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

Latest Episodes:

S7 Bonus: From Commodore 128 Self-Taught Coder to Building an AI Map Engine with Juan Soberanis of Beacon Nov 23, 2022

Show notes

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 room, and taught himself how to program, and of course, he did some gaming on it as well. This was the genesis of his career path, which picked back up in college. Outside of tech, he has kids in their 20's, and spends a lot of his free time hiking and being outdoors.

Juan has been working with startups for quite some time. At one point in his career, he became a contractor doing mobile development. Through a number of contracts with a specific investor, Juan found himself as the CTO of a startup, pitching an idea for what his current venture would become.

This is the creation story of Beacon.

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Website: https://www.beacon.site/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-soberanis-4447191/

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Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

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S7 E14: The Royalties Exchange: Engineering a Fractionalized Music Investment Engine with Olga Stern, CTO of Tangy Market Nov 22, 2022

Show notes

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 in her life - like underwater rugby, floor hockey, knitting and squash. Recently, she became a dog owner, and listens to podcasts to learn more about being a good dog parent. She splits her time 50% in Stockholm, and the other half in a small village up north, in an outdoors and skiing area. She is currently into ski touring... when you hike up the mountain, don't use a lift, and "earn your turn".

Olga's co-founder has a PhD in financial flows, specifically for the music industry. She decided to pursue the democratization of music rights, and created new assets for anyone to invest in. Olga joined her, and starting building out what would become their mobile app.

This is the creation story of Tangy Market.

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Website: https://www.tangymarket.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olga-stern-51957216

Current Sponsors:

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

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

S7 Bonus: Author Nick Donofrio - If Nothing Changes, Nothing Changes Nov 17, 2022

Show notes

Hello listeners! Today have Nick Donorio on the show today.

Nick Donorio is a second generation American. His grandparents were poor, Italian immigrants - and his family was hard working, focused on value creation. They were poor, but never thought of themselves as poor - they always had food to eat, and always sat down at the table for dinner at night. Nick spent 44 years of his life at IBM, as an electrical engineer and then as a technology leader. In 2008, he "graduated" from IBM, and now holds board seats for dozens of companies.

Nick is the co-author of the book "If Nothing Changes, Nothing Changes". The book is a powerful testimony to our ability as human beings to drive transformation - not just within tech, but across generations. With heart and candor, Nick explains how he led IBM's global technical team to embrace market centric, focus redefining innovation and sparking worldwide collaboration.

Get the book on Amazon, or learn more at nickdonofrio.com.

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Current Sponsors:

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

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

S7 Bonus: The Integration Bottleneck: Reclaiming 50% of R&D Capacity with Michael Zuercher, Co-Founder & CEO of Prismatic Nov 16, 2022

Show notes

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 through that prior company. He is married with 3 kids, living in South Dakota, and is a pilot. Beyond these things, he is a machinist as a hobby - in fact, he created logos for his current team as they shipped their MVP.

In his prior company, Michael built numerous amount of productized integrations across his platform and thousands of customers. No matter their state of growth, these integrations were always a significant challenge. After selling the company in 2018, he decided to build the thing he wished he had back then.

This is the creation story of Prismatic.

Sponsors

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Website: https://prismatic.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-zuercher/

Current Sponsors:

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

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

S7 E13: From Fake AI to 60,000+ Organizations: Unlocking Product-Market Fit with Krish Ramineni of Fireflies.ai Nov 15, 2022

Show notes

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. He used to play sports as a kid - tennis, baseball, etc. - and he was always excited about filming his games or practice, and utilizing software to analyze how he executed the craft. He brings his analytical mainframe into his current venture, and still plays some sports, lifts weights, and tracks his nutrition.

Krish went through meetings like we all do - conducting a meeting with expensive team members, and then forgetting most of the conversation afterwards. He decided he wanted to figure out a way to remember every conversation he had, and unlock the hidden metrics behind meetings.

This is the creation story of Fireflies.ai.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://fireflies.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/

Current Sponsors:

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

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

S7 Bonus: From Counter-Terrorism Network Analysis to Mapping Workplace Connection with Shawn Ramirez of Mystery Nov 10, 2022

Show notes

Shawn Ramirez spent a decade as a political science professor, studying terrorism and strategic negotiations. Five years ago, she switched into tech, in order to make a positive impact, joining startups with great missions. She has created training programs, worked in AI, scaled teams, and dug into the data science world. Outside of tech, she lives in Seattle with her family, and loves all the outdoors things you can do in the Pacific Northwest.

Shawn tells the story of how her current venture started out as a dating service, but pivoted when the pandemic hit to positive events for remote teams. Being on one of those remote teams and consuming the events, she fell in love with the idea and joined the team, to build and deliver shared experiences with powerful insights.

This is the creation story of Mystery.

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Website: https://www.trymystery.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/slramz/

Current Sponsors:

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

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

S7 Bonus: The First Benefits Placement System: Engineering a Shared Architecture for a $150B Industry with Shaheeb Roshan, Co-Founder & CTO of ThreeFlow Nov 09, 2022

Show notes

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 world - teaching his daughter how to swim and be safe in the water, and learning how to do new things. For example, he got into baking, which ended up into 13 cakes on his counter table (yes, I'm wondering my invite was too). The pattern for him is getting deeply interested in something, as there is always a system behind it.

Collectively, Shaheed and his co-founders had 10 years of experience supporting the employee benefits insurance space. On a regular basis, they observed the manual creation, editing and lack observability in the processes - aka, the lack of modern tooling to support the industry. They made the decision and committed to changing the face of the industry.

This is the creation story of ThreeFlow.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.threeflow.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaheebroshan/

Current Sponsors:

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

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

S7 E12: The FinOps Revolution: Turning Cloud Chaos into Unit Economics with Roi Ravhon, Co-Founder & CEO of Finout Nov 08, 2022

Show notes

Roi Ravhon path to tech started in the Israeli military, like many other founders in Israel. In fact, the very first introduction he had to computers was when he joined the services. It was a great experience, that taught him everything he knows. This is a common story with founders in the area, as I've noticed from other interviews I've done. He lives in Tel Aviv, and he is a big fan of music, sports, and running his company.

In his previous role at Logz.io, Roi and his team spent large sums of money for cloud providers and services. The finance team quickly got wind of these costs, and started asking questions, appropriately. Roi found out that he didn't have answers to the questions, and there wasn't tooling out there that helped him.

This is the creation story of Finout.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://www.finout.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roiravhon/

Current Sponsors:

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

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

S7 Bonus: The Death of Static Credentials: Architecting Hardware-Attested Device Identity with Mike Malone, Founder & CEO of Smallstep Nov 03, 2022

Show notes

Mike Malone is a nerd from way back (his words, not mine). In the 6th grade, he bought a Borland C book and learned how to code. Back when Napster was round, he hosted an open Nap server in his basement, and ran a few things on IRC. He graduated from Virginia Tech with a Business Information Systems degree, and worked for Accenture for a hot second... then joined a 3 person startup, and hasn't looked back since. He's married with 2 kids, and a dog - and he claims he collects hobbies, which is another way of saying he likes to try new things.

Mike's career has tracked along side the development of the cloud. He witnessed the security problems alongside distributed systems, and felt the pains of having to manage sensitive information. He and his team saw an opportunity here, and set out to fix the problem.

This is the creation story of Smallstep.

Sponsors

Links

Website: https://smallstep.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mmalone/

Current Sponsors:

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

Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

S7 Bonus: The Spatial Applied Math Engine: Building Geospatial AI for Franchise Growth with Kateryna Sytnyk, Co-Founder of Fract & CTO Doctor Nov 02, 2022

Show notes

Kateryna Sytnyk is originally from Ukraine, but moved to the states 15 years ago after winning the green card lottery. Her background is in applied mathematics, and she grew up surrounded with logical brains - for example, her grandparent was literally a rocket scientist. When she moved to the US, she dove right into the world of entrepreneurship. Outside of tech, she travels a lot, being a digital nomad, and likes to salsa dance. She is fascinated with psychology and what drives behavior.

For her prior startup, she utilized her background in applied math, combined with her co-founder's experience in the space, to create a way to optimize territory creation - for franchises, sales teams, etc. and predict revenue for said territories. When she moved on from that gig, she started a new thing - one that would enable women founders to build technical solutions.

This is the creation story of Fract... and CTO Doctor.

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