Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Aaron Upright used to get a ton of energy staying up late and strategizing about his startup, but now that he is 8 years in, he gets the most energy from what he does outside of work. Living outside Vancouver, he enjoys spending quality time with family & friends, and riding mountain bikes, which he finds particularly physically and mentally stimulating.In the past, Aaron and his team noticed the gap between developers and product folks, as developers were working in Github while Product Managers were working in, and reporting on, project software. They took a step back, and decided to create something to solve this problem and match the tool to their ethos.This is the creation story of Zenhub.SponsorsAirbyteDopplerHost.ioIPInfomablLinksWebsite: https://www.zenhub.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronupright/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

Arjun Bhatnager has been coding since he was 10 years old, and in general, his family is full of entrepreneurs, running their own businesses. In fact, his brother is his co-founder in his current business. He loves to read, write, and play tennis in his spare time, along with playing music. In fact, playing music was a large part of his life, starting out playing the trumpet. In general, he is passionate about creating, and was inspired early on by the Inkheart series of books.Arjun decided to build a prototype system, which integrated all the data from every aspect of his life. What he figured out was that he didn't trust other companies to handle the data from these systems - and he needed a way to "cloak" his true credentials from those he utilized on other platforms.This is the creation story of Cloaked.SponsorsAirbyteDopplerHost.ioIPInfomablLinksWebsite: https://www.cloaked.app/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunbhatnagar/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

Ian Small is a Canadian, and claims that is the most important thing about him. Tech started for him when he was 12 years old, when he got a bad grade on a homework assignment, bought the manual, and became an expert on the machine. Outside of tech, he likes to do home renovation. As he says it, when there is a power tool in your hand, that could potentially cut your arm off, you tend to focus on it.Ian joined Evernote in 2018, to solve a big problem. The company was stuck behind a wall of technical debt, which was blocking its way to innovation. In order for the company to grow and thrive in current times, they had to get out from underneath these problems.This is his creation story, at Evernote.SponsorsAirbyteDopplerHost.ioIPInfomablLinksWebsite: https://evernote.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iansmall/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

Hello listeners.Believe it or not, Season 6 has come to a close, and tomorrow, we are kicking off yet another Season of the Code Story podcast. With 6 seasons under our belt, we've nailed down the formula for surfacing the best, human stories, from the builders themselves... like Ian Small, CEO of Evernote, and Waseem Daher, CEO of Pilot.Tune in for this Season's kickoff episode, this Tuesday, August 23rd. And, as always, thank you for listening.SponsorsAirbyteDopplerHost.ioIPInfomablSupport 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 Deeb was influenced by the education space early on. He had many teachers who inspired him through his life, and his parents pushed him to do well in school on order to obtain better opportunities. Along side of that, he is interested in equitable opportunities, which is a big driver for him in his professional ventures. He is passionate about helping learn about new opportunities. He grew up in Long Island, NY - so of course, he loves pizza. He frequents the local pizza house, which in his opinion is Stellas'. He gets 2 slices of regular cheese, with a coke - which is the only time he drinks soda.One day, he and his friends got together to have a business brainstorming question. One of the questions that came up was how can you make videos searchable? Also, how can you improve engagement within schools, perhaps with popular media?This is the creation story of Classhook.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

Adam Newman grew up in the suburbs of New York and Brooklyn. Now, he lives in the DC / Maryland area. His grandparents were immigrants, and owned a bakery and were Taylors. So the entrepreneur and self starter characteristics found in Adam are deeply rooted. He's married with 4 kids, and loves to spend lots of time outdoors and living vicariously through his childrens sports activities. He spends a lot of time helping his wife grow her education business, and she spends a lot of time supporting and encouraging him with his ventures.Through his life experiences, including losing his Father to cancer, an idea originated in him around consumers owning their purchase data, while benefitting companies who cooperate with data privacy best practices. When a few things caught up in the world - data privacy rules, the industry, and Adam himself - he was able to step into creating a win-win solution around data.This is the creation story of Pyrl.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

Harshil Parikh is the father of 2 daughters, as well as the father of 2 dogs. Most of the time spent outside of work is with his family, although he does love to cook, especially experimenting with pizza. Through his life, he has realized that sleep is overrated - humans can function on very little sleep... maybe not forever, but for a few weeks at a time.Through their experiences, Harshil and his co-founder found that it was difficult to make a cyber security program successful. After running through the same challenges again and again, they decided to step out and build a solution to streamline security and the development process.This is the creation story of Tromzo.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://www.tromzo.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harshil/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

When asked what he does for fun, Gavin Mendel-Gleason likes to program for fun. He builds stuff in his spare time, as tech dominates his life. Outside of tech though, he has 2 daughters, and his family enjoys spending time outdoors, specifically in the alps.At Trinity College in Dublin, Gavin and his teammates were working on a project that required the storage and relation between loads of complex datasets. During this project, they decided to create a better kind of database, to help solve with these sorts of problems.This is the creation story of TerminusDB.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://terminusdb.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gavinmendelgleason/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

Jennifer Smith had an abnormal path to tech. She was born in upstate New York, and was not exposed to tech or startups or building companies during her early years. Post school, she interned at Lehman Brothers but didn't enjoy the feel of the money obsessed tribe. She went into management consulting for 7 years, which eventually led her into business school. Post that, she decided to stay in Silicon Valley and eventually went into Venture. Outside of tech, she just recently had a baby and is in the throws of early parenting.As a management consultant, Jennifer did a lot of work, observing the tricks and tribal knowledge contained in the workers themselves. After frequently documenting these practices, she thought there had to be a way to just capture their knowledge work instantly with a tool.This is the creation story of Scribe.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://scribehow.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferreneesmith/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

Liam Gerada comes from an eCommerce background, building websites, stores, etc. He is passionate about providing people ways to find cheaper products through online commerce. Liam loves to solve problems, and finds it is hard to find a replacement hobby, now that his hobby has become his full time gig. He and his brother have worked together for years, as they do now on their current venture. They grew up in Malta, which is an amazing gem in the Mediterranean.Liam and his brother were merchants, building their own eCommerce store around 5-6 years ago. From that perspective, they saw very early on that there was a movement towards a headless platform. They weren't developers at the time, which most merchants aren't, and they struggled - and felt there must be a better way.This is the creation story of Krepling.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://www.krepling.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liam-j-e-gerada-28043a122/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