Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Craig McLuckie is a self proclaimed boring guy - monochromatic, as he put it. At one point, he tried retiring from his professional ventures - IE building technology - but... it didn't work. So he is now back into building tech. Outside of tech, he is father to four children - two younger, two older - and enjoys spending time outside with them, hiking and building things. When he comes to food, he mentioned that there is no type of food he doesn't like - as long as it is well prepared and made with love.Craig has been passionate about the supply chain security space for a long time. And in the past, he had built several open source projects - one being Kubernetes. He found himself intrigued at the intersection of these worlds, and wanted to build a solution, enabling developers to secure their open source.This is the creation story of Stacklok.SponsorsDrataCacheFlyClearQueryLinkshttps://stacklok.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigmcluckie/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Naomi Chopra grew up in Delhi, India, but attended Grad school in the US, specifically in Atlanta. He worked in the valley for several companies, including Uber, but eventually left to start his own thing. Outside of tech, he enjoys spending time with family and friends and loves to play tennis, which he has been playing since he was young. He mostly plays doubles because there are more people and less courts these days.Naomi noticed that people were depending on dozen's of SaaS tools to get their work done. He and his team started to ask the right questions, around why don't we build something to collect the signals from these tools, and present information to help drive velocity, alignment, and well-being.This is the creation story of Hatica.SponsorsCacheFlyClearQueryLinkshttps://www.hatica.io/https://www.linkedin.com/in/naomichopra/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Melissa Pancoast is originally from Miami, but now lives in California. She still loves Florida, being outside skiing or rowing. The latter was a huge part of her life from middle school through grad school, and she is hoping to get back into it soon. She's married, and runs outside as much as possible. In fact, she has completed several half and full marathons, including the Boston Marathon.Prior to her current venture, Melissa was a part of the group called "caring professionals", as a teacher in New York City. She studied how people feel about money at Oxford, and took her learnings, created a program, and decided to build a software company around it.This is the creation story of The Beans.SponsorsCacheFlyClearQueryLinkshttps://join-thebeans.io/https://www.linkedin.com/in/mgpancoast/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Jonathan Norris lives in Toronto, and has a passion for tech that started early in his life. He has participated in the First Robotics competition, which got him into mechanical engineering, building robots, and leading teams to world championships. He still actively volunteers and mentors people in the program today. Outside of tech, he is a new Dad, and stays quite busy parenting his kid, when he's not riding an eBike to work.In Winter 2014, Jonathan and his founding team did Y-combinator and formed Taplytics. After doing this for nearly 10 years, what his team noticed was the most passionate users were developers using feature flagging over the core offering of the product. So - they decided to spin out a new brand, to focus on just that.This is the creation story of DevCycle.SponsorsDrataCacheFlyClearQueryLinkshttps://devcycle.com/https://taplytics.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathantnorris/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gilad Shriki, Co-founder of Descope, shares insights from his journey in tech, including the creation of an innovative authentication platform. He discusses the pressing challenges in identity management and the motivation behind their solution. Gilad emphasizes the importance of rapid MVP development and collaboration among his founding team. He also reflects on transitioning to a self-service model to empower developers, providing essential advice for aspiring entrepreneurs on the value of teamwork and customer feedback.

Alex Deeb was influenced by the education space early on. He had many teachers who inspired him through his life, and his parents pushed him to do well in school on order to obtain better opportunities. Along side of that, he is interested in equitable opportunities, which is a big driver for him in his professional ventures. He is passionate about helping learn about new opportunities. He grew up in Long Island, NY - so of course, he loves pizza. He frequents the local pizza house, which in his opinion is Stellas'. He gets 2 slices of regular cheese, with a coke - which is the only time he drinks soda.One day, he and his friends got together to have a business brainstorming question. One of the questions that came up was how can you make videos searchable? Also, how can you improve engagement within schools, perhaps with popular media?This is the creation story of Classhook.LinksWebsite: https://www.classhook.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderdeeb/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Sahil Patel has lived in Atlanta for 12 years now, but has made a lifetime of leaving Atlanta... and the coming back. He attended undergrad in ATL, and in 2011, started a company called ER Express, which centered around patient scheduling. After building the company, he sold it for a successful outcome for him, for his team, and for the buyer. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 daughters, and loves to play music and play socer. He plays guitar in a rush cover band called the Atlanta Rush Hour, and used to play soccer competitively.In the past, Sahil was a client of his current venture. In leading ER Express, he saw great value in a tool to predict conversion. He liked it so much, that after he sold his company and moved on, he wanted to join the team - and take it to the next level.This is the creation story of Spiralyze.SponsorsDrataCacheFlyClearQueryLinkshttps://www.spiralyze.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/sahilanamipatelSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ariel Dominguez has been an entrepreneur for most of his life. He started his first company at age 15, selling websites in Miami, hiring family members before he could drive. He continued his career later, in finance, then consumer product goods, then healthcare insurance. He loves to build things, and has started 13 - 15 businesses in his lifetime. Outside of tech, he is an avid drummer, and has been playing since he was 10 years old.Irena Tigranyan was born in Armenia, and moved to the US in 2014. She never dreamed of being a founder, cause in the world she was raised in, youalways worked for someone else. She has diverse professional experience in retail and operations, but outside of work, she likes to explore, kayaking, tennis and being outdoors.Fun fact - Ariel and Irena are married, IE partners in life and in business. They Met on Bumble, live in Miami, and invested their "wedding money" to found a company.Ariel and Irena wanted to build the Expedia for healthcare - to make it simple, and abstract away all the loopholes and jargon. They wanted to innovate in a non-innovative space, and to bring the swipe right or left mentality to healthcare insurance.This is the creation story of Healthbird.SponsorsDrataCacheFlyClearQueryLinkshttps://www.healthbird.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/arieldominguez/https://www.linkedin.com/in/irena-t-419739101/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ayal Regev lives in Tel Aviv, and continues working hard on his startup, despite the hostage conflict in the country at the time of this recording. Prior to his current venture, he was in tech for 10 years, doing consulting in cybersecurity, healthcare, and gaming. Being a gamer for a long time, he enjoyed the technical challenges in brining a game to market. Outside of tech, he likes to write raps - and forecasts that he will perform them one day. He also likes to do rock climbing and play board games with friends.Ayal and his co-founders noticed the trends of automation in continuous integration and development processes (or CI/CD). They also noticed that over time, this has created a lot of clutter and bloat in the ecosystem. They wanted to filter out bad practices, and build a platform to reduce feedback time and redefine CI/CD.This is the creation story of Redefine.SponsorsDrataCacheFlyClearQueryLinkshttps://www.redefine.dev/https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayal-regev/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Leonardo Shapiro is originally from Mexico City. His family was from Russia and Poland, but ended up being in Mexico City after being denied from the US. He is an outdoorsy person, and loves to walk and hike. And in fact, he used to be a scuba diving instructor in college, and he loves to spend time in spaces like the underwater. He's also a foodie, and loves coffee and wine.For Leonardo, the immigration process into the US was a very hard process. He went on the search for a product that would make this process easier, and he couldn't find it. He wanted to fix this, and provide something for his fellow "not" alien's.This is the creation story of Not Alien.SponsorsDrataCacheFlyClearQueryLinkshttps://notalien.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonardoshapiro/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy