Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Steven Schkolne has a standard tech story. He was good at math, and loved computers - so, he got into programming. What sets him apart in the industry though, is his passion for design, art and creativity. He is a self taught designer, but really jams when his right and left brains are firing at the same time. Outside of tech, he is married and enjoys gaming and digging into YouTube.Steven was working on a VR project in the past, and a component required some web development. What he immediately noticed was that although Unity Game Engine development was visual, but web development required you to build visually in the realm of code. He started to wonder if there was a way to bring this sort of thing to web dev.This is the creation story of MightyMeld.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.mightymeld.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schkolne/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Somak Chattopadhyay lives 30 minutes outside of Syracuse, NY, where he enjoys the great outdoors vibe of the area. He studied engineering at MIT, but spent the bulk of his career in investing. He has been in venture capital for nearly 18 years, spending time at Edison and Tribeca. Outside of tech, he is married and passionate about food and music. He's actually a classically trained violinist, and enjoys cooking or consuming Tandoor cuisine.In 2013, a group of professors and business people noticed that early stage companies in Syracuse were required to move to NYC - primarily because there was lack of capital and access to talent. A year later, Somak and his team stepped out to solve this problem in New York regions... and beyond.This is the creation story of Armory Square Ventures.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.armorysv.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/somak-chattopadhyay-7662a/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Maxim Fateev grew up in the Soviet Union, and witnessed its collapse. He left in 1995, and moved to Brazil, where he got his Masters in Computer Science. In the late 90's, he moved to the US, eventually landing in Seattle, which loves. He's been married for 27 years, with 3 boys, and loves to hike, play ice hockey, and snowboard. He mentioned there were a number of choices, but he prefers Whistler in Canada, when he can make the 5 hour drive.During the development of open source services at Amazon, Maxim came across the idea of durable execution. Eventually, at Uber, he launched an open source library that eventually would become the basis of his current venture.This is the creation story of Temporal.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://temporal.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fateev/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ibrahim Surani grew up in Pakistan, dropped out of high school and in his words, stumbled around for a while. Eventually, he stumbled onto an IBM mainframe, taught himself to code, and has been in tech ever since. He moved to the states in 1988 and has been here ever since. Outside of tech, he is an avid hiker, and enjoys a good fantasy read, like Lord of the Rings.Jay Mishra studied mathematics and computer science. He started out at his current venture right out of college, post his masters program. Outside of tech, he is a Dad of two boys who love sports. He enjoys playing chess and golf, and likes to hike and travel. His favorite book is the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.Going back several years, Ibrahim started a consultancy in 2005 or so, and mentions working on successful products in the area of mortgage banking. In 2008, the financial meltdown happened, and all of their customers (save 1) went out of business. After struggling for while, they decided take a foundational utility they had built and bridge the gap to 2.0 of their business.This is the creation story of Astera.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.astera.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ibrahimsurani/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaymishra/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Jason Radisson had a tough childhood, being born to a 16 year old single mom. He grew up on a rural place, and his journey required him to work jobs to get ahead and figure the world out at a young age. He was always interested in math and sports, which led him down the path to study economics and applied mathematics, eventually working for McKinsey. Today, he is married with small kids, and enjoys an active, outdoor life, specifically participating in distance sports (IE biking or running).Through his career, Jason gained great experience in the gig economy, through his time at Uber and other ventures in Latin America. He saw many shifts run the market through his time, and throughout the pandemic, and he saw that people were looking to maximize the productivity of the workforce they currently had.This is the creation story of Movo.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://movo.co/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-radisson/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Valeriy Bykanov studied computer science in the Ukraine, and eventually in 2009, decided to start his own software development agency. After doing this for some time, he wanted to expand his horizons and moved to Berlin to join a startup. Outside of tech, he is married, and loves to be active outdoors - hiking, snowboarding and cycling. In fact, one of his favorite things to do is listen to a podcast or audiobook while hitting a biking trail.Valeriy had some past experience in recruitment, having had run his own agency. He found great reward in placing people, but eventually wanted to build a solution for the process. After he met his co-founder, they both decided to attack the creation of a new kind of recruiting tool.This is the creation story of Prodigy.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://prodi.gg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valeriybykanov/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Massoud Alibakhsh was born in Iran, but grew up in the states. He has always been curious about machines, computers, robots - and as such, studied electrical engineering and computer science. He built his career on hardware and software, and witnessed all the tech changes throughout the past decades - from mainframes to GUI's to pcs to distributed systems to the cloud. Outside of tech, he used to be a competitive soccer player, but after he hurt his knees, he switched to swimming daily. He swears by intermittent fasting, but makes sure to carry walnuts and dates on him when he travels.Massoud held a strong desire to find a solution to the complex communication problem between people and systems. He decided to approach this with deep AI integration, smart objects, and an object messaging model. And in doing so, he put AI in project management, and discovered the next development paradigm.This is the creation story of Omadeus.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://omadeus.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/massoud-alibakhsh-7b139753/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Josh Purvis grew up in Missouri, on a lake in the Ozarks. He spent most of his time outdoors, and became a professional wakeboarder. Eventually, an injury took him out of the circuit and he went to entertainment school. During his time there, he and his roommate built a website - and he has been into tech ever since. Outside of tech, he reads a ton, owning about 400-500 books, and enjoys street tacos, wings, and a good plate of pasta.In the past, Josh and his current co-founder started to discuss employment engagement. They also noticed that sharing information across a large company was, well - inefficient, with many points of failure. On the side, they started building something that would improve both of these areas together.This is the creation story of Assembly.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.joinassembly.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuapurvis/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Max Rudman grew up in Soviet, Moscow - then moved from Russia when he was 16 years old. He spent his early years programming and exploring engineering, and it just continued on as he got older. He got the entrepreneurial bug in early 2000's when he was hired at a marketplace .COM startup. Outside of tech, he is married with 3 kids. He loves to travel and considers himself a foodie, stating that his favorite restaurants were in the wine country and in Spain.Within his last startup, Max discovered that deploying configuration rules on Salesforce was clunky and took a long time to do so, even for a seasoned engineer. Eventually, he decided to build a tool to focus on this process alone.This is the creation story of Prodly.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://prodly.co/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxrudman/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Kaj Pedersen was born in Zambia, Africa, and has travelled all throughout his life - through Africa, Europe, but has now landed in the United States. He has had tons of exposure to cultures and countries, which he is fond of. Outside of tech, he married with a family, and loves climbing, being a proclaimed mountaineer. When he isn't climbing he likes to read a broad array of books, and scuba dive - of which, he mentioned Fiji was the coolest dive.In 2017, the founders of AstrumU kicked off the idea to build a company focused on creating equity to the value of education for everyone, by tracking hard and soft skills at the individual level. Though he couldn't join the company at that time, Kaj eventually joined in 2019 to take the initial idea to 1.0 conception.This is the creation story of AstrumU.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://astrumu.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kajpedersen/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy