Code Story

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://objection.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/arondsouza/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.truefoundry.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikunj-bajaj-10476824/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://foreenterprise.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-hochman-83b547130/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://getduckbill.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghanvjoyce/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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?SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinksThe AI Ultimatum: Preparing for a World of Intelligent Machines and Radical Transformationhttps://beacons.ai/aifuturisthttps://www.stevebrown.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/futuresteve/https://www.linkedin.com/company/aitransformation/https://www.youtube.com/@futureofaiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://lovelaice.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/catalinaturlea/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.glasswall.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/aqibrashid/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.venn.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmatalon/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.QuestionsBefore 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?SponsorsUnblockedBraingrid.ai.TECH DomainsMezmoLinkshttps://catchersjob.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/vadim-dedov-060b8935a/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://agatsoftware.com/https://agatsoftware.com/secure-ai-platform/ai-suite/ai-agent/https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoavcrombie/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttp://openhands.dev/https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-a-brennanAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.growthloop.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobias-konitzer-phd-65984454/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://andesite.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-carbaugh-38b339243/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://therealtimeapp.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/reannahwyatt/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.pinwheel.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/danewitbeck/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/codestory/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://stacklist.app/https://www.linkedin.com/in/martina-zrnec/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/codestory/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.positron.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitesh7/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/codestory/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://mobiusengine.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/agrawalashwin/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/codestory/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.QuestionsYou'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 wholeAcross 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?SponsorsIncogniLinkshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/oleksandr-piekhota-b675ba53/https://teachingstrategies.com/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/codestory/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.waylit.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/satyamishra/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/codestory/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.QuestionsBefore 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?SponsorsUnblockedBraingrid.TECH DomainsMezmoLinkshttps://loyaltyplant.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/denevich/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/codestory/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.dosybikes.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/nouran-aly-farouk-msc-mbbs-31637b195/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/codestory/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://kineticdata.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswdavies/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/codestory/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.warmy.io/https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-shnaider/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedMezmoBraingrid.aiAlcorEquitybeeTerms 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.Linkshttps://14.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelfesterSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiAlcorEquitybeeTerms 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.Linkshttps://innostax.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/prashanth-tondapuSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Gene Simmons of Data Protection: Protegrity's KISS MethodToday, 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 InnovationsIn 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.QuestionsWhat 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? Linkshttps://www.protegrity.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/averell-gatton/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiAlcorEquitybeeTerms 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.Linkshttps://www.onetrack.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcgyongyosi/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.southworks.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnnyhalife-engineering/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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?SponsorsTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiAlcorEquitybeeTerms 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.Linkshttps://keithvlucas.com/https://a.co/d/fYjiHmhhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/kvlucas/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiAlcorEquitybeeTerms 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.Linkshttps://krisp.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/artominasyan/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiAlcorEquitybeeTerms 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.Linkshttp://alcor.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmitryovcharenkoSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiAlcorEquitybeeTerms 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.Linkshttps://www.teambridge.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunvora/https://www.linkedin.com/in/titogoldstein/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiAlcorEquitybeeTerms 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.Linkshttps://www.ribbon.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/arshamghttps://arshamg.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiAlcorEquitybeeTerms 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.Linkshttps://www.fluidcloud.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharadkumar123/https://www.linkedin.com/in/harshito/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiAlcorEquitybeeTerms 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.Linkshttps://hydrolix.io/https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidsztykman/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiAlcorEquitybeeTerms 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.Linkshttps://www.securitypalhq.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/pukarhamalSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiAlcorEquitybeeTerms 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.LInkshttps://www.canarytechnologies.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/harmansn/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiAlcorEquitybeeTerms 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.LInkshttps://www.qubeyond.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikopapademetriouSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiAlcorEquitybeeTerms 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.Linkshttps://overmind.tech/https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanratcliffe/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsIncogniNordProtectVentionCodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.Full ScalePaddle.comSema SoftwarePropelAuthPostmanMeilisearchLinkshttps://www.arcade.dev/https://www.linkedin.com/in/sampartee/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsIncogniNordProtectVentionCodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.Full ScalePaddle.comSema SoftwarePropelAuthPostmanMeilisearchLinkshttps://wundergraph.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jens-neuse-706673195Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsIncogniNordProtectVentionCodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.Full ScalePaddle.comSema SoftwarePropelAuthPostmanMeilisearchLinkshttps://terzo.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonrcardOur Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsIncogniNordProtectVentionCodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.Full ScalePaddle.comSema SoftwarePropelAuthPostmanMeilisearchLinkshttps://inselligence.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/juandeangulo/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 at Bumble. 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.QuestionsYou'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?SponsorsIncogniNordProtectVentionCodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.Full ScalePaddle.comSema SoftwarePropelAuthPostmanMeilisearchLinkshttps://www.bumble.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/petr-petrenko-006534150/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsIncogniNordProtectVentionCodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.Full ScalePaddle.comSema SoftwarePropelAuthPostmanMeilisearchLinkshttps://mappa.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahaluc/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsIncogniNordProtectVentionCodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.Full ScalePaddle.comSema SoftwarePropelAuthPostmanMeilisearchLinkshttps://www.mezmo.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/tucker-callaway-9310171/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsIncogniNordProtectVentionCodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.Full ScalePaddle.comSema SoftwarePropelAuthPostmanMeilisearchLinkshttps://www.deltastream.io/https://www.linkedin.com/in/hojjatjafarpour/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, we are kicking off a new series, entitled Developer Chats - hearing from the large scale system builders themselves, sponsored by our friends at Beyond Tech. Beyond Tech is a top tier consulting company, specializing in creating portfolios for tech and science professionals seeking the UK Global Talent Visa.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.QuestionsYou'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?SponsorsEquitybeeAlcorLInkshttps://www.meta.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/svyatoslav-babinets-42b826137/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsIncogniNordProtectVentionCodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.Full ScalePaddle.comSema SoftwarePropelAuthPostmanMeilisearchLinkshttps://buildkite.com/https://www.aviator.co/https://www.linkedin.com/in/spriha-tucker/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsIncogniNordProtectVentionCodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.Full ScalePaddle.comSema SoftwarePropelAuthPostmanMeilisearchLinkshttps://contra.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/gajus/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy