Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Stephanie Florio's journey to tech started in the world of advertising. She always knew that she wanted to be an entrepreneur, but didn't really know what it was. Outside of tech, she has a young family. In fact, when recording the episode, she was near her due date for her second child. For fun, she loves to go out for dinner and hang out with her friends and family. Pasta and pizza are the favorites but she is open to trying new things.As mentioned, Stephanie didn't know what sort of business she wanted to start. That was until her brother got frustrated with looking for a job, and together, they figured out there must be another way. They did some research, and used their knowledge of popular dating apps, to create a simple, swipe-able platform.This is the creation story of Swob.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://swobapp.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-florio-51397765/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

If you would have told Girish Redekar while he was in college that he would eventually be writing software, he would have been shocked. His studies focused on electrical engineering, and post school, he was a hard core analyst. After some time, he and his friend decided to do the whole start up thing - they tried a bunch of ideas, and taught themselves to code. He remembers in his previous company he was the top contributor to the codebase until it was finally sold. Outside of tech, he is a movie buff - but bent towards the obscure movies that most haven't heard of... so obscure that he couldn't remember the name of the last one he saw.In his prior startup, he went through the painstaking process of becoming SOC2 certified. This experience stuck with him - so much so, that when he and his co-founder ventured out to start something new, they decided to create something to make this easier.This is the creation story of Sprinto.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://sprinto.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/girishredekar Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

Austin Parker started out at a young age with computers, writing programs in BASIC and hanging out on bulletin boards. Prior to his tech career, he held many other jobs - as a short order cook, waiting tables, and taking tickets at a theater. When he stepped into this industry, he started out in test automation, followed by getting involved in open source communities, which is how he got into Developer Relations. What he likes about this arena is that DevRel is taking your companies story of a product, and making it harmonize with what everyone else is singing in the market. He has a young family, which occupies most of his time these days. But he likes to do photography, tinkering with electronics, and building model aircraft. Back in the day, he experienced the glory days of Radio Shack where you could grab electronic components on a whim.Austin Parker has been at his current company for 4 years, right after stealth mode ended. He has helped enable the company to support developers through their innovative tech stack, built by industry experts.This is Austin's creation story of Lightstep.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://lightstep.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinlparker/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

Stephen Mathai-Davis grew up in a family where he was expected to go into the buy side of Wall Street. Originally, he rebelled against this, pursuing professional kickboxing and even running his own dojo in New York. Fun fact, he has 8 black belts, and has started teaching his kids how to box. In his late 20's he came back to wall street, and experienced the 2008 crash and rebound. Along his journey, Stephen realized that his friends didn't have access to the same money management tools and strategies that institutional investors had. He became inspired to offer these types of investment tools to the average person.This is the creation story of Q.ai.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://tryq.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-mathai-davis-cfa-cqf/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

Jimmy Jacobson grew up in Snoqualmie, about 45 minutes east of Seattle, Washington. He graduated from college in 2020, as the pandemic was breaking - but, directly correlated with the pandemic, he didn't actually get to walk and receive his diploma. His first job out of school was the startup he is building now. Outside of tech, he rides mountain bikes, digging the trails at Tiger Mountain or back home in Snoqualmie. Around Seattle, he likes to hang out at parks and throw the frisbee, or chilling on the beaches with a late night bonfire.Post graduation, the job Jimmy had lined up got cancelled. Last minute, he joined some alumni slack channels and sent a cold message to his now co-founder. He found himself fascinated by the idea of giving cash back to people for paying their rent.This is the creation story of Stake.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://stake.rent/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmy-jacobson-378563113/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

Outside of technology, Lars Grønnegaard is an avid cyclist. He stats that if you've been to Copenhagen, where his from, you would know that a lot of people do cycling. He is into road or mountain biking, along with Alpine Skiing - but he does the latter outside of Denmark, in Norway or South Austria. He is a family man, with 3 kids, and he takes his kids cycling with him. Along side of this, he likes to cook for his family. He claims he has a full life, between a startup, family, children and hobbies - and he needs no more.Prior to his current venture, Lars was primarily a product guy. And in running product, he cared deeply about the impact that strategic business moves made on the business. He also saw that claiming revenue was less empirical, creating human error and bias. After not finding a solution to solve his problem, he decided to create a platform to find out the truth around revenue data.This is the creation story of Dreamdata.Find out more about B2B Attribution here: https://dreamdata.io/b2b-attributionSponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://dreamdata.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larsgroennegaard/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

Jack Naglieri grew up in Ohio, but moved to Virginia when he was 10. He had a normal east coast family up-bringing, but he focused on tech early on, even as a kid. Eventually, he went to George Mason to study Cyber Security. Outside of tech, he is into cooking and fitness. He focuses a lot on making sure that his body and brain are in a good state, through exercise, meditation, sleep and healthy eating.Jack was working as an incident responder previously, and during that time, he figured out that AI based models for breach detection don't work as well as intuitive humans, as often times there isn't enough signal for them. Along with using antiquated sets of data, he decided that there must be a way to leverage the cloud and build a solution to solve the pain points within this process.This is the creation story of Panther Labs.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://panther.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacknaglieri/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

For Itiel Schwartz, it's hard to remember life before his current venture. He studied computer science and psychology in school, and during that time he started working for Ebay. He's 32 years old (he thinks), and is married with a young family. Outside of hiking and binge watching TV, he is a big fan of coffee and bakeries.In spending a lot of time in the infrastructure world, he found out that in the world of DevOps troubleshooting, there is a lot of chaos to sift through. He thought it would be amazing to build a tool to impact Kubernetes, and the entire infra ecosystem.This is the creation story of Komodor.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://komodor.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itiel-shwartz-18542853Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

From the time he was very young, Todd Larsen was always interested in technology. However, he ended up studying audio engineering so found his way to tech through teaching himself how to code. He gained a ton of experience at companies like Groupon and Digit.co. Outside of tech, he is a father to a 5 year old daughter, and musician, which both things occupy his time outside of business.Having gained fantastic experience in advertising space, at Groupon, and then at Digit, he learned how to execute on longer term initiatives, but balanced with fast delivery on top of a strong foundation. All of this experience was hard fought, and as he started consulting, he thought... how can I scale myself?This is the creation story of Tech Leaders.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://www.technical-leaders.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/salesandsoftware/Our Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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

Marin Smiljanic was born and raised in Croatia. He attended a local math school, which actually got him into tech. Post attending college, his first experiences of the industry were through internships and startup involvement. Outside of tech, he likes to hike, swim, winter sports, being outdoors, etc. - and he lives in Vancouver now, which gives him great access to all of the above. He says the main difference between Vancouver and Croatia comes down to food. Croatia contains a bit more traditional cuisine - seafood close to the water, and meat based dishes inland.During his Amazon years, Marin was hitting a few problems on a regular basis, having to sift through dense training content on a daily basis. And the training format was all over the map - video, audio, text, etc. After brainstorming with his now cofounder, they decided to build an MVP, starting with an API.This is the creation story of Omnisearch.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://omnisearch.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marin-smiljanicOur Sponsors:* Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory* Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestorySupport 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