Chapter 1: What is Johnny Halife's background and how did it influence his career?
This episode is sponsored by Alcor. Global hiring for engineering teams can be a nightmare. Too many providers, hidden fees, slow support, and local rules that don't make sense. Alcor is a different kind of EOR partner. They're built for tech companies scaling across borders with deep expertise in Eastern Europe and Latin America.
Alcor combines employer of record services with tech recruiting, helping you choose the right country, find and assess engineers, and onboard them in days, not months. Nearly 85% of what you pay goes straight to your engineers. Alcor's fee decreases as your team grows, and you can always bring the team in-house with zero exit fee.
That's why Silicon Valley startups, including Five Unicorns, work with Alcor. Learn more at alcor.com slash podcast, or tap the link in the show notes. This episode is sponsored by Equitybee. Stock options can be valuable, but exercising them often means taking on real financial risk.
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Chapter 2: What was the inspiration behind the founding of Southworks?
That's codestory.co slash equitybee. At the beginning, we were ultra hardcore nerds and it was always about the technology and always about the latest and greatest and always about doing the right thing, using the proper practices and doing whatever it takes to make it work. When we started with Mutal, I had that we are building a product, we are innovating. serving some end users.
This is no longer talking about servers, but it's about real people using consumer-facing stuff. And that gave me a completely different view. I learned that there is more than me, the eye, when it comes to technology, and I can empathize. My name is Johnny Jalife, and I'm Southwark's CTO. This is CodeStory. A podcast bringing you interviews with tech visionaries. Six months moonlighting.
There's nothing on the back end. Who share what it takes to change an industry. I don't exactly know what to do next. It took many goes to get right. Who built the teams that have their back. A company is its people. The teams help each other achieve more. Most proud of our team. Keeping scalability top of mind. All that infrastructure was a pain. Yes, we've been fighting it as we grow.
Total waste of time. The stories you don't read in the headlines.
Chapter 3: How does Southworks help companies adopt new technologies?
It's not an easy thing to achieve, mind you. Took it off the shelf and dusted it off and tried it again. To ride the ups and downs of the startup life. You need to really want it. It's not just about technology. All this and more on Code Story. I'm your host, Noah Lampart. And today, how Johnny Halife is giving you a better way to build software and creating development on demand.
This episode is sponsored by BrainGrid. If you are building with AI coding tools, but your features keep breaking, you need to check out BrainGrid. It is the product management agent for AI builders. BrainGrid turns messy ideas into clear specs, tasks, and prompts that coding agents like Cursor and Claude can actually build the right way. Ship real software, not fragile prototypes.
Start free at braingrid.ai. This episode is sponsored by Unblocked. AI code generation is moving fast, but quality and confidence, well, they haven't kept pace. The core problem is shared context. Unblocked was built to solve this specific problem. The code review platform is built on the same context senior engineers rely on when reviewing code.
The result is fewer comments, higher signal, and reviews teams actually trust. Get a free three-week trial at getunblocked.com slash codestory. That's getunblocked.com slash codestory. This episode is sponsored by Mesmo. If your team is collecting large volumes of logs, metrics, and traces, but still struggling to get timely answers, Mesmo can help.
Mesmo is an active telemetry platform that processes and enriches observability data in real time before it's stored or analyzed. That means lower data volume, lower cost, and faster root cause analysis across your existing observability tools. To see how it works, get a demo at mezmo.com slash codestory. That's M-E-Z-M-O dot com slash codestory.
Today's episode is brought to you by .Tech Domains. And this one hits close to home. Back in 2016, I was building my startup and went hunting for that perfect .com and found next to nothing. So I did what every founder does, settled. Here's what I wish someone had told me. You're building a tech startup. Just get a .Tech domain.
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Chapter 4: What unique service offerings does Southworks provide?
It instantly tells investors and customers what you're about. Don't overthink it. Get a .Tech domain for your startup today. 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 two young boys, which he notes completely changed his life.
He has been slowly introducing them to soccer, as an Argentinian father 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. 21 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're helping Microsoft, why don't we help other companies? This is Johnny's creation story at Southworks. Southworks is a software development firm. We work with high-tech companies and mostly like R&D centers and stuff like that.
helping the adoption of new technology, accelerating that adoption and modernizing the platforms for all these great companies that are out there. We started a company 21 years ago. We started working for Microsoft Engineering. That was the childhood dream. Being born in Argentina, I was like, hey, these guys in Seattle, how do we get to work with them?
And those sorts of things and an opportunity came along.
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Chapter 5: How has Johnny's experience shaped the culture at Southworks?
I traveled to the Microsoft campus and we were always behind the scenes helping Microsoft shape products and those sorts of things. Eventually from there we said, hey, we are helping Microsoft and why don't we help other companies? And from there we started growing and going out and working with new and exciting customers all over the place. And it's been a fantastic ride.
It's been half of my life. We always wanted to use this concept of like the Navy Seals or the Green Berets, right? So we were always envisioning the idea of coming in and out and working with customers on their toughest challenge, their most complex problem, and then eventually move on. It was part of the philosophy that we still have of we are not looking for office space within your buildings.
We just want to help you solve something that is your most complex challenge at the moment. And you can look back and say, hey, Southworks came in and we are better than we were before. OK, tell me about the company, you know, what your service line offering looks like and, you know, kind of the starting stories of how you got started building it.
After that first couple of iterations during the beginning of our journey, we crafted different models. One and our flagship offering that it's called the fire team, that it's a team of three senior engineers overseen by an architect that goes in and out. We measure everything in weeks. We are like on that agile side of the spectrum saying, hey, this project is 13 weeks.
It's a quarter, but we treat that with that mindset of we come in and out and we help you be better at something compared to where you were before. Later on, we said, hey, we have really smart people.
So we brought this concept of specialist that it's, hey, given that we work behind the scenes with all these big tech companies and we know their technologies from the inside out, if you happen to need an expert, I can give you one. And that would follow the same philosophy in terms of We go in, we fix something, we show you the before and after, and then we move on.
And that creates a flywheel of solving complex challenges, learning, and having fun. Because at the end of the day, it's what it's all about, that it's having those moments working on something that everybody thought impossible. We also have an offering that we call the Dev Squads that are based on our understanding that the current pace with the technology, you
Like modernization is not a milestone, right? There are moments in mostly when you talk about the AI and models that technology changes, you know, really fast. So having a pair of developers that we call this a dev squad, looking at your problem and trying to enhance and improve as you go and don't think, hey, we are going to move from model A to model B or from hyperscaler A to hyperscaler B.
It's more being embedded, understanding the business context, the technology landscape, and from there, building something that is really cool and can give you more runway, and it doesn't feel forced, that it's okay. Now there is a new GPT model out, so we need to do the whole thing over. We want that idea of familiarity and being involved customers.
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Chapter 6: What challenges did Johnny face while building his team?
different set of requirements. So it's no longer just all the technology. And that gave me a completely different view understanding our customers. Initially, we look at it from the technology standpoint alone. You are running an older staff, or you are not already in the cloud, or you are not containerized, or you are not doing this or that.
After that scene at Mural, I learned that there is more than me, the I, when it comes to technology, and I I can empathize with the actual problems that these founders and these CTOs working for a high growth startup. My experience and it helped me shape the conversation with them completely different. And from there, I think that we open up as a new part of the business.
our ability to interact with startups. So we have helped a lot of startups migrate from one cloud to the other or containerize their workloads and do those sorts of things. And I think that's because we now have that edge. I can empathize and tell to my team, I understand what you're saying, but there is more there. It was great. I always wanted to be on the other side of the counter.
I always was the service provider. So when I had that experience, it changed how I think about building software products, how I think about the SaaS industry. I learned a new playbook. I understand new things. I got to meet a lot of really smart people outside of the technical people that are fantastic.
Chapter 7: What mistakes has Johnny learned from in his entrepreneurial journey?
And it gave me a completely different viewpoint. This episode is sponsored by Alcor. Global hiring for engineering teams can be a nightmare. Too many providers, hidden fees, slow support, and local rules that don't make sense. Alcor is a different kind of EOR partner. They're built for tech companies scaling across borders with deep expertise in Eastern Europe and Latin America.
Alcor combines employer of record services with tech recruiting, helping you choose the right country, find and assess engineers and onboard them in days, not months. Nearly 85% of what you pay goes straight to your engineers. Alcor's fee decreases as your team grows, and you can always bring the team in-house with zero exit fee.
That's why Silicon Valley startups, including Five Unicorns, work with Alcor. Learn more at alcor.com slash podcast, or tap the link in the show notes. Today's episode is brought to you by .Tech Domains. And this one hits close to home. Back in 2016, when I was building my own tech startup, I went on the hunt for that elusive .com. Looked high, looked low, and guess what I found? Nothing.
What I did find cost me an arm and a leg. So I did what every founder does under pressure. Threw in extra letters, settled for the less than optimal name. And here's what I wish someone had said to me back then.
Chapter 8: What does the future hold for Southworks in the context of AI and human collaboration?
Noah, you're building a tech startup. Just get a .tech domain. Tech startup, .tech domain. It could not be more obvious. It tells investors, customers, and anyone who looks at your website, really, that tech is at the core of your build. And I've kicked myself plenty since, especially when I see the clean and sharp names tech companies have landed on .tech.
Nothing.tech, 1x.tech, Aurora.tech, CES.tech, Ultra.tech, Alice.tech, Neon.tech, Blaze.tech, Pi.tech. You get the idea. So take it from someone who learned it the hard way. If you're building a tech startup, don't overthink it. Get a .tech domain. This episode is sponsored by BrainGrid. Building with AI coding tools is exciting until the moment things start breaking.
You ask for a small change and suddenly three other features stop working. AI gets confused, misses edge cases, and loses track of your intent. The problem is not code generation. The problem is planning. That is why BrainGrid exists. BrainGrid acts as your product management agent.
It writes clear specification, maps UX flows, asks the clarifying questions you forgot to ask, and breaks big ideas into engineering-grade tasks that AI coding tools can build reliably. It guides Cursor, ClogCode, Replit, Windsurf, and others so they deliver features that work and keep working. Founders use BrainGrid to build real AI-native SaaS products without a technical background.
If you want reliable features instead of fragile prototypes, try BrainGrid for free at braingrid.ai. That's braingrid.ai. You know, I typically ask and when I'm asking about a product about roadmap, there's company roadmap, there's execution roadmap and all those sorts of things. But I'm curious about maybe a little bit different approach to that.
It's like, what have been maybe the biggest aha moments as the company has progressed and matured? And, you know, what moments shaped how you build and scale the company? And I think that would liken to kind of a company roadmap or a product roadmap. So what moments shaped that? What were the aha moments?
One of the most interesting things for that aha moment was when we started to converge the Silicon Valley startup model into the traditional services industry model and figuring out like using the roadmap, like the same concept of a roadmap of experimentation of MVPs and stuff like that to evolve a lot.
It was something like, hey, you know, you talk in this industry with people that say, hey, this is how we always did it. Or this is the way we work. And this is what the industry does. And we were like, hey, there might be things that we can try. And I think that at my instinct, With Mural, I learned that you can experiment and you can try. And when you start seeing those results, you can scale.
So everybody thinks that it's about hours and people and statements of works and retainers. And we were like, okay, how about we test this on our process? Like how about we send daily reports as if it was a standard? How about we treat this as a weekly digest of everything that we have done during the week?
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