Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Shawn Cao lives in Kirkland, just outside of Seattle. He immigrated to the US, and is married with 4 kids. He loves to hike and play soccer with his children, and even though Seattle can be rainy and cloudy for half the year, he admits that the summers are fantastic for being outside. He also admits he stops by Starbucks occasionally, but couldn't confirm if it tastes better at the home store in Seattle.Shawn noticed, through his time at larger companies like Pinterest and Microsoft, that the path to get data insights and analytics leans heavily on engineering, and takes a long time. He thought, there must be a way to make an easy, quick tool to enable people outside of engineering to do this themselves. So he built the Canva for Data.This is the creation story of Columns.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://columns.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caoxhua/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

Lauren Long was originally born and raised in China, and moved to Canada when she was 10. She had to learn English for the first time, which taught her how to embrace hard things and challenges. She attended University in Canada, and started her first company there called BoxIt. Outside of tech, she is an outdoors person - post moving from China, where she was more of a city girl. She loves to hike, rock climb, and do yoga. She also loves to cook, and claimed she learned to cook a whole duck once, creating 5 meals from all the parts.Lauren was a key developer at Firebase, and post that, she started thinking about her past experiences and what areas could be improved - and she landed on integrations. Once she met her now co-founder, they realized they both were passionate about solving this problem.This is the creation story of Ampersand.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.withampersand.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenzlong/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

Scott Bening is a 63 year old kid at heart who grew up in Buffalo, NY. He got a degree in chemistry and went into the plastics industry. Outside of his profession, he is super active - playing drums in a rock band, racing GT race cars competitively, kayaking, hiking and golfing. He has been married for 35 years, with 2 older children.Many years ago, Scott joined a small division of a company in 1989. Scott took the company to new heights, developing and selling a material that you probably use every day - the film that wraps Tide Pods. Since retired from the company, he is advising other companies, and helping entrepreneurs through his book, titled Formulating Solutions.This is Scott's creation story of Monosol.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.monosol.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/p-scott-bening-a8225b14/https://www.formulatingsolutionsbook.com/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

Matt Martin has always been a computer nerd, even way back in Elementary School, learning to use a Mac and learning Hypercard. In Middle School, he discovered the internet and programming in HTML - and he was hooked. That said, he didn't grow up around tech folks and eventually got into public policy and went to law school. After being a litigator for a while, he decided to ditch the law industry, move to the Bay Area and get into tech. Outside of tech, he is married with 2.5 year old twin girls. They live in downtown San Francisco, and they love to go on bike rides together.Matt considers himself a productivity nerd, and is always looking for ways to improve his workflow. At a prior role, he was focusing on individual optimization to schedules. And what he realized, is that time is not an individual problem - but a team problem to be solved.This is the creation story of Clockwise.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.getclockwise.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/voxmatt/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

Ido Shamunn cut his teeth on the C programming language, while studying Applied Mathematics. He was unsure while studying if he should go Computer Science, but he mentioned that his Applied Math degree helped him understand better what goes on behind the scenes. He's happily married, and enjoys playing music, since way back in Junior High with the keyboard. He has since moved into guitar, and eventually into the drums and heavier music.Ido and his co-founders started out building a side project, building a tool to help themselves keep track of what's going on in the industry. After they built a quick tool to aggregate information, they thought that maybe other developers would be interested in this solution.This is the creation story of Daily Dev.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://daily.dev/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ido-shamun-aa8628a3/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

I have another special episode of the Code Story podcast today, where I'm sharing another great podcast I've just been made aware of. It's called The Closer, from the team at Project Brazen, hosted by financial journalist Aimee Keane. The show focuses on pulling out the high octane emotion and exponential stakes that underscore todays biggest acquisition or investment headlines.In the episode I'm sharing today, the host takes you inside the final days of Toys R Us with Lauren Hirsch, the reporter who first revealed the iconic company's impending bankruptcy. You can expect to hear juicy tidbits around what drove the company out of business.Check out The Closer, and subscribe today, on your favorite podcast catcher.And thanks again for listening.LinksApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-closer/id1668774101Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7jQPWgY7Yk6J13dN3day4H?si=fa80c4d6c2644dc5Support 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

Andy Wilson lives in Central Oregon, which he claims is an adult playground. He loves to ski, hike, and enjoy all outdoor recreation available to him. His favorite food is a medium-rare steak, which I gotta say is an excellent choice. He got his tech degree in the 90's, and fell into the world of legal tech.Previously, Andy worked for a company that printed email for legal teams - like truck loads of email. He decided to startup a business to digitize this process, using servers in his dining room. Eventually, he moved to the cloud, and started using AI.This is the creation story of Logikcull.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.logikcull.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andylogikSupport 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

Dr. Eamonn Keogh is a globally renowned expert in data mining, machine learning, and information retrieval. He is pioneering the field of computational entomology. Outside of tech, he is originally from Dublin, Ireland, but came to California in the 80's. He misses his family in Ireland, but he loves the cuisine in California, specifically Mexican food. I made sure to invite him to Texas though, cause we have great Mexican food.A perk of Dr. Keogh's job as a professor, he gets to play with toys (in his words). He picked up a science toy one day and decided to see if he could pick up sound from plant insects. When it worked, he decided to take it to the next level.This is the creation story of FarmSense.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://www.farmsense.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eamonn-keogh-96ab25143/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

Srini Srinivasan grew up in India, during a time when you could go do whatever you wanted during the summer. So he explored and experienced many things, tech and non-tech. He was very into sports and competition, and wanted to be a cricket super star. He didn't start coding until he went off to college, and interestingly enough, there were many startups formed from his class. In the early days, he really loved the Assembly language (which I can attest is not the norm!).Srini was working in a company focused on mobile and adtech related work. During this time, he discovered that all database tech existing were lacking. He and his co-founder decided that they were the right pair to build a better system.This is the creation story of Aerospike.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://aerospike.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drvsrini/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

Lilac Bar David has been in the banking and payments space for over 20 years. Previously, she was the Co-founder & CEO of Pepper, a banking system focused on millennials and young adults. Outside of tech, she has 3 kids, and enjoys everything to do with the sea - paddle boarding, swimming, etc. She enjoys paddle boarding because it helps her to clear her head. And when it comes to food, she is a fan of Thai, and claims that New York has the best Thai food - outside of Thailand, of course.Lilac and her co-founders started to think about business owners, and all of the things they had to manually, and in disconnected, non-optimal ways. They wanted to build a banking solution that was tailored towards these users - starting with freelancers.This is the creation story of Lili.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinksWebsite: https://lili.co/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lilachbardavid/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