Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Mark Porter has always been fascinated with puzzles, so tech just fit for him and a great journey for him. He got his first 4k computer in middle school, and then moved into doing programming for the Department of Education. His big learning from this was that you can use tech to do social good. He's married with 5 kids, and as he puts it, they put up with his deep tech obsession.Mark joined the board of MongoDB in 2019. What got him excited about the company was the world changing nature of the product. So much so, that he asked to step off the board to be CTO - and carry the banner to the developer community about the power of their doc based, distributed system performing DB transactions.This is Mark's story with MongoDB.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://www.mongodb.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklovestech/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

Maria Meier grew up bilingual, as her Mom was from Poland and her Dad was from Germany. In her free time, she participates Olympic weight lifting (which she clarified does not mean she participates in the olympics). The difference with Olympic weight lifting is in how you do the actual lifts. She finds this is a great way to blow off steam. Outside of this, she is a bit of a foodie and loves to travel and try different restaurants.In her words, the way she started her current venture is kind of unusual. Formerly a backend engineer, she got restless and figured she was as intelligent as other founders she was observing. Through an accelerator, she met her co-founder and built learning models to illustrate how pedestrians act in traffic.This is the creation story of Phantasma Labs.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://www.phantasma.global/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariameierSupport 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

Notifications North Star, sponsored by Courier!Guest: Stephanie Griffith is an email and SMS marketing expert, and a marketing strategy consultant. She is a startup founder, and has been involved with big names like Drip, Thinkful, Bath & Body Works and more. She is also the host of the Conversational Commerce podcast.Questions:What is the primary goal for someone in your role, which you mention required you to be sending millions of emails a day?So there was a viral HackerNews thread recently, titled "I only like the important notifications, not promotional ones." What does this mean to someone who advises to send promotional messaging for a living?Should we stop sending promotional messages?In the world of messaging, what would the perfect world look like? Do we need to go to detailed preferences for all?As applications evolve and become more complex, notifications become a secondary UX layer that often lives on users devices. How do we keep users from opting out of this critical user experience?What impresses you about Courier, and how they are approaching notifications as a UX layer?Linkshttps://www.courier.com/https://twitter.com/QueenDTChttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/conversational-commerce/id1606214549Support 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 Young claims to have been born with a tech spoon in his mouth, having his Dad work for IBM and providing early access to computers. In the 80's, he was interested in music and video games, which carried on through the rest of his life. He is very interested in the intersection of tech and how it can improve real life. Fun fact about Matt.. he loves pinball! He restores and works on the machines themselves, which combines everything he loves. Some other fun facts are that Matt was (and still is) a club DJ, and he loves to travel to ride roller coasters.In 2015, Matt joined his current venture as the VP of Engineering. At the time he was hired, the company was trying to press into the enterprise space, and in order to do that, the company needed some organization and some process put into place.This is Matt's creation story of UserVoice.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://uservoice.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcyoung/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

In his words, Tyler Rohrer is best described through his spirit animal, Curious George. He likes to write and try new things. He has 3 grown children, one who is getting married. He has found that his expectations of his kids were actually met, which was welcome and surprising to them. He enjoys golf, and used to do Rally Racing, though he claims he wasn't very good at it. He had more fun building the engines, and less fun crashing the cars.With the onslaught of the pandemic and the rise of remote work, Tyler reached out to a former customer to run an idea by them. His idea was around a cloud platform to support remote users. The blunt feedback from the customer was that the idea was terrible... if the users couldn't be secured.This is the creation story of Remotely.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://www.remotelyrmm.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtylerrohrer/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 Salvadore is a father of 2 young boys, and when he is not working, they fill up his schedule. He and his boys live half an hour from the forest, so they spent lots of time there, swimming, and jumping in muddy puddles when possible. He enjoys sports, nutrition, and personal optimization. Though he tends to lean towards reading about self improvement, he had drifted into educating himself on startups, crypto, and trading (which is important for his current venture).Andrew's founders began to realize the impact of the fact that the crypto market is a 24/7 market, and most days, they would wake up in the morning and wish they wouldn't have been asleep when crypto events occurred. They wanted to build something to do it for them - and Andrew was recruited to move the company and the product forward.This is the creation story of Coinrule.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://coinrule.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asalvadore/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

Notifications North Star, sponsored by Courier!Guest: Troy Goode is the Co-founder & CEO of Courier. He is a multi startup veteran, a Y Combinator veteran, and was a prior guest on the Code Story podcast, in Season 4.Questions:Tell me about the recent fundraise with Google Ventures.Considering the success of Courier, it seems like you are in a place where you can choose your investors. Why Google Ventures?Enhanced mobile functionality is a new focus - what is planned on the roadmap?Earlier we talked to Eric from Lattice, who mentioned notifications support 50% of their engagement. We spoke with Pat at Matrix who mentioned you being a significant piece of layer 2 infrastructure. And, we spoke to Vatasha, one of your Sr. Engineers, who spoke of how empowering the app was to use as a customer. Keep the movie playing forward - where do you see this going?How are you educating your customers on treating your notifications as a part of your user experience?Linkshttps://www.courier.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

Franzi Low doesn't have the usual CTO path. She studied economics, and was doing her PhD in econometrics, prior to her current venture, and was a teaching assistant. She loves to play sports, and can't go a day without playing some sort of sport. She is passionate about triathlons, which is something she can do with her recently injured knees. Living in Hamburg, Germany, she and her husband always enjoy hiking and being outside.When COVID hit the world, and the topic of global mobility was pushed into view. Franzi, along with her co-founders, used to live abroad, and experienced the lack of support when moving to a new area and settling in. They wanted to come up with a solution to help people during this relocation process.This is the creation story of Localyze.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://www.localyzeapp.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/franzi-l%C3%B6w-80b8b562/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

Shaunak Roy spent 10 years in the tech industry before deciding to be a tech entrepreneur. In undergraduate, he studied mechanical engineering and eventually came to the states for his masters. Outside of running a company, he has 2 daughters and enjoys playing games and observing their patterns of learning, which applies to his current venture.Throughout his life, Shaunak has always been fascinated by learning. When looking into building his own startup, he noticed that there wasn't a learning platform built around the mechanics of social media, and community.This is the creation story of Yellowdig.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://www.yellowdig.co/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunak-roy-65231b/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

Notifications North Star, sponsored by Courier!Guest: Vatasha White is a Senior Software Engineer at Courier. Previously, she built software at Lacework, LaunchDarkly and GE Digital. She is a graduate of Smith College in 2015.Questions:Having been a prior customer of Courier, what excited you about the solution?What is your favorite use case for the tool?So now that you work at Courier... what impact do they have that really motivates you?What are you working on now, that really excites you about the product?Linkshttps://www.courier.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