Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Yuliia Tkachova grew up in the Ukraine, but lives in Canada now. She has a family with 2 kids, and a masters in statistics. And, she acknowledges that the war with Russia has been difficult to deal with, thinking of her friends and family back home. On the lighter side, she notes that she loves Depeche Mode and Red Hot Chili Peppers, whom she has seen many times in concert. She recalls the 2010 concert in Kyiv with Depeche Mode was a moment that she cherishes.As a data product manager, Yuliia was called out, even during the early days of her job, that her customers were going to churn - due to some erroneous data downstream. After fixing this problem, she saw the landscape of data quality issues that were likely to occur with her customers, and wanted to do something about it.This is the creation story of Masthead Data.SponsorsAirbyteDopplerHost.ioIPInfomablLinksWebsite: https://mastheadata.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuliia-tkachova/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

Josh Lewis was fascinated by computers in the late 80's / early 90's. In the early days, he was neighborhood tech support, fixing people's computers around the block. He quickly moved into programming, but he moved off from technology in college, targeting philosophy and going to grad school. In doing research with a computer science component, he was pulled back into tech and went to work in Palo Alto. Outside of tech, he's a Dad taking care of his young family. Also, he plays competitive drafts of Magic the Gathering, along with Tennis.At his last company, Josh experienced a recurring problem in spades, where account managers were spending large amounts of time with data entry of standardized forms and information. When he looked for the Twilio for PDF's, he couldn't find a tool to solve his problem.This is the creation story of Sensible.SponsorsAirbyteDopplerHost.ioIPInfomablLinksWebsite: https://www.sensible.so/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshlewisml/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

Andrew Hoag remembers a time before he started his own company where there were other things outside the company. What keeps him sane is spending time outdoors, kite surfing, and traveling. He's a life long nerd, and building things has been his passion for as long as he can remember. Beyond that, he's also a musician - and enjoys hiding behind a drum kit or a DJ booth.Andrew remembers a time during his career, where if he would have purchased a piece of software, he would have been fired. As the market has shifted today, there is more need for everyone to be apart of the software procurement process - but the tooling is still stuck in the wrong era.This is the creation story of Teampay.SponsorsAirbyteDopplerHost.ioIPInfomablLinksWebsite: https://www.teampay.co/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjhoag/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

Stephany LaPierre is originally from Quebec, so English is her second language. She was a ski instructor in Whistler, and followed up going to university studying English. She grew up with an inspirational grandmother, who was a forced entrepreneur, involved in the community, and a fantastic mother and family member. Her Mom has a similar story, and Stephany pulls a lot of influence from both of these ladies. From many years ago, she has been starting and running businesses.While progressing through her career, Stephany had an idea around enhanced supplier data that she couldn't shake. After a small maternal break to have her 3rd daughter, she stepped back into the startup ring to build a tool around dynamic supplier data.This is the creation story of Tealbook.SponsorsAirbyteDopplerHost.ioIPInfomablLinksWebsite: https://www.tealbook.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tealbook/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

Nat Robinson is from New Zealand, and grew up there the first half of his life. He finds that growing up in a small island nation gives him a unique perspective in the world. He currently lives in San Francisco with a young family, and loves doing water sports when he is not working - including surfing, sailing, and the opposite winter sports, snowboarding and such. He likes Santa Cruz for surfing, and typically prefers inland snowboarding.While working at Microsoft, post the acquisition of his prior company, he started attempting to solve a problem for himself - around storing legal documents. What he discovered was that families were struggling with an overload of information, and how to keep it readily available and organized.This is the creation story of Trustworthy.SponsorsAirbyteDopplerHost.ioIPInfomablLinksWebsite: https://www.trustworthy.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natrobinson/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

Dan Draper is from South Australia, specifically Adelaide, but his family now lives in Sydney. Interestingly, he does not drink Fosters beer (which is not surprising), and doesn't know what a blooming' onion is. Outside of tech, he has been a life long martial artist, and continues to compete in several forms today. He finds that there is overlap between coding and martial arts, as they are very technical, require a lot of solo focus, and... jokingly, you have to be ready to take a beating.Five years ago, Dan got the idea of his current venture while he was the CTO at Expert360. During his time there, he was approached by his clients as they demanded proof of how his organization was protecting their data. He was never fully satisfied with the answers they gave the clients. He desired bridge the worlds between encrypted data, and queryable information.This is the creation story of CipherStash.SponsorsAirbyteDopplerHost.ioIPInfomablLinksWebsite: https://cipherstash.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ddraper/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

Marie Ng was born in Malaysia but grew up in Australia. She has lived and worked in London and New York City, so you could say she has been all over. At one point, she decided to teach herself how to code, which led her into her current venture. She has a dog named Homer, and ensures that he maintains his celebrity status on social media.While she was learning how to code for the third time, she changed the learning method to working on an actual project. After she completed an early version of a to do list, she got great feedback from her following on Twitter. Though she didn't plan to turn it into a business, people started following and supporting the project.This is the creation story of Llama Life.SponsorsAirbyteDopplerHost.ioIPInfomablLinksWebsite: https://llamalife.co/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marieng1/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

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