Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Rickard Hansson is 48 years old to date, but started tinkering with his Commodore 64 when he was young. Later in life, he fell in love with building things and distributing it - IE building for others. He built his first commercial product at 15, which was a CRM built in Pascal. Outside of tech, he is a father of 3 and is a movie buff in his spare time. His favorite movie is a story about a tree diver, called Le Grand Blue or "The Big Blue".In the past, Rickard was running his company named Incentive, making tools for internal teams to collaborate. What they noticed was that there was a major shift towards utilizing third party tools to improve productivity, while developers of said tools had a hard time keeping up. He and his team decided to create the tooling to help them better compete.This is the creation story of Weavy.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoLinksWebsite: https://www.weavy.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickardh/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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 Skipper currently resides in Belfast, Ireland, though he is from London originally. He's been knee deep in tech since he was 12 years old, as a hobby programmer. He left college early to start his first software development agency, prior to joining the startup world during the .com era. He loves tech, but loves people as well - which lead him into his current venture. Outside of tech, he is a bedroom guitarist, an amateur photographer, and a Dad - which means he plays a log of Minecraft and Roblox.In the past, Andy was a consulting CTO, going into companies to coach leaders or temporarily fill in for leaders who had left. What he realized was that these leaders would be doing just fine, if they had mentorship and/or coaching available from seasoned veterans. So Andy branched off - and started doing just that.This is the creation story of CTO Craft.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoLinksWebsite: https://ctocraft.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyskipper/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

Egil Østhus is based out of Norway - which obviously means he loves skiing. But outside of this, he loves to run outdoors, through the woods and on the streets. He has not done a full marathon yet, but dreams of doing the New York marathon someday. He's a family man, married, with 2 boys - none of which like to run with him, but they all enjoy being active and hiking.In a past role, Egil's co-founder (and brother, FYI) was looking for a tool that would help him release code into the wild, in a rapid - yet safe - manner. He couldn't find anything to meet his high standards - so he built his own. When the open source version started to get a lot of attention, Egil joined his brother to bring the solution to the enterprise.This is the creation story of Unleash.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoLinksWebsite: https://www.getunleash.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/egilconr/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

Aviram Hassan started hacking his way into stuff at a young age, primarily from online multiplayer games. The first game was a fan based game for Pokemon, when he was 8 years old, which was helpful for him to learn English. He served in the Israeli military, prior to become a startup solution architect and backend developer. Outside of tech, he is a family man with a 6 month old, born around the same time as his startup. He also really enjoys coffee, but he admits, he is not obsessive or overly enthusiastic about it.Given their background, Aviram and his co-founder wanted to build a product based company. In their last company, they didn't really have a developer environment, as it was hard to maintain and didn't represent real data in the production environment. They started thinking about how they could solve this sort of problem.This is the creation story of Metalbear, and mirrord.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoLinksWebsite: https://metalbear.co/, https://mirrord.dev/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aviram-hassan/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

Shem Magnezi is from Tel Aviv, and started his software engineering career when he was in high school. It wasn't really professional, just hacking some stuff together, which is the way he learned the typical starting tools like HTML, Javascript, and the like. Post college, he served in the Israeli Military, in intelligence, and then moved into startups, then bigger companies like Facebook, and then - into his current venture. Outside of tech, he is a family man with 2 kids, and he loves to play and watch football (or soccer for us stateside).Throughout their time in the industry, Shem and his co-founders saw a big gap in the industry - between theoretical knowledge and what is actually done on the job in a company. They wanted to set out and build something to bridge that gap - an immersive experience, that not only prepares engineers... but takes them on a quest.This is the creation story of Wilco.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoLinksWebsite: https://www.trywilco.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shem-magnezi-45490424/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

For Puneet Gupta, his professional work and personal hobbies collide. He has been enamored with tech since his early days, and finds coding to be quite therapeutic. He spent many years launching prominent cloud solutions, and has a track record for success there. Outside of tech, he is a family man with 2 boys, living in the Bay Area with his extended family. He is into motorcycles, and is falling in love with reading again.The story of Puneet's current venture goes back over 10 years, when he found himself in the middle of the dawn of cloud computing at AWS. During that time, he was introduced to SaaS models, and how these models can grow exponential growth. Fast forward to 3 years ago, and through observing industry progression, he decided to create a solution to aid in usage based pricing models.This is the creation story of Amberflo.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoLinksWebsite: https://www.amberflo.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/puneetguptausa/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

Glauber Costa is a family man, with three kids at home. So he admits, that with a startup and kids, there is not much space for anything else. He made mention that the jump from 2-3 kids was hard, and we joked that he playing zone defense now over man to man. AS of this recording, he had already seen the Mario movie 3 times with his kids, and enjoys playing video games with them. But, his game to play is Civilizations, which he is highly addicted to.Glauber comes from a heavy database and systems programming background, as does his co-founders. They noticed that the buyer persona of database tech is changing. More and more frontend developers or full stack developers were responsible for these decisions. After iterating on a few projects, they figured the pillar of their data edge solution... which was SQLLite.This is the creation story of Turso.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoLinkshttps://chiselstrike.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/glommer/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

Sefi Genis lives in Tel Aviv, and started in with technology early on in his life, maintaining the school website when he was younger. He served in the Israeli military, specifically in the cybersecurity unit, followed by working at some interesting and successful startups. Outside of tech, he loves to travel, ninja warrior, and scuba diving. One of his favorite places to dive was Thailand, which I've added to the list for my family.Sefi understood all things related to infrastructure as code (IAC). Once he was introduced to his co-founders, they set out to build a solution that helped platform and DevOps teams manage their entire cloud footprint - and do so at scale.This is the creation story of Firefly.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoLinksWebsite: https://www.gofirefly.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sefi-genis-90282185https://www.momtestbook.com/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

Naré Vardanyan has a statistically unlikely story. She grew up in Armenia, without electricity during a war. She recalls that her parents gamified the experience, which allowed her to experience it much differently than the hardship it was. Her upbringing was very community driven, focused on caring for others. Eventually, she went to work for the United Nations, in her words, so she could save the world - though eventually she was disillusioned by how slow things moved. It was at this point, where she shifted over to tech. Outside of tech, she used to love reading, but now that she has a child, she sticks to audiobooks. And, she thoroughly enjoys art, specifically, 20th century Russian-Jewish artists.When Naré started to travel abroad, she noticed that for some folks, the ability to obtain things in life, like a Visa or Passport, was a given. Yet, others were not enabled to obtain these types of things, as the process was much more difficult or unavailable. She set out to create the great equalizer, through enriched financial data.This is the creation story of Ntropy.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoLinksWebsite: https://ntropy.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/narevardanyan/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

Ron Richardson studied robotics and embedded systems in Arizona, and is a former Marine - which is where he got his start in logistics. His biggest influence has been his parents. He mentioned his Mom introduced him to a personal website builder, which kicked off his learning into HTML, PHP and JavaScript. Outside of tech, he has a passion for traveling, and is big into horror games and movies. One of his favorite horror games is Amnesia, and movie is Insidious. He actually built an app to have an ongoing curated playlist for his fans.Ron previously co-founded a startup in the eCommerce space, focusing on fulfillment in Asia. While he was building the backend for this solution, he noticed there weren't any developer tools for logistics and supply chain. He built an API solution and SDK to help implement common design features for this industry.This is the creation story of Fleetbase.SponsorsCipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoLinksWebsite: https://www.fleetbase.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronald-a-richardson/https://apps.apple.com/us/app/horror-movie-night/id1613495460Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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