Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Andrew Colombi is a 38 year old tech guy from way back. At 12 years old, he wanted to play a computer game, but lacked the RAM to load it. After digging into the internal configuration to delay the load of peripherals, he was hooked on computers and eventually, coding. Outside of tech, he is picking back up learning piano, and really enjoys biking. He mentioned he just got a new gravel bike, which is a street bike with a front suspension.In the past, Andrew frequently worked with data that was private, with other users not having access. So, he had to create fake data, for multiple different projects. When he tried to do this, it took him much longer than anticipated, and it was incredibly valuable for multiple uses (stress testing and demos to name a few). This was key to eventually building a real tool for this, and starting a new adventure.This is the creation story of Tonic.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.tonic.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-colombi-9a52aa5/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Our host, Noah Labhart, couldn't be more excited about being featured on Dev Interrupted, whom we have followed for a long time, and have learned a ton from. Check out the post below, and subscribe to Dev Interrupted! Check out the original post here: https://linearb.io/dev-interrupted/podcast/career-journey-3-assembling-and-nurturing-engineering-teamsSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Max Howell did well in school, and was presented with the problem that - he didn't know what to do with himself. At that time, software wasn't cool, so he studied chemistry and started out a job in that industry. After he mastered his work environment within 3 months, he was disenchanted with the career path, and decided to stop going to work. Post installing Linux on his home computer, he started coding - and fell in love with it. Outside of tech, he is married with a young son. He enjoys a good beer, cooking a steak, and seeing how new everything is interpreted through his son's eyes.Max is the creator of Homebrew, the widely used package manager which is probably installed on your computer right now. After the success of the tool, he wanted to figure out a way to continue to bring value to open source, and power digital money in the web3 space.This is the creation story of Tea.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://tea.xyz/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mxcl/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Shirshanka Das grew up on the eastern side of India, near Calcutta. He did well in school, and got into IIT, choosing Computer Science as his major. Post undergrad, he got his PhD at UCLA, eventually working at PayPal and Yahoo on massive architectural systems. Outside of tech, he's married with 2 kids, he's an accomplished Indian vocalist, and has a passion for swimming, which he states is his therapy.After spending over a decade at LinkedIn, Shirshanka had led the teams supporting all things data. He created a unified approach to data discovery, governance, and observability - while he was at the company. He open sourced the product, called DataHub, and eventually created a managed version.This is the creation story of Acryl Data.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.acryldata.io/Website: https://datahubproject.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirshankadas/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Jon Ricketts lives in Knoxville, TN with his wife and kids. He notes that he has had an unconventional route to being a tech startup founder. He has an MBA and JD, but knew during law school he didn't want to practice. Throughout his career, he has continually fallen in love with building. Outside of tech, he enjoys spending time on the beach, staying physically fit, golfing, and working on his private pilots license.Jon observed the maturation of AI, in the creation of tooling like ChatGPT and generative AI. He envisioned building an application to extend the progression of natural language processing to enable work productivity.This is the creation story of Writerly.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://writerly.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-ricketts-639187267/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Tim Tutt grew up in the military, and travelled around following his father. An interesting fact he shared was that he attended three different schools in the 1st grade. He learned how to make friends and fit in quickly. Outside of tech, he loves the marvel cinematic universe, from which he states that Tony Spark is his spirit animal. He also loves to play poker, which he got into during college. He actually got to play in a smaller event within the World Series of poker this past year.In the past, Tim played the role of the middle man between the data and those who needed answers from the data. Like a good engineer, he always automated the repeat things he was asked to do. He asked his co-founder one day... wouldn't it be nice if we could just get out of the way?This is the creation story of ClearQuery.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.clearquery.io/Website: https://www.nightshiftdevelopment.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timtutt/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Alfredo Ramirez is the son of Ecuadorian immigrants, which instilled in him positive beliefs around faith, family, community and hard work. Way back, his father bought him an Apple 2 computer, which started him on his software development journey. Outside of tech, he is married with kids, and loves spending time outdoors with them - hiking, water sports, snow skiing and shooting trap. All of these things allow him to relax, recharge and clear his head.Fifteen years ago, Alfredo and his co-founders started their current venture during the 2008 financial crisis. After relying on the services side of their business, they headed towards building a single platform around digital collaboration, one that is reliable, a better user experience, and the analytics to go with it.This is the creation story of Vyopta.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.vyopta.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alfredo-ramirez-7131175/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Will Gaviria was born and raised in Columbia, immigrating to Florida at 11 years old. His family seta off in a single bedroom together, and worked hard for their life and successes. He got a full ride to MIT, and funny enough, he had to convince his mother that it was a legit school. Through all of his studies, he got to see the rise of AI and focused on neo-morphic computing. Outside of tech, he is married with a cat named Chipotle. He lives in the Bay Area, and loves playing Magic the Gathering and doing Crossfit.Will and his co-founder observed first hand the explosion of visual content. At the same time, artificial intelligence had reached a mature state, such that you could use it to learn from unstructured data. They set out to build the next big thing, specifically in context of unstructured visual data.This is the creation story of Coactive.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://coactive.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamgaviria/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Andrew Kahl has spent 30 years in tech, and has had many wonderful experiences. He graduated in 1992, and actually accidentally entered the industry, when he came across a job ad for Compaq. He's been in tech ever since, all around the building of things. Outside of tech, he is marred with 2 daughters - one of which he just sent to college, and one in high school. Along side of that, they have 3 overly energetic German shepherds.Andrew was part of a private equity group, which acquired BackBox in late 2021. He stepped in as CEO, maintaining the technology team in Israel and bringing the GTM team to the US. Taking over a fantastic product, Andrew set his sights on growing the company.This is the creation story of BackBox.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://backbox.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewkahl/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Pete Hunt grew up in NE Massachusetts, which he mentions was culturally New Hampshire. He wasn't into Hockey, but did a lot of swimming, in particular the 200m butterfly. He has a 2 year old daughter, and loves to play guitar in his cover band.Pete was one of the founding team members of React, and his friend and colleague, Nick, was one of the creators of GraphQL. Post Facebook, they wanted to figure out what was next, and wanted to build something impactful. After interviewing some folks, he realized that managing data and data pipelines was a challenge that needed to be solved.This is the creation story of Dagster.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://dagster.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pwhunt/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy