Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

S8 E12: Stephanie Mertz, Eisen

05 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Stephanie Mertz is into software development because she likes to create something from nothing - IE the blank canvas nature of coding. Outside of tec...

S8 Bonus: Fredrik Björk, Grafbase

30 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Fredrik Björk is originally from Sweden, but has spent many years in San Francisco. He got started coding in BASIC on his Commodore 64 (while also pl...

S8 Bonus: Jaclyn Ling, Hatchways

29 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jaclyn Ling is a super competitive person, and has been her entire life. Whether it's board games with her family, or playing sports in her younge...

S8 Bonus: Shawn Cao, Columns

28 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Shawn Cao lives in Kirkland, just outside of Seattle. He immigrated to the US, and is married with 4 kids. He loves to hike and play soccer with his c...

S8 E11: Lauren Long, Ampersand

27 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lauren Long was originally born and raised in China, and moved to Canada when she was 10. She had to learn English for the first time, which taught he...

S8 Bonus: P. Scott Bening, Monosol & Author

22 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Scott Bening is a 63 year old kid at heart who grew up in Buffalo, NY. He got a degree in chemistry and went into the plastics industry. Outside of hi...

S8 Bonus: Matt Martin, Clockwise

21 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Matt Martin has always been a computer nerd, even way back in Elementary School, learning to use a Mac and learning Hypercard. In Middle School, he di...

S8 E10: Ido Shamun, Daily Dev

20 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ido Shamunn cut his teeth on the C programming language, while studying Applied Mathematics. He was unsure while studying if he should go Computer Sci...

The Closer: Toys R Us

19 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

I have another special episode of the Code Story podcast today, where I'm sharing another great podcast I've just been made aware of. It's...

S8 Bonus: Andy Wilson, Logikcull

16 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Andy Wilson lives in Central Oregon, which he claims is an adult playground. He loves to ski, hike, and enjoy all outdoor recreation available to him....

S8 Bonus: Dr. Eamonn Keogh, FarmSense

15 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Eamonn Keogh is a globally renowned expert in data mining, machine learning, and information retrieval. He is pioneering the field of computationa...

S8 Bonus: Srini Srinivasan, Aerospike

14 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Srini Srinivasan grew up in India, during a time when you could go do whatever you wanted during the summer. So he explored and experienced many thing...

S8 E9: Lilac Bar David, Lili

13 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lilac Bar David has been in the banking and payments space for over 20 years. Previously, she was the Co-founder & CEO of Pepper, a banking system...

S8 Bonus: Prasad Kawthekar, Dashworks

08 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Prasad Kawthekar grew up in India, and eventually came stateside to school in Wisconsin. He took a java coding class, and was immediately hooked - whi...

S8 Bonus: Kwindla Kramer, Daily

07 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Kwindla Kramer has always been interested in building things, and his parents gave him lots of opportunity. He spent his early days learning to progra...

S8 E8: Gilad Uziely, Sequence

06 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Gilad Uziely is married with 2 daughters. He told me he met his wife on a taxi in Thailand, but that the story there was for a different podcast. He h...

S8 Bonus: Nooshin Alibhai & Eric Klimuk, Supportbench

01 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Nooshin Alibhai has a background in sales, event planning, and entrepreneurship. Outside of her professional life, she enjoys latin dancing, which is ...

S8 Bonus: Matt Swalley & Hikari Senju, Omneky

31 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Hikari Senju grew up in Westchester, NY, and was exposed to tech early on, as his family worked at IBM. His Dad is also a painter, so he has been driv...

S8 E7: Jason Boehmig, Ironclad

30 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jason Boehmig is lucky to be in tech, in his words. He wasn't sure what he wanted to do post college, and ended up at Lehman Brothers. In reflecti...

S8 Bonus: Adam Judelson, NetworkNerd

25 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Day to day, Adam Judelson is obsessed with complex problem sets in the product world. This has resulted in him getting more and more excited about sim...

S8 Bonus: Vlad Matsiiako, Infisical

24 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Vlad Matsiiako was born in the Ukraine, but moved to the Netherlands to study his undergrad. He was one of the first data scientists at Bunq. He event...

S8 E6: Bryce Crawford, Meow

23 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Bryce Crawford had a pretty simple path into tech. He attended school at Vanderbilt, originally wanting to be a history major. But after observing his...

S8 Bonus: Shai Ber & Elad Ben-Israel, Monada & Winglang

18 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Shai Ber is 40 years old, living in Tel Aviv. He loves to travel, hike, and eat new kinds of food. He loves to swim at the beach often, but he admits,...

S8 Bonus: Andrew Louder, Louder Co

17 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Andrew Louder grew up west of Houston, TX, in a town called Katy. He got into tech during his web mastery class in High School. He's a business gr...

S8 E5: Nikita Federov, Qase

16 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Nikita Fedorov has been a tech guy all his life. He loves physics, and eventually decided to try out being a developer, starting out with PHP and doin...

No Priors: Jensen Huang, Founder & CEO of Nvidia

12 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week, we’re sharing something special: The No Priors podcast. No Priors is your guide to the AI revolution. At this moment of inflection in tec...

S8 Bonus: George Novik, Zerocoder

11 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

George Novik's life is his work, so it's strange for him to think of life outside of his startup. But outside of tech, his hobbies include swi...

S8 Bonus: Rickard Hansson, Weavy

10 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rickard Hansson is 48 years old to date, but started tinkering with his Commodore 64 when he was young. Later in life, he fell in love with building t...

S8 E4: Andy Skipper, CTO Craft

09 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Andy Skipper currently resides in Belfast, Ireland, though he is from London originally. He's been knee deep in tech since he was 12 years old, as...

S8 Bonus: Egil Østhus, Unleash

04 May 2023

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...

S8 Bonus: Aviram Hassan, MetalBear & mirrord

03 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Aviram Hassan started hacking his way into stuff at a young age, primarily from online multiplayer games. The first game was a fan based game for Poke...

S8 E3: Shem Magnezi, Wilco

02 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Shem Magnezi is from Tel Aviv, and started his software engineering career when he was in high school. It wasn't really professional, just hacking...

S8 Bonus: Puneet Gupta, Amberflo

26 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For Puneet Gupta, his professional work and personal hobbies collide. He has been enamored with tech since his early days, and finds coding to be quit...

S8 Bonus: Glauber Costa, Turso

26 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Glauber Costa is a family man, with three kids at home. So he admits, that with a startup and kids, there is not much space for anything else. He made...

S8 E2: Sefi Genis, Firefly

25 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sefi Genis lives in Tel Aviv, and started in with technology early on in his life, maintaining the school website when he was younger. He served in th...

S8 Bonus: Naré Vardanyan, Ntropy

20 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Naré Vardanyan has a statistically unlikely story. She grew up in Armenia, without electricity during a war. She recalls that her parents gamified th...

S8 Bonus: Ronald Richardson, Fleetbase

19 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ron Richardson studied robotics and embedded systems in Arizona, and is a former Marine - which is where he got his start in logistics. His biggest in...

S8 E1: Sargun Kaur, Byteboard

18 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Before Sargun Kaur got into tech, she was anti-wanting to be in tech. Her Dad was an engineer, and she thought the work he did was super boring. She p...

Season 8 - Trailer

12 Apr 2023

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?......

From Tools and Weapons: Connecting Africa’s Youth to the World

11 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tools and Weapons, hosted by Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, features conversations with leaders in government, business, and culture t...

S7 Bonus: Rene Morkos, ALICE Technologies

06 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rene Morkos is a builder. When he was younger, his Dad told him that he could study anything he wanted, as long as it wasn't Civil Engineering. So...

S7 Bonus: Valentin Vasilyev, Fingerprint.com

05 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Valentin Vasilyev has always been interested in the open source world. His Github account was created way back in 2008 when they started. He always dr...

S7 E30: Sam Lambert, PlanetScale

04 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sam Lambert is originally from the UK, and has lived quite a few places during his life. He went to school in India, but now resides in San Francisco....

S7 Bonus: Ruben Izmailyan, Quiltt

30 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ruben Izmailyan grew up in Armenia originally, then moved to Russia when he was 12. When he was 14, he and his family came to the US, eventually atten...

The New Notification Stack for Developers - Drew Youngwerth

29 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome back listeners, today we are dropping episode in our series entitled The New Notification Stack for Developers, brought to you by our long tim...

S7 E29: Manik Suri & Lucas Tepman, Therma

28 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Manik Suri calls himself a jack of all trades. He went about his career doing lots of different things, and figured out most of what he didn't wan...

S7 Bonus: Tapan Pattnayak, Addverb

23 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tapan Pattnayak life revolves around technology - his friends, professional colleagues, etc. and even his wife is an engineer, who he met at a company...

The New Notification Stack for Developers - Maria Irizarry

22 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome back listeners, today we are dropping episode in our series entitled The New Notification Stack for Developers, brought to you by our long tim...

S7 E28: Sean Stavropoulos, Boulevard

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sean Stavropoulos grew up in Southern California, His journey to technology started in 7th grade, when he started programming for fun in Visual Studio...

S7 Bonus: Ashley Cline, Ice Cream Social

16 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ashley Cline was born and raised in a small town in Ohio. Her big dreams and aspirations led her to move to California and start her career in tech an...

The New Notification Stack for Developers - Shreya Gupta

15 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome back listeners, today we are dropping episode in our series entitled The New Notification Stack for Developers, brought to you by our long tim...

S7 E27: Mathias Nestler, AccessOwl

14 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Mathias Nestler has co-founded several startups in his career, in the insure-tech and fintech spaces. Outside of tech, he does kite surfing and diving...

S7 Bonus: Evan Powell & Sam Clemens, Reprise

09 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Evan Powell had a career mostly in sales, which started in college within his acapella group. His group recorded tracks for the well known show Glee, ...

The New Notification Stack for Developers - Seth Carney & Ben Link

08 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome back listeners, today we are dropping episode in our series entitled The New Notification Stack for Developers, brought to you by our long tim...

S7 E26: Liam Patterson, Bidnamic

07 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Liam Patterson has been an entrepreneur since the early days of his life. He was the kid that was selling sweets at school, undercutting the local sto...

S7 Bonus: Roya Kachooei, Walletafai

03 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Roya Kachooei came to Canada 9 years ago, with the aim to pursue her masters in the US. When her funding fell through, she stayed in Canada and starte...

S7 E25: Matt Butcher, Fermyon

02 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Matt Butcher was always intending to be a philosopher in the early days. His Dad informed him at some point he would need to get a job though. After h...

The New Notification Stack for Developers - Mike Miller

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome back listeners, today we are kicking off another special series of the Code Story podcast, entitled The New Notification Stack for Developers,...

GrowthMode: ON - Jesse Rubenfeld, FinOptimal

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome back listeners, today we are dropping another episode in the series entitled Growth Mode: ON, sponsored by our good friends at GrowthMatch. Gr...

S7 Bonus: Chelsey Roney, Proxi

23 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Chelsey Roney graduated from Texas A&M in 2011 (whoop!). She is passionate about building businesses, as her current venture is her 3rd startup. B...

GrowthMode: ON - Arun Sivashankaran, FunnelEnvy

22 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome back listeners, today we are dropping another episode in the series entitled Growth Mode: ON, sponsored by our good friends at GrowthMatch. Gr...

S7 E24: Ethan Song, RareCircles

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ethan Song is a boarder through and through - enjoying snowboarding, surfing, etc. and doing it as often as he can. He loves to read, and has moved mo...

S7 Bonus: Faisal Bhutto, Calian

16 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Faisal Bhutto is a family man, and the proud father of 2 girls and a boy. He is based out of Houston, and enjoys the outdoors - hunting, sports, and w...

GrowthMode: ON - Lee Gilley, Docmo

15 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome back listeners, today we are dropping another episode in the series entitled Growth Mode: ON, sponsored by our good friends at GrowthMatch. Gr...

S7 E23: Navid Alipour, AI Med Global

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Navid Alipour has spent many years in the world of medicine and AI, supporting and admiring doctors. He jokes that his wife and he are the black sheep...

S7 Bonus: Joe De Pinto, Haste Arcade

09 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Joe De Pinto was born and raised in Los Angeles, and was drafted to play professional baseball in the minors for the White Sox. He's always had an...

GrowthMode: ON - Zach Fragapane, GrowthMatch

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome back listeners, today we are kicking off a special series of the Code Story podcast, entitled Growth Mode: On!, sponsored by our good friends ...

S7 E22: Paul McCarthy, SnapFix

07 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Paul McCarthy grew up in Cork, Ireland, and went to school there. He lives around the corner from the sea, and likes to dip in now again - literally, ...

S7 Bonus: Kyle Tut, Piñata

02 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Kyle Tut started out his life wanting to be a car mechanic. His Mom affirmed his aspirations, but gave him the advice to make sure he owned the mechan...

S7 E21: Nanxi Liu, Blaze.tech

31 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Nanxi Liu is from Colorado, and went to school at UC Berkeley. In college, she immediately started her entrepreneurial journey by starting a bio tech ...

S7 Bonus: Alex Embiricos, Remotion

26 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Alex Embiricos comes from an interesting background, having grown up all over the place - between Asia, the Caribbean, and Switzerland. He came to the...

S7 Bonus: Sydney Davis, Nixcode

25 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sydney Davis really enjoys art. She enjoys immersive exhibits and loves to paint. She's a Mom, and digs spending time with her son and traveling t...

S7 E20: Tanmai Gopal, Hasura

24 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tanmai Gopal studied computer science, and specialize in computer vision and machine learning. He found himself frustrated with the pace at which his ...

S7 E19: Ken Babcock, Tango

18 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ken Babcock grew up outside of Buffalo, and as such.. is a big Bills fan. He attended Cornell, and has spent time in NYC, San Francisco and now Chicag...

S7 Whats New with Materialize - Arjun Narayan, Co-founder & CEO

11 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Hello again listeners!Today I have yet another special return episode for you. I'm speaking with Arjun Narayan, Co-founder & CEO of Materializ...

S7 Whats New with Pulumi - Joe Duffy, Co-founder & CEO

10 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Hello Listeners!We have a treat for today's episode. On the show, I'll be interviewing Joe, the CEO of Pulumi, to get an update on all that ha...

S7 Bonus: Arjun Bhatnagar, Cloaked (Replay)

05 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Arjun Bhatnager has been coding since he was 10 years old, and in general, his family is full of entrepreneurs, running their own businesses. In fact,...

S7 Bonus: Derek Osgood, Ignition (Replay)

03 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Derek Osgood comes from a family of entrepreneurs, and has always known he wanted to start something himself. Prior to that, he worked for other compa...

S7 E10: Raj Bains, Prophecy (Replay)

29 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Raj Bains grew up in India, North of Delhi, and comes from a family who, as he says, does "whatever is best to do" at the time. They moved aro...

S7 E1: Ian Small, Evernote (Replay)

27 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Ian Small is a Canadian, and claims that is the most important thing about him. Tech started for him when he was 12 years old, when he got a bad grade...

S7 Bonus: Jeremy Wood, OpenStore

22 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Jeremy Wood grew up in Portland, and has been heavily influenced by that upbringing. He enjoyed really strong maker communities, supporting local craf...

S7 Bonus: Max Lukichev, Telmai

21 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Max Lukichev is a deeply technical guy, which means his hobbies have been related to tech since the early days. He is a PhD in computer science, and h...

S7 E18: Hadi Radwan, Asteya

20 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hadi Radwan is an amateur biohacker, which was a new term for me, and means trying to DIY your own biology. He is a family man, and enjoys playing fan...

S7 Bonus: Nick Ippolito & Rowan Findlay, Squarekicker

15 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Nick Ippolito has been involved with youth work for many years, and stumbled into web design and taught himself how to code. He's been married for...

S7 Bonus: Casey Kipfer, Justifi

14 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Casey Kipfer is a family man. He's married with 3 kids, and there is a lot of excitement and noise at his house - which is says is wonderful. He e...

S7 E17: Nora Jones, Jeli.io

13 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Nora Jones has been in tech her entire career. She originally thought she was going to get into hardware, but was always focused on reliability and sa...

S7 Bonus: Alex Svinov, Insquad

08 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Alex Svinov has very few things to talk about outside of the business world. He likes to jog, play tennis, and has a family with three kids at home. H...

S7 Return to Komodor - Andrey Pohkilko

07 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

You might remember in Season 6, episode 15, I interviewed Itiel, the Co-founder of Komodor. Today I have a special episode of the Code Story podcast, ...

S7 E16: Gabriel Isserlis, Tutti

06 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Gabriel Isserlis grew up in London with an artistic background in the creative industries. His Dad is a professional cellist, which is the instrument ...

S7 Bonus: Nathan Yap, SupportZebra

01 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Nathan Yap has a tight knit family, that he spends a lot of time with. So traveling and enjoying good food with his family is winning to him. Outside ...

S7 Bonus: Satish Jayanthi, Coalesce

30 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Satish Jayanthi was born in India, and attended school there. When he was growing up, his Mom was a teacher and his Dad was dabbling in different busi...

S7 E15: Jeff Grass, Hungry Marketplace

29 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Jeff Grass had his career start more traditionally, as a bond underwriter, graduating from Wharton, and then being a serial entrepreneur. Outside of h...

S7 Bonus: Rob Moore, Churnkey

28 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Rob Moore was previously on the Code Story podcast back in Season 2, when he was building Floom - a marketplace built to make monetizing SaaS products...

S7 Bonus: Juan Soberanis, Beacon

23 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Back in 1986, Juan Soberanis and his family got a personal computer for the house - a Commodore 128. He asked his mother if he could take it to his ro...

S7 E14: Olga Stern, Tangy Market

22 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Olga Stern considers herself an onion, with a lot of different layers. She loves to try out new things, which has produced a lot of different hobbies ...

S7 Nick Donofrio - If Nothing Changes, Nothing Changes

17 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hello listeners! Today have Nick Donorio on the show today.Nick Donorio is a second generation American. His grandparents were poor, Italian immigrant...

S7 Bonus: Michael Zuercher, Prismatic

16 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Zuercher has been in tech since he was young, starting his first company when he was 19 years old. A lot of his path to his current place is t...

S7 E13: Krish Ramineni, Fireflies.ai

15 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Krish Ramineni grew up in Silicon Valley, observing tech all around him. But really excited him was the innovation happening the in the last 5 years. ...

S7 Bonus: Shawn Ramirez, Mystery

10 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Shawn Ramirez spent a decade as a political science professor, studying terrorism and strategic negotiations. Five years ago, she switched into tech, ...

S7 Bonus: Shaheeb Roshan, ThreeFlow

09 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Shaheeb Roshan is a family man. He's been married 16 years and has a 10 year old daughter. It's his family that drives how he looks at the wor...