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

Latest Episodes:

S9 Bonus: Demystifying Unit 8200’s Cyber Warfare Dominance and Launching a New Cloud Efficiency Engine with Alon Arvatz, Author of The Battle for Your Computer & CEO of PointFive Apr 11, 2024

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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 his father, he discovered that tech is not just computer science - which was a big relief. He is the author of a book called The Battle for your Computer, which highlights Israel and the growth of the global cybersecurity industry. Outside of tech and cybersecurity, he is married with 4 kids, and highlights that all things in life - family, startup, etc. - is a partnership between he and his wife. Their family is a big fan of history, and looks to learn the stories of the places they visit.

Through his time in the military, Alon was exposed to the difficulties of managing cloud cost. Alongside his 15 years in cybersecurity, and writing his book on the topic, he figured out that a focus on efficiency could help businesses with their cloud costs - starting with a minimum integrate-able product.

This is the creation story of Pointfive.

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S9 E19: The Event-Native API Revolution: Unifying Synchronous Rest and Asynchronous Kafka Pipelines with Linus Håkansson, Chief Product Officer at Gravitee Apr 09, 2024

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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's a family man, with a 2.5 year old son, and enjoys spending time with them and raising is kid. Outside of that, he enjoys soccer, sports, and cooking Italian food. In fact, recently he bought a pizza oven and started making his own dough and pie.

Linus has been working with API's since he started in the industry. In 2019, he was introduced to his current venture, as they wanted to create an open source API management software. After a couple of years, he partnered with the team, and then eventually - joined the company, to build something good.

This is Linus' creation story at Gravitee.

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Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

S9 Bonus: Doing the Work of a Whole DevOps Team, with just two people - Erin Marie & Jesus Maria of MSquared Apr 04, 2024

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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. She went from web developer to programmer analyst to cloud engineering, and met her current business partner at Boeing. Outside of tech, she is into amateur photography, capturing landscapes and portraits. She is also passionate about passion and film, with her favorite grind core film titled "They call her one eye".

Jesus Maria comes from the Caribbean, and enjoys beaches and being near the water. When he is not coding or coming up with crazy tech ideas, he describes the amount of heavy metal he listens to as obscene. He has 6 guitars, all tuned differently, and loves to take breaks from his tech and throw down a new riff. He's also passionate about art, and into doing illustrations. He shares the same favorite film as Erin Marie.

Erin and Jesus are stationed in Denver, Colorado. During the pandemic, they were hanging out at the back yard picnic table, with wine and smokes. They were ideating over building a digital strip mall, to help local businesses build their platforms. Eventually, they started up a platform engineering company and when Lionsgate called, their pandemic picnic table idea started to grow.

This is the creation story of MSquared.

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S9 E18: The Era of Physical AI: Engineering Deep-Learning Computer Vision and Real-Time Risk Action at Scale with Jai Ranganathan, Chief Product Officer at Motive Apr 02, 2024

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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 the University of Texas. Post that, he spent 25 years in California at different tech businesses. Outside of tech, he enjoys doing activities with his daughters, rock climbing, and playing sports.

In 2013, Jai's current CEO saw a huge opportunity for the millions of heavy freight vehicles on the road. He built an app to track service hours, around the time that Jai joined - but, they didn't plan on stopping there.

This is the creation story of Motive.

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S9 Bonus: From Wall Street Institutional Research to Coaching Top-Tier Fortune 100 Executives: Mastering the S-Curve of Growth with Amy Frame and Whitney Johnson, Co-founders of Disruption Advisors Mar 28, 2024

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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 Wall Street. After taking business courses at night and building confidence from a boss who believed in her, she moved into picking stocks. In 2005, she had an "aha!" moment leading her towards entrepreneurship, and starting a fund with Clayton Christensen, author of the Innovators Dilemma. She's the author of the many books, including Disrupt Yourself, which you can find a link in the show notes. Outside of these things, she is married, loves to play tennis, and enjoys a good Korean drama.

Amy Humble grew up in a rural part of Colorado called Rifle. Her mother was a principal, her father was a psychologist, and she studied political science during undergrad, while working in the Senate. She explored how to develop young people, and has always been rooted in her desire to develop people. In the past, she worked with Jim Collins - the author of Good to Great, who baptized and indoctrinated her into leadership development. Outside of her professional life, she is married with a young family. She enjoys skiing, hiking, biking, and playing in the water.

Amy was researching women who had become though leaders, and stumbled upon the work that Whitney was doing. They started out doing a small project together in 2015, and discovered that not only do they like working together, their strengths complimented each other - which led to the forming of a partnership.

This is the creation story of Disruption Advisors.

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S9 E17: Bypassing Documentation Friction: Implementing Developer Learning Engines and 30x Engagement Video Frameworks with Jake Ward, Co-founder & CEO of Data Protocol Mar 26, 2024

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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 for a while - in the House, the Senate, and Public Affairs before starting the Application Developers Alliance. That spurred on the next chapter of his life. Outside of tech, he has 3 kids and enjoys golf. He loves to cook and spend time with his kids, playing basketball or exploring life sciences. He also mentioned that every 5 years, he tends to buy another house, have another kid, and start a new business.

Jake figured out that 85% of developers want their content through video, over documentation or other means of info comms. He believes that developers are building the world around us - and the world is underperforming in how those people are supported. He decided to change this, and set out to build docs and guidance learnings into one video content platform.

This is the creation story of Data Protocol.

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S9 Bonus: The Dorm Room to $20M Supply Chain Shift: Overthrowing Distribution Dinosaurs and Automating Healthcare Procurement with Luká Yancopoulos, Co-Founder & CEO of Grapevine Mar 21, 2024

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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 point was environmentalism and doing good in the world. He is an active botanist, and though there isn't much "soil to toil" in NYC, he spends his weekends filling the planter boxes with plants, on his block and around the neighborhood.

For Luka, COVID caused immediate awareness of supply chain issues. He and his buddies kicked over stones around these problems, specifically into the medical supply chain, and discovered a whole list of things needing to be addressed to support medical professionals in their buying.

This is the creation story of Grapevine.

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S9 E16: Bypassing Kong and Azure APM: Implementing Global Edge Rate Limiting and Decentralized API Key Governance with James Perkins, Co-founder & CEO of Unkey Mar 19, 2024

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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 teacher prior to switching to technology. He's worked in pre-seed startups all the way to big corporations. But outside of tech, he has a wide variety of hobbies - in particular, running and training for half marathons. This process requires about 6 weeks of training, primarily mental training over physical.

James and his co-founder were friends and colleagues before their current venture. They had an idea around building a small version of API authentication. After building and releasing this version, they wanted to see how people received it. They were overwhelmed with the response, and figured they should push harder on this to be a company.

This is the creation story of Unkey.

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S9 Bonus: The Scale-Stage Architecture Blueprint: Overthrowing Devops Debt and Scaling High-Velocity Engineering Organizations with Zach Goldberg, Author of The Startup CTO's Handbook Mar 14, 2024

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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 - and it didn't go so well. At the camp, he fell in love with tech, and eventually became a counselor. He finds the most joy and impact at the intersection of business and technology. Outside of tech, he is married, and a private pilot in California. He also admits to being a total geek, getting very excited about installing a solar panel on his roof (up to code of course, and with the permission of his wife).

A few months ago, Zach was introduced to the founders of his current company, through the executive coaching and consulting he does. They all had great conversation around approaches to DevOps and what the future of the industry is - so much so, that he decided to join the team and lead the conversation.

This is Zach's creation story at Gruntwork.

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S9 E15: Scaling From an Internal Hackathon Project to a Multi-Million Dollar Global Knowledge Layer with Saravana Kumar, Founder & CEO of Kovai.co & Document360 Mar 12, 2024

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Saravana Kumar is from India, near Chennai, but moved to London 23 years ago. He loves to play badminton, and is very into high quality cars. One of his favorite things to do is to engage in interesting conversations on social media, which there are ample opportunities to do. Outside of Indian food, he enjoys Chinese and Mexican, of which all three he cited having good options in London.

In past projects, Saravana encountered the need to build a knowledge base for a different product - and one that had the flexibility to serve his unique needs. After he couldn't find it, he encourage his team to build something during a hackathon - which validated the product idea, and led him to want to take this further.

This is the creation story of Document360.

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Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.