Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders
Episodes
Podcasthon & the American Cancer Society
17 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Hello Listeners.Today is going to be a special episode, a bit out of the ordinary to our normal programming. I'm participating in Podcasthon, whic...
S10 Bonus: Tyler Wells, Braingrid
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tyler Wells lives outside of Austin, TX. He moved there 4 years ago, but spent most of this time in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. Outside of tech, ...
S10 E23: Anthony Eden, DNSimple
11 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Anthony Eden is a gray beard in terms of internet time, being around when Netscape was released. He was studying music at the University of Miami, and...
S10 Bonus: Andrew Lau, Jellyfish
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew Lau is located in Boston now, but is a California native. He grew up in Oakland, and calls himself the odd duck who went west instead of east, ...
S10 E22: Ayush Agarwal, Dodo Payments
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ayush Agarwal is a techy trying to code his way out of things. He graduated with a degree in Computer Science, but more importantly, he discovered ent...
S10 Bonus: Josh Ho, Referral Rock
27 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Josh Ho was into tech at a young age. In high school, which was around the time of bulletin boards and AOL online, he had to code a way to connect win...
S10 E21: Austin Vance, Focused.io
25 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Austin Vance grew up in Oklahoma, but takes residence outside of Denver, Colorado now. He is a father of 3 boys, who are also 3 in under - so he's...
S10 Bonus: Jason Schappert, Moola
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jason Schappert grew up in an entrepreneurial family. His Mom and Dad were always working together, and never had jobs. Jason's first job was work...
S10 E20: Tameem Hourani, RapDev
18 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tameem Hourani was born in the Middle East, on a small island. He came to the states, Boston specifically, for school in 2006. He planned on 4 years o...
S10 Bonus: Shahar Azulay, Groundcover
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Shahar Azulay has had many opportunities to get into tech throughout his life. He started digging into cyber security when he was 17 years old, where ...
Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, with Imad Gharazeddine, CEO of Mamo
12 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we are releasing another episode in our series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai. Dubai is ...
S10 E19: Simmi Singh, Hook Music
11 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Simmi Singh grew up in Australia, when her parents migrated from India. She studied law and finance at university, and then went into investment banki...
S10 Bonus: Nikita Shamgunov, Neon
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Nikita Shamgunov is a native of Russia, coming to the US for grad school in 2005. Eventually he worked at Microsoft on the SQL Server product. A fun f...
Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, with Mohammad Albalooshi, CEO, DIFC Innovation Hub
05 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we are releasing another episode in our series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai. Dubai is ...
S10 E18: Cory O'Daniel, Massdriver
04 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Cory O'Daniel has had an interesting path to technology, growing his career in a number of cloud architect roles at Ripple, DealScience and The Re...
S10 Bonus: Torrey Leonard, Thoughtly
30 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Torrey Leonard lived in Maryland prior to moving to New York City. In 7th grade, his claim to fame was building the world's largest Minecraft serv...
Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, with Dr. Marwan Al Zarouni, CEO of AI
29 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we are releasing another episode in our series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai. Dubai is ...
S10 E17: Joni Klippert, Stackhawk
28 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Joni Klippert has spent many years in startups. Post getting her MBA, she built her early career in Boulder, CO, and became very technical learning ne...
S10 Bonus: Eric Leebow, FreezeCrowd
23 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Eric Leebow was born in New Jersey, and bounced around a few states growing up. He has always been a gadget and tech enthusiast, growing up curious. A...
S10 E16: Mihri Minaz, Beams
21 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mihri Minaz is originally from Turkey, and has 4 siblings in different industries. Being good at math and problem solving, he was drawn go study compu...
S10 Bonus: Wes Tatters, Rapyd Cloud
20 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wes Tatters has had a crazy, diverse career history. He is been in IT for around 40 years, and started in the days before the internet. He has had two...
S10 Bonus: Thomas Hansen, Amplitude
16 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas Hansen was born and raised in Denmark. He's also lived in South Africa, Thailand, Turkey and then Seattle. He is married to his wife Ingrid...
S10 Bonus: Anand Kulkarni, Crowdbotics
15 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Anand Kulkarni started his career in the dark ages of AI, as a Computer Science researcher at UC Berkeley. He published papers on human intelligence i...
S10 E15: Hannes Lenke, Checkly
14 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Hannes Lenke was born in East Germany. He started tinkering with computers at an early age, and became interested in making games at the age of 10. On...
S10 Bonus: Egil Østhus, Unleash (Replay)
07 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Egil Østhus is based out of Norway - which obviously means he loves skiing. But outside of this, he loves to run outdoors, through the woods and on t...
S10 Bonus: Matt Pierce, Immediate (Replay)
31 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Matt Pierce has been a tech guy for his entire 17 year career. Coming out of grad school, he started out in healthcare tech for a decade or so. Eventu...
S10 Bonus: Reed McGinley-Stempel, Stytch (Replay)
24 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Reed McGinley-Stempel grew up in Las Vegas, but went to school on the East Coast. Frankly, he didn't know what he wanted to do and "stumbled&#...
S10 Bonus: Jonathan Stark, Consultant - Teacher - Author
19 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Stark is based in Providence, Rhode Island. He attended the Berkeley College or Music, with a dual major in song writing. He ended up going b...
S10 E14: Eric Müller, Presence
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Eric Müller lives in San Francisco, and explored many different paths before landing in tech. He looked into architecture, photography, but ultimatel...
S10 Bonus: Andrey Kudievskiy, Distillery
12 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Andrey Kudievskiy has always been fascinated by technology, and when asked about himself, he identifies as an entrepreneur. He has been a software eng...
Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, with Sonia Gokhale, VentureSouq
11 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we are kicking off a new series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai. Dubai is the new global ...
S10 E13: Josh Levine, Chess.com
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Josh Levine lives in Brooklyn, NY. He started programming when he was 6 years old, when his Dad brought home an Apple 2. He realized that though there...
S10 Bonus: Daniel Loreto, Jetify
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Loreto grew up in Venezuela, but moved around a lot and lived in 6 different countries. He is married with 2 kids, ages 8 and 5, which keeps hi...
Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, with Raakin Iqbal, Nucleus AI
04 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we are kicking off a new series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai. Dubai is the new global ...
S10 E12: Nick Mistry, Lineaje
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nick Mistry lives in the suburbs of Maryland, outside of Washington, DC. He has always been fascinated by cyber security, but most of all, its interse...
S10 Bonus: Shaunak Roy, Yellowdig (Replay)
26 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Shaunak Roy spent 10 years in the tech industry before deciding to be a tech entrepreneur. In undergraduate, he studied mechanical engineering and eve...
S10 Bonus: Jon Perl, QA Wolf
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jon Perl is originally from Virgina, growing up on a computer. Mom is an architect and Dad is an electrical engineer. Jon picked up programming at his...
S10 E11: Nigel Smart, Zama
19 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nigel Smart is from Britain, but currently lives in Belgium. He has a PhD in mathematics, but headed into the world of cryptography early on. He has s...
S10 Bonus: Michael Louis, Cerebrium
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Louis grew up in South Africa, spending the first 25 years of his life there. From a young age, and being surrounded by an entrepreneurial fam...
S10 Bonus: Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz, Penpot
13 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz has a background in physics and computer science. At some point, he decided to ditch the science and pursue open source, which is ...
S10 E10: William Neill, Basket
12 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
William Neill had an interesting childhood in New Zealand, rooted in being an entrepreneur. As a kid, he helped write business plans with his parents,...
S10 Bonus: Rohith Varanasi, Block Party
07 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rohith Varanasi grew up in Jersey and had a chill childhood, playing videos games and sports from a young age. He wanted to learn how to build a video...
S10 E8: Jason Harbert, Flowspace
05 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jason Harbert grew up in the middle of nowhere, Ohio. He got into video games, which led him into programming... which led him to Linux and internet s...
The Haunted House of APIs - A Portal to the Beyond with Allison Averill
30 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Haunted House of API'sToday, we are releasing another episode for Cybersecurity Awareness month, in our series entitled the Haunted House of A...
The Haunted House of APIs - Phantom Threats with Adam Arellano
29 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Haunted House of API'sToday, we are releasing another episode for Cybersecurity Awareness month, in our series entitled the Haunted House of A...
S10 E8: Shashwat Sehgal, P0 Security
28 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Shashwat Sehgal has been in the tech industry broadly for 15 years. He started out as an engineer, but eventually, worked his way towards product and ...
The Haunted House of APIs - The Haunted Web of APIs with Richard Bird
24 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Haunted House of API'sToday, we are releasing another episode for Cybersecurity Awareness month, in our series entitled the Haunted House of A...
The Haunted House of APIs - The Dark Corners of APIs with Katie Paxton-Fear
23 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Haunted House of API'sToday, we are releasing another episode for Cybersecurity Awareness month, in our series entitled the Haunted House of A...
The Haunted House of APIs - The Witch’s Brew with Jayesh Ahire
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Haunted House of API'sThe Witch’s Brew: Stirring Up OWASP Vulnerabilities and API TestingToday, we are kicking off an amazing series for Cyb...
S10 Bonus: Elkhan Shabanov, Digicode
17 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Elkhan Shabanov was born in the Soviet Union, and started out in the tech world. He eventually left tech to try some other types of businesses, but ev...
S10 E7: Vishal Agarwal, Checkmate
15 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Vishal Agarwal was born in India, and did his schooling in Darjeeling. He noted that this city exports some of the best tea in the world! Prior to his...
S10 Bonus: Heiki Riesenkampf, Commonbase
10 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Heiki Riesenkampf is from a tiny country called Estonia, later studying computer science in London and doing his post grad in Zurich. He has been into...
S10 E6: Guy Guzner, Savvy Security
08 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Guy Guzner first computer when he was 5, which was a Commodore 64, where he learned to program in BASIC. As a teed, get started getting into the inter...
S10 Bonus: Rob Grazioli, Bread
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rob Grazioli started his life in Brooklyn NY, but moved to Italy for his Dad's job, and lived there from age 5 to 13. He ended up moving back to t...
S10 E5: Sebastian Raffaele, Minotaur Trading Systems
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sebastian Raffaele grew up in a small, working class family in Australia. He had a crazy life, growing up in social housing, having to find his way. H...
S10 Bonus: Adam Pisk, Bruntwork
26 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Pisk lives in Sydney, Australia, and just turned 45. He has 5 year old twins, and at the time of this recording, had just taken them on a trip to...
S10 E4: Brendan Wood, SnapTrade
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In August of 2021, we interviewed Brendan Wood on the podcast to tell the creation story of Passiv. After the recording, the company decided to pivot ...
S10 Whats New with SWOB - Alex Florio
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hello listeners.Today, I have an awesome follow episode from our friends at Swob. You may remember our episode with Stephanie Florio in Season 6 over ...
S10 E3: Kevin Hurley, Lightspark
17 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kevin Hurley grew up in a multi-kid house, which is where he got his competitive nature. He used to play 2 on 2 with his Dad and siblings at home. He ...
S10 Turso Update with Pekka Enberg
12 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hello listeners.Today, I have an incredible follow episode from our friends at Turso. You may remember our episode with Glauber Costa in Season 8, whe...
S10 E2: Matt Van Itallie, Sema
10 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Matt Van Itallie is the son of a math teacher and a coder - so this explains why he now uses code as data. He is a proud Boy Scout, making it of cours...
S10 Bonus: Anurag Goel, Render
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Anurag Goel grew up in New Delhi, but moved to Boston after college for his first job. He worked at Stripe, as the 8th employee, before eventually mov...
S10 E1: Sagar Batchu, Speakeasy
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sagar Batchu was born in Sacramento, but moved to Bangalore after a decade. He has always been interested in how things work, and majored in Physic at...
Trailer
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What if you had a window into the digital startup world? What if you could ask the tech veterans what it feels like to create a world class product? H...
S9 Bonus: Mark Porter, MongoDB (Replay)
27 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Porter has always been fascinated with puzzles, so tech just fit for him and a great journey for him. He got his first 4k computer in middle scho...
S9 Bonus: Egil Østhus, Unleash (Replay)
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Egil Østhus is based out of Norway - which obviously means he loves skiing. But outside of this, he loves to run outdoors, through the woods and on t...
S9 Bonus: Matt Cowell, Quanthub (Replay)
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Matt Cowell didn't start out in tech. In fact, he studied the chemical world heavily in school, getting his Bachelors in Chemistry and Masters in ...
S9 E35: Prince Ghosh, Factored Quailty
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Prince Ghosh was born in Bangalore, India, and moved around a lot during his life - to the US, then to Europe, then back to the US. But he spent his f...
S9 E34: Anish Dhar, Cortex
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Anish Dhar grew up in the Bay Area, but now is located in New York. He felt lucky to be surrounded by technology, being in the Bay Area and having his...
S9 E33: Rick Caccia, WitnessAI
23 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rick Caccia was born and raised in Silicon Valley - and just stayed. He is married with 2 teenage daughters, one about to go to college. Between him a...
S9 E32: Shalin Madan, Formidium
16 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Shalin Madan immigrated to the US when he was 6 years old. He spent 20 years in the financial markets, of which he got into when he was a teenager. HI...
S9 E31: Konrad Niemiec, Lekko
11 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Konrad Niemiec lives in San Francisco. He is very close to his family, of which his parents are polish immigrants. He started coding when he was 11, w...
S9 Bonus: Jason Hill, Owwlll App
05 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jason Hill was born and raised in New York, and post college, went back to New York and joined the financial services - though, he was always into tec...
S9 E30: Adam Jacob, System Initiative
25 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Jacob grew up in Vancouver, but now lives North of San Francisco. He's married with a teenage daughter, and grew up in the era of the interne...
S9 Bonus: Berkay Atatop, Maestra
20 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Berkay Atatop is originally from Turkey, but now lives in Germany. He loves to travel, and living in Germany allows him to be close to family, but ena...
S9 E29: Umaimah Khan , Opal Security
18 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Umaimah Khan grew up in San Diego, but now lives in the Bay Area. A fun fact about her - she was home schooled until college, and growing up, loved pu...
S9 E28: David Cauthron, Outpave
11 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David Cauthron grew up in Dallas, TX and attended UTD for undergrad. Post that, he spent 22 years at Texas Instruments - who makes a whole lot more th...
S9 Bonus: Omry Hay, env0
06 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Omry Hay is 41 years old, married, with 3 young kids. He has lived his whole life in Israel. Unlike many founders in Israel tech, he did not serve his...
S9 E27: Neil Patel, Axiom
04 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Neil Patel has always been a hacker - electronics boards, radios, etc. - being interested in how things work, mechanically or digitally. He learned ha...
S9 E26: Sanjay Nagaraj, Traceable AI
30 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sanjay Nagaraj started his journey in India, where he was born and raised. He earliest influences started at home, as his father taught him honesty an...
S9 Bonus: Nic Beique, Helcim
23 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nic Beique was born in Odessa, Texas, but moved when he was very young to Montreal. Later in his teens, he moved to Alberta, which he describes as the...
S9 E25: JJ Tang, Rootly
21 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
JJ Tang grew up in mainland China, though eventually he came to the US for University and stayed. He found a job, started working and eventually, move...
S9 E24: Alex Gallego, Redpanda Data
15 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Alex Gallego was born and raised in Colombia. He has always identified as a builder, and as a kid, he would help his Uncle re-build dirt bike engines,...
S9 Bonus: Adam Sandman, Inflectra
09 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Sandman grew up in Wales, in the United Kingdom. He went to university to study physics, because he had a fascination and desire to understand ho...
S9 E23: Vlad Sadovskiy, Netevia
07 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Vlad Sadovskiy is a first generation immigrant from the Ukraine in the early 1990's. He has been in the payments space for 30+ years, so he knows ...
S9 Bonus: Sasha Mitchell, BeL2
02 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sasha Mitchell living in Bangkok, Thailand, but grew up in London. He stared in the creative industries, as one side of his family are architects and ...
S9 E22: Roman Sevast, Awesomic
30 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Roman Sevast was born in a small city in Ukraine. When he met his girlfriend, he wanted to take her out to dinner - but he didn't have the money t...
S7 Bonus: Björn Kolbeck, Quobyte
25 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When asked about his life outside of tech, Björn Kolbeck stated "Is there anything outside of tech?". He has made his hobby into his job, bei...
S9 E21: Matt Hocking, WellSaid Labs
23 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Matt Hocking has a background in design, and started off as a graphic designer in Australia. He moved into lecturing while running a design school, wh...
S9 Bonus: Tech Update - Rene Morkos, Alice Technologies
18 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome back listeners.Today we have a return guest on the podcast, Rene Morkos, the Founder & CEO of Alice Technologies. If you recall our conver...
S9 E20: Michael Hummel, Establish
16 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Hummel has a different perspective on tech and startups than most people in this realm. His background dis in marketing, and prior to his curr...
S9 Bonus: Alon Arvatz, Pointfive & Author of Battle for Your Computer
11 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Alon Arvatz has been in tech for a long time. Fun fact, he loved technology but hated computer science. After getting introduced to the industry by hi...
S9 E19: Linus Hakansson, Gravitee
09 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Linus Hakansson finds that he has been in the tech industry so long, that it is difficult to separate himself from what he does professionally. He'...
S9 Bonus: Erin & Jesus, MSquared
04 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Erin Marie has been in tech for 20 years. Prior to tech, she was a history major but became more passionate about building websites and technology. Sh...
S9 E18: Jai Ranganathan, Motive
02 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jai Ranganathan is a typically middle aged man, living in Austin, TX with a couple of kids and a Tesla. He moved to the US when he was 17, to attend t...
S9 Bonus: Amy & Whitney, Disruption Advisors
28 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Whitney Johnson graduated college with a degree in Music, minoring in English. Of course, she needed a job, and became the secretary to a broker on Wa...
S9 E17: Jake Ward, Data Protocol
26 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jake Ward originally from a small town in Maine, and claims to be running away from the snow by living in South Carolina now. He worked in politics fo...
S9 Bonus: Luka Yancopolis, Grapevine
21 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Luka Yancopoulos lives in New York City, and believes whole heartedly in doing well by doing good. He grew up in the early 2000's, where the focal...
S9 E16: James Perkins, Unkey
19 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
James Perkins did not have a traditional journey to technology, but has been in the space for 16 years. He had planned to be a special education teach...
S9 Bonus: Zach Goldberg, Gruntwork & The Startup CTO's Handbook
14 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Zach Goldberg was sent to computer camp when he was 12 years old. An interesting part of the story is that the prior year, he went to sports camp - an...