Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

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

Today's episode is sponsored by Microsoft!Guests: Girish Bablani and Junior Diarrassouba, two Microsoft employees at different stages in their career. One seasoned veteran at the company, and one up-and-coming engineer, who share how Microsoft has expanded their career horizons and provided many different opportunities for growth and experience.Questions:Junior, how long have you been working at Microsoft? How did you find out about the opportunity?What were your expectations coming out of school, regarding projects you would work on?What are you actually working on today? Are you already working with customers to solve real world problems?Girish, you've been a Microsoft for quite some time - but how did things start for you?You are overseeing teams across Computer, Networking and Storage - but have you always been in this group?What other groups did you work in? Was it hard to switch, or did you receive push back?Both of you - how has Microsoft's opportunities opened your career horizons?What have you learned that you didn't know about prior to joining the company?What is the future for you at MS? What would you say to someone considering joining the team?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

Addison Higham is a father of 2 kids, and has been married for 12 years. His family is of the utmost importance to him, and he has been happy to be able to balance his career and personal life along his journey. As he puts it - he has been a nerd since day 1, building, fixing and playing with computers from a young age. Along with his CS interests, his family was very entrepreneurial growing up. During schooling, he joined some startups to learn the ropes of building solutions. Outside of tech, he loves to ski and be outdoors.The makers of Apache Pulsar, an open source project, decided to build a cloud-native event streaming platform. Early on in the venture, Addison joined his team as a Chief Architect, in order to enable enterprises to easily access data as real-time event streams.This is the creation story of StreamNative.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://streamnative.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/addisonj/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

Tutelage of Treehouse, sponsored by Treehouse!Guest: Graham Morby is a Senior Software Engineer who works as a dev for hire. He has developed applications in Python, PHP, JS, Vue, and even coded BASIC in the 90's, hacking games for his Commodore 64. He's been doing computers since before they were cool.Questions:Tell me more about the book you are working on.How did you get into programming? You've been into computers for a long time, but at some point you stepped into programming - tell me about that journey.Now that we know how you got started, tell me about your journey within development. How do you sift through the myriad of content out there and staying sharp in your field?You mentioned that you found Treehouse, you liked it and you stayed - tell me more about that.What is your perspective on how the coding/tech careers really are?Linkshttps://teamtreehouse.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