Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Idan Plotnik is a half Russian and half Moroccan, which mainly shows up in the way he cooks. First and foremost though, he is a geek, having worked in computer security from his early days. Outside of tech, he is married to a professional surfer, so he and his wife surf Israel's waves regularly. He is a dad as well, and stays busy putting together lego sets, or cooking delicious fish dishes, in traditional moroccan style.In the past, Idan sold two companies, one of which to Microsoft. At Microsoft, he felt the challenge and the pain of talking to risk management and security folks, begging them to integrate their tooling into the development process - which slowed down delivery. After spending so much time on non-value add activities, he decided to set out and optimize this process.This is the creation story of Apiiro.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://apiiro.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/idanplotnik/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Yann Ravel-Sibillot lives in France, and has a lot of hobbies. Ones that he mentioned was kayaking and rock climbing, which he has been doing for more than 10 years. He is passionate about AI, and built his first robot 15 years ago. Outside of tech, he is happily married and really enjoys Italian food. When I asked him what I should do when I come to France, he mentioned trying all the different food genres, regionally across the country.When Yann was a CTO of a group of restaurants, he was pursued by the accounting department, to ensure he was validating invoices. Though he tried to build a system for this, it wasn't enough to alleviate the pain of the problem. Eventually, he set out to build the right solution to solve this.This is the creation story of Flowie.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.get-flowie.com/enLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannravelsibillot/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Danielle Shaul was born and raised in Tel Aviv, as an only child with a dog she dearly loved. She has always been passionate about building and creating things, often assembling and disassembling things in her home. She loves to travel, and spent many years in Asia, Europe and in the US. Outside of tech, she likes ceramics and reading - specifically, biohacking, mindset books, or learning to become a better leader. When asked her favorite food, she says her Mom's - who can cook anything well.Prior to her current startup, Danielle had to create home grown solutions for financial workflows - cause back then, when she was at Fundbox, software for these workflows didn't exist. Her and her co-founder clicked over the idea to build the software that she wished she had.This is the creation story of Nilus.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.nilus.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-shaul-735b1b92/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Caroline Strzalka is a Philadelphia native, born and raised. She is a first generation American, and is grateful to be in a place where she can run her own company. Her parents are from Argentina, with a Polish heritage - so she pointed out that they speak a lot of languages in her home. Outside of tech, she loves to hike and be in the trees. And, she calls herself the MacGyver of the kitchen, meaning she can take anything from the fridge and make a stellar meal out of it.Dan Projansky is a country boy, only moving to NYC when he was 11 years old. He is a father of a 14 year old, whom he adores, and is an avid mountain biker and motorcyclist. In fact, he has owned over 50 different motorcycles across different brands over the years. Originally, he attended to school for film, but after working at Sesame Street, he started to work in computers and development - and that is where he met Caroline.One day, Dan was watching some videos online. He had a thought, a desire, a want - to play the video like it was a game. And eventually, this idea turned into a business, which he started with his co-founder Caroline.This is the creation story of Overplay.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://overplay.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolinestrzalka/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-projansky/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ritukar Vijay has been in tech for around 16 years. He has always been fascinated with new things above and beyond the normal day to day grind. During his studies, he was interested in robotics - which he describes as the culmination of computer and physical sciences. Outside of tech, he is married with a 6 year old son. He mentioned that his son is inquisitive, and is requesting robot features from home, preparing to build his first robot in the future.Prior to COVID and during lockdowns, Ritukar started ideating about the autonomous delivery for an industry that was overlooked for automation. They started to created robots to service the industry, and did so - from their guest rooms.This is the creation story of Ottonomy.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://ottonomy.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritukarvijay/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Mike Long describes himself as near really sitting still. He was born in Australia, but when he was 9 years old, he moved to Scotland. Post school, he worked in England, then Norway, then China... and now back to Norway. Early on his career, he worked in the Oil & Gas building larger robots for the industry. Outside of tech, he enjoys spending time with his family and taking long walks in the forest with his dog.At his previous company, Mike was the CTO of a DevOps consultancy company. He realized that they would see the same problem over and over again in regulated environments - businesses needed a process to follow to ensure changes were tracked, and they could in turn, "keep the receipts" for proof of changes.This is the creation story of Kosli.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.kosli.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikelongoslo/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Suman Kanuganti is married with a 5 year old daughter, which he greatly enjoys. He loves robots, as a robotics major, but describes himself as a human oriented person - one who wants to elevate the experience of people. Outside of tech, he enjoys playing volleyball and is a foodie with his wife. They enjoy yellow tail sashimi and modern Mexican fusion, but at home, they enjoy remixing cuisines with different spices.In his previous company, Suman built solutions around augmenting the human experience for blind people. Moving forward, he wanted to expand this to allow people to use AI to create long term memory, personally for you and your loved ones.This is the creation story of Personal AI.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: http://www.personal.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kanugantisuman/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Jay Sarmaz studied operations research in college, which he describes as the science of solving problems and maximizing value with limited resources. His studies led him to learn computer science to utilize in solving this problems, and eventually, he got his PhD from Georgia Tech. He is driven by curiosity to solve big problems, but outside of tech, he is a soccer fan, plays musical instruments, and spends time with his wife and 5 year old son.Jay and his team were doing consulting, prior to launching their current startup. During COVID, law firms were going through significant digital transformation, and didn't know what to do with all of their data. Wanting to scale their consultancy, they wanted to find a better way to provide analysis at scale.This is the creation story of Truve.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://truve.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaysarmaz/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Reza Farahani has a background in engineering, and was heavily influenced by his family. In particular, his Uncle was a fighter jet engineer, which he thought was the coolest job in the world. He graduated from Waterloo, and became a data scientist - but eventually moved towards entrepreneurship. Outside of tech, he lives in Ontario and loves to rock climb and boulder. He enjoys the community aspect of the sport, and has access to gyms and outdoor boulders where he lives. He also passionate about food, enjoying Greek and Turkish food in Greek Town where he lives.Reza and his co-founder wanted to engage workers who were working remote - productivity, mental health, etc. And they believed that these parameters were vectors in measuring the performance of remote teams.This is the creation story of WFHomie.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.wfhomie.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reza-farahani-/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Alex Bovee is first and foremost a family man. Time outside of his life as a founder is dictated by his family. He's married with 2 kids, and can be found shuttling kids to soccer or dance practices in his spare time. During COVID, he was able to pickup guitar, using YouTube to teach himself. His family got him a super nice Taylor acoustic that he plays on today.Alex spent some time at Okta, and what he noticed was cloud forward companies struggled with managing identify access and governance. This left companies wasting money on users, and in an insecure state. He saw a big opportunity in this space, and with his co-founder, decided to tackle this problem head on.This is the creation story of ConductorOne.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.conductorone.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexbovee/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy