Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Shmuel Kliger is a self proclaimed old man. He was born in Israel, and served in the army for 6 years. It was in the army where he obtained his passion for the space, from which he got his bachelors, masters and eventually, his PhD. Outside of tech, he is married with 4 kids and 2 grandchildren. He met his wife during grad school, and they now live in New York. When asked what he did for fun, he laughed and said that he enjoyed living in the "best city in the world", with everything at his fingertips.When his past venture winded down, Schmuel found himself at the center of an idea that was the culmination of all his years in technology. To build something that could not only process large amounts of observability data - but could make sense of it, and take appropriate action.This is the creation story of Causely.SponsorsPropelAuthTeclaSpeakeasyQA WolfSnapTradeLinkshttps://www.causely.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/shmuel-kliger-1a91963/Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORYSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hello Listeners.Today is going to be a special episode, a bit out of the ordinary to our normal programming. I'm participating in Podcasthon, which gives Code Story the opportunity to dedicate one episode to a charity of choice. Hundreds of podcasts are participating in this, releasing their episodes simultaneously in a coordinate effort, with the goal of creating a massive and international wave of inspiring audio content.Whats the point? The point is to raise awareness for a huge number of charities worldwide.The charity I've chosen is the American Cancer Society.The American Cancer Society is fighting cancer through research into cures and support for existing patients in their family. This not for profit organization, and is enabled to do its work through donations, grants and other sources.If you feel led to help fight cancer and support patients, go to the cancer.org website and click Donate. You can even give in Honor & Memorial of someone who's life has been impacted by cancer.If you want to learn more, go to cancer.org. That C A N C E R.org.Big thanks to the American Cancer Society for the work they do, and to Podcasthon, for coordinated this effort for charity.And thanks again for listening.SponsorsPodcasthonLinkshttps://www.cancer.org/Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORYSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Tyler Wells lives outside of Austin, TX. He moved there 4 years ago, but spent most of this time in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. Outside of tech, he is married with a family. His 3 kids are heavily involved in sports and extracurricular activities, which keeps them all pretty busy. But, when he has time, he is into cooking. He thinks of it as a nerdy endeavor, eating at a fancy restaurant and going home to try to recreate the dish.At the sunset of his prior company, Tyler and his co-founders started digging into the AI Code Editor, Cursor, and how the agent side of things could increase the power and speed of coding. Through the shutdown, they decided to start something new.This is the creation story of Braingrid.SponsorsPropelAuthTeclaSpeakeasyQA WolfSnapTradeLinkshttps://www.braingrid.ai/https://propeldata.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerswells/Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORYSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anthony Eden is a gray beard in terms of internet time, being around when Netscape was released. He was studying music at the University of Miami, and decided to build a website to show off his music and other peoples work - and was hooked. Outside of tech, he grew up surfing, living in Hawaii, France and now Florida. He enjoys writing software for fun - when he has time - and playing board games with this kids - when they are around.In the past, Anthony was coming off of a failed startup. At the time, he was using a different vendor to manage domains and DNS - which he did not like at all. He decided to go forward and build a better solution, and one that is - you guessed it - simple.This is the creation story of DNSimple.SponsorsPropelAuthTeclaSpeakeasyQA WolfSnapTradeLinkshttps://dnsimple.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/aeden/Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORYSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Andrew Lau is located in Boston now, but is a California native. He grew up in Oakland, and calls himself the odd duck who went west instead of east, like most people. He went to the north east for school, and stayed to be apart of the startup world, interestingly enough with his current co-founders. Outside of tech, he's married to an AP Calculus teacher, and has two daughters. He enjoys cooking and making new cuisine with his kids. Fun fact, he is a certified barbecue judge in Kansas City, and has come to Texas a time or two to tour the Texas Monthly list.Andrew met his current co-founders in 1999. Recently, they re-connected, recalling the successes and camaraderie they had during their startup days. They recalled that the act of leading engineering teams is hard - and they wanted to build something that makes that easier.This is the creation story of Jellyfish.SponsorsPropelAuthTeclaSpeakeasyQA WolfSnapTradeLinkshttps://jellyfish.co/https://www.linkedin.com/in/amlau/Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORYSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ayush Agarwal is a techy trying to code his way out of things. He graduated with a degree in Computer Science, but more importantly, he discovered entrepreneurship in college, inspired by his successful classmates. He spent years gathering experience in different startup verticals, including fintech. But outside of tech, he loves to play badminton, cricket, and hangout with friends. He is also big into Chess, which he mentioned enjoying Chess.com, as well as our recent interview with their CTO, Josh Levine.When Ayush met his now co-founder, they started to think through businesses and how much goes into setting up payments, taxes, etc. They started to dream about building this layer of payments, to enable builders to send and receive global payments easily, so they can focus on their core competencies.This is the creation story of Dodo Payments.SponsorsPropelAuthTeclaSpeakeasyQA WolfSnapTradeLinkshttps://dodopayments.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/aagarwal1012/Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORYSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Josh Ho was into tech at a young age. In high school, which was around the time of bulletin boards and AOL online, he had to code a way to connect windows to the internet using TCP/IP. Outside of tech, he is married with a family. He notes that because he is in tech, people perceive him to be younger in age. He plays handball, and has been into the sport since he was younger.Prior to his current venture, Josh had a SaaS product he attempted to launch that didn't work out. While he was getting his car worked on at a dealership, he noticed patrons being referred to salesmen in real time - and he started to think, who manages this sort of thing for other businesses?This is the creation story of Referral Rock.SponsorsSpeakeasyQA WolfSnapTradeLinkshttps://referralrock.com/https://mojoho.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuajho/Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORYSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Austin Vance grew up in Oklahoma, but takes residence outside of Denver, Colorado now. He is a father of 3 boys, who are also 3 in under - so he's quite busy. He loves woodworking, and teaching his oldest son how to ski. When it comes to food, he loves all of it in general - but has been drawn to asian fusion lately. And he enjoys reading business books, and sci fi - of which, Blade Runner was mentioned number one.Austin had several experiences with consulting firms, where they operated under traditional "land and expand" models. IE, increasing the footprint of their teams. He felt passionate about building a services company that was designed to deprecate itself - starting with the wide world of DevOps.This is the creation story of Focused.SponsorsSpeakeasyQA WolfSnapTradeLinkshttps://focused.io/https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinbv/Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORYSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Jason Schappert, founder of Moola and former aviation entrepreneur, shares insights from his unique journey. He discusses the challenges of startup life, emphasizing the importance of financial management and meaningful metrics over vanity metrics. The creation story of Moola highlights lessons learned in developing their MVP, focusing on essential features and market readiness. Jason also reflects on team dynamics, the value of culture fit, and the impact of mentorship on personal growth, advocating for personalized financial services through technology.

Tameem Hourani was born in the Middle East, on a small island. He came to the states, Boston specifically, for school in 2006. He planned on 4 years of engineering, which turned into 19 years of life. He became a citizen of the US during COVID, and spent many years of his career at Wayfair, which he throughly enjoyed. But outside of tech, he is a new father and spends a lot of time with his newborn. He loves being in the ocean, scuba diving, kite surfing and along side that, collecting vintage watches.In the past, Tameem had been burned by consulting firms. He saw a gap in the industry, and when he left his prior role at Wayfair, he wanted to become a trusted, transparent technology partner - the one that he had longed for in his previous roles.This is the creation story of RapDev.SponsorsSpeakeasyQA WolfSnapTradeLinkshttps://www.rapdev.io/https://www.linkedin.com/in/tameem-hourani/Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/CODESTORYSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy