this and deep learning models?
What is the difference between language models and LLM's?
What sort of data sets were your models pre-trained on? How long does that take?
How does the cost of training these models factor into your offering?
Can you talk about latency as a key factor in this process?
You've told me Ntropy has been doing this since the beginning, but give me a little more - how does this fit into Ntropy's approach?
What is in the future for Ntropy in this space, specifically as it relates to LLM's and financial services?

Links

Website: https://www.ntropy.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/narevardanyan/

S8 Bonus: Adriaan van Rossum, Simple Analytics

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Adriaan van Rossum is a tech guy even at home. He likes to tinker with home automation, like turning on the lights - which his girlfriend doesn't like the home automation experiments at times. Outside of tech, he does kite surfing, and travels around the world. He really enjoyed Thailand, specifically the food there, as he is a vegetarian.

For several years, Adriaan was a freelancer. Each time he built an application for his clients, he did the usual song and dance with Google Analytics - he copy and pasted the script. This didn't feel right, and his girlfriend prompted him to build his own... so he did.

This is the creation story of Simple Analytics.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.simpleanalytics.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaanvanrossum/

S8 E12: Stephanie Mertz, Eisen

Wed, 05 Jul 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Stephanie Mertz is into software development because she likes to create something from nothing - IE the blank canvas nature of coding. Outside of tech, she loves to garden, grow her own vegetables, and build things out of wood. She also has as beehive, which she claimed was a fantastic way to observe the natural creative process - and decompress from a screen.

Stephanie and her co-founder were drawn to solving problems for the behind the scenes processes - aka the boring business stuff. When digging into these problems, they kept running into the fact that no one really had a solid escheatment process... and eventually, they decided to tackle it.

This is the creation story of Eisen.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.witheisen.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephmertz/

S8 Bonus: Fredrik Björk, Grafbase

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Fredrik Björk is originally from Sweden, but has spent many years in San Francisco. He got started coding in BASIC on his Commodore 64 (while also playing video games, of course). Post graduating from RIT, he has been involved in many startups, like Avatars United and The Real Real. Outside of tech, he is a Dad of two kids and likes to run - specifically marathons. Beyond that, he likes wind surfing and wing foil.

Fredrik noticed that the patterns of development has changed towards outsourcing over building everything in house over the past decade. Fast forward to 2021, great services exist to empower developers to ship faster. Fredrik wanted to build a service like this for the API layer, and below.

This is the creation story of Grafbase.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://grafbase.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fbjork/

S8 Bonus: Jaclyn Ling, Hatchways

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Jaclyn Ling is a super competitive person, and has been her entire life. Whether it's board games with her family, or playing sports in her younger years, she wants to win. She still plays sports today, and watches basketball, specifically the Miami Heat or Toronto Raptors. Outside of that, she is a low key person, enjoying taking walks, hanging at the local coffee shop, and thrift shopping.

Jaclyn is a self proclaimed terrible interviewer, which never gave her the best foot forward when looking for jobs. When her co-founder and she wanted to solve a problem in the space of hiring, they wanted to enable people to have access to more opportunities, and get noticed better for your first job.

This is the creation story of Hatchways.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://hatchways.io
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaclynling

S8 Bonus: Shawn Cao, Columns

Wed, 28 Jun 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Shawn Cao lives in Kirkland, just outside of Seattle. He immigrated to the US, and is married with 4 kids. He loves to hike and play soccer with his children, and even though Seattle can be rainy and cloudy for half the year, he admits that the summers are fantastic for being outside. He also admits he stops by Starbucks occasionally, but couldn't confirm if it tastes better at the home store in Seattle.

Shawn noticed, through his time at larger companies like Pinterest and Microsoft, that the path to get data insights and analytics leans heavily on engineering, and takes a long time. He thought, there must be a way to make an easy, quick tool to enable people outside of engineering to do this themselves. So he built the Canva for Data.

This is the creation story of Columns.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://columns.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caoxhua/

S8 E11: Lauren Long, Ampersand

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Lauren Long was originally born and raised in China, and moved to Canada when she was 10. She had to learn English for the first time, which taught her how to embrace hard things and challenges. She attended University in Canada, and started her first company there called BoxIt. Outside of tech, she is an outdoors person - post moving from China, where she was more of a city girl. She loves to hike, rock climb, and do yoga. She also loves to cook, and claimed she learned to cook a whole duck once, creating 5 meals from all the parts.

Lauren was a key developer at Firebase, and post that, she started thinking about her past experiences and what areas could be improved - and she landed on integrations. Once she met her now co-founder, they realized they both were passionate about solving this problem.

This is the creation story of Ampersand.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.withampersand.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenzlong/

S8 Bonus: P. Scott Bening, Monosol & Author

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Scott Bening is a 63 year old kid at heart who grew up in Buffalo, NY. He got a degree in chemistry and went into the plastics industry. Outside of his profession, he is super active - playing drums in a rock band, racing GT race cars competitively, kayaking, hiking and golfing. He has been married for 35 years, with 2 older children.

Many years ago, Scott joined a small division of a company in 1989. Scott took the company to new heights, developing and selling a material that you probably use every day - the film that wraps Tide Pods. Since retired from the company, he is advising other companies, and helping entrepreneurs through his book, titled Formulating Solutions.

This is Scott's creation story of Monosol.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.monosol.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/p-scott-bening-a8225b14/
https://www.formulatingsolutionsbook.com/

S8 Bonus: Matt Martin, Clockwise

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Matt Martin has always been a computer nerd, even way back in Elementary School, learning to use a Mac and learning Hypercard. In Middle School, he discovered the internet and programming in HTML - and he was hooked. That said, he didn't grow up around tech folks and eventually got into public policy and went to law school. After being a litigator for a while, he decided to ditch the law industry, move to the Bay Area and get into tech. Outside of tech, he is married with 2.5 year old twin girls. They live in downtown San Francisco, and they love to go on bike rides together.

Matt considers himself a productivity nerd, and is always looking for ways to improve his workflow. At a prior role, he was focusing on individual optimization to schedules. And what he realized, is that time is not an individual problem - but a team problem to be solved.

This is the creation story of Clockwise.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.getclockwise.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/voxmatt/

S8 E10: Ido Shamun, Daily Dev

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Ido Shamunn cut his teeth on the C programming language, while studying Applied Mathematics. He was unsure while studying if he should go Computer Science, but he mentioned that his Applied Math degree helped him understand better what goes on behind the scenes. He's happily married, and enjoys playing music, since way back in Junior High with the keyboard. He has since moved into guitar, and eventually into the drums and heavier music.

Ido and his co-founders started out building a side project, building a tool to help themselves keep track of what's going on in the industry. After they built a quick tool to aggregate information, they thought that maybe other developers would be interested in this solution.

This is the creation story of Daily Dev.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://daily.dev/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ido-shamun-aa8628a3/

The Closer: Toys R Us

Mon, 19 Jun 2023 10:00:00 +0000

I have another special episode of the Code Story podcast today, where I'm sharing another great podcast I've just been made aware of. It's called The Closer, from the team at Project Brazen, hosted by financial journalist Aimee Keane. The show focuses on pulling out the high octane emotion and exponential stakes that underscore todays biggest acquisition or investment headlines.

In the episode I'm sharing today, the host takes you inside the final days of Toys R Us with Lauren Hirsch, the reporter who first revealed the iconic company's impending bankruptcy. You can expect to hear juicy tidbits around what drove the company out of business.

Check out The Closer, and subscribe today, on your favorite podcast catcher.

And thanks again for listening.

Links

S8 Bonus: Andy Wilson, Logikcull

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Andy Wilson lives in Central Oregon, which he claims is an adult playground. He loves to ski, hike, and enjoy all outdoor recreation available to him. His favorite food is a medium-rare steak, which I gotta say is an excellent choice. He got his tech degree in the 90's, and fell into the world of legal tech.

Previously, Andy worked for a company that printed email for legal teams - like truck loads of email. He decided to startup a business to digitize this process, using servers in his dining room. Eventually, he moved to the cloud, and started using AI.

This is the creation story of Logikcull.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.logikcull.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andylogik

S8 Bonus: Dr. Eamonn Keogh, FarmSense

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Dr. Eamonn Keogh is a globally renowned expert in data mining, machine learning, and information retrieval. He is pioneering the field of computational entomology. Outside of tech, he is originally from Dublin, Ireland, but came to California in the 80's. He misses his family in Ireland, but he loves the cuisine in California, specifically Mexican food. I made sure to invite him to Texas though, cause we have great Mexican food.

A perk of Dr. Keogh's job as a professor, he gets to play with toys (in his words). He picked up a science toy one day and decided to see if he could pick up sound from plant insects. When it worked, he decided to take it to the next level.

This is the creation story of FarmSense.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.farmsense.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eamonn-keogh-96ab25143/

S8 Bonus: Srini Srinivasan, Aerospike

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Srini Srinivasan grew up in India, during a time when you could go do whatever you wanted during the summer. So he explored and experienced many things, tech and non-tech. He was very into sports and competition, and wanted to be a cricket super star. He didn't start coding until he went off to college, and interestingly enough, there were many startups formed from his class. In the early days, he really loved the Assembly language (which I can attest is not the norm!).

Srini was working in a company focused on mobile and adtech related work. During this time, he discovered that all database tech existing were lacking. He and his co-founder decided that they were the right pair to build a better system.

This is the creation story of Aerospike.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://aerospike.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drvsrini/

S8 E9: Lilac Bar David, Lili

Tue, 13 Jun 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Lilac Bar David has been in the banking and payments space for over 20 years. Previously, she was the Co-founder & CEO of Pepper, a banking system focused on millennials and young adults. Outside of tech, she has 3 kids, and enjoys everything to do with the sea - paddle boarding, swimming, etc. She enjoys paddle boarding because it helps her to clear her head. And when it comes to food, she is a fan of Thai, and claims that New York has the best Thai food - outside of Thailand, of course.

Lilac and her co-founders started to think about business owners, and all of the things they had to manually, and in disconnected, non-optimal ways. They wanted to build a banking solution that was tailored towards these users - starting with freelancers.

This is the creation story of Lili.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://lili.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lilachbardavid/

S8 Bonus: Prasad Kawthekar, Dashworks

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Prasad Kawthekar grew up in India, and eventually came stateside to school in Wisconsin. He took a java coding class, and was immediately hooked - which led to him pursuing computer science, focusing on artificial intelligence. He met his tribe during school, and stayed on for further academic experiences. Outside of tech, he lives in the Bay Area and enjoys being outside in nature.

There was a time in his previous role that he was searching for info related to his role. After 7 email threads and 8 weeks passing, he finally located the document. This experience blew him away, and seeded the problem he now seeks to solve.

This is the creation story of Dashworks.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.dashworks.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prasadkawthekar/

S8 Bonus: Kwindla Kramer, Daily

Wed, 07 Jun 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Kwindla Kramer has always been interested in building things, and his parents gave him lots of opportunity. He spent his early days learning to program on the Commodore 64, and playing old games like Loadrunner. He was super interested in the internet while in College, and in 1996, he got the opportunity to be apart of the MIT Media lab. Outside of tech, he is a quasi vegan, and enjoys the foggy beach living on the western edge of San Francisco.

After exiting his last startup, Kwin took some time to figure out what he wanted to do next. During that time, he just started coding on projects, and came across WebRTC, which allowed real time communication for the web. This tech catalyzed a tipping point in his mind, and led him to build video experiments on top of it.

This is the creation story of Daily.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://daily.co
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kwkramer/

S8 E8: Gilad Uziely, Sequence

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Gilad Uziely is married with 2 daughters. He told me he met his wife on a taxi in Thailand, but that the story there was for a different podcast. He has always been an entrepreneur, along with his wife. They have built 2 small hotels in Italy, where his wife is from. Outside of tech and these things, he lives by the beach in Tel Aviv, and loves to surf.

Recently, Gilad and his team built a product called Lance (you might remember his co-founder Oona from Season 5). This was a Neo-bank for the self employed, which was built on the idea of stacks. When they figured out they needed to pivot, they moved towards focusing on financial routing.

This is the creation story of Sequence.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.getsequence.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giladuziely

S8 Bonus: Nooshin Alibhai & Eric Klimuk, Supportbench

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Nooshin Alibhai has a background in sales, event planning, and entrepreneurship. Outside of her professional life, she enjoys latin dancing, which is actually where she met her co-founder Eric. Eric Klimuk has also been in entrepreneurial roles throughout his life, starting companies early on in his life. Eventually, he dove into enterprise customer support, which led him to his current venture today. He attributes his love for salsa dancing as a major part of his professional successes, and has danced on ESPN. Both Nooshin and Eric enjoy spending time with family and friends, to help decompress from startup life.

Erik spent many years in Customer Support, and found it incredibly difficult to deploy a new platform into his support group. He set out and built a toolset for the company he was at to use - and it went viral. When he figured out nothing existed in the market like this, he decided build something to the world

This is the creation story of SupportBench.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.supportbench.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nooshin-alibhai-2a0795177/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericklimuk/

S8 Bonus: Matt Swalley & Hikari Senju, Omneky

Wed, 31 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Hikari Senju grew up in Westchester, NY, and was exposed to tech early on, as his family worked at IBM. His Dad is also a painter, so he has been driven through the intersection of art and tech. He studied Computer Science at Harvard, and was cross registered at MIT. It was at MIT that his passions united, and he knew that his life goals would be aligned between art and technology. He started his first couple of businesses while still in college,

Matt Swalley graduated from Indiana University business school, and was influenced by his Dad and Mom, who were both business people. Post school, he joined a leadership development program at AT&T, and led sales teams in several different locations. Post getting his MBA, he got deep into data to analyze the big trends in the business world.

In one of his earliest ventures, Hikari was leading marketing efforts across multiple digital channels. He saw an opportunity to use generative AI and omni-channel marketing to optimize how content is generated, and how well it performs. At the same time, Matt was researching great folks building companies around data - and found Hikari.

This is the creation story of Omneky.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.omneky.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-swalley-59249533/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hikari-senju-63780199/

S8 E7: Jason Boehmig, Ironclad

Tue, 30 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Jason Boehmig is lucky to be in tech, in his words. He wasn't sure what he wanted to do post college, and ended up at Lehman Brothers. In reflecting on what was unique about this moment in time, he decided it was tech's influence - and he wanted to be a part of it. Outside of tech, he reads a lot, and enjoys music, specifically collecting vinyl records and listening (they do sound better).

Jason was working as a corporate attorney, and was fascinated with the fact that no company had a good way to handle contracts. Even Google was building their own internal version to handle this. He and his co-founder felt like the problem was pervasive, and wanted to change that.

This is the creation story of Ironclad.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://ironcladapp.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jboehmig

S8 Bonus: Adam Judelson, NetworkNerd

Thu, 25 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Day to day, Adam Judelson is obsessed with complex problem sets in the product world. This has resulted in him getting more and more excited about simple, but powerful, productivity tools. He comes from Silicon Valley, joining Palantir Technologies in the early days, followed up by some VC backed startups. Outside of tech, he spends a lot of his free time with his kids, riding bikes and polishing up his Dad joke trophies. He also does ocean swimming, and loves the challenge to get out past the waves.

When Adam was a Palantir, he was building great relationships with his colleagues. Then he realized that the relationships he had in his life before had moved on, or changed in natural ways. He started to wonder if there was a way to build something easy, to store information about people and prompt you to checkin with important people.

This is the creation story of NetworkNerd.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.networknerd.app/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-judelson-25441583/

S8 Bonus: Vlad Matsiiako, Infisical

Wed, 24 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Vlad Matsiiako was born in the Ukraine, but moved to the Netherlands to study his undergrad. He was one of the first data scientists at Bunq. He eventually got his Masters at Cornell, and actually worked at Figma, around the time of their acquisition - which he mentioned was super exciting. Outside of tech, he enjoys tennis and traveling, especially to Europe, meeting people and hearing their stories... and of course trying the food. His favorite place to go has been Portugal.

Vlad and his co-founder were previously working on other startup projects. And one of the problems they encountered on a regular basis was secrets management. After talking to like minded industry folks, they figured out that this was a MUCH bigger problem, and needed to be solved.

This is the creation story of Infisical.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://infisical.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vmatsiiako/

S8 E6: Bryce Crawford, Meow

Tue, 23 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Bryce Crawford had a pretty simple path into tech. He attended school at Vanderbilt, originally wanting to be a history major. But after observing his Dad's role in tech sales, he thought the industry looked like a good way to make money. He's worked for Capital One, Gemini and Facebook, specifically on Instagram shops. Outside of work - he keeps on coding, while trying to exercise, stay in shape, and travel when time permits. Fun fact - he claims to have an addiction to Indian food, and tends to eat at the same restaurant 2-3 times a week.

Bryce and his co-founder wanted to start something together for a long time - but didn't have any good ideas. However, they noticed that there was a ton of disruption and advancement in fintech, and specifically, the majority of folks don't like their financial services provider. They aimed to change that... for business customers, through treasury management.

This is the creation story of Meow.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://meow.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryce-crawford-32164466/

S8 Bonus: Shai Ber & Elad Ben-Israel, Monada & Winglang

Thu, 18 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Shai Ber is 40 years old, living in Tel Aviv. He loves to travel, hike, and eat new kinds of food. He loves to swim at the beach often, but he admits, tech consumes a large amount of his life - and he likes it that way. Elad Ben-Israel is also from Tel Aviv, and is 43 years old - and he jokingly claims that he is the responsible adult in the company. Outside of tech, he enjoys attending burning man, and making sure he gets his workout in,

About year ago, Shai and Elad started a company to make using the cloud easier. As they went about thinking how best to do this, they struck gold in the thought of creating an expressive programming language.

This is the creation story of Monada and Winglang.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://monada.co/
Website: https://www.winglang.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shai-ber-245b1226/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hackingonstuff/

S8 Bonus: Andrew Louder, Louder Co

Wed, 17 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Andrew Louder grew up west of Houston, TX, in a town called Katy. He got into tech during his web mastery class in High School. He's a business graduate from Texas A&M University, and he got a taste of what life would be like as an entrepreneur when he founded a social group of Latin American students. Outside of tech, he lives in Dallas, married with 3 kids, and is enjoying all that life has to offer in that space.

About 6 years ago, Andrew decided to jump out and be on his own, with the hope of making a bigger impact than what he was experiencing. He went the solo consultant right for a while, bringing big firm experience to the table and trying things out. Fast forward to now, he and his team are at the forefront of utilizing AI to help you grow your business.

This is the creation story of Louder Co.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.louderco.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewlouder/

S8 E5: Nikita Federov, Qase

Tue, 16 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Nikita Fedorov has been a tech guy all his life. He loves physics, and eventually decided to try out being a developer, starting out with PHP and doing it for 7 years. Eventually, he moved into leadership and management of engineering teams. Outside of tech, he into his side projects and playing video games, of which is favorite is the game Dark Souls.

While he was an engineering manager, Nikita went looking for a good suite of tools to support manual testing. All of the tools he found were archaic, and looked like they came from the days of the mainframe. He decided to start building a tool that met his own need... and people liked it.

This is the creation story of Qase.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://qase.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nifedorov/

No Priors: Jensen Huang, Founder & CEO of Nvidia

Fri, 12 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

This week, we’re sharing something special: The No Priors podcast. No Priors is your guide to the AI revolution. At this moment of inflection in technology, co-hosts Elad Gil and Sarah Guo ask the world's leading AI engineers, researchers and founders the biggest questions - people like Cristobal Valenzuela, Founder/CEO RunwayML and Kevin Scott, CTO of Microsoft.

They ask questions like: How far away is AGI? What markets are at risk for disruption? How will commerce, culture, and society change? What’s happening in state-of-the-art research? In this episode, Jensen Huang, legendary founder/CEO of Nvidia talks about how Nvidia is powering AI models, their latest chips, how he runs Nvidia, and the AI applications he's most excited about.

You can find No Priors wherever you get your podcasts.

And, thanks again for listening.

Links

S8 Bonus: George Novik, Zerocoder

Thu, 11 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

George Novik's life is his work, so it's strange for him to think of life outside of his startup. But outside of tech, his hobbies include swimming, surfing, and computer games. He loves to surf at the United Emirate States. He is uncertain of the wave sizes there, as the variance is high.

A few years ago, George was hired to build a marketplace for his friends company. Fast forward, he and his team are on a mission to simplify software production, and provide access to vetted, no code developers.

This is the creation story of Zerocoder.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://zerocoder.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nov3k/

S8 Bonus: Rickard Hansson, Weavy

Wed, 10 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Rickard Hansson is 48 years old to date, but started tinkering with his Commodore 64 when he was young. Later in life, he fell in love with building things and distributing it - IE building for others. He built his first commercial product at 15, which was a CRM built in Pascal. Outside of tech, he is a father of 3 and is a movie buff in his spare time. His favorite movie is a story about a tree diver, called Le Grand Blue or "The Big Blue".

In the past, Rickard was running his company named Incentive, making tools for internal teams to collaborate. What they noticed was that there was a major shift towards utilizing third party tools to improve productivity, while developers of said tools had a hard time keeping up. He and his team decided to create the tooling to help them better compete.

This is the creation story of Weavy.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.weavy.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickardh/

S8 E4: Andy Skipper, CTO Craft

Tue, 09 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Andy Skipper currently resides in Belfast, Ireland, though he is from London originally. He's been knee deep in tech since he was 12 years old, as a hobby programmer. He left college early to start his first software development agency, prior to joining the startup world during the .com era. He loves tech, but loves people as well - which lead him into his current venture. Outside of tech, he is a bedroom guitarist, an amateur photographer, and a Dad - which means he plays a log of Minecraft and Roblox.

In the past, Andy was a consulting CTO, going into companies to coach leaders or temporarily fill in for leaders who had left. What he realized was that these leaders would be doing just fine, if they had mentorship and/or coaching available from seasoned veterans. So Andy branched off - and started doing just that.

This is the creation story of CTO Craft.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://ctocraft.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyskipper/

S8 Bonus: Egil Østhus, Unleash

Thu, 04 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Unleash.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.getunleash.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/egilconr/

S8 Bonus: Aviram Hassan, MetalBear & mirrord

Wed, 03 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Aviram Hassan started hacking his way into stuff at a young age, primarily from online multiplayer games. The first game was a fan based game for Pokemon, when he was 8 years old, which was helpful for him to learn English. He served in the Israeli military, prior to become a startup solution architect and backend developer. Outside of tech, he is a family man with a 6 month old, born around the same time as his startup. He also really enjoys coffee, but he admits, he is not obsessive or overly enthusiastic about it.

Given their background, Aviram and his co-founder wanted to build a product based company. In their last company, they didn't really have a developer environment, as it was hard to maintain and didn't represent real data in the production environment. They started thinking about how they could solve this sort of problem.

This is the creation story of Metalbear, and mirrord.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://metalbear.co/, https://mirrord.dev/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aviram-hassan/

S8 E3: Shem Magnezi, Wilco

Tue, 02 May 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Shem Magnezi is from Tel Aviv, and started his software engineering career when he was in high school. It wasn't really professional, just hacking some stuff together, which is the way he learned the typical starting tools like HTML, Javascript, and the like. Post college, he served in the Israeli Military, in intelligence, and then moved into startups, then bigger companies like Facebook, and then - into his current venture. Outside of tech, he is a family man with 2 kids, and he loves to play and watch football (or soccer for us stateside).

Throughout their time in the industry, Shem and his co-founders saw a big gap in the industry - between theoretical knowledge and what is actually done on the job in a company. They wanted to set out and build something to bridge that gap - an immersive experience, that not only prepares engineers... but takes them on a quest.

This is the creation story of Wilco.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.trywilco.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shem-magnezi-45490424/

S8 Bonus: Puneet Gupta, Amberflo

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 21:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Amberflo.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.amberflo.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/puneetguptausa/

S8 Bonus: Glauber Costa, Turso

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 10:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Turso.

Sponsors

Links

S8 E2: Sefi Genis, Firefly

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 10:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Firefly.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.gofirefly.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sefi-genis-90282185
https://www.momtestbook.com/

S8 Bonus: Naré Vardanyan, Ntropy

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 10:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Ntropy.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://ntropy.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/narevardanyan/

S8 Bonus: Ronald Richardson, Fleetbase

Wed, 19 Apr 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Ron Richardson studied robotics and embedded systems in Arizona, and is a former Marine - which is where he got his start in logistics. His biggest influence has been his parents. He mentioned his Mom introduced him to a personal website builder, which kicked off his learning into HTML, PHP and JavaScript. Outside of tech, he has a passion for traveling, and is big into horror games and movies. One of his favorite horror games is Amnesia, and movie is Insidious. He actually built an app to have an ongoing curated playlist for his fans.

Ron previously co-founded a startup in the eCommerce space, focusing on fulfillment in Asia. While he was building the backend for this solution, he noticed there weren't any developer tools for logistics and supply chain. He built an API solution and SDK to help implement common design features for this industry.

This is the creation story of Fleetbase.

Sponsors

Links

S8 E1: Sargun Kaur, Byteboard

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Before Sargun Kaur got into tech, she was anti-wanting to be in tech. Her Dad was an engineer, and she thought the work he did was super boring. She pursued journalism, marine biology, and found her self changing interests a lot as she got bored. Now, she came over to the dark side, and jokes that she is no longer interesting because she is so immersed in what she does. Outside of tech, she loves to travel, building community, and hosting. This boils down to loving bringing people together through multiple means. And finally, she jokes that she is a mediocre instagram poet, enjoying writing semi-deep posts on the platform.

When Sargun was applying at Google, she went through their normal engineering interview process - IE five whiteboard sessions back to back. After getting hired at Google, she struggled with the industry standard for interview questions, via algorithmic riddles, that didn't mirror the actual job. These types of interviews weren't only not fair, but left many great candidates out in the cold.

This is the creation story of Byteboard.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://byteboard.dev/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sargunkaur/

Season 8 - Trailer

Wed, 12 Apr 2023 18:30:00 +0000

What if you had a window into the digital startup world?

What if you could ask the tech veterans what it feels like to create a world class product?

...how to recover from critical mistakes...

...how to scale your solution to the masses?

How do you get from an idea on the back of a napkin, to a fully functioning product?

What if you could hear the human stories about how they delivered technology?

What if there was a show where you could hear those stories?

Sponsors

From Tools and Weapons: Connecting Africa’s Youth to the World

Tue, 11 Apr 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Tools and Weapons, hosted by Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, features conversations with leaders in government, business, and culture that explore the world’s most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

This episode’s guest is Strive Masiyiwa, a pioneer of Africa’s telecoms industry and influential global tech tycoon.

He and Brad discuss Strive’s work to ensure that all 1.3 billion+ Africans get access to digital infrastructure, close the digital skills gap, and invest in the continent’s young entrepreneurs to find innovative solutions for healthcare and food insecurity.

Follow or subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith wherever you get your podcasts.

Links

Website: https://news.microsoft.com/tools-and-weapons-podcast/

S7 Bonus: Rene Morkos, ALICE Technologies

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Rene Morkos is a builder. When he was younger, his Dad told him that he could study anything he wanted, as long as it wasn't Civil Engineering. So... that is exactly what he did. He has built amazing things all over the world, and also, obtained his PhD at Stanford. Outside of technology, he likes to alternate hobbies, and has currently settled into Mountaineering, after spending some time doing Kite Surfing.

Rene was in Afghanistan working on a project, trying to repair the runway that had been struck by RPG's. He was struck by how hard it was to find the optimal way to do a simple project. While he was studying his PhD, he also noticed that constructions sites were under utilized... so he and his team invented a simple algorithm that knew how to build.

This is the reaction story of Alice Technologies.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://alicetechnologies.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renemorkos/

S7 Bonus: Valentin Vasilyev, Fingerprint.com

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Valentin Vasilyev has always been interested in the open source world. His Github account was created way back in 2008 when they started. He always dreamt about contributing to Ruby on Rails, since he developed with it in the past. Outside of tech, he loves cycling - road and mountain, and enjoys good coffee and online shooting games. He's married with 2 kids, and loves living in the midwest, specifically Chicago.

Post getting his green card, Valentin wanted to experiment with the open source library he created, which its worth noting, was starred 6000 times. He decided to keep his library, but spin off a pro version which included a backend. Then he followed up with some landing pages, and payment mechanisms. And then began his focus on accuracy.

This is the creation story of Fingerprint.com.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://fingerprint.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valentin-vasilyev/

S7 E30: Sam Lambert, PlanetScale

Tue, 04 Apr 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Sam Lambert is originally from the UK, and has lived quite a few places during his life. He went to school in India, but now resides in San Francisco. He finds software to be a creative, playful process, and sees people trying to build that away from the process. He feels very lucky to building something that provides fruit and solves problems. Outside of tech, he is married with a 4 year old, and is into cooking and art. I asked about NFT's, given his tech background, but he's not super into that form of art at this time.

Sam spent time working at Github as a VP of Engineering, specifically focusing on infrastructure. He and his team came across Vitess, the backend that ran YouTube, and he took this amazing framework into his current venture to remix their approach of design and scalability.

This is the creation story of PlanetScale.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://planetscale.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isamlambert/

S7 Bonus: Ruben Izmailyan, Quiltt

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Ruben Izmailyan grew up in Armenia originally, then moved to Russia when he was 12. When he was 14, he and his family came to the US, eventually attending school at Brown in Rhode Island. He's an avid BBQer, which fits perfectly now that he is living in Texas with his young family. However, he let me know that he even was into this style of cooking when he was living in Brooklyn - against the wishes of his landlord at the time.

In a previous role, Ruben was made aware that although financial institutions and brokers had access to useful data, normal consumers did not. Starting out with a budgeting app, he and his team ended up pivoting to creating the tooling and infrastructure needed to interact with financial data sets. And this abstraction started to gain traction.

This is the creation story of Quiltt.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.quiltt.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubenizmailyan/

The New Notification Stack for Developers - Drew Youngwerth

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Welcome back listeners, today we are dropping episode in our series entitled The New Notification Stack for Developers, brought to you by our long time friends and sponsors of the Code Story podcast, Courier. As a reminder, Courier is developer infrastructure for product notifications, making it easier to deliver the notification experience that your customers expect. Check out their product to learn more at Courier.com

Guest: Drew Youngwerth, Software Manager at Courier

Links

Website: https://courier.com/codestory
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-youngwerth/

S7 E29: Manik Suri & Lucas Tepman, Therma

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Manik Suri calls himself a jack of all trades. He went about his career doing lots of different things, and figured out most of what he didn't want to do. He started out an academic, then went into private equity investment, then did a spin in Government, then went to law school - and finally, landed in the tech world. He grew up in Fresno, and ended up back in Cali, specifically in the Bay Area. Outside of tech, he is married with a young family, and a dog named Espresso.

Lucas Tepman was originally born in Argentina, and came to the US around 5 years ago. He started out his career in public affairs and politics, working at an NGO and promoting the acceleration of sustainability. He came to study at UC Berkeley as a recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship, and eventually he explored solutions via high impact venture capital. This is where he met Manik.

Manik and Lucas stumbled into the problem they are solving today. A decade ago, Manik wanted to solve big public problems. He saw opportunities in the food industry, and created a software solution to replace the clipboard. What they figured out was most people were checking temperatures, and did need a digital clipboard - the needed the process automated.

This is the creation story of Therma.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.hellotherma.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maniksuri/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucas-tepman-0474783b/

S7 Bonus: Tapan Pattnayak, Addverb

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Tapan Pattnayak life revolves around technology - his friends, professional colleagues, etc. and even his wife is an engineer, who he met at a company he was working at. He's passionate about making kids fall in love with science, and inspire a generation of young people to roll up their sleeves and dig into hardware. He believes that engineering is taught from the passion of other engineers. Outside of tech, he used to play sports, specifically cricket. When time limited the play of cricket, he started reading philosophy and history, with the goal of predicting what is happening in macro or societal trends.

While growing up in India, Tapan was contacted by his good friend in the states to join his company. At first he was hesitant, but he came to a point in his life where he felt he needed to do something different - something that was high energy, open, and impactful to the rest of the world.

This is Tapan's creation story at Addverb.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://addverb.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tapanpattnayak/

The New Notification Stack for Developers - Maria Irizarry

Wed, 22 Mar 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Guest: Maria Irizarry, Technical Lead Manager at Courier

Links

Website: https://courier.com/codestory
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mairizar/

S7 E28: Sean Stavropoulos, Boulevard

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Sean Stavropoulos grew up in Southern California, His journey to technology started in 7th grade, when he started programming for fun in Visual Studio, breaking his friends computers along the way. He studied aerospace engineering in college, but enjoyed tech and pogromming way more and joined the LA development community 12 years ago. Outside of tech, he plays beach volleyball, hikes, and enjoys little vacations here and there.

Sean and his co-founder had an idea to build a modern appointment scheduling solution, specifically for salons and spas - so called self care businesses, traditionally underserved. They interviewed owners and built and built until they had a solution to power a 6 person salon.

This is the creation story of Boulevard.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.joinblvd.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanstavropoulos/

S7 Bonus: Ashley Cline, Ice Cream Social

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Ashley Cline was born and raised in a small town in Ohio. Her big dreams and aspirations led her to move to California and start her career in tech and marketing. She has always really enjoyed meeting people through direct networking. She has 2 kids, and she loves to get outside and enjoy all that sunny Cali offers.

Through her other company, Ticketsocket, Ashley began interviewing her clients about how she could help them get more money out of their marketing budgets. She began to pursue trying to figure out how to gamify registration, to incentivize people to want to bring their friends and family to events.

This is the creation story of Ice Cream Social.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://icecreamsocial.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashcline/

The New Notification Stack for Developers - Shreya Gupta

Wed, 15 Mar 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Guest: Shreya Gupta, Developer Advocate at Courier

Links

Website: https://courier.com/codestory
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shreya-gupta-60a2b4168/

S7 E27: Mathias Nestler, AccessOwl

Tue, 14 Mar 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Mathias Nestler has co-founded several startups in his career, in the insure-tech and fintech spaces. Outside of tech, he does kite surfing and diving. He claims that the calmness under the water is the best way to unwind from tech life. His favorite place he's dived before was in Thailand, where he observed his first seahorse. He often takes the train to Switzerland to see his significant other, and they like to cook at home together.

Coming from a regulated industry, Mathias wanted to build something to help him keep track and document who has access to what, which is a huge time sync and security risk. One day, he had one of his fellow CTO's ask him if he knew of a tool that could do this... and he started thinking, "Maybe I should just build it?".

This is the creation story of AccessOwl.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.accessowl.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathias-nestler-a8436044/

S7 Bonus: Evan Powell & Sam Clemens, Reprise

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Evan Powell had a career mostly in sales, which started in college within his acapella group. His group recorded tracks for the well known show Glee, and Evan had to manage and negotiate contracts with Fox. Outside of professional ventures, he still continues his singing and plays Dungeons and Dragons with his friends.

Sam Clemens came up on the opposite side of the house, on the build side. He was a product manager at Hubspot and Upwork, and co-founder at InsightSquared. He also teaches at business school, and gets his hands dirty on the weekends, helping his wife with her commercial farm by driving the tractor and wielding a chainsaw.

Evan, Sam, and their other co-founder, experienced a recurring problem with sales demos at their prior companies - with sales reps deleting material from production environments, or internal teams spending lots of time maintaining separate demo environments. They thought there had to be a better way.

This is the creation story of Reprise.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.reprise.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evanwapowell/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sclemens/

The New Notification Stack for Developers - Seth Carney & Ben Link

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Guest: Seth Carney, CTO at Courier and Ben Link, DevRel at Twilio Segment

Links

Website: https://courier.com/codestory
Website: Twilio Segment
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethcarney/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamindlink/

S7 E26: Liam Patterson, Bidnamic

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Liam Patterson has been an entrepreneur since the early days of his life. He was the kid that was selling sweets at school, undercutting the local store. He journeyed into e-commerce as he got older, continuing his entrepreneurial journey. Outside of tech, he is a runner and is into fencing. Recently, he completed his first marathon, after training for about a year. In regards to fencing, he started when he was a kid, and did it all the way through college - which is actually where he met his now co-founder.

Liam's prior business was a print on-demand company, which allowed locally printing and shipping. As they scaled that business, they came to be hooked on Google Shopping and started using off the shelf tech to manage the campaigns. They found them to be lacking, and eventually built their own - and it became their competitive advantage.

This is the creation story of Bidnamic.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.bidnamic.com/en-us/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-patterson/

S7 Bonus: Roya Kachooei, Walletafai

Fri, 03 Mar 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Roya Kachooei came to Canada 9 years ago, with the aim to pursue her masters in the US. When her funding fell through, she stayed in Canada and started working. When she was younger, her mother used to speak to her about making a difference in the world around her, and as such, she always dreamed about being an entrepreneur.

In 2017, Roya wanted to start saving for a house downpayment. She discovered that it was really difficult to save up the money, and started looking into apps that would help her. When the only thing she could find to really help was Excel, she decided to step out and do something about it.

This is the creation story of Walletifai.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://walletifai.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roya-kachooei/

S7 E25: Matt Butcher, Fermyon

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Matt Butcher was always intending to be a philosopher in the early days. His Dad informed him at some point he would need to get a job though. After he interviewed at a local utility company, he was thrust into learning the World Wide Web. He continued programming his way through college, getting his PhD in philosophy, but eventually moved solely into tech. He has contributed to multiple open source projects, and was one of the original creators of Helm. Outside of tech, he's a coffee snob, with more coffee tooling in his kitchen than plates or silverware.

Matt and his team started to explore the things they couldn't do with their current tooling, and landed on the power of WebAssembly. In attempting to speed up the startup time of servers and containers, along side the rising popularity of server-less, he and his team stumbled onto something, during a post offsite dinner.

This is the creation story of Fermyon.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.fermyon.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattbutcher/

The New Notification Stack for Developers - Mike Miller

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Welcome back listeners, today we are kicking off another special series of the Code Story podcast, entitled The New Notification Stack for Developers, brought to you by our long time friends and sponsors of the Code Story podcast, Courier. As a reminder, Courier is developer infrastructure for product notifications, making it easier to deliver the notification experience that your customers expect. Check out their product to learn more at Courier.com

Guest: Mike Miller, Lead Mobile SDK Engineer at Courier

Links

Website: https://courier.com/codestory
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/killamikemilla/

GrowthMode: ON - Jesse Rubenfeld, FinOptimal

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Welcome back listeners, today we are dropping another episode in the series entitled Growth Mode: ON, sponsored by our good friends at GrowthMatch. GrowthMatch helps tech companies grow their audience, supercharge their sales, and activate thought leadership in their industry. They are turning entrepreneurs into thought leaders, one video at a time, by utilizing fractional growth teams. You can learn more by checking out their website, GrowthMatch.com.

Guest: Jesse Rubenfeld, Founder of FinOptimal

Links

Website: https://www.growthmatch.com/codestory/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesserubenfeld/

S7 Bonus: Chelsey Roney, Proxi

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Chelsey Roney graduated from Texas A&M in 2011 (whoop!). She is passionate about building businesses, as her current venture is her 3rd startup. But prior to her entrepreneurial adventures, she worked for Microsoft and Boeing, gaining incredible big industry experience. Outside of tech, she has a busy home life, being married, and a Mom of 2 young kids. Her family has a number of furry friends at their house, including a husky and a few cats.

During the first Halloween during COVID, Chelsey and her co-founders experienced the need for mappable addresses, in organizing Seattle trick or treating. What was built for that holiday got media attention, and their crew decided to build it right, apply to an accelerator, and bring their solution to the world.

This is the creation story of Proxi.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.proxi.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chelseyroney/

GrowthMode: ON - Arun Sivashankaran, FunnelEnvy

Wed, 22 Feb 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Guest: Arun Sivashankaran, Founder at FunnelEnvy

Links

Website: https://www.growthmatch.com/codestory/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arunsivashankaran/

S7 E24: Ethan Song, RareCircles

Tue, 21 Feb 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Ethan Song is a boarder through and through - enjoying snowboarding, surfing, etc. and doing it as often as he can. He loves to read, and has moved more into non-fiction over fiction as he has gotten older. Prior to his current venture, he co-founded Frank & Oak, a successful thoughtful and ethical apparel and e-commerce company.

After the successes of his prior company, Ethan started to explore web3 as a technology, and a product offering. He noticed that most people were focusing on visual assets, but he wanted to create a tool that allows companies to depend their engagement - and revenue - with their customers.

This is the creation story of RareCircles.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.rarecircles.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethansong/

S7 Bonus: Faisal Bhutto, Calian

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Faisal Bhutto is a family man, and the proud father of 2 girls and a boy. He is based out of Houston, and enjoys the outdoors - hunting, sports, and working on his off-road rig. When discussing sports, the mentioned he was lucky enough to go see the World Cup recently. And when I asked about hunting, we yammered on about white tail and pheasant, as your host is an avid hunter too.

Prior to his current role, Faisal built and grew his Computex business to serve the larger part of the United States. Calian took noticed of the business, and stepped in to acquire their footprint and expand into the US, specifically around Cloud & Cybersecurity.

This is Faisal's creation story at Calian.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.calian.com/itcs/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fbhutto/

GrowthMode: ON - Lee Gilley, Docmo

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Guest: Lee Gilley, Founder of Docmo

Links

Website: https://www.growthmatch.com/codestory/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lgilley/

S7 E23: Navid Alipour, AI Med Global

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Navid Alipour has spent many years in the world of medicine and AI, supporting and admiring doctors. He jokes that his wife and he are the black sheep of the family... because they aren't actual doctors. He's the co-founder and managing partner at Analytics Ventures, as well as serving on the board of multiple San Diego based companies. Outside of his professional ventures, he enjoys watching movies with his wife and kids.

Navid and his team explored the world of radiology, from a technology and data standpoint. After applying the same thought process and/or algorithm for predicting space weather, they processed millions of mammogram images to detect cancer in their patients. And it worked... really well.

This is the creation story of AI Med Global.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://aimedglobal.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/navid-alipour-a295777/

S7 Bonus: Joe De Pinto, Haste Arcade

Thu, 09 Feb 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Joe De Pinto was born and raised in Los Angeles, and was drafted to play professional baseball in the minors for the White Sox. He's always had an active lifestyle, and now lives at the beach and surfs regularly. In 2015, he and his current co-founder started a company called Barpay, which makes it easier to get drinks at busy bars.

In January 2021, Joe and his co-founder are sitting in their office, frustrated that no one was getting what Bitcoin - that is BSV, not BTC - was originally created for. They asked themselves, what could we build to illustrate the utility of blockchain?

This is the creation story of Haste Arcade.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.hastearcade.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-de-pinto/

GrowthMode: ON - Zach Fragapane, GrowthMatch

Wed, 08 Feb 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Welcome back listeners, today we are kicking off a special series of the Code Story podcast, entitled Growth Mode: On!, sponsored by our good friends at GrowthMatch. GrowthMatch helps tech companies grow their audience, supercharge their sales, and activate thought leadership in their industry. They are turning entrepreneurs into thought leaders, one video at a time, by utilizing fractional growth teams. You can learn more by checking out their website, GrowthMatch.com.

Guest: Zach Fragapane, CEO of GrowthMatch

Links

S7 E22: Paul McCarthy, SnapFix

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Paul McCarthy grew up in Cork, Ireland, and went to school there. He lives around the corner from the sea, and likes to dip in now again - literally, swim in the ocean. He calls it a great shock to the system, but ensured that I know he doesn't spend a full hour in the water.

Five years ago, Paul was fed up with the archaic ways that properties were managing their safety, maintenance and work orders manually, through platforms like WhatsApp. He set out to build the simplest way to manage your hotel, facilities and team - using photos.

This is the creation story of SnapFix.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://snapfix.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulmccarthyireland

S7 Bonus: Kyle Tut, Piñata

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Kyle Tut started out his life wanting to be a car mechanic. His Mom affirmed his aspirations, but gave him the advice to make sure he owned the mechanic shop. He's taken interesting paths through the auto world, marketing, and eventually, into the tech world. Outside of tech, he is originally from North Dakota but now lives in Nebraska, and enjoys the practicality of the way people think in the Midwest.

Kyle knew that storing data on the blockchain was expensive. At the same time, it wasn't fast, nor was it stable. He and his co-founder set out to build an unbelievably fast content delivery network, easily accessible across the world.

This is the creation story of Piñata.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.pinata.cloud/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyletut/

S7 E21: Nanxi Liu, Blaze.tech

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Nanxi Liu is from Colorado, and went to school at UC Berkeley. In college, she immediately started her entrepreneurial journey by starting a bio tech company, and then eventually starting tech companies. She built and sold a company called Enplug, which was the #1 open digital signage software company. Outside of tech, she has kept a full life as well - producing TV shows - them winning an Emmy, snowboarding, and playing piano & cello.

At her prior company, Nanxi experienced her non-technical team members consistently needing some sort of tool to solve a problem, and as such, waiting around for engineering resources to be freed up to build it. When their company got acquired, she and her co-founders knew exactly what they wanted to build.

This is the creation story of Blaze.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.blaze.tech/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nanxi/

S7 Bonus: Alex Embiricos, Remotion

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Alex Embiricos comes from an interesting background, having grown up all over the place - between Asia, the Caribbean, and Switzerland. He came to the states for college, and found his way into software after a stint in Aerospace. Ultimately, he found himself interested in the intersection between business and building technology. During his career, he spent a lot of time working at Dropbox, followed up by starting a company with his friends. Outside of tech, he loves to play Badminton, and when asked what his favorite food was, well... it is his Mom's food.

After his prior startup failed, Alex still had the urge to build something. He met his now co-founder, and they started to explore ways to connect people online. What they noticed was that most video chat tools were created around a presentation, but not around solving problems together.

This is the creation story of Remotion.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://remotion.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/embirico/

S7 Bonus: Sydney Davis, Nixcode

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Sydney Davis really enjoys art. She enjoys immersive exhibits and loves to paint. She's a Mom, and digs spending time with her son and traveling to different exhibits. She loves the intersection between elemental art, digital art, and art from repurposed elements. She introduced me to a new term for immersive exhibits - selfie museums, which I hadn't heard before.

When Sydney was leaving the college world, she was creating apps for customers, and validated the need for said customers to have guidance on how to build an app. After taking a development hiatus, she picked back up her platform approach in 2019, and eventually started using AI & Machine Learning to drive an easier, no code, app development experience.

This is the creation story of Nixcode.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://nixcodeapps.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamsydneydavis/

S7 E20: Tanmai Gopal, Hasura

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Tanmai Gopal studied computer science, and specialize in computer vision and machine learning. He found himself frustrated with the pace at which his research work was getting exposure, so he expedited his jump into industry, which help solidify the foundation for his current venture. Outside of tech, he reads a lot, hikes and travels. For the readers, he highly recommends N.K. Jemisin, Charlie Jane-Anders and Namoi Novak.

Tanmai and his colleagues became outright frustrated with building API's just to build products. He began wondering what it would take to not do that work anymore, and after breaking down the process to its simplest form - data mapping and security authorization - he had a bead on how to do that.

This is the creation story of Hasura.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://hasura.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanmaig/

S7 E19: Ken Babcock, Tango

Wed, 18 Jan 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Ken Babcock grew up outside of Buffalo, and as such.. is a big Bills fan. He attended Cornell, and has spent time in NYC, San Francisco and now Chicago. He's a family man, with an 11 month old, and loves to ski. His favorite mountain was Tahoe, specifically Palisades, where he mentioned spending many hours on the slopes. He mentions that his busy life of a startup and family life is a dangerous cocktail, but one that is worth drinking.

Back in 2019, he and his current co-founders met each other at Harvard Business School. After digging into team performance, they started asking questions around the barriers to increasing team performance, specifically in replicating high performers. The dialed it into process replication, and started down the road to build a tool to make this not only possible... but easy.

This is the creation story of Tango.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.tango.us/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenbabcock/

S7 Whats New with Materialize - Arjun Narayan, Co-founder & CEO

Wed, 11 Jan 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Hello again listeners!

Today I have yet another special return episode for you. I'm speaking with Arjun Narayan, Co-founder & CEO of Materialize. He told us the creation story of the product and company in Season 4, Episode 11, which I would encourage you to go back and listen to. Similar to yesterday's episode, Arjun is returning to the podcast since his prior appearance to give me major updates on the company and the product. As a reminder Materialize is a fast, distributed SQL database, based on streaming internals, which allows you to have data consistency, scalability and low latency. You can learn more about the product at materialize.com. Thats M A T E R I A L I Z E.com.

Sponsors

Links

S7 Whats New with Pulumi - Joe Duffy, Co-founder & CEO

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Hello Listeners!

We have a treat for today's episode. On the show, I'll be interviewing Joe, the CEO of Pulumi, to get an update on all that has gone on within the company. As a reminder, Pulumi is Infrastructure as Code technology, that allows you as an engineer, developer, architect - to deliver infrastructure with high velocity and scale, through software engineering. You can learn more about their product, and get started quick, at pulumi.com. Thats P U L U M I.com.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.pulumi.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joejduffy/
https://codestory.co/podcast/bonus-luke-hoban-pulumi/

S7 Bonus: Arjun Bhatnagar, Cloaked (Replay)

Thu, 05 Jan 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Arjun Bhatnager has been coding since he was 10 years old, and in general, his family is full of entrepreneurs, running their own businesses. In fact, his brother is his co-founder in his current business. He loves to read, write, and play tennis in his spare time, along with playing music. In fact, playing music was a large part of his life, starting out playing the trumpet. In general, he is passionate about creating, and was inspired early on by the Inkheart series of books.

Arjun decided to build a prototype system, which integrated all the data from every aspect of his life. What he figured out was that he didn't trust other companies to handle the data from these systems - and he needed a way to "cloak" his true credentials from those he utilized on other platforms.

This is the creation story of Cloaked.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.cloaked.app/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunbhatnagar/

S7 Bonus: Derek Osgood, Ignition (Replay)

Tue, 03 Jan 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Derek Osgood comes from a family of entrepreneurs, and has always known he wanted to start something himself. Prior to that, he worked for other companies, large and small, in product and marketing roles. Some of the companies he worked for included Playstation, Rippling and BBVA. Outside of his profession, he loves to travel the world, and is a huge fantasy story nut. It's worth noting that we geeked out on fantasy novels for a good 10 minutes, as your host is a fantasy nut as well.

At his previous companies, Derek has been through hundreds of product launches, of various types and sizes. In his words... every one of them was a dumpster fire, no matter the size and supposed maturity of the company. It was always a challenge, and after trying to build a robust process in every tool imaginable, he decided to set out and build it right.

This is the creation story of Ignition.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.haveignition.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derekosgood3/

S7 E10: Raj Bains, Prophecy (Replay)

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Raj Bains grew up in India, North of Delhi, and comes from a family who, as he says, does "whatever is best to do" at the time. They moved around quite a bit when he was a kid, and his family dabbled in a number of different trades. After doing an internship in France and then, completing his undergrad, he moved stateside and has called many different states home. In fact, in those states, he got involved in outdoors activities, like kayaking, mountain biking, and the like. Also, he plays a lot of games, specifically on his phone, which makes his fingers hurt.

Raj comes from a background of building powerful tools, that also happen to be really complicated and hard to use... specifically, around the data engineering space. To put it blunt, he felt that the tools were from the Stone Age. He knew that he could build something better.

This is the creation story of Prophecy.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.prophecy.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raj-bains-b837a46/

S7 E1: Ian Small, Evernote (Replay)

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Ian Small is a Canadian, and claims that is the most important thing about him. Tech started for him when he was 12 years old, when he got a bad grade on a homework assignment, bought the manual, and became an expert on the machine. Outside of tech, he likes to do home renovation. As he says it, when there is a power tool in your hand, that could potentially cut your arm off, you tend to focus on it.

Ian joined Evernote in 2018, to solve a big problem. The company was stuck behind a wall of technical debt, which was blocking its way to innovation. In order for the company to grow and thrive in current times, they had to get out from underneath these problems.

This is his creation story, at Evernote.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://evernote.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iansmall/

S7 Bonus: Jeremy Wood, OpenStore

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Jeremy Wood grew up in Portland, and has been heavily influenced by that upbringing. He enjoyed really strong maker communities, supporting local craft artists to thrive and build their business. He moved to the Bay Area for school, and was surrounding by optimism, tech focus, and sheer intelligence. I was under the impression that Portland was beautiful all year round, but Jeremy clued me in that 3 months out of the year, it's a drizzly, soggy mess.

As I mentioned, Jeremy was really into the craft builder community, which also led him to be interested in eCommerce. He observed Shopify grow as a marketplace, that made things so easy to launch a store. What he figured out was that there was a need for these store owners to offload and sell their store.

This is the creation story of Openstore.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://open.store/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jemdwood/

S7 Bonus: Max Lukichev, Telmai

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Max Lukichev is a deeply technical guy, which means his hobbies have been related to tech since the early days. He is a PhD in computer science, and has always been interested in building things. In fact, and his words, he has been building drones since back before they were cool. Overall, he likes to figure out how things work. Outside of tech, he is a family man, and make sure that his kids have all kinds of STEM tools.

After spending decades in the enterprise data space, Max experienced first hand the struggles around data anomaly detection. He constantly lived in escalation mode, and saw first hand that traditional rules and static dashboard based solutions were failing today's data needs. He set out to be part of the solution.

This is the creation story of Telmai.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.telm.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximlukichev/

S7 E18: Hadi Radwan, Asteya

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Hadi Radwan is an amateur biohacker, which was a new term for me, and means trying to DIY your own biology. He is a family man, and enjoys playing fantasy sports. He's also a podcaster, and regularly interviews founders on his podcast, the First 100, to learn how those people obtained their first 100 customers. When it comes to family, he just had a newborn, so most of his time is devoted to that.

Hadi and his team took a hard look at the the market, and realized that 1 out of 4 people are disabled in their career due to an unforeseen circumstance. Strikingly, 50% of folks are living paycheck to paycheck, and don't even know disability insurance existed. They decided to build a product based on technology that fills this gap.

This is the creation story of Asteya.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.asteya.world/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hadiradwan/

S7 Bonus: Nick Ippolito & Rowan Findlay, Squarekicker

Thu, 15 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Nick Ippolito has been involved with youth work for many years, and stumbled into web design and taught himself how to code. He's been married for 15 years, and he and his wife have 3 children - along with a budding startup the run together. They enjoy mounting biking in New Zealand and all things tech.

For Rowan Findlay, tech has always been his blood, with his family members working in the industry. In his younger years, he was into technical legos, and used to mod Xbox for pocket money. He has spent a lot of time in tourism, and has done a lot of freelance work, building sites for your local technicians.

During a few days off, Rowan decided to tinker with an idea and build a tool to enable custom Squarespace site tooling. When he came back, he immediately showed off what he had built to Nick and his wife - who immediately saw the value, and the future, in the product.

This is the creation story of Squarekicker.

cSponsors

Links

Website: https://www.squarekicker.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-ippolito/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rowan-findlay-88b8a876/

S7 Bonus: Casey Kipfer, Justifi

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Casey Kipfer is a family man. He's married with 3 kids, and there is a lot of excitement and noise at his house - which is says is wonderful. He enjoys golfing and fishing, and tries to spend as much time outside as possible, including spending time with his brother paying some hockey in the winter. They also worked together for around 12 year at a prior venture of his brothers.

Through their collective knowledge, Casey and his team have found that customers have a need for a solid in house expertise to support a payments ecosystem. And, technically speaking, customers need an orchestration layer to abstract multiple partners and services behind the scenes.

This is the creation story of Justifi.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.justifi.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/casey-kipfer/

S7 E17: Nora Jones, Jeli.io

Tue, 13 Dec 2022 13:00:00 +0000

Nora Jones has been in tech her entire career. She originally thought she was going to get into hardware, but was always focused on reliability and safety. She has quite the track record, in regards to companies she has worked for - Jet.com, Netflix, and Slack. She lives in Denver, and likes to get outside and do dangerous activities (post studying the risk of course). She loves to ski, and really digs Telluride and Steamboat when she can make the drive.

Through her time at other companies, Nora realized that the industry spends little time looking back on our past mistakes. She figured out that there was a solid market for people wanting to understand their incidents better, and started building something on the side, which eventually became her focus.

This is the creation story of Jeli.io.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.jeli.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/norajones1/

S7 Bonus: Alex Svinov, Insquad

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Alex Svinov has very few things to talk about outside of the business world. He likes to jog, play tennis, and has a family with three kids at home. He likes to travel with his family and try new things, which he admits is complicated with the kids. Personally, he is driven each day to create something new. When it comes to food, his favorite is curry chicken, which according to him, he could eat every day.

For the last several years, Alex had a huge problem finding qualified developers for his startup. Alongside of this, resources were thin in the early days, and he was losing recruiting bids to larger companies. He thought - hiring developers shouldn't be this hard... maybe he should look somewhere different.

This is the creation story of Insquad.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://insquad.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-svinov/

S7 Return to Komodor - Andrey Pohkilko

Wed, 07 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0000

You might remember in Season 6, episode 15, I interviewed Itiel, the Co-founder of Komodor. Today I have a special episode of the Code Story podcast, bringing back our friends at Komodor. I'm chatting with their Open Source Dev Leader, Andrey Pokhilko, about the latest initiatives at the company, including some exciting tooling around Helm and further advances in Kubernetes troubleshooting and expertise.

As a reminder, Komodor enables development teams to monitor their entire Kubernetes stack, identify issues, uncover root causes and get the context needed to troubleshoot their orchestration efficiently and independently.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://komodor.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreypohilko/

S7 E16: Gabriel Isserlis, Tutti

Tue, 06 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Gabriel Isserlis grew up in London with an artistic background in the creative industries. His Dad is a professional cellist, which is the instrument that he chose as a young musician. As a teen, he became highly interested in making films, and decided to give it a try. He studied film in upstate New York, and realized he liked making sci-fi films about the future. Instead of films though, he decided to go make the future, and got into tech.

When Gabriel combined his technical knowledge with his experience in the creative industries, he started to see numerous opportunities to automate manual steps in these processes. He decided to set out and build these tools for people in the creative industry.

This is the creation story of Tutti.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.tutti.space/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gmisserlis/

S7 Bonus: Nathan Yap, SupportZebra

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Nathan Yap has a tight knit family, that he spends a lot of time with. So traveling and enjoying good food with his family is winning to him. Outside of that, he is enjoying the Pickleball craze, and he was heading into his first tournament at the time of this recording. He also loves to ski as well, and mentions really enjoying Crested Butte and Vail.

Prior to his current venture, Nathan was importing coconut water from the Philippines. At scale, the company had an office in the Philippines, handling the back office work. They eventually sold that company, but during its lifetime, they took on other customers to help with support, and found a nice formula for building these teams.

This is the creation story of SupportZebra.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://supportzebra.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanyap/

S7 Bonus: Satish Jayanthi, Coalesce

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Satish Jayanthi was born in India, and attended school there. When he was growing up, his Mom was a teacher and his Dad was dabbling in different businesses. After he graduated, he started working for a software company, which ultimately sent him to Europe, and then eventually to the US 22 years ago. Outside of tech, he spends a lot of time with his family, his 2 kids, and he loves to play tennis and meet people doing so. As a father, he continually reminds his kids to be passionate about what they are doing, and to do so with 100% effort.

Prior to his current venture, Satish was building data warehouses for different businesses and firms in the industry. He saw first hand how hard it was to bring a bunch of data sources all together, and have them be compatible in a single source. He decided to set out and solve the problem, by bringing a modern approach to the space, paired with automations.

This is the creation story of Coalesce.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://coalesce.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/satish-jayanthi-32703613/

S7 E15: Jeff Grass, Hungry Marketplace

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Jeff Grass had his career start more traditionally, as a bond underwriter, graduating from Wharton, and then being a serial entrepreneur. Outside of his business ventures, he is married with 2 kids, and used to run marathons... including one into Athens with his bare feet. When he's not running, he's spending time with his kids and their activities.

Jeff's current venture started out as a tech-enabled platform for office and event catering, which connected their users to incredible chef entrepreneurs. Fast forward, they are now a national platform for top chef-made food production and delivery services, that includes much, much more.

This is the creation story of Hungry.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://tryhungry.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffgrass/

S7 Bonus: Rob Moore, Churnkey

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Rob Moore was previously on the Code Story podcast back in Season 2, when he was building Floom - a marketplace built to make monetizing SaaS products easier. Three years ago, he moved to London with his now wife, as they got married a few months ago. Another update is he enjoys studying philosophy and how people think... and he tends to find good insight from Seneca. He applies a lot of his learnings to his personal life, but also to his startup ventures.

Rob previously built a product called Waave. When their customer acquisition couldn't keep up with churn, they started building tools to help them figure out what was going on. They focused on a cancellation flow, and spent 6 months perfecting a tool that helped them fix their churn problem.

This is the creation story of ChurnKey.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://churnkey.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-moore/

S7 Bonus: Juan Soberanis, Beacon

Wed, 23 Nov 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Back in 1986, Juan Soberanis and his family got a personal computer for the house - a Commodore 128. He asked his mother if he could take it to his room, and taught himself how to program, and of course, he did some gaming on it as well. This was the genesis of his career path, which picked back up in college. Outside of tech, he has kids in their 20's, and spends a lot of his free time hiking and being outdoors.

Juan has been working with startups for quite some time. At one point in his career, he became a contractor doing mobile development. Through a number of contracts with a specific investor, Juan found himself as the CTO of a startup, pitching an idea for what his current venture would become.

This is the creation story of Beacon.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.beacon.site/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-soberanis-4447191/

S7 E14: Olga Stern, Tangy Market

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Olga Stern considers herself an onion, with a lot of different layers. She loves to try out new things, which has produced a lot of different hobbies in her life - like underwater rugby, floor hockey, knitting and squash. Recently, she became a dog owner, and listens to podcasts to learn more about being a good dog parent. She splits her time 50% in Stockholm, and the other half in a small village up north, in an outdoors and skiing area. She is currently into ski touring... when you hike up the mountain, don't use a lift, and "earn your turn".

Olga's co-founder has a PhD in financial flows, specifically for the music industry. She decided to pursue the democratization of music rights, and created new assets for anyone to invest in. Olga joined her, and starting building out what would become their mobile app.

This is the creation story of Tangy Market.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.tangymarket.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olga-stern-51957216

S7 Nick Donofrio - If Nothing Changes, Nothing Changes

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Hello listeners! Today have Nick Donorio on the show today.

Nick Donorio is a second generation American. His grandparents were poor, Italian immigrants - and his family was hard working, focused on value creation. They were poor, but never thought of themselves as poor - they always had food to eat, and always sat down at the table for dinner at night. Nick spent 44 years of his life at IBM, as an electrical engineer and then as a technology leader. In 2008, he "graduated" from IBM, and now holds board seats for dozens of companies.

Nick is the co-author of the book "If Nothing Changes, Nothing Changes". The book is a powerful testimony to our ability as human beings to drive transformation - not just within tech, but across generations. With heart and candor, Nick explains how he led IBM's global technical team to embrace market centric, focus redefining innovation and sparking worldwide collaboration.

Get the book on Amazon, or learn more at nickdonofrio.com.

Sponsors

Links

S7 Bonus: Michael Zuercher, Prismatic

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Michael Zuercher has been in tech since he was young, starting his first company when he was 19 years old. A lot of his path to his current place is through that prior company. He is married with 3 kids, living in South Dakota, and is a pilot. Beyond these things, he is a machinist as a hobby - in fact, he created logos for his current team as they shipped their MVP.

In his prior company, Michael built numerous amount of productized integrations across his platform and thousands of customers. No matter their state of growth, these integrations were always a significant challenge. After selling the company in 2018, he decided to build the thing he wished he had back then.

This is the creation story of Prismatic.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://prismatic.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-zuercher/

S7 E13: Krish Ramineni, Fireflies.ai

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Krish Ramineni grew up in Silicon Valley, observing tech all around him. But really excited him was the innovation happening the in the last 5 years. He used to play sports as a kid - tennis, baseball, etc. - and he was always excited about filming his games or practice, and utilizing software to analyze how he executed the craft. He brings his analytical mainframe into his current venture, and still plays some sports, lifts weights, and tracks his nutrition.

Krish went through meetings like we all do - conducting a meeting with expensive team members, and then forgetting most of the conversation afterwards. He decided he wanted to figure out a way to remember every conversation he had, and unlock the hidden metrics behind meetings.

This is the creation story of Fireflies.ai.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://fireflies.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/

S7 Bonus: Shawn Ramirez, Mystery

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Shawn Ramirez spent a decade as a political science professor, studying terrorism and strategic negotiations. Five years ago, she switched into tech, in order to make a positive impact, joining startups with great missions. She has created training programs, worked in AI, scaled teams, and dug into the data science world. Outside of tech, she lives in Seattle with her family, and loves all the outdoors things you can do in the Pacific Northwest.

Shawn tells the story of how her current venture started out as a dating service, but pivoted when the pandemic hit to positive events for remote teams. Being on one of those remote teams and consuming the events, she fell in love with the idea and joined the team, to build and deliver shared experiences with powerful insights.

This is the creation story of Mystery.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.trymystery.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/slramz/

S7 Bonus: Shaheeb Roshan, ThreeFlow

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Shaheeb Roshan is a family man. He's been married 16 years and has a 10 year old daughter. It's his family that drives how he looks at the world - teaching his daughter how to swim and be safe in the water, and learning how to do new things. For example, he got into baking, which ended up into 13 cakes on his counter table (yes, I'm wondering my invite was too). The pattern for him is getting deeply interested in something, as there is always a system behind it.

Collectively, Shaheed and his co-founders had 10 years of experience supporting the employee benefits insurance space. On a regular basis, they observed the manual creation, editing and lack observability in the processes - aka, the lack of modern tooling to support the industry. They made the decision and committed to changing the face of the industry.

This is the creation story of ThreeFlow.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.threeflow.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaheebroshan/

S7 E12: Roi Ravhon, Finout

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Roi Ravhon path to tech started in the Israeli military, like many other founders in Israel. In fact, the very first introduction he had to computers was when he joined the services. It was a great experience, that taught him everything he knows. This is a common story with founders in the area, as I've noticed from other interviews I've done. He lives in Tel Aviv, and he is a big fan of music, sports, and running his company.

In his previous role at Logz.io, Roi and his team spent large sums of money for cloud providers and services. The finance team quickly got wind of these costs, and started asking questions, appropriately. Roi found out that he didn't have answers to the questions, and there wasn't tooling out there that helped him.

This is the creation story of Finout.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.finout.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roiravhon/

S7 Bonus: Mike Malone, Smallstep

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Mike Malone is a nerd from way back (his words, not mine). In the 6th grade, he bought a Borland C book and learned how to code. Back when Napster was round, he hosted an open Nap server in his basement, and ran a few things on IRC. He graduated from Virginia Tech with a Business Information Systems degree, and worked for Accenture for a hot second... then joined a 3 person startup, and hasn't looked back since. He's married with 2 kids, and a dog - and he claims he collects hobbies, which is another way of saying he likes to try new things.

Mike's career has tracked along side the development of the cloud. He witnessed the security problems alongside distributed systems, and felt the pains of having to manage sensitive information. He and his team saw an opportunity here, and set out to fix the problem.

This is the creation story of Smallstep.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://smallstep.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mmalone/

S7 Bonus: Kateryna Sytnyk, Fract & CTO Doctor

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Kateryna Sytnyk is originally from Ukraine, but moved to the states 15 years ago after winning the green card lottery. Her background is in applied mathematics, and she grew up surrounded with logical brains - for example, her grandparent was literally a rocket scientist. When she moved to the US, she dove right into the world of entrepreneurship. Outside of tech, she travels a lot, being a digital nomad, and likes to salsa dance. She is fascinated with psychology and what drives behavior.

For her prior startup, she utilized her background in applied math, combined with her co-founder's experience in the space, to create a way to optimize territory creation - for franchises, sales teams, etc. and predict revenue for said territories. When she moved on from that gig, she started a new thing - one that would enable women founders to build technical solutions.

This is the creation story of Fract... and CTO Doctor.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.fract.com/
Website: https://www.ctodoctor.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katerynasytnyk/

S7 E11: Benjamin Wilms, Steadybit

Tue, 01 Nov 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Benjamin Wilms started his career in 1999 as a developer. In the little free time he has, he does mountain biking, spends time with his family, and visits the ocean a few hours away. For mountain biking, he finds that it helps him to keep life balanced away from a screen, and the ocean - well... he just likes to watch his kids play on the beach.

Seven years go, Ben started getting into the topic of Chao's engineering, while working as a consultant. As he learned about the tools on the market, he realized that to get the tool in production, it required him to understand all the codebase test coverage, without knowledge of SRE. He released on open source project of his own creation, and his approach got picked up by big name enterprises.

This is the creation story of Steadybit.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://steadybit.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-wilms/

S7 Bonus: John Rush, Mars X

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 10:00:00 +0000

John Rush has been in tech since he was a child, so its hard for him to think of a time where it wasn't a part of his life. Since 2008, he has been building apps, websites, etc. and a lot of what he was doing was client work. During this time, he noticed that a lot of his tasks were similar, repetitive, and he wanted to find ways to get repeat use out of the work he was doing. Outside of tech, he plays soccer on a semi-professional team, and is a huge part of his life. He also likes the outdoors, and even plays a little ping pong.

While running his prior startup, John wanted to figure out a way to create a system that allowed him to get reuse out of the work he was building. What he ended up building was an ecosystem, for solution builders and developers, to merge the worlds of low code and no code.

This is the creation story of Mars X.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.marsx.dev/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-rush-l/

S7 Bonus: Tom Medema, Bubbles

Wed, 26 Oct 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Tom Medema is Dutch, and grew up in a small village in the Netherlands. This allowed him to explore what else was out there, which led to him living in 5 different countries. Alongside that, he loves to travel and reads a lot of fantasy novels. We had a good chat about Tolkien books, Dune, and he recommended that I check out the Cradle series. We both highly recommend the Licanus Trilogy, for anyone who is interested in their next read.

Prior to his current venture, Tom was the CTO at a startup and found himself having to hire people fast, while maintaining that the people he hired were a good fit for the company. Hiring at their current geo only was not going to work, so they had to look remote - and he quickly felt the pains of ineffective tools and methods for doing so.

This is the creation story of Bubbles.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.usebubbles.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommedema/

S7 E10: Raj Bains, Prophecy

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 10:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Prophecy.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.prophecy.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raj-bains-b837a46/

S7 Bonus: Derek Osgood, Ignition

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 10:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Ignition.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.haveignition.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derekosgood3/

S7 Bonus: Justin Clegg, Allset

Wed, 19 Oct 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Justin Clegg grew up all around the world, living in countries like Puerto Rico, Mexico City and Brazil. He spent 2 years on mission in Africa, and 5 years in India as well. Through these experiences, he has learned empathy, gratitude, and how to be a better listener, which helps him in his business ventures. He is multi-lingual, and interestingly, he mentioned that selling religion helped him to be better at sales. Outside of tech, he digs the mountains and playing sports, specifically tennis and indoor soccer.

Justin had a pivotal experience with a handyman helping him at his home. When it came time to pay this person, he was unable to do so because the handyman didn't accept forms of payment Justin had available to him. He decided to build something to fix this, and onboarded said handyman, as his first merchant customer.

This is the creation story of Allset.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.tryallset.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justindclegg/

S7 E9: William Falcon, Lightning AI

Tue, 18 Oct 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Will Falcon did not have a traditional path to tech. He is originally from South America, and moved to the US when he was a teenager. Later in life, he went through Navy Seal training and served the country for 6 years, doing primarily special reconnaissance. After leaving the military, he taught himself how to code and "fell into" the world of AI. He finds the dynamic of uncertainty in the military translates over to the tech startup world. Outside of tech, he likes to try random things, but digs surfing, swimming, and doing art.

In his undergrad program, Will created a toolset to help you scale code within the deep learning, AI world. Prior to joining Facebook, he open sourced his tooling and shared it with the world. He noticed that many large enterprises were adopting his toolset, and in doing so, they were running into the same problems - problems that this current iteration could fix.

This is the creation story of Lightning AI.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://lightning.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wfalcon/
https://www.williamfalcon.com/

S7 Bonus: Conor Carmody, Furthr Festival

Fri, 14 Oct 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Conor Carmody lives just outside of Dublin with his wife and has 3 lads - aka boys. Professionally, he worked in Eastern Europe around the time of the Berlin Wall, through some dramatic change in society. He learned a ton about setting up businesses in a society that was rebuilding itself. Today, he does a lot of advising and consulting around establishing and growing a business. Outside of his current venture, he likes to garden - and claims he is the guy that counts down the minutes until he can cut the grass again.

Conor joined his current organization is helping to build the Ireland entrepreneur and startup culture. With the arrival of big tech companies helping to accelerate that, his group is ensuring that entrepreneurs are being strategic in forming their businesses, meeting the right people, raising money, and... building community.

This is the creation story of the Furthr Festival.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://furthr.ie/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conorcarmody

S7 Bonus: Mark Stouse, Proof Analytics

Thu, 13 Oct 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Mark Stouse was a CCO and CMO in large companies like Honeywell Aerospace. He claims that he is not a data scientist, but can play one on TV. He got to a high degree of organizational maturity, and could understand and speak to the needs of a data scientist. If he wasn't pursuing his current venture, he would likely be a history professor, as he is seriously passionate about 15th century innovation and the pre renaissance era. He is also a parent of 2 teenage boys, so outside of tech and history, he spends time doing what they want to do.

As a communications and marketing leader, Mark was frustrated with the lack of recognition for his marketing teams to the bottom line. In addition, he solved major analytics problems at his prior companies, but had massive budgets to do so. He saw that software and automation was the way forward.

This is the creation story of Proof Analytics.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.proofanalytics.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markstouse/

S7 Bonus: Jake Vacovec, Flycode

Wed, 12 Oct 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Jake Vacovec started his career in sales, and eventually moved into the product world. He loves to cook, and finds it relaxing, and a good way to unwind from startup world. Primarily, he loves to cook steaks and likes to integrate chemistry into cooking, which aligns with the recipes he likes. Also, he loves to mountain ski, starting out when he was a 1 year old (he was the kid on the leash, he says).

Jake noticed that capacity for engineering resources was scarce across the board, while the demand for experimentation in product was very high. He sought to fix the problem, by creating no code edits - for your code itself.

This is the creation story of Flycode.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.flycode.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-p-vacovec-28417869/

S7 E8: Waseem Daher, Pilot

Tue, 11 Oct 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Waseem Daher had two immigrant parents from Lebanon. He was born in the states, after the migrated to the states in the 80's. With his relatives around him, he saw that it was possible to run your own business, and do it well. His love for computer science really culminated when he went to MIT to complete is undergraduate studies, where he actually met his current co-founders. He is married with a 2 year old - so all additional time he has outside of work is spent with his young family.

Waseem and his co-founders have done many startups together. Inevitably, with every business they started, they found the back office type processes were important to have each time, but not the area of expertise for the founders - and much less, not the focus of said business. So, they built the service they wished they had in prior ventures.

This is the creation story of Pilot.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://pilot.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wdaher/

S7 Bonus: Ryan Buick, Canvas

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Ryan Buick grew up in San Francisco - in the actual city itself. He went to school in Oregon, but quickly back to the area. He is a very proud owner of a COVID dog - IE, he got the dog during COVID - and enjoys biking and just hanging out. He named the dog Jerry, in order to make his Dad and his Grateful Dead loving family laugh.

Prior to their current venture, Ryan and his co-founders were working at Flexport. They were so early on the team, that while having to prove ROI on a roadmap, he had to grow new skills in data analytics just to service his job needs. This got him thinking about other folks, and what sort of tool could support a spreadsheet interface on top of data sources.

This is the creation story of Canvas.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://canvasapp.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanjbuick/

S7 Bonus: Ashleigh Wilson, Auditmate

Wed, 05 Oct 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Ashleigh Wilson is a self proclaimed elevator baby, being raised in the elevator industry. She grew up with an interesting mix of entrepreneurial spirit, along side blue collar influence. Outside of her current venture, she likes to reach books and is very into fashion. For books, she likes self help, spiritual type books, like Brene Brown or Glennon Doyle.

At a prior company, Ashleigh did a research profit that surfaced to her how much the industry was focused solely on profits, and not the people they were serving. She left her company, and had a moment where she envisioned how she would change the industry, and shift the power back to the customer.

This is the creation story of Auditmate.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://auditmate.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleigh-wilson-she-her-01131285/

S7 E7: Alexandre Omeyer, Stepsize

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Alex Omeyer is undercover French ,despite his thick British accent. He was born and raised in Paris, and though he studied business and management, he spent most of his time doing show jumping - in other wides, riding horses to jump over obstacles. He moved over to the UK to join his brother, finish his Masters, and get cracking on what they were going to build together.

Alex, his brother, and their friends set off building software solutions. They noticed that there was a lot of data generated throughout the process, and they envisioned a future where this could be accessed to enable anyone to code. But.. in order to arrive at that, they realized that a tool needed to be built to access that data, in a trustworthy manner.

This is the creation story of Stepsize.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.stepsize.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-omeyer-060a0175

S7 Bonus: Ruslan K, Filmustage

Thu, 29 Sep 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Ruslan K has been doing software development for over 10 years. He's gone from mobile development to automation and AI most recently, working with neural networks. He is a huge horror movie fan - with his favorite being the original Thing movie - and has always been looking for an intersection of tech and movie making. He's also a musician, and is into rockabilly and psycho-billy.

Ruslan started his current venture in 2019, with his university friend who is a film maker. While his co-founder was stuck int the US, he dove deeper into the film making process. They noticed that the processes used in film making were not innovated... IE ripe for disruption.

This is the creation story of Filmustage.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://filmustage.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruslan-khamidullin-136831a1/

S7 Bonus: Max Koziolek, Spectrm

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Max Koziolek comes from a simple background. His single mother raised he and his twin brother, outside of Berlin, with no connection to technology. When he was introduced to tech, he was really only interested as far as the games he could play. He was into sports, martial arts, and even politics, believe it or not. He studied law, and realized that as the world was changing to be wrapped around tech, he came back to the industry. Now a days, he is back into martial arts, and he notices - and supports - the trend of tech and martial arts being correlated.

In the past, Max noticed that he was getting a ton of good content from his friends on the chat apps he used. He paired up with his co-founder to explore fixing journalism, and distribute valuable content to users... through WhatsApp.

This is the creation story of Spectrm.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://spectrm.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxkoziolek/

S7 E6: Jon Darbyshire, SmartSuite

Tue, 27 Sep 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Jon Darbyshire is joined at the hip with his wife, in life and in business. They have been doing business together for 22 years, along with having 2 older kids, out in the world doing their own thing. He loves to do anything outside, and claims to be at Newport beach almost every day.

After selling his prior company called Archer Technologies, he sat down with many founders of startups, investing in their ideas and working with. What he noticed was that they spent the same amount of time talking business tooling as they did on their product. He started to think there must be a way to have one operating system for all of these tools.

This is the creation story of SmartSuite.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.smartsuite.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondarbyshire/

S7 Bonus: Andrew Zhou, Kona

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Andrew Zhou grew up in the Bay Area, which he claims was a great place to grow up in. However, he noticed that it was sort of in authentic - as in, no one really did things for themselves. Eventually, he dropped out of college to build something based on authenticity. Outside of tech, he highly values authenticity, has been doing art for more than a decade, and he loves to ski and rock climb as well. In regards to art, he actually finds it challenging to be creative in an artistic way, because his creative brain is mixed with being highly analytical.

Andrew and his co-founders were inspired to build something around workforce management. The knew something needed to change, but wasn't sure where to start. After building solutions and pivoting, they landed on their current venture, around mental health check ins.

This is the creation story of Kona.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://heykona.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-zh/

S7 E5: Vicki Duben, Viewst

Tue, 20 Sep 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Vicki Duben's background is actually in physics and applied mathematics. Prior to graduation, she was a professional tennis player, having played since she was 4 years old. She loves science, and though it was going to be her future - but post graduation, she joined a hedge fund while waiting to start on her PhD. She found great joy at the trading desk of the hedge fund, which is how she quit science, and eventually to venture and entrepreneurship. Outside of tech, she still plays tennis and likes to ski.

Prior to her current venture, Vicki and her team had built a tool around creating rich media ads. During the peak seasons for advertisements, she noticed her team having to reject requests, due to the fact that they couldn't digest the project with their limited capacity. And, there was no tool out there to support digital display ads.

This is the creation story of Viewst.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://viewst.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoriaduben/

S7 HarperDB Update - Jaxon Repp, Head of Product

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Today's episode

Guest: Jaxon Repp is the Head of Product at HarperDB. He has 25 years of experience in architecting, designing, and developing enterprise software. He has founded 3 tech startups, along with consulting on multiple iOT and digital transform initiatives.

Questions:

How did you get involved with HarperDB?
You lead the charge on product, so what problem did you set out to solve with the product?
What is the best use case for HarperDB?
Wait a minute... you're claiming that HarperDB is the fastest, most connected data platform in the world. Tell me why that is?
How have you built your roadmap? How are you balancing customer feedback with the future vision of the company?
How far has the product come since the early days?
Why are you focused on areas like Edge Computing & Machine Learning?
Lastly, tell me about your upcoming 4.0 release - what can we expect to see?

Sponsors

HarperDB

S7 Bonus: Luca Rossi, Refactoring

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 10:02:00 +0000

Luca Rossi is based in Italy, and has lived there his whole life. He has studied computer science, while being a part time musician. He left his PhD program to found a startup called Wanderio, and has been working in engineering leadership roles ever since. Outside of tech, he has been playing guitar his whole life, and he calls it the most serious thing he does outside of tech.

During the 8 years he was an engineering leader, Luca started writing about his experiences and the things he had learned along the way. People started to love it, and his venture started to gain subscribers and traction - so much so, that he stepped out to do it full-time.

This is the creation story of Refactoring.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://refactoring.fm/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucaronin/

S7 Bonus: Dan Lorenc, Chainguard

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 10:01:00 +0000

Dan Lorenc got into tech in a roundabout way. Most of his time in school was dedicated to the study of Mechanical Engineering, building in the world of atoms in machine shops and with 3d printers. He learned how to program through Matlab, and he got hooked. He lives in Austin, enjoys taking in the live music scene, and likes to get outdoors - when it's not 108 degrees, like it was when we did this recording.

While Dan was at Google, the well known Solarwinds attack happened, illustrating the gaps and holes in the software supply chain space. Given he had experience in this space, paired with the Biden Administration's executive order to secure this space, led Dan and his co-founders to give this startup a try.

This is the creation story of Chainguard.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.chainguard.dev/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danlorenc/

S7 E4: Yuliia Tkachova, Masthead Data

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Yuliia Tkachova grew up in the Ukraine, but lives in Canada now. She has a family with 2 kids, and a masters in statistics. And, she acknowledges that the war with Russia has been difficult to deal with, thinking of her friends and family back home. On the lighter side, she notes that she loves Depeche Mode and Red Hot Chili Peppers, whom she has seen many times in concert. She recalls the 2010 concert in Kyiv with Depeche Mode was a moment that she cherishes.

As a data product manager, Yuliia was called out, even during the early days of her job, that her customers were going to churn - due to some erroneous data downstream. After fixing this problem, she saw the landscape of data quality issues that were likely to occur with her customers, and wanted to do something about it.

This is the creation story of Masthead Data.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://mastheadata.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuliia-tkachova/

S7 Bonus: Josh Lewis, Sensible

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Josh Lewis was fascinated by computers in the late 80's / early 90's. In the early days, he was neighborhood tech support, fixing people's computers around the block. He quickly moved into programming, but he moved off from technology in college, targeting philosophy and going to grad school. In doing research with a computer science component, he was pulled back into tech and went to work in Palo Alto. Outside of tech, he's a Dad taking care of his young family. Also, he plays competitive drafts of Magic the Gathering, along with Tennis.

At his last company, Josh experienced a recurring problem in spades, where account managers were spending large amounts of time with data entry of standardized forms and information. When he looked for the Twilio for PDF's, he couldn't find a tool to solve his problem.

This is the creation story of Sensible.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.sensible.so/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshlewisml/

S7 Bonus: Andrew Hoag, Teampay

Wed, 07 Sep 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Andrew Hoag remembers a time before he started his own company where there were other things outside the company. What keeps him sane is spending time outdoors, kite surfing, and traveling. He's a life long nerd, and building things has been his passion for as long as he can remember. Beyond that, he's also a musician - and enjoys hiding behind a drum kit or a DJ booth.

Andrew remembers a time during his career, where if he would have purchased a piece of software, he would have been fired. As the market has shifted today, there is more need for everyone to be apart of the software procurement process - but the tooling is still stuck in the wrong era.

This is the creation story of Teampay.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.teampay.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjhoag/

S7 E3: Stephany LaPierre, Tealbook

Tue, 06 Sep 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Stephany LaPierre is originally from Quebec, so English is her second language. She was a ski instructor in Whistler, and followed up going to university studying English. She grew up with an inspirational grandmother, who was a forced entrepreneur, involved in the community, and a fantastic mother and family member. Her Mom has a similar story, and Stephany pulls a lot of influence from both of these ladies. From many years ago, she has been starting and running businesses.

While progressing through her career, Stephany had an idea around enhanced supplier data that she couldn't shake. After a small maternal break to have her 3rd daughter, she stepped back into the startup ring to build a tool around dynamic supplier data.

This is the creation story of Tealbook.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.tealbook.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tealbook/

S7 Bonus: Nat Robinson, Trustworthy

Fri, 02 Sep 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Nat Robinson is from New Zealand, and grew up there the first half of his life. He finds that growing up in a small island nation gives him a unique perspective in the world. He currently lives in San Francisco with a young family, and loves doing water sports when he is not working - including surfing, sailing, and the opposite winter sports, snowboarding and such. He likes Santa Cruz for surfing, and typically prefers inland snowboarding.

While working at Microsoft, post the acquisition of his prior company, he started attempting to solve a problem for himself - around storing legal documents. What he discovered was that families were struggling with an overload of information, and how to keep it readily available and organized.

This is the creation story of Trustworthy.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.trustworthy.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natrobinson/

S7 Bonus: Dan Draper, CipherStash

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Dan Draper is from South Australia, specifically Adelaide, but his family now lives in Sydney. Interestingly, he does not drink Fosters beer (which is not surprising), and doesn't know what a blooming' onion is. Outside of tech, he has been a life long martial artist, and continues to compete in several forms today. He finds that there is overlap between coding and martial arts, as they are very technical, require a lot of solo focus, and... jokingly, you have to be ready to take a beating.

Five years ago, Dan got the idea of his current venture while he was the CTO at Expert360. During his time there, he was approached by his clients as they demanded proof of how his organization was protecting their data. He was never fully satisfied with the answers they gave the clients. He desired bridge the worlds between encrypted data, and queryable information.

This is the creation story of CipherStash.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://cipherstash.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ddraper/

S7 E2: Marie Ng, Llama Life

Tue, 30 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Marie Ng was born in Malaysia but grew up in Australia. She has lived and worked in London and New York City, so you could say she has been all over. At one point, she decided to teach herself how to code, which led her into her current venture. She has a dog named Homer, and ensures that he maintains his celebrity status on social media.

While she was learning how to code for the third time, she changed the learning method to working on an actual project. After she completed an early version of a to do list, she got great feedback from her following on Twitter. Though she didn't plan to turn it into a business, people started following and supporting the project.

This is the creation story of Llama Life.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://llamalife.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marieng1/

S7 Bonus: Aaron Upright, Zenhub

Thu, 25 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Aaron Upright used to get a ton of energy staying up late and strategizing about his startup, but now that he is 8 years in, he gets the most energy from what he does outside of work. Living outside Vancouver, he enjoys spending quality time with family & friends, and riding mountain bikes, which he finds particularly physically and mentally stimulating.

In the past, Aaron and his team noticed the gap between developers and product folks, as developers were working in Github while Product Managers were working in, and reporting on, project software. They took a step back, and decided to create something to solve this problem and match the tool to their ethos.

This is the creation story of Zenhub.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.zenhub.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronupright/

S7 Bonus: Arjun Bhatnagar, Cloaked

Wed, 24 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Cloaked.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.cloaked.app/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunbhatnagar/

S7 E1: Ian Small, Evernote

Tue, 23 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0000

This is his creation story, at Evernote.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://evernote.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iansmall/

Season 7 Trailer

Sun, 21 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Hello listeners.

Believe it or not, Season 6 has come to a close, and tomorrow, we are kicking off yet another Season of the Code Story podcast. With 6 seasons under our belt, we've nailed down the formula for surfacing the best, human stories, from the builders themselves... like Ian Small, CEO of Evernote, and Waseem Daher, CEO of Pilot.

Tune in for this Season's kickoff episode, this Tuesday, August 23rd. And, as always, thank you for listening.

Sponsors

S6 Bonus: Alexander Deeb, Classhook (Replay)

Thu, 18 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Classhook.

S6 Bonus: Adam Newman, Pyrl (Replay)

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Adam Newman grew up in the suburbs of New York and Brooklyn. Now, he lives in the DC / Maryland area. His grandparents were immigrants, and owned a bakery and were Taylors. So the entrepreneur and self starter characteristics found in Adam are deeply rooted. He's married with 4 kids, and loves to spend lots of time outdoors and living vicariously through his childrens sports activities. He spends a lot of time helping his wife grow her education business, and she spends a lot of time supporting and encouraging him with his ventures.

Through his life experiences, including losing his Father to cancer, an idea originated in him around consumers owning their purchase data, while benefitting companies who cooperate with data privacy best practices. When a few things caught up in the world - data privacy rules, the industry, and Adam himself - he was able to step into creating a win-win solution around data.

This is the creation story of Pyrl.

S6 Bonus: Harshil Parikh, Tromzo

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Harshil Parikh is the father of 2 daughters, as well as the father of 2 dogs. Most of the time spent outside of work is with his family, although he does love to cook, especially experimenting with pizza. Through his life, he has realized that sleep is overrated - humans can function on very little sleep... maybe not forever, but for a few weeks at a time.

Through their experiences, Harshil and his co-founder found that it was difficult to make a cyber security program successful. After running through the same challenges again and again, they decided to step out and build a solution to streamline security and the development process.

This is the creation story of Tromzo.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.tromzo.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harshil/

S6 Bonus: Gavin Mendel-Gleason, TerminusDB

Thu, 11 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0000

When asked what he does for fun, Gavin Mendel-Gleason likes to program for fun. He builds stuff in his spare time, as tech dominates his life. Outside of tech though, he has 2 daughters, and his family enjoys spending time outdoors, specifically in the alps.

At Trinity College in Dublin, Gavin and his teammates were working on a project that required the storage and relation between loads of complex datasets. During this project, they decided to create a better kind of database, to help solve with these sorts of problems.

This is the creation story of TerminusDB.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://terminusdb.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gavinmendelgleason/

S6 Bonus: Jennifer Smith, Scribe

Wed, 10 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Jennifer Smith had an abnormal path to tech. She was born in upstate New York, and was not exposed to tech or startups or building companies during her early years. Post school, she interned at Lehman Brothers but didn't enjoy the feel of the money obsessed tribe. She went into management consulting for 7 years, which eventually led her into business school. Post that, she decided to stay in Silicon Valley and eventually went into Venture. Outside of tech, she just recently had a baby and is in the throws of early parenting.

As a management consultant, Jennifer did a lot of work, observing the tricks and tribal knowledge contained in the workers themselves. After frequently documenting these practices, she thought there had to be a way to just capture their knowledge work instantly with a tool.

This is the creation story of Scribe.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://scribehow.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferreneesmith/

S6 E30: Liam Gerada, Krepling

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Liam Gerada comes from an eCommerce background, building websites, stores, etc. He is passionate about providing people ways to find cheaper products through online commerce. Liam loves to solve problems, and finds it is hard to find a replacement hobby, now that his hobby has become his full time gig. He and his brother have worked together for years, as they do now on their current venture. They grew up in Malta, which is an amazing gem in the Mediterranean.

Liam and his brother were merchants, building their own eCommerce store around 5-6 years ago. From that perspective, they saw very early on that there was a movement towards a headless platform. They weren't developers at the time, which most merchants aren't, and they struggled - and felt there must be a better way.

This is the creation story of Krepling.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.krepling.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-j-e-gerada-28043a122/

Microsoft Careers with Girish & Junior!

Fri, 05 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Today's episode is sponsored by Microsoft!

Guests: Girish Bablani and Junior Diarrassouba, two Microsoft employees at different stages in their career. One seasoned veteran at the company, and one up-and-coming engineer, who share how Microsoft has expanded their career horizons and provided many different opportunities for growth and experience.

Questions:

Junior, how long have you been working at Microsoft? How did you find out about the opportunity?
What were your expectations coming out of school, regarding projects you would work on?
What are you actually working on today? Are you already working with customers to solve real world problems?
Girish, you've been a Microsoft for quite some time - but how did things start for you?
You are overseeing teams across Computer, Networking and Storage - but have you always been in this group?
What other groups did you work in? Was it hard to switch, or did you receive push back?
Both of you - how has Microsoft's opportunities opened your career horizons?
What have you learned that you didn't know about prior to joining the company?
What is the future for you at MS? What would you say to someone considering joining the team?

S6 Bonus: Addison Higham, StreamNative

Thu, 04 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Addison Higham is a father of 2 kids, and has been married for 12 years. His family is of the utmost importance to him, and he has been happy to be able to balance his career and personal life along his journey. As he puts it - he has been a nerd since day 1, building, fixing and playing with computers from a young age. Along with his CS interests, his family was very entrepreneurial growing up. During schooling, he joined some startups to learn the ropes of building solutions. Outside of tech, he loves to ski and be outdoors.

The makers of Apache Pulsar, an open source project, decided to build a cloud-native event streaming platform. Early on in the venture, Addison joined his team as a Chief Architect, in order to enable enterprises to easily access data as real-time event streams.

This is the creation story of StreamNative.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://streamnative.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/addisonj/

Tutelage of Treehouse - Graham Morby, Sr. Software Engineer

Wed, 03 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Tutelage of Treehouse, sponsored by Treehouse!

Guest: Graham Morby is a Senior Software Engineer who works as a dev for hire. He has developed applications in Python, PHP, JS, Vue, and even coded BASIC in the 90's, hacking games for his Commodore 64. He's been doing computers since before they were cool.

Questions:

Tell me more about the book you are working on.
How did you get into programming? You've been into computers for a long time, but at some point you stepped into programming - tell me about that journey.
Now that we know how you got started, tell me about your journey within development. How do you sift through the myriad of content out there and staying sharp in your field?
You mentioned that you found Treehouse, you liked it and you stayed - tell me more about that.
What is your perspective on how the coding/tech careers really are?

Links

https://teamtreehouse.com/

S6 E29: Irina Bednova, Cordless

Tue, 02 Aug 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Irina Bednova started programming when she was a kid, starting out with a smash the cockroach game written in Delphi (which is object oriented pascal). She obtained her Computer Science degree in Russia, and moved to the UK to work in a few startups, including Monzo a popular fintech product. Outside of tech, she cycles her hobbies from time to time, and has landed on gardening at the moment, along with interior design. She's mentioned she is going back to woodworking when the weather changes.

Irina and her co-founder led teams at Monzo, specifically in operations. What they noticed was the proliferation of chat tools for customer service - but, that telephony was largely ignored. Once they validated the problem, they set out to build a product in this space.

This is the creation story of Cordless.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://cordless.systems/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jafrog/

S6 Bonus: Andre Ferraz, Incognia

Fri, 29 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Andre Ferraz was influenced heavily by his parents, as they were both computer scientists. When he was 10 years old, his first science project was themed around computer hacking, which got a lot of surprise at the science fair. Outside of tech, he enjoys to surf on a short board several times a week and spends time with his family.

Twelve years ago, Andre had the amazing idea to create a unique identity for end users, based on their location data. The market wasn't in need of this solution at the time, but after academically exploring the solution, they recognized that GPS alone would not be enough.

This is the creation story of Icognia.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.incognia.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreferraz/

S6 Bonus: Robert Cooke, 3Forge

Thu, 28 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Ever since he was a little kid, Robert Cooke always had a fascination with computers. Even when he was super young, when he didn't know much about them, he was still intrigued by this magic box. At the same time, he loved legos - but found it very expensive to expand his lego set. To contrast that, he could build as big as he wanted within a computer - and he was hooked. He built video games, explored databases, and even an accounting system in his teens.

As he started validating a new idea, Robert visited a number of top tier banks and looked for consistency in the problem they were facing. He found a starting point to build out a data platform, to enable his three pillars of data delivery.

This is the creation story of 3Forge.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.3forge.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-cooke-a7835b69/

Tutelage of Treehouse - Daniel McElroy, WV Coding Club

Wed, 27 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Tutelage of Treehouse, sponsored by Treehouse!

Guest: Daniel McElroy is the Founder of the West Virgina Coding Club. He has been helping young people thrive for a number of years, in many different facets, and has started a number of businesses.

Questions:

What is the West Virgina Coding Club?
In supporting the kids learning how to code, what sort of tooling do you use to help them thrive in learning?
What makes Treehouse stand out from the other solutions out there?
What sort of feedback have you gotten from your members about Treehouse?
What does the future look like for, for the WV Coding Club / Treehouse partnership?

Links

https://teamtreehouse.com/

https://wvcoding.org/

S6 E28: Tyson Kunosvsky, Autocloud

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Tyson Kunosvsky was born in South Africa, and travelled a lot as a kid. When he was a kid, he was majorly influenced by his parents, who ran the Gottman Institute. It was his parents job to take the content that the Gottmans created, and deliver their research to the world, and Tyson helped them do that by building the first version of their learning management system. Outside of tech, he loves to ride motorcycles and do rock climbing.

In 2015, Tyson started a company who focused on migrating enterprise workloads to the cloud. After being acquired, he realized they kept doing the same thing over and over again at the larger company. At 18,000 feet in the air while climbing a mountain, he made the decision to quit his job and build a solution to help people go to cloud.

This is the creation story of Autocloud.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.autocloud.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tkunovsky/

S6 Bonus: Saksham Sharda, Outgrow

Fri, 22 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Saksham Sharda likes to make short films, or anything that is related to videos. In fact, he has narrowed that down to creating trailers, which he attributes to being in the right role in marketing. He's always active in making social media clips, and is always recording everything (even the most boring moments, in his words).

The founders of Saksham's current venture started out building an estimator for what it would take to build an app. This estimator became very popular, and they figured they should build a platform to enable others to make their own.

This is the creation story of Outgrow.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://outgrow.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saksham-sharda-outgrowco/

S6 Bonus: Mike Cruz, Protégé

Thu, 21 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Mike Cruz grew up in Guam, near Japan. He spent 18 years before moving to the US for college. He has always been in tech - everywhere from the Discovery Channel to startups like Trunk Club, and always in building tech products. He has a young family with 2 boys, and his oldest is getting into programming from the lens of gaming. He reflects on how far games have come these days, as they were much simpler and easier to code in the past.

In 2011, Mike & his co-founder has witnessed the proliferation of bootcamps for practical entry and exposure into the tech industry. Given their own backgrounds in struggling to plug into the music and startup scenes, they thought they could replicate this type of model and help people be discovered.

This is the creation story of Protégé.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.protege.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdcruz/

Tutelage of Treehouse - Dustin Usey, Treehouse

Wed, 20 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Tutelage of Treehouse, sponsored by Treehouse!

Guest: Dustin Usey is a Treehouse graduate and a full time technical evangelist for Treehouse. He has pursued numerous tech degrees, after switching careers from the Oil & Gas field into technology.

Questions:

How did you come across Treehouse? What attracted you to it?
What skills did you have professionally that helped you learn faster?
How many programs did you complete on Treehouse? What was your goal?
Tell me the story about how you got your job with Treehouse. What do you do for them?

Links

https://teamtreehouse.com/

S6 E27: Gina Bianchini, Mighty Networks

Tue, 19 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Gina Bianchini grew up in Cupertino in the 70's & 80's, which was a place where people were tinkerers and creators. What she learned from that experience was a deep appreciation for the interests and passions of people. When the early days of social tech happened, she fell in love with how they worked - specially around creating communities. Outside of tech, she played field hockey at Stanford and a solid career. Fun fact, you can't cross check in field hockey, which was news to me. Now a days, she loves to hike, read, and hangout with her friends, family and her husband.

Gina has created community tools before, and has discovered that people who are creating and participating in these online communities are phenomenal. So much so, that she set out to do it again, in order to unlock the power of community in people's lives.

This is the creation story of Mighty Networks.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.mightynetworks.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginabianchini/

S6 Bonus: Omer Rosenbaum, Swimm

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Omer Rosenbaum lives in Tel Aviv, with his wife and 3 month old son. He loves to teach, and he shares his knowledge on his YouTube channel. He loves coffee, traveling, meeting new people, and learning languages (not just coding languages). In High School, he took an after school Pascal class - and he loved it. And around that time, he installed a virus on his computer, and established a new hobby for him - virus removal. As military service is obligatory, he spent several years in the Israeli military and learned a ton.

Despite the skill level of engineers these days, Omer found that the onboarding processes of many companies were too costly. After discussing this issue with many end users, they confirmed that the world of knowledge sharing was broken... and they wanted to fix it.

This is the creation story of Swimm.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://swimm.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omer-rosenbaum-034a08b9

S6 Bonus: Andreas Creten, madewithlove

Thu, 14 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Andreas Creten has been in tech for as long as he can remember, and even started a company when he was 18 years old. He is a family man, with 3 kids, which is what he spends most of his spare time. He likes to do carpentry as well, and he recently built a cabin in his garden, for him to work remotely. His bucket list item is to built a truly remote cabin in the forest someday.

In the past, Andreas started an agency in the normal fashion - taking on development projects and delivering results. What happened was that businesses starting asking their team to be interim CTO's, and help lead the technical strategy for their companies.

This is the creation story of madewithlove.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://madewithlove.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreascreten

Tutelage of Treehouse - Cynthia Kao, Operation Code

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Tutelage of Treehouse, sponsored by Treehouse!

Guest: Cynthia Kao is the Executive Director at Operation Code. Previously, she has spent time as a combat journalist, and was deployed in the Air Force twice. She is passionate about serving and advocating for the families and for the military.

Questions:

What is Operation Code?
In supporting our service members and spouses, what sort of tooling do you use to help them thrive in learning?
What makes Treehouse stand out from the other solutions?
What sort of feedback have you gotten from your members about Treehouse?
What does the future look like for the organization, and for your partnership with Treehouse?

Links

https://teamtreehouse.com/

https://operationcode.org/

S6 E26: Aria Hahn, Pocketed

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Aria Hahn grew up in Okanagan, in British Columbia, Canada. She's always been on the entrepreneurial train, though at times she says she may not have known it. She started out studying business - but hated it. She eventually went into grad school (cause she wasn't ready to work full time). By the end of grad school and a small stint in teaching, she pursued her PhD in Genomix. When she observed the folks in the dry lab pasting thousands of lines of code, she was intrigued by computer science.

Having some experience with grants, Aria and her co-founder took some friends who were business owners out for drinks. When their platform idea and grant acquisition capabilities were challenged, they took action and secured a large amount of grant money... directly from the bar.

This is the creation story of Pocketed.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://hellopocketed.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariahahn/

S6 Bonus: Chakri Devarakonda, Tavant

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Chakri Devarakonda finds it strange how he got into Quality Engineering starting out as a security guy. That being said, he can definitely see the intersection of both. Where he used to test a lot of security devices and labs, he has shifted into the quality side of things and ensuring things work properly. He is a family oriented guy, with 2 boys nearing the end of grade school. Three years ago, Chakri carried forward his quality mindset into his current role. He was intrigued by the intersection of product, services, and quality.

This is his creation story at Tavant.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.tavant.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chakridevarakonda/

S6 Bonus: Ben Turner, Verituity

Thu, 07 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Ben Turner's grandfathers were both an entreprenuer. One grandfather went to Cornell, but ended up buying a fishing boat and then eventually, a hardware store. His other grandfather started a grain elevator after WWII, followed by going into real estate. He learned to be blind to risk, which is important in starting something new. Outside of tech, he likes to do outdoor activities, like kayaking, mountain biking and trail running.

Ben was apart of a company called Network Solutions, and when they started that company, there wasn't the concept of a payment gateway. To make a solution work, you had many technical hurdles that existed. Two years ago, Ben started looking into how you solve this problem.

This is the creation story of Verituity.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://verituity.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnerb/

Tutelage of Treehouse - Jason Gilmore, Treehouse

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Tutelage of Treehouse, sponsored by Treehouse!

Guest: Jason Gilmore is the CEO of Treehouse. He is also a principal at Xenon Partners, along with a startup advisor. He has spend many years as an engineer, consultant, and conference leader, along with making significant content contributions to prominent tech sites and writing several books on programming.

Questions:

How to you come to land in this position with Treehouse?
What are the future plans for Treehouse? What's the strategy?
How many people do you hire who have graduated from your program?
Why would someone choose Treehouse over other online training providers?

Links

https://teamtreehouse.com/

S6 E25: Tom Hacohen, Svix

Tue, 05 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

For Tom Hacohen, coding started when he was 9 years old. He took after school robotics classes which required coding... and once he stepped into the programming aspect, he realized he didn't really care about robots anymore. Outside of tech, he surfs, cycles, and longboards - when the conditions are right. When asked where he likes to longboard, he prefers the roads on a sunny day for long distance long boarding in Tel Aviv.

When a friend asked Tom a question about webhooks, he dug deeper into the problem and realized that for her solution, she just wanted an easy way to send hooks from her service. After she agreed to pay him to build it, along with several others, he found the validation to step into building a platform.

This is the creation story of Svix.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.svix.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhacohen/

S6 Bonus: Mark Porter, MongoDB

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 10:00:00 +0000

This is Mark's story with MongoDB.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.mongodb.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklovestech/

S6 Bonus: Maria Meier, Phantasma Labs

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Maria Meier grew up bilingual, as her Mom was from Poland and her Dad was from Germany. In her free time, she participates Olympic weight lifting (which she clarified does not mean she participates in the olympics). The difference with Olympic weight lifting is in how you do the actual lifts. She finds this is a great way to blow off steam. Outside of this, she is a bit of a foodie and loves to travel and try different restaurants.

In her words, the way she started her current venture is kind of unusual. Formerly a backend engineer, she got restless and figured she was as intelligent as other founders she was observing. Through an accelerator, she met her co-founder and built learning models to illustrate how pedestrians act in traffic.

This is the creation story of Phantasma Labs.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.phantasma.global/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariameier

Notifications North Star - Stephanie Griffith, Marketing Expert

Wed, 29 Jun 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Notifications North Star, sponsored by Courier!

Guest: Stephanie Griffith is an email and SMS marketing expert, and a marketing strategy consultant. She is a startup founder, and has been involved with big names like Drip, Thinkful, Bath & Body Works and more. She is also the host of the Conversational Commerce podcast.

Questions:

What is the primary goal for someone in your role, which you mention required you to be sending millions of emails a day?
So there was a viral HackerNews thread recently, titled "I only like the important notifications, not promotional ones." What does this mean to someone who advises to send promotional messaging for a living?
Should we stop sending promotional messages?
In the world of messaging, what would the perfect world look like? Do we need to go to detailed preferences for all?
As applications evolve and become more complex, notifications become a secondary UX layer that often lives on users devices. How do we keep users from opting out of this critical user experience?
What impresses you about Courier, and how they are approaching notifications as a UX layer?

Links

S6 E24: Matt Young, UserVoice

Tue, 28 Jun 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Matt Young claims to have been born with a tech spoon in his mouth, having his Dad work for IBM and providing early access to computers. In the 80's, he was interested in music and video games, which carried on through the rest of his life. He is very interested in the intersection of tech and how it can improve real life. Fun fact about Matt.. he loves pinball! He restores and works on the machines themselves, which combines everything he loves. Some other fun facts are that Matt was (and still is) a club DJ, and he loves to travel to ride roller coasters.

In 2015, Matt joined his current venture as the VP of Engineering. At the time he was hired, the company was trying to press into the enterprise space, and in order to do that, the company needed some organization and some process put into place.

This is Matt's creation story of UserVoice.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://uservoice.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcyoung/

S6 Bonus: Tyler Rohrer, Remotely

Fri, 24 Jun 2022 10:00:00 +0000

In his words, Tyler Rohrer is best described through his spirit animal, Curious George. He likes to write and try new things. He has 3 grown children, one who is getting married. He has found that his expectations of his kids were actually met, which was welcome and surprising to them. He enjoys golf, and used to do Rally Racing, though he claims he wasn't very good at it. He had more fun building the engines, and less fun crashing the cars.

With the onslaught of the pandemic and the rise of remote work, Tyler reached out to a former customer to run an idea by them. His idea was around a cloud platform to support remote users. The blunt feedback from the customer was that the idea was terrible... if the users couldn't be secured.

This is the creation story of Remotely.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.remotelyrmm.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtylerrohrer/

S6 Bonus: Andrew Salvadore, Coinrule

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Andrew Salvadore is a father of 2 young boys, and when he is not working, they fill up his schedule. He and his boys live half an hour from the forest, so they spent lots of time there, swimming, and jumping in muddy puddles when possible. He enjoys sports, nutrition, and personal optimization. Though he tends to lean towards reading about self improvement, he had drifted into educating himself on startups, crypto, and trading (which is important for his current venture).

Andrew's founders began to realize the impact of the fact that the crypto market is a 24/7 market, and most days, they would wake up in the morning and wish they wouldn't have been asleep when crypto events occurred. They wanted to build something to do it for them - and Andrew was recruited to move the company and the product forward.

This is the creation story of Coinrule.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://coinrule.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asalvadore/

Notifications North Star - Troy Goode, Courier

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Notifications North Star, sponsored by Courier!

Guest: Troy Goode is the Co-founder & CEO of Courier. He is a multi startup veteran, a Y Combinator veteran, and was a prior guest on the Code Story podcast, in Season 4.

Questions:

Tell me about the recent fundraise with Google Ventures.
Considering the success of Courier, it seems like you are in a place where you can choose your investors. Why Google Ventures?
Enhanced mobile functionality is a new focus - what is planned on the roadmap?
Earlier we talked to Eric from Lattice, who mentioned notifications support 50% of their engagement. We spoke with Pat at Matrix who mentioned you being a significant piece of layer 2 infrastructure. And, we spoke to Vatasha, one of your Sr. Engineers, who spoke of how empowering the app was to use as a customer. Keep the movie playing forward - where do you see this going?
How are you educating your customers on treating your notifications as a part of your user experience?

Links

https://www.courier.com/

S6 E23: Franzi Low, Localyze

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Franzi Low doesn't have the usual CTO path. She studied economics, and was doing her PhD in econometrics, prior to her current venture, and was a teaching assistant. She loves to play sports, and can't go a day without playing some sort of sport. She is passionate about triathlons, which is something she can do with her recently injured knees. Living in Hamburg, Germany, she and her husband always enjoy hiking and being outside.

When COVID hit the world, and the topic of global mobility was pushed into view. Franzi, along with her co-founders, used to live abroad, and experienced the lack of support when moving to a new area and settling in. They wanted to come up with a solution to help people during this relocation process.

This is the creation story of Localyze.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.localyzeapp.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/franzi-l%C3%B6w-80b8b562/

S6 Bonus: Shaunak Roy, Yellowdig

Thu, 16 Jun 2022 10:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Yellowdig.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.yellowdig.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunak-roy-65231b/

Notifications North Star - Vatasha White, Courier

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Notifications North Star, sponsored by Courier!

Guest: Vatasha White is a Senior Software Engineer at Courier. Previously, she built software at Lacework, LaunchDarkly and GE Digital. She is a graduate of Smith College in 2015.

Questions:

Having been a prior customer of Courier, what excited you about the solution?
What is your favorite use case for the tool?
So now that you work at Courier... what impact do they have that really motivates you?
What are you working on now, that really excites you about the product?

Links

https://www.courier.com/

S6 E22: Matt Provo, Stormforge

Tue, 14 Jun 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Matt Provo has been married for 16 years and has three kids. So between the Provo household and his startup, there is never a dull moment. He is originally from the West Coast, until he came to Boston for grad school. He was influenced through his love of sports, specifically playing soccer through college. Early in life, he had the opportunity to help start a non-profit organization, based around documentary films of children in Africa. In doing so, he learned a lot about, and fell in love with, building a healthy, impactful organization.

While building a platform surrounding HVAC software, Matt and his team ran into some challenges around the diversity of their implementations. When they lifted & shifted to Kubernetes, they unlocked the problem around resource scaling that their current solution targets today.

This is the creation story of StormForge.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.stormforge.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mprovo/

S6 Bonus: Temilola Adebayo, HumanSquad

Fri, 10 Jun 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Temilola Adebayo is in tech, but her background is in film production. She grew up most other life in Nigeria, but then moved to Canada. She has been producing films for 10 years, and still does. She takes large influence from her family, who happen to all be entrepreneurs. Beyond professional things, she has a 2 year old son who keeps her on her toes, and she enjoys watching films and traveling with her spouse.

Temilola and her co-founder set out to create tools to not only make the immigration process easier, but to provide immigrants with the tools and people to support them through the process.

This is the creation story of HumanSquad.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://humansquad.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/temilolaadebayo/

S6 Bonus: Christine Spang, Nylas

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 10:00:00 +0000

According to Christine Spang, she is secretly Canadian, being born in Toronto. She moved to Upstate New York when she was 3, and grew up there. She came from a family of engineers and entrepreneurs. After getting into an RPG game based on Lord of the Rings, she had to learn to code, run linux, and fell in love with software. In High School, she was a band geek, and was super into fantasy reading. These days she tends to focus more on hobbies that get her out and moving in the world, specifically rock climbing and plants.

Christine was working for a startup that ended up being sold to Oracle. At that point, she was considering what was next for her. The timing was fortuitous, as her friend from MIT was starting up something around extracting information from email.

This is the creation story of Nylas.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.nylas.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinespang/

Notifications North Star - Patrick Malatack, Matrix Partners

Wed, 08 Jun 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Notifications North Star, sponsored by Courier!

Guest: Patrick Malatack is a partner at Matrix Partners, early stage investment firm. Prior to that, he spent 7 years at Twilio, leading product and launching messaging. He also spent 4 years at Microsoft, managing the MS Project program.

Questions:

What things did you build, or attempt to build, at Twilio around the messaging problem?
Why does notifications as infrastructure make sense?
Tell about your perspective on Notifications being a layer of user experience.
What did you see in Troy based on your experiences, to indicate he gets it?
How strongly do you advise your portfolio companies to use a solution like Courier?

Links

S6 E21: Douwe Maan, Meltano

Tue, 07 Jun 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Douwe Maan started programming when he was 9 years old, and grew up with his Dad pushing Linux on him over Windows. He was raised in the Netherlands, outside of Amsterdam. How he recharges outside of technology is traveling to new places. Prior to his current venture, he joined, as employee number 10, for Gitlab. The company is the largest all remote company, which allowed for him to be a digital nomad, which roundabout, led him to meet his wife, get married, and live in Mexico City.

Since 2018, there was a team inside of Gitlab working on a project to bring the same principles and methodologies from software development, into designing and maintaining data architecture. By that time, Douwe was craving the early stage startup feel. Through some changes in Gitlab, he was tasked to lead the team of reviving the project, which eventually led to it becoming its own thing.

This is the creation story of Meltano.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://meltano.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/douwem/
https://douwe.me/

S6 Bonus: Jon Dahl, Mux

Thu, 02 Jun 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Jon Dahl was a philosophy major in college, and eventually, obtained a graduate degree studying theology. He thought he would go into academia, but he quickly figured out that he needed to make money as well. So he started a dev shop and taught himself to code. He is married with 2 kids in their teens, and a 21 year old cat who believe or not... is not playful. They like to read and travel, and watch shows together.

While he was running his dev shop, Jon took on a project that required him to build a video transcoder. Although this was a hard problem to solve, he learned a lot and this served as the catalyst for him to pursue building the product that he wished he could have bought while dev'ing this project.

This is the creation story of Mux.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.mux.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zencoder/

Notifications North Star - Eric Koslow, Lattice

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Notification North Star, sponsored by Courier!

Guest: Eric Koslow is the Co-founder of Lattice, the people success platform. Prior to Lattice, he spent time engineering at TeeSpring, and now he is building a new venture called VStream.

Questions:

What impact does user communication have in the HR SaaS space?
What infrastructure issues arose that caused you to look for a notification infrastructure vendor at Lattice?
Tell me about your new venture Vstream, and how important will your communication strategy be?
Have you experienced particular preferences from your user base, as far as how and when they are notified?
How does Courier fit into your overall messaging strategy?

Links

S6 E20: Izzy Azeri, mabl

Tue, 31 May 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Izzy Azeri has been in the tech industry for 20 years, starting out at places like EMC and VMWare. He's married with three kids, living in Franklin, Massachusetts, outside of Boston. He loves soccer and CrossFit, which helps him destress from his tech work. The family has a place in Maine, where they can be outside, swim, etc. - whatever they can do to keep active and stay healthy Post the Google acquisition of his prior startup, Stack Driver, Izzy and his co-founder were looking to get back into early stage. After interviewing a number of engineering leaders, they noticed a trend - while software development was speeding up, QA was becoming a bottleneck in the SDLC.

This is the creation story of Mabl.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.mabl.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/izzyazeri/

S6 Bonus: George Georgallides, Basis Health

Thu, 26 May 2022 10:00:00 +0000

George Georgallides is originally from a small island in Europe called Cypress. He grew up there, joined the army, and competed in Track & Field and Triatholons. He came to Los Angeles in 2005 for his studies, and has been stateside ever since. He is a passionate polymath, speaking quite a few languages, and regularly takes on new challenges. In learning these languages, he finds that he is able to breakdown barriers in connecting with people.

George has been in the health tech space for some time. When he started working on a pace maker, he interviewed surgeons who were working on patient with metabolic illnesses. Seeing these illnesses, which are lifestyle driven, was very formative for his mission to automate a healthy lifestyle.

This is the creation story of Basis Health.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.basishealth.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-georgallides/

S6 Bonus: Savarth Misra, ContractPodAI

Wed, 25 May 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Savarth Misra didn't start out in tech. In fact, he was a lawyer, working as a corporate commercial lawyer in Asia and the UK. During this time, he noticed how little tech adoption was being done, and how much opportunity was available for solutions to make an impact. He is married, with 2 girls - who, in his words, keep him out of mischief. One of his daughters is totally extroverted, and coming from two introverted parents, they are still trying to figure out where she got it from.

In his prior profession as a lawyer, Savarth thoroughly understood how contracts were done. He also noticed how little tech adoption was present, which directly impacted the effectiveness of contract management in general. He figured it was only a matter of time before this industry - his industry, was disrupted by tech.

This is the creation story of ContractPodAI.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://contractpodai.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarvarth-misra-69869953/

S6 E19: Kirk Marple, Unstruk Data

Tue, 24 May 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Kirk Marple has been a family man for 20+ years now. His kids are older now, in their 20's, which he finds amazing. He's been in tech for most of his whole career, but when he started out professionally, he wanted to be a chef. When he was 13, he wanted to attend culinary school - but then things changed, obviously, but he still cooks often, dabbling in stir fry and barbecue.

After selling his prior company, which was heavy in the broadcast media space, Kirk ended up at General Motors. He started to learn about media data, and the value of getting the media data into computer vision algorithms. Five years later, he realized that no one had created a platform to do this yet... and he got started building it, on nights and weekends, first for podcast discovery.

This is the creation story of Unstruk Data.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.unstruk.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirkmarple/

S6 Bonus: Beier Cai, Commit.dev

Thu, 19 May 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Beier Cai has been in the tech space for 16 years, almost exclusively in early stage startups. The third startup he worked at did pretty well, which was HootSuite. He was the first engineer writing the first line of code for the social sharing platform. Towards the latter years at the company, he fell in love with helping engineers grow their careers, and managing teams. Passionate about community, he started organizing meetup groups outside of the company. Outside of tech, he is married with two boys. He finds that being a father helps him to be a better business owner, thinking towards building something for the long term. Being based in Vancouver, he loves to ski during the winter, and be outdoors hiking and camping in the summer.

After Beier left Hootsuite, he was interested in getting back into the startup life and solving a new problem. He got together with his now co-founder, and a particular problem stood out to him - the difficulty in building a successful career within the startup ecosystem. He was puzzled to see great talent leaving the startup eco-system, and he wanted to fix it, through a private, professional network.

This is the creation story of Commit.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://commit.dev/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beiercai

S6 Bonus: Patrick Bryant, CODE + TRUST

Wed, 18 May 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Patrick Bryant lives in Charleston, South Carolina, and splits time in Washington, DC. He loves entrepreneurship, and believes it is the number one change agent in the world. He is involved in multiple communities around the topic - Startup Grind, EO, and he founded the Harbor Entrepreneur Center. Scuba diving is the thing that takes his mind off all things though, given you are 100 feet under the water, and have to focus. He is excited to go dive with the sharks soon, and he also enjoys the beaches and being in the sunshine.

Prior to his current ventures formation, Patrick and the other three partners had two software products and other companies they were building. Between them all, there were two dev teams... and in the interest of making a bigger impact in their space, they decided to join forces, and form one team.

This is the creation story of Code & Trust.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://codeandtrust.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickbryant/

S6 E18: Or Weis, Permit.io

Tue, 17 May 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Or Weis has been a programmer or engineer since the age of 5. He started playing with DOS commands super early in his life. He made a significant leap in his professional skills when he was joined the IDF, as a reverse engineer. Post that, he worked for a startup to build containers (before they were commonplace), followed by co-founding Rookout, a company who defined the production debugging space. You might recognize that name, as I interviewed his co-founder, Liran, on a recent episode. Outside of tech, he is married to another software engineer, and dabbles in writing science fiction. He hopes to publish one day soon. Or hopes to eventually write a book that overlaps with his professional interests as well, kind of like the Phoenix Project.

While he was building his startups, Or quickly found himself annoyed with having to build and rebuild permission sets, or authorization, into every solution he made. Since he couldn't find someone doing it, he decided to create a permissions solution... for the last time.

This is the creation story of Permit.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.permit.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orweis

S6 Bonus: Stephanie Florio, Swob

Thu, 12 May 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Stephanie Florio's journey to tech started in the world of advertising. She always knew that she wanted to be an entrepreneur, but didn't really know what it was. Outside of tech, she has a young family. In fact, when recording the episode, she was near her due date for her second child. For fun, she loves to go out for dinner and hang out with her friends and family. Pasta and pizza are the favorites but she is open to trying new things.

As mentioned, Stephanie didn't know what sort of business she wanted to start. That was until her brother got frustrated with looking for a job, and together, they figured out there must be another way. They did some research, and used their knowledge of popular dating apps, to create a simple, swipe-able platform.

This is the creation story of Swob.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://swobapp.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-florio-51397765/

S6 E17: Girish Redekar, Sprinto

Tue, 10 May 2022 10:00:00 +0000

If you would have told Girish Redekar while he was in college that he would eventually be writing software, he would have been shocked. His studies focused on electrical engineering, and post school, he was a hard core analyst. After some time, he and his friend decided to do the whole start up thing - they tried a bunch of ideas, and taught themselves to code. He remembers in his previous company he was the top contributor to the codebase until it was finally sold. Outside of tech, he is a movie buff - but bent towards the obscure movies that most haven't heard of... so obscure that he couldn't remember the name of the last one he saw.

In his prior startup, he went through the painstaking process of becoming SOC2 certified. This experience stuck with him - so much so, that when he and his co-founder ventured out to start something new, they decided to create something to make this easier.

This is the creation story of Sprinto.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://sprinto.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/girishredekar

S6 Bonus: Austin Parker, Lightstep

Thu, 05 May 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Austin Parker started out at a young age with computers, writing programs in BASIC and hanging out on bulletin boards. Prior to his tech career, he held many other jobs - as a short order cook, waiting tables, and taking tickets at a theater. When he stepped into this industry, he started out in test automation, followed by getting involved in open source communities, which is how he got into Developer Relations. What he likes about this arena is that DevRel is taking your companies story of a product, and making it harmonize with what everyone else is singing in the market. He has a young family, which occupies most of his time these days. But he likes to do photography, tinkering with electronics, and building model aircraft. Back in the day, he experienced the glory days of Radio Shack where you could grab electronic components on a whim.

Austin Parker has been at his current company for 4 years, right after stealth mode ended. He has helped enable the company to support developers through their innovative tech stack, built by industry experts.

This is Austin's creation story of Lightstep.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://lightstep.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinlparker/

S6 Bonus: Stephen Mathai-Davis, Q.ai

Wed, 04 May 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Stephen Mathai-Davis grew up in a family where he was expected to go into the buy side of Wall Street. Originally, he rebelled against this, pursuing professional kickboxing and even running his own dojo in New York. Fun fact, he has 8 black belts, and has started teaching his kids how to box. In his late 20's he came back to wall street, and experienced the 2008 crash and rebound. Along his journey, Stephen realized that his friends didn't have access to the same money management tools and strategies that institutional investors had. He became inspired to offer these types of investment tools to the average person.

This is the creation story of Q.ai.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://tryq.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-mathai-davis-cfa-cqf/

S6 E16: Jimmy Jacobson, Stake.rent

Tue, 03 May 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Jimmy Jacobson grew up in Snoqualmie, about 45 minutes east of Seattle, Washington. He graduated from college in 2020, as the pandemic was breaking - but, directly correlated with the pandemic, he didn't actually get to walk and receive his diploma. His first job out of school was the startup he is building now. Outside of tech, he rides mountain bikes, digging the trails at Tiger Mountain or back home in Snoqualmie. Around Seattle, he likes to hang out at parks and throw the frisbee, or chilling on the beaches with a late night bonfire.

Post graduation, the job Jimmy had lined up got cancelled. Last minute, he joined some alumni slack channels and sent a cold message to his now co-founder. He found himself fascinated by the idea of giving cash back to people for paying their rent.

This is the creation story of Stake.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://stake.rent/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmy-jacobson-378563113/

S6 Bonus: Lars Grønnegaard, Dreamdata

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Outside of technology, Lars Grønnegaard is an avid cyclist. He stats that if you've been to Copenhagen, where his from, you would know that a lot of people do cycling. He is into road or mountain biking, along with Alpine Skiing - but he does the latter outside of Denmark, in Norway or South Austria. He is a family man, with 3 kids, and he takes his kids cycling with him. Along side of this, he likes to cook for his family. He claims he has a full life, between a startup, family, children and hobbies - and he needs no more.

Prior to his current venture, Lars was primarily a product guy. And in running product, he cared deeply about the impact that strategic business moves made on the business. He also saw that claiming revenue was less empirical, creating human error and bias. After not finding a solution to solve his problem, he decided to create a platform to find out the truth around revenue data.

This is the creation story of Dreamdata.

Find out more about B2B Attribution here: https://dreamdata.io/b2b-attribution

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://dreamdata.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larsgroennegaard/

S6 Bonus: Jack Naglieri, Panther Labs

Wed, 27 Apr 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Jack Naglieri grew up in Ohio, but moved to Virginia when he was 10. He had a normal east coast family up-bringing, but he focused on tech early on, even as a kid. Eventually, he went to George Mason to study Cyber Security. Outside of tech, he is into cooking and fitness. He focuses a lot on making sure that his body and brain are in a good state, through exercise, meditation, sleep and healthy eating.

Jack was working as an incident responder previously, and during that time, he figured out that AI based models for breach detection don't work as well as intuitive humans, as often times there isn't enough signal for them. Along with using antiquated sets of data, he decided that there must be a way to leverage the cloud and build a solution to solve the pain points within this process.

This is the creation story of Panther Labs.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://panther.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacknaglieri/

S6 E15: Itiel Schwartz, Komodor

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 10:00:00 +0000

For Itiel Schwartz, it's hard to remember life before his current venture. He studied computer science and psychology in school, and during that time he started working for Ebay. He's 32 years old (he thinks), and is married with a young family. Outside of hiking and binge watching TV, he is a big fan of coffee and bakeries.

In spending a lot of time in the infrastructure world, he found out that in the world of DevOps troubleshooting, there is a lot of chaos to sift through. He thought it would be amazing to build a tool to impact Kubernetes, and the entire infra ecosystem.

This is the creation story of Komodor.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://komodor.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itiel-shwartz-18542853

S6 Bonus: Todd Larsen, Tech Leaders

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 10:00:00 +0000

From the time he was very young, Todd Larsen was always interested in technology. However, he ended up studying audio engineering so found his way to tech through teaching himself how to code. He gained a ton of experience at companies like Groupon and Digit.co. Outside of tech, he is a father to a 5 year old daughter, and musician, which both things occupy his time outside of business.

Having gained fantastic experience in advertising space, at Groupon, and then at Digit, he learned how to execute on longer term initiatives, but balanced with fast delivery on top of a strong foundation. All of this experience was hard fought, and as he started consulting, he thought... how can I scale myself?

This is the creation story of Tech Leaders.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.technical-leaders.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/salesandsoftware/

S6 Bonus: Marin Smiljanic, Omnisearch

Thu, 21 Apr 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Marin Smiljanic was born and raised in Croatia. He attended a local math school, which actually got him into tech. Post attending college, his first experiences of the industry were through internships and startup involvement. Outside of tech, he likes to hike, swim, winter sports, being outdoors, etc. - and he lives in Vancouver now, which gives him great access to all of the above. He says the main difference between Vancouver and Croatia comes down to food. Croatia contains a bit more traditional cuisine - seafood close to the water, and meat based dishes inland.

During his Amazon years, Marin was hitting a few problems on a regular basis, having to sift through dense training content on a daily basis. And the training format was all over the map - video, audio, text, etc. After brainstorming with his now cofounder, they decided to build an MVP, starting with an API.

This is the creation story of Omnisearch.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://omnisearch.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marin-smiljanic

S6 Bonus: Aaron Bromberg, StimScience

Wed, 20 Apr 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Aaron Bromberg is living the Dad life outside of tech. His kids are 11 and 13, so he wants to spend as much time with them before they get too cool to hangout with their parents. He likes to cook, and during the pandemic, he got really into pizza making, even to the point of calculating dough hydration ratios. Previously, he was working as a management consultant, but spending his time reading about electronics. He took that as a sign that he was more of a gadget guy, and joined Bose. Post that he, worked on the product lines at Amazon, like tablets and smart speakers.

Aaron put together a dream team of Neuroscientists to execute a sleep study lab for 3 years. After that time, what they realized was that with a short brain stimulation session before bedtime, they can drastically improve the time it takes to go to sleep, and the entire sleep time itself. They charged ahead to build a product to make this happen, and do so in a personalized way.

This is the creation story of StimScience, and Somnee.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.stimscience.com/
Website: https://trysomnee.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronbromberg/

S6 E14: Joe Pettersson, Banked

Tue, 19 Apr 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Joe Pettersson is quite the renaissance man, with many interests and ventures he is a part of. He's also had an interesting path to tech. He was originally a lawyer many years go... funny enough, because he thought that after the dot com bubble burst, he didn't think people were going to make money writing software again. He hated it though, and left the legal profession as soon as he could.

He is a collector by nature, with over 100 pairs of sneakers (most of which are Jordans), and several mechanical keyboards. Along side these hobbies, he has started a few non profit organizations - one around equipping young men, and another around educating people in the digital world. Finally, he is writing a book, around scaling engineering teams, which is actually going to be given away free. It should be published in June or July of this year, 2022.

In January 2020, Joe joined his current venture prior to raising a seed round. Having gotten regulated in the UK, they were ready to deploy the first product and find their market fit. And in doing so, he went about optimizing team, process, and built a platform strategically ready for change - in the payment space.

This is the creation story of Banked.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://banked.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe8bit/

S6 Bonus: Dan Langevin, Vericred

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Dan Langevin grew up in Madison, CT - east of New Haven. He had a good size family, with his Dad being an engineer and Mother being a teacher. He grew up around computers, and learned how to build websites in High School. When he went to college, he didn't think he wanted to be in tech and struck out in consulting. It was during this time that he taught himself how to code, built a portfolio, and switched careers into tech. He's married, with a 2 year old and another baby on the way. So free time doesn't really exist for him. But when he can, he likes to spend time outdoors, reading and exercising.

Dan and his co-founder started out building credentialing software, a sort of deep background check on Doctors. In creating a way to scrape & pull in accepted insurance, they recognized a broader need for data to be more fluid in the space. It became obvious that a company needed to solve this problem for the space.

This is the creation story of Vericred.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://vericred.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-langevin-0636004/

S6 Bonus: Roy Ng, Bond

Wed, 13 Apr 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Roy Ng moved to LA from Hong Kong when he was 10 years old, first with his Mother, with his Father following on a year later. His family moved to the stats to build a future for him, with education and opportunity. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley, doing into finance with Goldman Sachs. He eventually made his way back to Hong Kong, to help Goldman with cool deals (like taking Baidu public). Post Goldman, he stepped into the startup world. His first startup sold to SAP, and he then went on to help Twilio grow and go public, followed by maturing the developer platform at MapBox.

Roy connected with his a college friend, and now co-founder, to discuss his experience at SoFi. What they realized was that developers are having to build the "plumbing" of financial products over and over again, because there isn't a developer platform to enable them to focus on their end products. After some market validation at the Money 2020 conference, they set out to build this foundational platform.

This is the creation story of Bond.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://bond.tech/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/royandrewng/

S6 E13: Alexander Luksidadi, Rose Rocket

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Alexander Luksidadi came to Canada in 2002 as an immigrant, with a dream to work for IBM. However, during his time in school, he had a friend that went to San Francisco, and came back "changed", as Alexander as he put it. That same friend asked Alexander to join him in his garage, and build his startup. He started to build things around analytics and AB testing, and saw the revenue impact of his work. It was this point that startups became his life. He quickly found out the power of being a developer, but also the need to have a partner on the business side of the journey.

Aside from tech, he is a musician - in fact, he got into programming because his Dad wouldn't let him become a musician. He decided to do programming, because he thought building software was going to be his way back to music. He loves blues, jazz, and recording in his studio.

Alexander and his co-founder attempted to build a business in the freight and logistics space, which ultimately failed. But they saw a lot more opportunity in the space, and set some goals for themselves to get funding, or get into Y Combinator. They started by building strictly broker software.

This is the creation story of Rose Rocket.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.roserocket.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luksidadi/

S6 Bonus: Liran Haimovitch, Rookout

Thu, 07 Apr 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Liran Haimovitch is 34 years old, and recently married. He and his wife enjoy traveling and eating delicious foods together, and of course, taking care of their awesome dog. Although it has been a while, Liran loves to scuba dive, and enjoys a great whisky, scotch or fancy cocktail now and again. He has recently gotten into trying to make them at home, or seeking out the latest bar to try something new.

Just over 5 years ago, Liran and his co-founder realized that everytime you need to change the way you observe or log your application, you have to fully release that application. They applied their cyber security way of thinking, and built a platform to enable the instant change to logging and observability.

This is the creation story of Rookout.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.rookout.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liran-haimovitch/

S6 Bonus: Perry Zheng, Cash Flow Portal

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Perry Zheng graduated in 2010 from Duke University. He became a software engineer, working for big name companies like Amazon, Twitter and Lyft. During his time at Lyft, he started tinkering with Real Estate investment, buying single family dwellings here and there. Outside of tech and real estate, he likes to travel a lot, and find the best food around. When asked what was the best restaurant he'd been to, he promptly noted that Le Bernardin in New York City was top notch.

Once he had a few single family dwellings in his portfolio, he decided to syndicate a deal for a multi family complex. In doing this, he quickly realized how complicated the process was to get this done. He decided to apply his tech knowledge and create something to solve his problem.

This is the creation story of Cash Flow Portal.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.cashflowportal.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/perryzheng/

S6 E12: Bobby Gruenewald, YouVersion

Tue, 05 Apr 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Bobby Gruenewald is a lifelong learner, and an activator. He majored in Finance, but was always interested in entrepreneurship. In 1995, he built a website for a car dealership for $100, and then went on to build hondaparts.com. The dealer he worked for committed to investing in his future projects right then and there. Post that, he built several companies and sold them, creating a successful track record. He has been married for 26 years, and has 4 children. His 16 year old just started driving, but he claims she is a great driver... way better than the self driving mode on his Tesla.

As a hobby - or addiction, as he confesses - he is a pilot but didn't stop with his pilots license. He can fly helicopters, seas planes, jets - over the past few years, he had flown 44 different types of planes. He's found it was very therapeutic to be up in the air... a great way to clear his head of all the things that occupy his thoughts.

In spite of being on staff at a church, Bobby found himself not reading the bible regularly. While standing in the security line in the airport, he thought up an idea to use technology to help him read the Bible more, and grow spiritually.

This is the creation story of the YouVersion Bible App.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.youversion.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbygruenewald/

S6 Bonus: Brandy & Ryan, Kitcaster

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Brandy Whalen and Ryan Estes are two different folks, joined together in a unified mission. If you look up Denver guy in the dictionary, you will see a picture of Ryan, in a flannel shirt, with a dog, a truck, and speeding off to hit up his fishing spot. He's a family guy, trains in martial arts, and previously owned an agency. Brandy is not a Denver native - in fact, she grew up in Iowa on a Turkey farm... with 30,000 turkeys. She's married with three boys, and likes to get in the mountains to hike or snowboard, during the right seasons.

In their prior roles, Brandy had pitched a client to Ryan for his podcast. As Ryan describes it, she's a great networker and "instigator". When they both had the itch to do a new project, they looked to podcasting. And after some initial validation, they confirmed that they had stumbled upon a need.

This is the creation story of Kitcaster, the podcast booking agency.

Links

Website: https://kitcaster.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandy-whalen/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/estesryan/
https://kitcaster.com/podcast-guest-list/
https://podcastcontent.studio/

Mentorcam March - Josh Campbell

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Mentorcam - Book your mentor session with promo code CODE for 20% off!

Topic: Brand Building

Josh Campbell is the founder and CEO of protein supplement brand Human Improvement and wine brand So Gay Rose. Formerly a Starbucks Executive and President of cannabis wellness company Dosist, Josh has founded, funded, built, and exited multiple startups in the consumer packaged goods space. He is passionate about mentoring up and coming founders and entrepreneurs.

Questions:

How do you start building a brand?
Whats different about building a brand around an unconventional idea?
How did your traditional experience contribute to your entrepreneurial backbone?
What's different about packaged goods vs. digital products, when it comes to brand?
Whats different about selling to retailers, vs. selling eCommerce?

Book a call with Edvard by accessing the link below:

https://mentor.cam/joshcampbell - Use Promo Code CODE

S6 E11: Hywel Carver, SkillerWhale

Tue, 29 Mar 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Hywel Carver has been writing code since he was 9 years old. His first language was C, which quite a language to start out in, and his first program was a "Guess the Number" program, using binary search - and of course, with an embedded Easter egg. He is married, with 2 children. Parenting has really pushed him to learn how to focus, and he regularly has to put things down to take care of other responsibilities. One of his biggest hobbies is pub quizzes, which in Britain is a big deal. In fact, he has been on a few quiz shows on TV, including Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

Hywel and his co-founders dreamed about a way to distill down the distinct learning moments for you, leading you to the point of inception for skills and wisdom. Their passion for this topic led them to build a way to develop developers, in an incremental, personalized way.

This is the creation story of Skiller Whale.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://skillerwhale.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hywelc/

S6 Bonus: John Egan, Kintaba

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 10:00:00 +0000

John Egan is a computer and electrical engineer by training. Early on, he got disillusioned by the idea of building robots - it was too slow for him. While he was working at Harvard, he was watching the early days Y Combinator, and told his wife that there was a movement going on, and they should move to be a part of it. Startups weren't common then, so it was a risky move - but John found himself excited about being a part of it. Eventually they did make the move, created a file transfer company, and ended up getting acquired by Facebook. Outside of tech, he's married, with a 4 year old son. And for fun? He builds tools for himself, since he's not writing much code at his current venture. One of them is Postmortem.io, in addition to launching IR Conf for incident responders.

Post Facebook, John set out to ask the question to his prior colleagues that had left, about the tools they missed the most. The tool that kept coming up in conversation was a tool to manage incidents. So he decided to build this platform, named after an ancient Japanese philosophy.

This is the creation story of Kintaba.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.kintaba.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john3gan/
https://postmortem.io/
https://www.irconf.io/

S6 Bonus: Dr. Gordon Jones, Thrivacy

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Dr. Gordon Jones just turned 60 years old, but you wouldn't know it from his energetic, vibrant tone. He has his doctorate in Health Administration, but he got into Health Technology in 1997. He lives in South Carolina, with his wife and five adopted children. Dr. Jones and his wife adopted their first child 1 year after they were married, as they felt led by God before they were married to pursue this path. Their main family activity is watching movies together, but they love to throw the frisbee, travel, and ultimately being together doing new things.

While teaching at the university, Dr. Jones came across a student's idea to provide security around her identify. In addition to that, he had recently gone through a lengthy background check process, which required the re-verification of several bits of information. He decided to solve both of the problems, by creating a solution using the blockchain.

This is the creation story of Thrivacy.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.thrivacy.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drgordonjones/

Mentorcam March - Edvard Engeseath

Wed, 23 Mar 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Mentorcam - Book your mentor session with promo code CODE for 20% off!

Topic: Angel Investing

Dr. Edvard "Eddie" Engeseath, MD is the Co-founder of a tele-health startup Nurx, angel investor, startup advisor, and a former family physician. He founded Nurx to make prescription birth control more accessible. The company has since grown into a full-service tele-health startup in the Rx medicine delivery space. Nurx is backed by some of the world's most prestigious VVCs such as Union Square Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Y Combinator, to name a few.

Questions:

What exactly is angel investing?
What's the financial target for angel investing? At what stage do you angel invest?
Is there an equity expectation difference between angels and VC's?
How do you find deals to invest in?
How does someone get started?

Book a call with Edvard by accessing the link below:

https://mentor.cam/edvardengesaeth - Use Promo Code CODE

S6 E10: Tommy Yionoulis, OpsAnalitica

Tue, 22 Mar 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Tommy Yionoulis has a traditional tech founder st4ry... via hotel, restaurant and standup comedy route. But in all seriousness, his Dad was literally a rocket scientist, and his Mom was a software engineer. Tommy diverted away from tech initially, and did the restaurant thing before jumping headfirst into stand up comedy, doing it for 10 years along side several hospitality businesses. When I asked him to tell me a joke, he said his jokes weren't podcast ready. After he got tired of the lifestyle, he went back to school, got his MBA, met his wife, graduate and started working for Quiznos. He's married with kids, and they live in Colorado - so he likes to cycle, paddle boarding, and being outdoors with his family. He also likes a good cigar now and then.

Tommy worked his way up and through the Quiznos organization, specifically landing in ops services. When Quiznos took a turn for the worst, he was tasked with figuring out audit reporting. Through his time there, and through some consulting, he created a solution that got the attention of Which Wich... and validated that the market wanted his solution.

This is the creation story of OpsAnalitica.

Sponsors

Links

Website: http://opsanalitica.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommyy/

S6 Bonus: Verl Allen, Claravine

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Prior to his current venture, Verl Allen spent 12 years at Adobe. During that time, he was raising 3 kids as a single Dad, so you can imagine that during that time, it took a large part of his focus. Outside of his profession and family, he loves to ride road bikes 3-4 hours a week, but in particular, long distance rides (to the tune of 200 miles in a single day). He is also a runner, which he finds takes less time to get a good workout in.

During his time at Adobe, Verl noticed a problem emerging with his exposure to acquisitions. He saw that the acquisitions were merging at the process level, but were not doing this down to the data level. When he found out about his current gig, the product was attempting to solve a specific use case of this problem, but was sorta falling over.

This is Verl's creation story of Claravine.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.claravine.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/verl-allen-b83175/

S6 Bonus: What's Your Problem?

Thu, 17 Mar 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Today, I’m excited to share with you a preview from a new podcast I’ve been enjoying and think you will, too.

You may know Jacob Goldstein as the former host of the Planet Money podcast. Now, he’s hosting a new show called What’s Your Problem? It’s a show about technology and business, where visionaries talk about the future they’re trying to build – and the problems they have to solve to get there. You’ll get to know the people who are trying to figure out how to do things no one on the planet knows how to do.

And, like Code Story, you’ll learn about the critical moments it takes to change an industry.

In this preview, Jacob talks with Keenan Wyrobek, the co-founder of a drone company called Zipline. The company has been building and deploying drones in Rwanda and Ghana for years. Now they're trying to solve a surprisingly hard problem: How do they make drone delivery work in the United States? I hope you enjoy it. You can hear Keenan’s full story, and more episodes of What’s Your Problem?, wherever you get your podcasts.

Links:

https://www.pushkin.fm/news/jacob-goldstein-formerly-of-planet-money-launches-a-new-technology-podcast-with-pushkin-industries/

Mentorcam March - Benjamin Balazs

Wed, 16 Mar 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Mentorcam - Book your mentor session with promo code CODE for 20% off!

Topic: All Things Product

Bio: Benjamin Balazs is the Co-founder & CTO of Mentorcam. At the age of 15, Benjamin taught himself how to code and hasn't stopped since. Before co-founding Mentorcam, he single-handedly designed and developed apps for companies like Lamborghini, Visa, and Maserati, enabling businesses to increase data transparency and make people's lives more efficient. Benjamin has founded 4 startups based around the idea of empowering individuals - some failed spectacularly, some are successful.

Questions:

What makes a solid MVP for a startup?
What is technical debt and when do you pay it?
How do you find product market fit?
When do you factor in scalability for a solution?
How much of product building is art vs. science?

Book a call on Mentorcam by accessing the link below:

https://mentor.cam/ - Use Promo Code CODE

S6 E9: Panos Siozos, LearnWorlds

Tue, 15 Mar 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Panos Siozos and his co-founders go back 25 years or more. They all studied Computer Science together in Greece and did their post graduate studies on educational tech. His hobbies have been on pause for the past few years, given the growth of his business, but his main passion is his family, and his 8 year old daughter. They are building a 3d printer together, and tend to create using lots and lots of legos, including lego animation. His family helps him to see the power of learning something, and recites that learning is something that no one can ever take away from you.

During their post graduate studies, Panos and his co-founders built many products in the learning space, as they were crafty and could implement the things they were imagining. During their time, they shared the passion to create products that impacted the masses, and enabled them to learn better.

This is the creation story of LearnWorlds.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.learnworlds.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siozos/

S6 Bonus: Barak Schoster, Bridgecrew

Thu, 10 Mar 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Barak Schoster claims he's generally a boring guy. What he does professionally, he also loves to do in his free time - which is coding. He contributes regularly to open source projects. Outside of this, he loves sea kayaking, and equates the ups and downs of the sport to software engineering. He is married with 2 sons, both under 5 years old. They are into building puzzles together and playing ball, as they are sporty kids. Barak and his wife like to visit restaurants, watch movies together, and thoroughly enjoys going to rock concerts. His favorite rock band is Guns and Roses, but his favorite concerts have been U2 and Imagine Dragons.

In February 2019, Barak and his co-founders started their companies journey by asking the question - how do you secure your cloud environment? What they found was their experience with fixing these environments were similar to the market, and no solution had been created for streamlining this process, much less optimizing and automating it where possible.

This is the creation story of Bridgecrew.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://bridgecrew.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barakschoster

Mentorcam March - Max Samuel

Wed, 09 Mar 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Mentorcam - Book your mentor session with promo code CODE for 20% off!

Topic: How VC's see your startup

Max Samuel is a venture capitalist and lawyer. He formerly worked at Thiel Capital, Wilson Sonsini and Credit Suisse. A graduate of Yale, Penn Law School and Wharton, Max is passionate about mentoring both startup founders and people looking to break into the VC industry.

Questions:

What is different about early stage VC vs. just VC?
How do venture capital firms evaluate startups?
What's important at the early stage? What should a pitch deck include?
How do you start a career in venture capital?
If you were just starting again, what would you do different?

Book a call with Max by accessing the link below:

https://mentor.cam/maxsamuel - Use Promo Code CODE

S6 E8: Ev Kontsevoy, Teleport

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Ev Kontsevoy wanted to be an engineer when he grew up, and this was directly influenced by his engineering parents. When he was younger, computers were relatively uncool still. But as they grew in popularity, he started to explore how to make computers do what he wanted them to do, specifically to interact with hardware. He recalls burning up a monitor once, because he was tinkering with changing the refresh rate, typing up assembly in DOS, and playing early games like Doom. Eventually, he got into infrastructure so he could serve engineers and stay close to the hardware. Fun fact about him - Ev enjoys to watch computers boot. Outside of tech, he likes to tinker with photography, but not digitally - he likes the old cameras, where you have to develop the pictures yourself.

Prior to his current venture, Ev created Mailgun - one of the top transactional email platforms out there - which he eventually sold to Rackspace. During his time scaling Mailgun, and working for Rackspace, he started to feel the pain of logging into multiple cloud services - so much so, that he decided to consolidate these connections into a single platform.

This is the creation story of Teleport.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://goteleport.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kontsevoy/

S6 Bonus: Prabhjot Singh, Pyze

Thu, 03 Mar 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Prabhjot Singh has been in enterprise software for the last 22 years - so he has seen a thing or 2. He joined Citibank out of school, and did a leadership program there for 10 months. Post that, he progressed into the startup world... and never left. He got to be apart of early stage growth, acquisitions, and scaling businesses over a short period of time. He's married, and the father of a four year old - which he notes keeps him sane during his startup life. He mentions that a huge blessing from the pandemic has been the time he's been able to spend with his wife and daughter, working on a fully remote team. They started hiking during the pandemic, to balance the lack of activity, and of course to use all of their daughter's energy so she will sleep at night.

He started out his current venture, he started out in the B2C space. When they weren't seeing the user growth they needed, they pivoted their capabilities fit the enterprise, over the average Joe consumer... with the mission of making enterprises successful. In doing so, they realized that it wasn't just the application - it was the process.

This is the creation of Pyze.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.pyze.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/psinghsf/

Mentorcam March - Rune Hauge

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Mentorcam - Book your mentor session with promo code CODE for 20% off!

Topic: Funding your startup

For the first installment of Mentorcam March, we chat with Rune Hauge, the Founder and CEO of Mentorcam. Rune is an expert in funding your startup, and is a multi time founder. Prior to Mentorcam, he founded three startups and had one successful exit. He has raised millions of dollars in venture capital from top tier Silicon Valley VCs and high-profile angel investors, and also took Mentorcam through Y Combinator.

Questions:

How do you build a fundraising strategy?
What would make one investor a better fit than another?
How do you identify the right investors to go after?
How do you create the best Y Combinator application?
How do you find seed investors?
How important is the MVP in the fundraising process?

Book a call with Rune by accessing the link below:

https://mentor.cam/runehauge - Use Promo Code CODE

S6 E7: Brian Vallelunga, Doppler

Tue, 01 Mar 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Brian Vallelunga loves to build things - products, companies, or silly things on the side. In Elementary school, he was asked by one of his friends, "why can't you put a movie on your phone?". This got Brian's mind racing, and he went home, ripped a movie into the specific format for his flip phone, and shared it immediately with his friend. Post that, he competed in science fairs, even at the state level. One of the projects, he built a craft that was lighter than a fingernail, and flew without wings or engines.

Brian led a portion of the engineering team at Uber, after inserting himself as an intern into the right meetings, which awarded him interesting projects. At the same time, he was building a crypto marketplace on the side, but struggling to get it launched. After taking a trip to reset, his mind kept coming back to a problem he faced while attempting to launch the marketplace - and it was surrounding managing environment variables and secrets. And his community of developers confirmed the need.

This is the creation story of Doppler.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.doppler.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vallelungabrian/

S6 Bonus: Raghav R S, Animaker

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Raghav was a product developer, starting a young age. He was creating interesting products for science exhibitions as a kid. Once, this professor asked him to do a cancer research project, which introduced him to the story of Steve Jobs and his entrepreneurial journey. He was highly influenced by this story, and still is today. In the early days, he focused more on the hardware side of computers. But, slowly over time, he was introduced to the coding side of things and found it a much more thriving ecosystem in India. Outside of tech, Raghav likes to watch movies... so much so, that he reviews movies for his friends, and tells them what to see or not see. His favorite movies of all time is Troy, but he did admit he saw Inception twice (mostly, so he could understand all of it). One day, Raghav found himself fed up with the lack of tools out there, when it came to videos, animations, etc. He got so fed up that he'd decided to build something to solve his problem... and for 14 million others.

This is the creation story of Animaker.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.animaker.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsraghavan/

Mentorcam March!

Wed, 23 Feb 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Happy Wednesday to all of you listeners.

First and foremost, thank you for being just that - a faithful listener. Thank you for tuning in to the show each week, I hope you are enjoying the amazing stories from the builders, founder and leader we have on the show.

As a thank you, we are doing something special in March. We are partnering with a new friend of ours, the folks over at Mentorcam. Mentorcam gives you access to high-profile advisors and experts for 1:1 advice on topics related to startups, tech and professional growth. These people are top-tier venture capitalists, founders that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, and tech industry leaders that can help you in the areas of startups, fundraising, sales, growing your career and much more.

Because we appreciate our listeners so much, we are declaring that March is Mentorcam March on the Code Story podcast. Along side our regular release schedule, each Wednesday, we are going to be interviewing some of the top advisors on the platform, about the topics you know, you love, and you'd love to know more about.

What do you have to hear these amazing conversations? Other than stay tuned during the month of March, I would love it if you would check out Mentorcam today, by going to codestory.co/mentorcam and browse their list of experts.

Again, go to codestory.co/mentorcam, and check them out. And of course, stay tuned to the Code Story podcast each week, and especially on Wednesday's, to hear from some of the top mentors on the platform.

S6 E6: John Myers, Gretel.ai

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 11:00:00 +0000

John Myers comes from a big military family. He was convinced he was going to be a pilot his whole life. When he was a junior in High School, he started doing C++ programing and he got hooked. After graduation, he got accepted to RPI in update New York, and started suiting computer science. He eventually joined the Air Force, and focused on information systems. Through an interesting turn of events, John got accepted to the NSA, while a good friend of his took his deployment spot to Iraq. This job launched him into the world of cyber security, which took him to Afghanistan doing engineering for the military. When he came back to the states, he jumped head first into the startup world. John is married, and just bought a fixer upper house with his wife. He is into exercise, likes to bike in the summer and ski in the winter. Mostly, he likes to do simple things and decompress with his friends and family.

Post acquisition of his first startup, John stared working on a bunch of projects, one of them requiring him to aggregate a large amount of data and anonymize it. This took a lot of work, and there wasn't anything out on the market that provided this type of functionality.

This is the creation story of Gretel.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://gretel.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-myers-98b07b7/

S6 Bonus: Jim Fagan, Global Cloud Exchange

Thu, 17 Feb 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Jim Fagan has had a long and winding road into the tech world. He grew up in New Jersey, and post school, started out in Finance. Slowly, through those roles, he drifted towards operations, and then eventually, towards technology. Personally, he loves to be outside, doing stuff that involves the water. He enjoys surfing, wakeboarding, skiing, you name it. Through his profession, he has travelled the world, and visited many amazing places, including spending 9 years in Hong Kong. He found great pleasure in learning the cultures - personal and business - and how to reach out across languages to make connections.

Jim found himself in an opportune position, to join a company and not only bring it back to life, but to take advantage of a massive global connectivity solution, providing managed network services for over 140 multi-national companies. The question he was hired to answer was - how do we combine infrastructure with software?

This is the pivot story of Global Cloud Exchange.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.globalcloudxchange.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-fagan-1691593/

S6 Code Story on Goodpods!

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Hey y'all, hope everyone is having an awesome day!

Do you ever find yourself about to put your earbuds on, or jump in the car, but don't really know which podcast to listen to. And you REALLY wish someone would give you a recommendation?

I wanted to let you in on a new, award winning podcasting app out there called Goodpods. And this app does just that. Just like you can get with books or music, you can now get with podcasts. On the Goodpods app, you can get recommendations from experts you admire, or friends you trust - or even better, you can be the one making the recommendation, and sharing your favorite episodes or shows with your friends. Its chock full of other features too, around chatting, following hosts, bookmarking episodes for later, and much more.

And guess what? Code Story is on Goodpods too.

Thats right, you can download Goodpods today, and listen to the Code Story podcast right there. In fact, my ask is this... please go pick out your favorite episode of the podcast on the app, and recommend it on the platform. It would be a huge help to Code Story, to Goodpods, and to your friends, of course.

Go to codestory.co/goodpods on your phone to download the app, follow the podcast, and recommend your favorite episode.

https://codestory.co/goodpods

S6 E5: Blake Garrett, Aceable

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Blake Garrett had the good fortunate to grow up in the Bay Area. He got to observe his father and his involvement in startups. Though none of them were massive successes, his Dad would bring him around and he got to watch him bring together teams of really smart people to solve customer problems. Blake was a sports player growing up - mainly, basketball and football. He was starting quarterback in football for a while, then transitioned to playing safety. Though, he admits that his heart was still into playing offense. He's married with a 2 year old, and one more on the way.

Blake decided he wanted to execute on one of his ideas. He taught himself several key areas to get himself started, and built a handful of mobile apps. Post this, he pitched an idea to some investor friends of his - which, ultimately turned down his idea. However, they saw potential within the focal areas of his ideas, and gave him some advice on how to proceed. Once he nailed down markets of required learning, that could be translated to a mobile experience - he was able to finally take off.

This is the creation story of Aceable.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.aceable.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blakegarrett/

S6 Bonus: Michel Tricot, Airbyte

Thu, 10 Feb 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Michel Tricot has been in the data space for the past 15 years. He really enjoys gathering information, and gaining insight from it. As a kid, he would gather data in analog ways, grouping together movies or internet articles in categories, and extracting info from it. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids, and loves a nice afternoon in the backyard cooking BBQ. He does both fire cooking, and smoking, though he admits that he not smoked a brisket yet because he doesn't want to get up in the middle of night and check the temperature.

In his prior role, Michel was a Director of Engineering and Head of Integration at LiveRamp, where he and his team were managing thousands of connectors, responsible for moving massive amounts of data everyday. His big realization was that every company needs to have a way to move data, and to do it in a dead simple way.

This is the creation story of Airbyte.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://airbyte.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/micheltricot/

S6 Bonus: Vedran Cindrić, Treblle

Wed, 09 Feb 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Vedran Cindrić grew up in a small town, in rural Croatia. As far back as he can remember, he has been tinkering with computers - messing around with DOS, and of course, gaming. From the very early days, computers became his passion. When he finishing college, he started his own successful design agency before building his current venture. He likes to watch movies and TV shows, and loves to barbecue. I learned that in Croatia they don't smoke meat as much as we do in the states, and stick mainly to pork over beef. One thing I loved that Vedran said was "the best way to eat a salad is when you are having barbecue - otherwise, you wouldn't eat a salad".

When business was booming, Vedran and his team built a tool to help them keep track of all the API's they were supporting. After putting it down several times, they finally figured out how to scale it properly and decided to finish building it... and share it with the world.

This is the creation story of

Treblle.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://treblle.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vedrancindric

S6 E4: Mike Boufford, Greenhouse

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Mike Boufford has no hobbies anymore, and for good reason... he has two 6 month old daughters and a 3 year old toddler, so its an exciting and very busy time for the family. He used to play guitar and enjoyed cooking, but now he exclusively focuses on family and work. His family loves to go to the park and taking walks around the neighborhood. Along with that, they sing songs, read stories, doing art projects and with the 3 year old, Mike does dramatic play. Recently, his daughter was Belle from Beauty and the Beast, and promptly decided that Mike was Gaston. He's not sure if that means she thinks he is arrogant or the strongest man she knows.

When Mike interviewed at a large company, he expected that there would be some sort of structured process and for it to be organized. He found out it wasn't... he chatted with multiple people, who all asked him the same questions. When approached to join a team, and build something to solve these problems - it took him no time at all to figure out he could build something better.

This is the creation story of Greenhouse.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.greenhouse.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boufford/

S6 Bonus: Lindsay Tjepkema, Casted

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Lindsay Tjepkema is married with three kids, living in Indianapolis. Her children are all boys, and she lovingly describes them more like bear cubs, that don't actually walk anywhere, they just kinda roll around and growl. They've been known to have many a family night playing Mario Kart or watching avengers movies.

Lindsay has been a B2B marketer for over 15 years. While working in the space, she wanted a platform to help her maintain, manage, and make the most of audio and video content made for her company. When she looked around for a solution, she couldn't find one. So of course - she and her co-founders decided to build their own.

This is the creation story of Casted.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.casted.us/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsaytjepkema/

S6 Bonus: Rob Carpenter, Valyant

Wed, 02 Feb 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Rob Carpenter was born and raised in Dillingham, Alaska - and no... he can't see Russia from his back steps. He has been a long term space ship nerd, and confesses that one of the reason he got into entrepreneurship is because he wants to eventually secure a ticket to space. Currently, he lives outside of Boulder, Colorado with his young family, and really enjoys the outdoors, growing his company, and taking good care of his little ones. While his kids are young, he loves to take the kids hiking, swimming at the pool, and going to the zoo and local animal sanctuaries.

Rob started a company, wanting to originally create holographic employees, using a gaming engine - and they even named this employee Holly. What they figured out during that process was that conversational AI hadn't been solved yet, and if they were ever going to make their original idea work, they would have to solve it. So... they got heads down solving it.

This is the creation story of Valyant.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://valyant.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-carpenter/

S6 E3: Matt Pierce, Immediate

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 11:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Immediate.

Sponsors

Links

Website: http://joinimmediate.com/codestory
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/piercmb/

S6 Bonus: Adam Newman, Pyrl

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 11:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Pyrl.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://pyrl.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/newmanadam/

S6 Bonus: Matt Cowell, Quanthub

Thu, 27 Jan 2022 11:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of QuantHub.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://quanthub.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcowell/

S6 E2: Trevor Marshall, Current

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Trevor Marshall grew up in NY, and has been living in the state his whole life. His path into technology was not a direct one. Prior to school, he was on the road to becoming a professional musician, studying at Juilliard. However, early on in his schooling, he found the same sort of joy he got from music in other areas, initially through economics and combinatorics - and he was hooked on math and computer science.

Early on in life, Trevor's grandfather took him to the horse tracks, teaching him about the odds of a race. Fast forward several years post graduation from Columbia, he joined Morgan Stanley and got really excited about Bitcoin. He even went to his boss and asked if he could trade it... which he was promptly denied. However, that bold interaction solidified a match made in heaven for future working relationship.

In fact, when his now co-founder left, Trevor followed him to continue working together. Being really into Crypto, they both wanted to figure out how to introduce these new value streams to the masses. In order to do so, they needed to build a banking product that made sense for everyone... not just the wealthy.

This is the creation story of Current.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://current.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-kurth-marshall/

S6 Bonus: Alexander Deeb, Classhook

Thu, 20 Jan 2022 11:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Classhook.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.classhook.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderdeeb/

S6 Bonus: Reed McGinley-Stempel, Stytch

Wed, 19 Jan 2022 11:00:00 +0000

This is the creation story of Stytch .

Sponsors

Links

Website: http://stych.com/codestory
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reed-mcginley-stempel-17362245/

S6 E1: Stephen Blum, Pubnub

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Stephen Blum finds that his life outside of tech is tricky to define, given we are surrounded by tech everywhere. He was inspired to be a game developer at an early age, and he found it fun and exciting. In the gaming days, he really enjoyed the Legend of Zelda, Metroid - those adventures and the animation was fascinating to him. After a while, he found more excitement within the business world, and using technology to solve problems and profit. In fact, he finds it so much fun, that what he loves to do outside of work and business... is just chill. He likes it when there is no plans.

Stephen likes to support and invest in earlier stage AI and API companies. He has 18 different companies he has invested in, and he wants to continue expanding that portfolio, and into crypto as well - specifically arbitrage through API's, which he finds particularly fun and lucrative. One of the tricks he found is to make all trades simultaneously within the same wallet.

In their inception, they were trying to solve a problem... by simply creating a button to order a taxi. In the process of building that, they figured out they needed tech to allow more than one party to participate. And their product vision clicked.

This is the creation story of Pubnub.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.pubnub.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenlb/

S5 Bonus: Guillermo Rauch, Vercel & Next.js (Replay)

Thu, 13 Jan 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Guillermo Rauch is originally from Argentina. He has always been involved in the open source world, starting out working in Linux and native tooling. After a while, he feel in love with the web and the front end web system, working in the early days of AJAX, JS Animation and jQuery competition. When I asked him what he does for fun, he laughed - because he really enjoys what is does professionally on the web .

On a personal level though, he has three kiddos so he stays pretty busu. He is into fitness, and does calisthenics and gymnastics. Beyond that, he is into coffee - though I don't know many tech people who aren't into coffee.

Having been a JS person, he saw an opportunity to build out the frontend layer of the web. To put that in context, think about what Stripe, Twilio, etc. have done for the industry with their foundational, developer first API's. He decided to create a framework that had no opinion about how you got your data. Along side of this, he created the optimal ecosystem for developers to build very fast - specifically, to develop, preview, and ship.

This is the creation story of Next.js and Vercel.

Sponsors

Courier
Img.ly
Routable
CTO.ai
Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://vercel.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillermo-rauch-b834b917b/
https://nextjs.org/

S5 Bonus: Adrian Tobey, Groundhogg (Replay)

Tue, 11 Jan 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Adrian Tobey lives in Canada. He got started in his tech career right out of high school, working for his father's digital marketing agency. In high school, he was interested in computer science, and developed video games and useful UI for his school. Prior to digital marketing, his father was a jazz musician, and Adrian followed in those footsteps to play the trumpet. For University, he had two options - go to school for computer science or for music... and chose the latter. During school, he was working full time for his Dad's agency, building websites, email campaigns and such. While he was doing this, he built his first product called Form Lift, which is a Wordpress form builder for Infusion Soft.

Around 3 years into school, he failed his first university course - a discrete computer science course around computer runtimes, big O notation, etc. He had invested a ton of money into the his degree already, but he started doing the math, and estimated he wouldn't complete school until 2025 because he was part time.

With that in mind, he dropped out of University school, and thought - what next? He didn't want to do agency work forever. He took a look at how expensive, convoluted and clunky marketing technology tools can be. He vowed to create the ultimate suite of tools, and to do it on Wordpress.

This is the creation story of Groundhogg.

Sponsors

Courier
Img.ly
Routable
CTO.ai
Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://www.groundhogg.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriantobey

Season 6 Trailer

Mon, 10 Jan 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Hello listeners... it's time to embark upon yet another season of the Code Story podcast.

As we dive into another journey together, in fact our 6th journey together, you an expect to hear more (even more!) amazing stories about MVP's, trade offs, determining feature importance, building teams - and scaling, or fighting scale, as you grow.

Our guest list this Season is truly epic, with appearances from Stephen Blum of Pubnub, Matt Pierce of Immediate, Reed McGinley-Stempel of Stytch, Mike Bouffard of Greenhouse... to mention just a few.

Season 6 starts on January 18th, so subscribe today to ensure you don't miss an episode.

And a big shout out and thank you to our Season 6 sponsors

Sponsors

Season 5 Sign Off

Fri, 07 Jan 2022 11:00:00 +0000

This is Season 5, signing off....

Thank you for listening!

Season 6 of the Code Story podcast will be starting SOON, so stay tuned.

S5 Bonus: Shelby Stephens, Growth Match

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 11:00:00 +0000

Back in 2019, we had Shelby Stephens on the show to talk about his project then, called Jolly. Since that time, the COVID pandemic shut down events and crippled their progress at the time. They pivoted the product a bit, to be a sort of eCommerce like site for freelancers to offer services. While they let their Jolly pivot grow, he and his co-founder started building a new product... one which allows startup experts to offer their knowledge and experience - in a fractional, part time manner.

This is the creation story of Growth Match.

Sponsors

Courier
Img.ly
Routable
CTO.ai
Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

S5 E30: Adam Wiggins, Muse

Tue, 04 Jan 2022 18:59:00 +0000

Adam Wiggins was from California originally, but has lived in Berlin for the last decade. Earlier in his life, he did burning man art installations and was a DJ. Now, he is a middle aged family man, so he focuses on his family, his daughter, his adorable dog and his career/software projects. His partner is also an immigrant, whom he met while in Berlin.

Adam loves Berlin, and in fact, loves European cities in general, for their focus on quality of life. He mentions that in the states, there is a large amount of economic freedom but some inequality and more highs and lows to speak of. The culture in Berlin specifically is full of history, culture, and a bohemian element which is very attractive to music and art.

Adam is most well known for starting Heroku, which completely simplified the way developers think, interact and use infrastructure. Post its acquisition by Salesforce, he found himself thinking about the future of computing, and started a research lab called Ink & Switch. The area they landed on was computing interfaces, and usage around screen touch. After a few prototypes, they landed on something that they though was a solid combination of desktop precision with touch screen mobility.

This is the creation story of Muse.

Sponsors

Courier
Img.ly
Routable
CTO.ai
Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://museapp.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-wiggins-a7623845/
https://adamwiggins.com/

S5 Bonus: Lydia Davies, Teemates

Thu, 30 Dec 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Lydia Davies is from the UK originally, but she has lived all over the world. She was Born in Thailand, and has lived in Southeast Asia, Singapore, Alaska, the Middle East and now in Houston. She has always been into sports - playing, supporting, etc. When she was 16 years old, she signed on to a music label as a singer and pianist, traveling around the world to perform. When she left the music industry, she got really into technology. As she opened a performing arts academy, she ended up building her own website and app for the business.

During COVID in 2020, she starting creating a framework for a golf app, for her and her husband to find people to play golf with. She wanted the app to have mechanics like a dating app, with a social aspect to see who was down to play some golf... worldwide.

This is the creation story of Teemates.

Sponsors

Courier
Img.ly
Routable
CTO.ai
Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://teematesgolf.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lydia-davies-57b7001/

S5 E29: Nick Clayton, Savitude

Tue, 28 Dec 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Nick Clayton has been into tech most of life. Outside of tech, he loves a good strategy game or board game - in face, he met his fiancé playing these types of games. He is an avid Magic the Gathering player, and has been enjoying the game for over 20 years. When I asked the difference between Magic and Dungeons and Dragons, he notes that DND is a role playing game and more about telling a story, while Magic is more about strategy and mechanics. He also enjoys spending time with friends and family, and cooking a good meal with lots of flavors.

Nick and his co-founders followed the data, and learned that there were a large number of people in the population have a hard time finding clothes... because clothes aren't produced in their body shape. After iterating on solutions around education and recommendation engines, they decided to move upstream into the designer's process.

This is the creation story of Savitude.

Sponsors

Courier
Img.ly
Routable
CTO.ai
Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://www.savitude.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-clayton-b6b60815/

S5 Bonus: Marco Palladino, Kong

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Marco Palladino migrated from Italy about 10 years ago.. and brought all of his Italian hobbies with him. He loves to cook - specifically pasta, of course - and enjoys a good glass of wine. He has a family, with 1 kid and 1 on the way. He loves sports, soccer and skiing. Beyond that, he is a self taught developer, where tech has been his side hobby and passion, but turned into his full time gig.

Marco and his co-founder came to San Francisco 10 years ago, to build an API marketplace. Over time, they amassed 300,000 developers, consuming and publishing API's. Eventually, the figured out the business model wasn't working... so they open sourced the platform.

This is the creation story of Kong.

Sponsors

Courier
Img.ly
Routable
CTO.ai
Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://konghq.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcopalladino/

S5 E28: Oona Rokyta, Lance

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Oona Rokyta is a first generation American, which you wouldn't expect from her lack of accent. Her parents are artists from the Czech Republic, who migrated to the US 6 months before she was born. Because of her parents profession, she comes from the land of not understanding business, nor tech. Her parents are role models for her - in fact, they are her personal heroes. From this inspired place, she finds her greatest motivation in life, which is to learn as much as possible and share it with others. She spends a lot of time with her boyfriend and his kids, and has even kicked off a weekly baking challenge with his daughter, creating experimental dishes.

As a freelancer, and a part of a community of freelancers, Oona found that it was difficult to understand cash flow with variable income. Through interactions with accountants or financial systems, she saw that most systems or professionals were backwards looking. She though, well what does it look like moving forward? What does it look like to bring on additional client?

This is the creation story of Lance.

Sponsors

Courier
Img.ly
Routable
CTO.ai
Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://www.lance.app/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orokyta/details/experience/

S5 Bonus: Ari Jacoby, Deduce

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Ari Jacoby grew up in the DC Metro Area, but has lived in New York City for the last 17 years. He's married with 2 kids at home, ages 12 and 9, and he spends a lot of time outside of his business building legos, math homework, and stem projects with his kids. The biggest hit of the stem projects has been circuitry, to see something buzz or light up at the end of the exercise. He's a big fan of international travel, and enjoys a good glass of wine with his wife.

Speaking of, Ari's biggest influence is his wife. As he puts it, she is the CFO (Chief Family Officer) of the Jacoby Household, and does a brilliant job of it. He likes to watch her works, and finds it motivating how much she gets done and takes care of in her infinitely more hard role than his.

Ari spent a lot of time around identity, specifically in ad tech and mar tech. He figured out that data was common currency in that world, but not in other spaces. Having built large identity graphs, he recognized there was an opportunity to do it again in cyber risk and fraud.

This is the creation story of Deduce.

Sponsors

Courier
Img.ly
Routable
CTO.ai
Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://deduce.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arijacoby/

S5 Bonus: Ben Downling, IPInfo

Thu, 16 Dec 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Ben Dowling lives in Seattle, and loves it there. He is married, and a father of three kids - ages 11, 8 and 5 - so he's a busy dude. He loves to hike, and recently took his family on a weekend trip to Mount Rainer. He loves to snowboard, and get away from the screen - though he admits, that tech is also his hobby... building side projects, apps, websites, etc.

Ben was working on a bunch of different side projects in 2013. The process to get IP Info was manual, tedious, and filled with headaches across projects. After he felt this pain point multiple times, he decided to build a solution to solve it... not knowing that he would quickly start getting millions of requests in a short time.

This is the creation story of IPInfo.

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Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://ipinfo.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bendowling/

Compiler - What is the recipe for burnout?

Wed, 15 Dec 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Original episode: https://www.redhat.com/en/compiler-write-technical-documentation

Hey guys, we are narrowing in on the Christmas holiday's in the states. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New year! For today, I'm sharing yet another fantastic episode of the Compiler podcast, from Red Hat. As a reminder Compiler is a show hosted by tech veterans, discussing tech topics - big, strange and small.

On this particular episode - which is episode 10 - the topic of burnout is chatted on. This was a great discussion, full of really good tidbits. What I really liked was how Angela, Brent and Johan break down the ingredients for burnout. In order, these are:

An unending amount of work
Not having healthy boundaries on your work
Guilt, obligation, and never doing enough
Criticism amplifying 1-3

The hosts primarily interviewed folks, and come up with this recipe from the standpoint of open source maintainers. Interestingly enough, I find that these apply to software engineers as well. I think criticism can be interchanged with pressure as well, which probably has some criticism implicit in it.

However, I also find that lack of team or company direction can lead to burnout as well as an absence of mentorship. When people don't feel like they are growing, work can become stale. Perhaps its a little bit of burnout mixed with boredom, but at any rate, it leads them to not want to work there anymore.

At any rate, I really enjoyed this episode, and think you will too. Enjoy!

S5 E27: Max Stoiber, GraphCDN

Tue, 14 Dec 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Max Stoiber was born and raised in a small town, just outside of Vienna, Austria. From a young age, his biggest influence was his mother, who left her job to start her own business as a medical expert in the courts. It has been inspiring for Max to watch her find her place in the world, and to box through everything life threw at her. He still finds great inspiration from that today. And, very early on, he was focused on doing something on his own.

When he's not staring at his computer screens, he likes to get outside and boulder with this friends. He got into the sport through other fellow geeks, and he feels that bouldering in Vienna is pretty much a nerd sport. He's also a trained skiing instructor, and really into coffee, as a certified barista.

Prior to his current venture, Max has had some great success in the open source world, and building a chat tool called Spectrum - which was a platform for community chat. Eventually, Github acquired the product, and opened a whole new set of problems around architecting a large scale, real time system. Through a difficult period of learning and service outages, he learned and figured out a better way to reduce traffic up to 95% with edge caching.

This is the creation story of GraphCDN.

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Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://graphcdn.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mxstbr/
The Mom Test

S5 Bonus: Darshan Mehta, iResearch

Thu, 09 Dec 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Darshan Mehta has a degree in marketing and finance, and has typically served those disciplines. However, he has been accused of having the extra tech gene, since he was born in India. He enjoys out door activities, and is scuba diving certified. He really likes to do activities around what he is passionate about. For example, he is launching a hackathon in Bangkok called Big Mango, to help teams achieve product market fit and incubate early stage startups. And, he teaches at universities around the world, in particular around how to give presentations. He believes deeply in communicating effectively and having engaging conversations.

He is also an author, and just recently released his book called "Getting to Aha". The tagline harps on the belief that today's insights become tomorrow's facts. One of the things Darshan found throughout his career was that most people want to figure out why people buy your products. Most people are comfortable with surveys, but its difficult to get to the "why" that way, and focus groups help with that. Traditionally, doing a focus group has been difficult, expensive, and concentrated to geo areas. Darshan set out to build a tool to change this for the market.

This is the creation story of iResearch.

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Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://www.iresearch.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darshan--mehta/
https://www.connectqik.com/
Getting to Aha - Book

S5 Bonus: Ilan Peleg, Lightrun

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Ilan Peleg is 29 years old, and has been a long time middle distance runner. He previously ran the 800 meters, and served int he Israeli Army as a professional athlete. At the age of 21, he retired and started his tech career. He said that there are many who would correlate their Israeli service area of their professional success. He just recently got engaged. He proposed to his fiancé outside of Tel Aviv, on a cliff, in the same spot where they had their first kiss. Generally, he enjoys sports and athletics, and sees it has a positive effect on how he manages his team at Lighten. He also likes to travel, and stay educated on the topics he follows.

Ilan and his co-founder were developers in many different types of companies - startups, enterprises, etc. It seemed to them that it was easy to debut and troubleshoot applications in development, but found it very difficult to observe applications in production. They realized that most developers were not equipped with the right tooling to troubleshoot and understand live applications in the wild.

This is the creation story of Lighten.

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Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://lightrun.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilan-peleg-5a31396b

S5 E26: Bruno Demuro, Armor Bionics

Tue, 07 Dec 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Bruno Demuro is first and foremost, a father of 2 children. He says this is the single most awesome thing, and yet at the same time, the most challenging thing. He has a background in industrial engineering and design, but considers himself a generalist and a relentless problem solver (which he admits, can be hard on this wife). He loves all thing tech - hardware, software, you name it. But beyond tech, he loves working on and restoring classic cars, along with surfing on a long board.

Earlier in Bruno's life, his mother had to undergo surgery to have a brain tumor removed. Though the surgery went WELL, in order to remove a tumor the size of a penny, the doctor's had to make an opening the size of a grapefruit. When Bruno asked why, the Doctor said that it was the only way they could be sure that the tumor would be accessible. Bruno found this answer to be unacceptable.

This is the creation story of Armor Bionics.

Sponsors

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Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://www.armorbionics.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brunodemuro/

S5 Bonus: Kyle Bernhardy, HarperDB

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Kyle Bernhardy had a less than traditional path to the tech world. He has been in the industry since the late 90's, but it all started when he was growing up, attempting to program text adventures games on his Commodore 64. In High School, he started running and they became a major part of his life - so much so, he went to run for Penn State University. He settled into an exercise and sports science major, so he could stay close to the sport.

Post college - he didn't know what to do with his degree. He worked in a few corporate fitness centers, but didn't enjoy what he was doing and didn't see a path for himself. During that time, he ended up getting a job in tech support. He grew in this role, in his knowledge of DB basics, SQL and supporting database reporting. Once this happened, he moved into the development world.Programming for Kyle is a creative outlet, but not for art... for problem solving. In 2010, he started working for a data center company and met his now co-founder. They would hang out and chat about what it would be like to build something together. While working for a large data aggregation company, he worked through a number of data availability, reliability, and infrastructure around massive data processing. Internally, he thought there must be a better way.

This is the creation story of HarperDB.

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Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://harperdb.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylebernhardy/

S5 Bonus: Cherish Santoshi, SAWO Labs

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Cherish Santoshi started his professional career when he was just 18. He plays music, being a one man band through his guitar, bass and drum skills. He's even got a studio setup at home, and enjoys lo fi hip hop, especially when he is working. Cherish reads and watches a lot of content, specifically around theoretical thought experiments, which help. Him to think about things from a different angle. Along with this, he likes to travel... to get out, see the world, and experience new people and ways of thinking. He likes to interact with like minded developers, founders, and startup folks, which makes his current role as Head of Community a perfect fit.

Being startup minded, he set out with his founding members to continue the growth of SaaS in India, and build a product specifically for then developer community, and building an auth product that furthers the password less revolution.

This is the creation story of SAWO.

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Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://sawolabs.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherishsantoshi/

S5 E25: Bobby Ross, Fire Hydrant

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Robert Ross, also known as Bobby Tables, has been into building stuff since he was 12 years old. Around that time, he Googled "how to make a website", learned from an online tutorial, and has been hooked on development ever since. He started making websites for people he knew in San Diego, which allowed him to facilitate his Xbox and Xbox Live needs. For gaming, he stuck to playing only Halo - and in fact, he already pre-ordered Halo Infinite over a year ago. But outside of gaming, he really loves to get analog - camping, being outside, and skiing.

In high school he did a lot of marching band, and continued the art in drum core international after he graduated. Post competition, he started working full time with a web consultancy.

Then went on to the next thing and the next, and he feels very lucky to have made the stops he made in his career, and the people he met along the way. He's grateful for his early work at an agency because it required him to move quickly, try out new things, and move on to the next project. This gave him a lot of rapid experience up front, which helped shape his skills later on.

Eventually, he was an on call engineer - either by accident or intentionally - because he always wanted to help solve the problem. At one point, he set out to bridge bootcamp grads into the real world of software through a video series. As it turns out, the product he was building during the series was much more interesting - and desired - than the videos themselves.

This is the creation story of FireHydrant.

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Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://firehydrant.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobby-tables/

S5 Bonus: Luke Hoban, Pulumi

Wed, 24 Nov 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Luke Hoban has been into tech and computers for many, many years. It started off when he was a kid, but sailed with him into college as he got into languages. He spent the first part of his career at Microsoft building tools, IDE's and programming languages. His take on the frame of mind required to build a language is centered around what you want it to do, combined with how it feels for the programmer to express what they want with it to do. Bottom line... it is an art, not a science, and is much more about product and user interaction design than anything.

Post Microsoft, Luke went work for Amazon on the cloud, specifically EC2. The thing he had in the back of his head for many years was how to bring the programming model into the cloud space. He eventually left Amazon, and set out to combine his love of designing programming languages, with the movement and excitement of the cloud.

This is the creation story of Pulumi.

Sponsors

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Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://www.pulumi.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukejhoban/

S5 E24: Thejo Kote, Airbase

Tue, 23 Nov 2021 11:00:00 +0000

Thejo Kote grew up in Southern India. He came from an academic, intellectual family. Both of his grandfathers were authors, and in the house, they had built up a library. But not just a few books here in there... Thejo grew up in with 3500 books in his house. These were a combination of everything, but with a lot of reference and historical books. If he's honest, Thejo didn't appreciate it really until he got older - however, no one appreciated it when it was time to move.

He was influenced a lot by what he was reading and watching, which he noted allowed him to learn from the experiences of others. Ultimately, his path took him down he road of tech and entrepreneurship. He's always been fascinated with how impactful tech can be on the world... you sit at home, write some code, and make an impact. Currently, he resides in San Francisco with his wife, and has been there for the last 10 years or so.

Prior to his current venture, he co-founded Automatic, connecting cars to the internet. This eventually sold to SiriusXM for several million dollars. Looking into another problem, he saw that the way people spend money lacked true visibility and connectivity between systems. He asked some questions, got some feedback, and set out to capitalize on the opportunity to build a better solution.

This is the creation story of Airbase.

Sponsors

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CTO.ai
Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://www.airbase.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejo/