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

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S5 Bonus: Engineering an Infinite Runway: Anthony Castrio on Bootstrapping Indie Worldwide Oct 29, 2021

Show notes

Anthony Castrio has been a freelance engineer and digital nomad for 3.5 years. He currently living in Mexico City, but is originally from upstate New York, up around the Adirondack Mountains area. He describes where he grew up very similar to the shire from the Lord of the Rings. His hobbies include reading, tennis and languages. He's learning Spanish, given his current location, but also has dabbled in Japanese and French.

As a freelance dev, he mostly is a full stack web developer. He's been aggressively part time, or quarter time as he puts it, as a freelancer. He considers it the boots trappers seed round... it is how he keeps his runway infinite to work on his personal projects.

Before he built his current project, every time he would move to a new city, Anthony would try to start a local indie hackers meetup. He started one in Boston and DC, and a few other places - but every time he moved, he lost his friend group. In order to stay connected with his friends, he decided to take his groups virtual. And it started to grow from there.

This is the creation story of Indie Worldwide.

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Website: https://indieworldwide.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antcas/

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S5 Bonus: Slashing the Cloud Bill in Half: Automated Kubernetes Optimization with Leon Kuperman of CAST.ai Oct 28, 2021

Show notes

Leon Kuperman comes from an immigrant family, who migrated to North America in the late 70's. He was born in a city that is not part of the Ukraine, but grew up in Canada. So he was brought up in western society, but closely observed his parents and their immigrant background, grinding as entrepreneurs throughout Leon's life.

He's a brown belt in Brazilian Jui Jitsu, and has been training for over 15 years. This consumes a lot of his time outside of tech. Funny enough though, when he was living in Seattle, he was a part of a group of people from Oracle, Amazon, Microsoft, etc., who all did martial arts. He finds that there is a correlation between Jui Jitsu specifically, and tech.

He's married with 3 kids, and of course, likes to spend time with his kids in different ways. His older son actually trains with him in martial arts, and also does tech - building raspberry pi's and engineering different things. Leon also plays piano, as coming from a Russian family, it wasn't an option not to.

At his prior startup, Leon and his CEO would get into conversations about - you guessed - his cloud spending bill. He knew that the usage was justified, but could not point to why each piece of infrastructure was allocated. And further, he could not automatically optimize it, and reduce the bill.

This is the creation story of Cast AI.

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Links

Website: https://cast.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itexecutivecto

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Compiler - Do we want a world without technical debt? Oct 27, 2021

Show notes

Original episode: https://www.redhat.com/en/compiler-podcast/what-is-technical-debt?pfe-ngumm8p1n=show-notes

Hey guys, I'm back again to share another fantastic episode of the Compiler podcast, from Red Hat. As a reminder Compiler is a show hosted by tech veterans, discussing tech topics - big, strange and small.

On this particular episode - which is episode 4 - the team dives into the topic of technical debt, by first asking the question - what the heck is it? Its starts quite humorous, with the hosts slinging thoughts about financial debt and trying to bridge the gap there.

There definition comes down to this - technical debt is the cost of delaying necessary work on a project or platform, so that you can hit your milestones on time. Essentially, the cost of delivering new features as a priority over bug fixes or maintenance of a platform.

I think this is pretty accurate, but incomplete view of technical debt. I'd like to add my 2 cents to the definition. In my view, technical debt can also be inferior approach or framework decisions early on in the life of a piece of software, that you plan to uplevel, change or completely replace in the future. In the startup world, I find this to be the more commonly occurring form of technical debt, with the former definition occurring for more mature software solutions.

At any rate, this was a great discussion on technical debt. Have a listen to Episode 4, titled "Do we want a world without technical debt." Be sure and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast catcher. I'll make sure and add a link to the show notes as well.

And as always... Enjoy.

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S5 E20: Building an AI Inside Sales Agent That Passes the Human Test with Nate Joens of Structurely Oct 26, 2021

Show notes

Nate Joens was born and raised in Iowa. And in fact, he plans to spend out the rest of his days there, cause he loves it. He lovingly calls it the Silicon Prairie, though he admits that most people don't call it that. He studied at Iowa State University, majoring in Geographic Information Systems and Urban Planning - which is basically mapping on steroids. He learned how to map topography, three dimensionally, using tools like ArcGIS. Outside of tech, he loves to hike, kayak, golf, and generally be outdoors.

In college, he was very interested and connected to the real estate industry, as urban planning works closely with realtors. He figured out that lead follow up was a huge pain point for realtors, which peaked his interest. And led him to build some tech to solve the problem.

This is the creation story of Structurely.

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Links

Website: https://www.structurely.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanjoens/

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S5 Bonus: Scaling to $100M ARR: The Product Evolution of CallRail with Ryan Johnson Oct 22, 2021

Show notes

Ryan Johnson is originally from Saginaw, Michigan, and now lives in Atlanta. He never imagined he would get into tech. In fact, when he was growing up he wanted to be an orthodontist. He got into school, and immediately saw how difficult the classes were going to be. So he switched to business, and that part of school stuck and came naturally to him. As a college elective, he took computer science as an elective (who does that?). He brags that his computer science professor still has the mortgage calculator program on hand (and it still works). Post college, he worked as a broker for Equitable, as a financial advisor, and then supported law firm with their SEO. Eventually, he got into product and is still leading the charge there.

He is married, and has 2 young daughters, both in grade school. He loves to travel, and hopes to make that more of a regular thing as the pandemic slows down. He has an affinity for all things automotive as well, and has been into racing most of his life. Though he loves cars, he really prefers just to watch... and not wrench on them.

Ryan joined the his current company many years ago, and was charged to build a team to expand the companies call tracking functionality... to essentially, make it omni channel, with form, source and message tracking.

This is the creation story of CallRail.

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Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://www.callrail.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryandjohnson/

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Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor.

S5 Bonus: How to Architect Trustworthy, Multi-Modal AI Systems with Seekar’s Kordel France Oct 21, 2021

Show notes

Kordel France has always been infatuated with finding order in chaos - and has carried that way of living throughout his life. He is an engineer by training and schooling, but grew up on a farm. What triggered his interest in AI was the day that his father brought home autonomous driving systems for the farm equipment. His Dad let him tinker with it, and Kordel was hooked.

In college, he studied Physics and Mathematics, as his father always told him that there was a lot of math involved with autonomous systems. Aligned with this, he really enjoyed studying calculus. He saw the relationship between time series and control theory - essentially, autonomous guidance of a vehicle. And to learn to code, he tried to automate the calculation of derivatives. All in all, he considers math a beautiful thing, and sees it behind everything throughout our day to day lives. Post school, he worked for defense companies, specifically on autonomous systems. He also got to work as a mechanical engineer for a while, which helped him to view things from a different discipline. To round this out, he obtained his graduate degree in Artificial Intelligence.

For fun, he practices Jiu Jitsu and plays the drums. In another life, he says he might been a drummer, but in this life, he plays along with a wide spectrum of music - from punk rock to country. Both hobbies allow his brain to turn off, but at the same time, Kordel solves some of his biggest technical problems while he is doing his hobbies.

Way back in college, Kordel started building a codebase around computer vision and detection. He started adding to it over time, made it quite impressive, and figured out a way to monetize the platform. However, coming from the defense industry, he and his co-founder understood the apprehension around the use of AI commercially. They set out to change that.

This is the creation story of Seekar Technologies.

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Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://seekartech.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kordel-k-f-10349811b/

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S5 Bonus: How Ubico Re-engineered Personalized Outreach at Scale with Philippe Kwiatkowski Oct 20, 2021

Show notes

Phillipe Kwiatkowski has been addicted to gaming since he was a teenager. He played games like Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Grand Theft Auto. In the process, he discovered multiplayer mods, that allowed you to play online - which was his first introduction to coding. When he was 16, he got his first freelancing gig building websites. Eventually, he studied computer science at University, and interestingly, he joined an accelerator. There were a ton of smart people, working on very interesting problems. For fun, he enjoys playing soccer, and has played ever since high school. He also enjoys running, and in fact, is sorta prepping for a marathon. Eventually he would love to do a spartan race as well.

During the days when he was involved in the accelerator, Phil started noticing that many founder problems were centered around distribution - or how to get their products in front of customers. He decided to build a better cold email tool, one that solved these problems. And it worked.

This is the creation story of Ubico.

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Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://www.ubico.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philkwiatkowski/

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S5 E19: From an Epic Games Exit to Mindstone: Scaling AI Learning with Joshua Wohle Oct 19, 2021

Show notes

Joshua Whole was born in the Netherlands. Before he was 13, he actually went to 5 different schools. Afterwards, he moved to Switzerland and went into the public school system - which was all in French (which he didn't speak). In his younger years, he started building websites and ultimately started a company, with 35 other high school students building these sites.

Eventually, he moved to London, initially to shape up his computer science background, given he was a self taught developer. He attended a 3 year Computer Science program at King's College, and the last year of University, he attempted to try to start another business. He and his co-founders declined an investment, and never got another one... so the business was out.

After University, he started a company called SuperAwesome - providing tools for safe digital engagement to almost half a billion kids every month, while also ensuring that parental consent was baked in. Seven years after starting the company, he eventually sold this to Epic games, the makers of Fortnite, and at the time of acquisition, the company was 170 people with offices all over the world.

For fun he is a whiskey lover, and has been collecting them for over 10 years now. In fact, once a week, he does a (fully remote) whisky tasting with a friend of his. His favorite is The Ileach, with his backup being a 10 year Laphroaig.

After many self learning adventures in his life, Joshua set out to create a product that would allow people to go through self directed learning online, but in specific learning pathways... and allow them to learn faster in the process. Self taught developer? Be able to prove you went through the appropriate material that you acquired the skills necessary.

This is the creation story of Mindstone.

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Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://mindstone.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuawohle/

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S5 Bonus: Making Data Unhackable: How to Offload PCI Compliance and Data Liability with Very Good Security (VGS)’s Mahmoud Abdelkader Oct 14, 2021

Show notes

Mahmoud Abdelkader immigrated to the United States from Egypt, from a city 100 km east of Cairo, on the Suez Canal. He was 8 years old when he moved to New York City, and later in life, he moved to Maryland, which is where he really started to get into gaming... er... computers. He used to play World of Warcraft and Age of Empires a lot, and through his gameplay, he was led down a path of reverse engineering hacks to aid him in winning.

Eventually, he started learning high level languages, all in the pursuit of building game hacking systems. He got into real programming when he was 16, slinging some C++ and deciding that he wanted to be a computer engineer. Post college, he worked on Wall Street, which in his eyes, was where he really became an engineer. After working for a startup, he joined Y Combinator and built Balanced, a payments marketplace system, which eventually transitioned to Stripe.

Outside of tech, he plays basketball, and used to weight lift and do long distance running. He likes to set goals, crush them - and then move on to the next thing, keeping a well rounded life. He used to ride motorcycles, but his wife put a stop to that... especially given they are expecting their 2nd child soon.

Post his exit from Balanced, Mahmoud began listening to customer needs. What he heard people say was that they really wanted everything that he built in his former startup, minus the payments. Companies wanted the heavy lifting of data security taken off their plate, so they could focus on building their differentiated products.

This is the creation story of Very Good Security, or VGS.

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Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

Website: https://www.verygoodsecurity.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mabdelkader/

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S5 Bonus: Scaling Open Source to a Docker Acquisition with Sergei Egorov of AtomicJar Oct 13, 2021

Show notes

Sergei Egorov grew up in a small city of only 100,000 citizens (which is huge compared to some cities). He grew up in Siberia, in the cold part of the country. His personal record for how cold it was during his time there was -53 Degrees Celsius. And a funny story, on that same day, he had to go to the post office to pay his internet bill.. so he could play video games at 16 years old. His favorite game at the time was Might and Magic, which was also 50% of Russia's favorite game as well. The cold weather was partially the reason he got into tech... cause he could do it at home indoors. Other than that, he was a regular kid, who liked to skateboard, and play guitar in his band.

Through a chance discovery in Docker's eco-system, Sergei discovered an open source test container library, and realized that they approach he was taking to test containers was out there in the wild. He was invited to be a co-maintainer to the open source library, which would eventually become their current Company today.

This is the creation story of AtomicJar.

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Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

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