Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Brandy Whalen and Ryan Estes are two different folks, joined together in a unified mission. If you look up Denver guy in the dictionary, you will see a picture of Ryan, in a flannel shirt, with a dog, a truck, and speeding off to hit up his fishing spot. He's a family guy, trains in martial arts, and previously owned an agency. Brandy is not a Denver native - in fact, she grew up in Iowa on a Turkey farm... with 30,000 turkeys. She's married with three boys, and likes to get in the mountains to hike or snowboard, during the right seasons.In their prior roles, Brandy had pitched a client to Ryan for his podcast. As Ryan describes it, she's a great networker and "instigator". When they both had the itch to do a new project, they looked to podcasting. And after some initial validation, they confirmed that they had stumbled upon a need.This is the creation story of Kitcaster, the podcast booking agency.LinksWebsite: https://kitcaster.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandy-whalen/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/estesryan/https://kitcaster.com/podcast-guest-list/https://podcastcontent.studio/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

Mentorcam - Book your mentor session with promo code CODE for 20% off! Topic: Brand BuildingJosh Campbell is the founder and CEO of protein supplement brand Human Improvement and wine brand So Gay Rose. Formerly a Starbucks Executive and President of cannabis wellness company Dosist, Josh has founded, funded, built, and exited multiple startups in the consumer packaged goods space. He is passionate about mentoring up and coming founders and entrepreneurs.Questions:How do you start building a brand?Whats different about building a brand around an unconventional idea?How did your traditional experience contribute to your entrepreneurial backbone?What's different about packaged goods vs. digital products, when it comes to brand?Whats different about selling to retailers, vs. selling eCommerce?Book a call with Edvard by accessing the link below:https://mentor.cam/joshcampbell - Use Promo Code CODESupport 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

Hywel Carver has been writing code since he was 9 years old. His first language was C, which quite a language to start out in, and his first program was a "Guess the Number" program, using binary search - and of course, with an embedded Easter egg. He is married, with 2 children. Parenting has really pushed him to learn how to focus, and he regularly has to put things down to take care of other responsibilities. One of his biggest hobbies is pub quizzes, which in Britain is a big deal. In fact, he has been on a few quiz shows on TV, including Who Wants to be a Millionaire.Hywel and his co-founders dreamed about a way to distill down the distinct learning moments for you, leading you to the point of inception for skills and wisdom. Their passion for this topic led them to build a way to develop developers, in an incremental, personalized way.This is the creation story of Skiller Whale.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://skillerwhale.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hywelc/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

John Egan is a computer and electrical engineer by training. Early on, he got disillusioned by the idea of building robots - it was too slow for him. While he was working at Harvard, he was watching the early days Y Combinator, and told his wife that there was a movement going on, and they should move to be a part of it. Startups weren't common then, so it was a risky move - but John found himself excited about being a part of it. Eventually they did make the move, created a file transfer company, and ended up getting acquired by Facebook. Outside of tech, he's married, with a 4 year old son. And for fun? He builds tools for himself, since he's not writing much code at his current venture. One of them is Postmortem.io, in addition to launching IR Conf for incident responders.Post Facebook, John set out to ask the question to his prior colleagues that had left, about the tools they missed the most. The tool that kept coming up in conversation was a tool to manage incidents. So he decided to build this platform, named after an ancient Japanese philosophy.This is the creation story of Kintaba.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://www.kintaba.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john3gan/https://postmortem.io/https://www.irconf.io/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

Dr. Gordon Jones just turned 60 years old, but you wouldn't know it from his energetic, vibrant tone. He has his doctorate in Health Administration, but he got into Health Technology in 1997. He lives in South Carolina, with his wife and five adopted children. Dr. Jones and his wife adopted their first child 1 year after they were married, as they felt led by God before they were married to pursue this path. Their main family activity is watching movies together, but they love to throw the frisbee, travel, and ultimately being together doing new things.While teaching at the university, Dr. Jones came across a student's idea to provide security around her identify. In addition to that, he had recently gone through a lengthy background check process, which required the re-verification of several bits of information. He decided to solve both of the problems, by creating a solution using the blockchain.This is the creation story of Thrivacy.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://www.thrivacy.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drgordonjones/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

Mentorcam - Book your mentor session with promo code CODE for 20% off! Topic: Angel InvestingDr. Edvard "Eddie" Engeseath, MD is the Co-founder of a tele-health startup Nurx, angel investor, startup advisor, and a former family physician. He founded Nurx to make prescription birth control more accessible. The company has since grown into a full-service tele-health startup in the Rx medicine delivery space. Nurx is backed by some of the world's most prestigious VVCs such as Union Square Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Y Combinator, to name a few.Questions:What exactly is angel investing?What's the financial target for angel investing? At what stage do you angel invest?Is there an equity expectation difference between angels and VC's?How do you find deals to invest in?How does someone get started?Book a call with Edvard by accessing the link below:https://mentor.cam/edvardengesaeth - Use Promo Code CODESupport 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

Tommy Yionoulis has a traditional tech founder st4ry... via hotel, restaurant and standup comedy route. But in all seriousness, his Dad was literally a rocket scientist, and his Mom was a software engineer. Tommy diverted away from tech initially, and did the restaurant thing before jumping headfirst into stand up comedy, doing it for 10 years along side several hospitality businesses. When I asked him to tell me a joke, he said his jokes weren't podcast ready. After he got tired of the lifestyle, he went back to school, got his MBA, met his wife, graduate and started working for Quiznos. He's married with kids, and they live in Colorado - so he likes to cycle, paddle boarding, and being outdoors with his family. He also likes a good cigar now and then.Tommy worked his way up and through the Quiznos organization, specifically landing in ops services. When Quiznos took a turn for the worst, he was tasked with figuring out audit reporting. Through his time there, and through some consulting, he created a solution that got the attention of Which Wich... and validated that the market wanted his solution.This is the creation story of OpsAnalitica.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: http://opsanalitica.co/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommyy/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

Prior to his current venture, Verl Allen spent 12 years at Adobe. During that time, he was raising 3 kids as a single Dad, so you can imagine that during that time, it took a large part of his focus. Outside of his profession and family, he loves to ride road bikes 3-4 hours a week, but in particular, long distance rides (to the tune of 200 miles in a single day). He is also a runner, which he finds takes less time to get a good workout in.During his time at Adobe, Verl noticed a problem emerging with his exposure to acquisitions. He saw that the acquisitions were merging at the process level, but were not doing this down to the data level. When he found out about his current gig, the product was attempting to solve a specific use case of this problem, but was sorta falling over.This is Verl's creation story of Claravine.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://www.claravine.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/verl-allen-b83175/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, I’m excited to share with you a preview from a new podcast I’ve been enjoying and think you will, too.You may know Jacob Goldstein as the former host of the Planet Money podcast. Now, he’s hosting a new show called What’s Your Problem? It’s a show about technology and business, where visionaries talk about the future they’re trying to build – and the problems they have to solve to get there. You’ll get to know the people who are trying to figure out how to do things no one on the planet knows how to do.And, like Code Story, you’ll learn about the critical moments it takes to change an industry.In this preview, Jacob talks with Keenan Wyrobek, the co-founder of a drone company called Zipline. The company has been building and deploying drones in Rwanda and Ghana for years. Now they're trying to solve a surprisingly hard problem: How do they make drone delivery work in the United States? I hope you enjoy it. You can hear Keenan’s full story, and more episodes of What’s Your Problem?, wherever you get your podcasts.Links:https://www.pushkin.fm/news/jacob-goldstein-formerly-of-planet-money-launches-a-new-technology-podcast-with-pushkin-industries/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

Mentorcam - Book your mentor session with promo code CODE for 20% off! Topic: All Things ProductBio: Benjamin Balazs is the Co-founder & CTO of Mentorcam. At the age of 15, Benjamin taught himself how to code and hasn't stopped since. Before co-founding Mentorcam, he single-handedly designed and developed apps for companies like Lamborghini, Visa, and Maserati, enabling businesses to increase data transparency and make people's lives more efficient. Benjamin has founded 4 startups based around the idea of empowering individuals - some failed spectacularly, some are successful.Questions:What makes a solid MVP for a startup?What is technical debt and when do you pay it?How do you find product market fit?When do you factor in scalability for a solution?How much of product building is art vs. science?Book a call on Mentorcam by accessing the link below:https://mentor.cam/ - Use Promo Code CODESupport 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