Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical Founders

Latest Episodes:

Developer Chats - Svyatoslav Babinets of Meta Dec 08, 2025

Show notes

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

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

Questions

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

LInks

Current Sponsors:

Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/

Check out our Patreon!

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

Our Sponsors:
* Check out Granola and use my code granola.ai/CODESTORY for a great deal: https://granola.ai
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

S11 Bonus: The New AI Engineering Reality: Decoupling Testing and Orchestrating the Next-Gen Software Factory with Spriha Baruah Tucker, Field CTO / Executive Leader at Buildkite Dec 05, 2025

Show notes

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.

Sponsors

Incogni
NordProtect
Vention
CodeCrafters 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 Scale
Paddle.com
Sema Software
PropelAuth
Postman
Meilisearch

Links

Current Sponsors:

Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/

Check out our Patreon!

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

S11 Bonus: Dismantling the "Upwork Middleman Tax" and Scaling a Global Freelance Network Without Percentage Slices with Gajus Kuizinas, Co-Founder & CTO of Contra Dec 04, 2025

Show notes

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.

Sponsors

Incogni
NordProtect
Vention
CodeCrafters 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 Scale
Paddle.com
Sema Software
PropelAuth
Postman
Meilisearch

Links

Current Sponsors:

Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/

Check out our Patreon!

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

The Railsware Way - Mistakes & Lessons in Product Evolution, with Oleksii Ianchuk Dec 03, 2025

Show notes

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

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

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

Questions:

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

Links

Current Sponsors:

Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/

Check out our Patreon!

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

S11 E27: Why Conventional SaaS Billing Fails the Agentic Era and How to Protect Margins on Non-Deterministic Actions with Raj Dosanjh, Co-Founder & Engineering Lead at Paid Dec 02, 2025

Show notes

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

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

This is the creation of Paid.

Sponsors

Incogni
NordProtect
Vention
CodeCrafters 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 Scale
Paddle.com
Sema Software
PropelAuth
Postman
Meilisearch

Links

Current Sponsors:

Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/

Check out our Patreon!

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

S11 Favorite: Why "Vibe Coding" Fails at Scale and How No-Code Ecosystems Unlocked $1B in User Revenue with Emmanuel Straschnov, Co-Founder & CEO of Bubble Nov 25, 2025

Show notes

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

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

This is the creation story of Bubble.

Sponsors

Incogni
NordProtect
Vention
CodeCrafters 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 Scale
Paddle.com
Sema Software
PropelAuth
Postman
Meilisearch

Links

Current Sponsors:

Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/

Check out our Patreon!

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

Unbreakable: How to Thrive Under Fear-Based Leaders with Kate Lowry Nov 20, 2025

Show notes

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

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

Questions:

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

Links

Current Sponsors:

Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/

Check out our Patreon!

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

The Railsware Way - How an MBA Helps (or doesn't) Product Mgmt, with Julia Starun Nov 19, 2025

Show notes

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

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

Questions:

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

Links

Current Sponsors:

Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/

Check out our Patreon!

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

S11 E26: Fusing Statistical Modeling with Agentic AI to Silence False Positives and Dominate SaaS Attack Surfaces with Marco Rodrigues, Co-Founder & Head of Customer Engineering at Exaforce Nov 18, 2025

Show notes

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

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

This is the creation story of Exaforce.

Sponsors

Incogni
NordProtect
Vention
CodeCrafters 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 Scale
Paddle.com
Sema Software
PropelAuth
Postman
Meilisearch

Links

Current Sponsors:

Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/

Check out our Patreon!

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

Fraud Awareness Week - How SEON is your Fraud & AML Command Center with Husnain Bajwa Nov 17, 2025

Show notes

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

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

Questions:

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

Links

Current Sponsors:

Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/

Check out our Patreon!

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.