Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Oleg Fridman has been at this startup thing for a while. Most of his career, he has been working for himself, remotely. In High School, he was drug into entrepreneurship by a few of his buddies, creating an e-commerce website in 2002 for selling furniture. They figured out that they sucked at selling furniture, but made a pretty good website. Post that, he got involved with restaurant ordering, and turned it into a thriving business. That business, called Onosys, sold to LivingSocial, after serving 4 countries, around 10k restaurants, and doing quite a bit of business online. Currently he lives in Cleveland, Ohio, but has done stints in Austin and Boston. He's married with 2 little girls, 3 years and 7 months old. His major hobby is legos. He has a huge Star Wards collection, owning one of almost everything. When asked if he shared the legos with his girls, he mentioned they know Daddy's legos are off limits.Prior to their current venture, Oleg and his co-founder, Dave, ran an agency focusing on high fidelity prototyping. After doing many projects, they figured out that the process of creating dashboards for a product was a mostly the same, but took a ton of time to prepare the data, extract data, and display it. They both figured out that they could create a solution to make this process simpler.This is the creation story of Verb Data.SponsorsCourierImg.lyRoutableCTO.aiCloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.LinksWebsite: https://www.verbdata.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ofridman/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

Phill Lawson-Shanks has had a convoluted path into tech. In the past, he worked for a company that owned and operated airpots in Europe. He got involved in the very early days of servers - so early, that this was back when they were just PC's under someones desk. This took him down the path of migrating mainframes to more cost effective, productivity machines. He worked for Compaq at one point, which brought him to the states. Personally, he enjoys risk taking. He rides a Ducati motorbike way too fast, enjoys adventure sports, jumping out of planes, and rock climbing.In 2013, the founders of Phil's current company saw the way the data center industry was going. They saw that the energy consumption around DC's was going to be astronomical. They started building some incredibly innovative things in this area, and got Phil's attention. Three years ago, he joined the team.This is the creation story of Aligned.SponsorsCourierImg.lyRoutableCTO.aiCloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.LinksWebsite: https://www.alignedenergy.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/plawsonshanks/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

For Laura Butler, tech has always been woven into her life. She left Harvard to go work full time at Microsoft, because she was having the time of her life as an intern. She went on to spend 20 years at the company, working on many different big name projects. To her, tech is solving problems for people by people - and everything boils down to tech. She is drawn to getting her hands on things, breaking them - then fixing them again.She is s self proclaimed professional contrarian, intentional rebel and successful misfit. She loves to read about people, history, and logistics - specifically, what works and what doesn't. She likes to run and walk, which is her yoga and helps to clear her brain. She is a cat mom right now, but loves all animals, and enjoys collecting art when she travels. Post Microsoft, she has been an angel investor multiple times, supporting startups and small businesses across a different variety of industries.When she decided to simplify her life and sell her house, Laura went through the process of buying a Condo.. and interacting with the HOA. She realized that the process was a bit arcane, and getting the details up front was near impossible. Her and her co-founder, who happens to also be her mother, set out to bring value to the buyers in the process, with the goal to eventually positively impact all stakeholders.This is the creation story of the Uplift Group.SponsorsCourierImg.lyRoutableCTO.aiCloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.LinksWebsite: https://www.upliftinc.co/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauracatpjs/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

Anthony Castrio has been a freelance engineer and digital nomad for 3.5 years. He currently living in Mexico City, but is originally from upstate New York, up around the Adirondack Mountains area. He describes where he grew up very similar to the shire from the Lord of the Rings. His hobbies include reading, tennis and languages. He's learning Spanish, given his current location, but also has dabbled in Japanese and French.As a freelance dev, he mostly is a full stack web developer. He's been aggressively part time, or quarter time as he puts it, as a freelancer. He considers it the boots trappers seed round... it is how he keeps his runway infinite to work on his personal projects.Before he built his current project, every time he would move to a new city, Anthony would try to start a local indie hackers meetup. He started one in Boston and DC, and a few other places - but every time he moved, he lost his friend group. In order to stay connected with his friends, he decided to take his groups virtual. And it started to grow from there.This is the creation story of Indie Worldwide.SponsorsCourierImg.lyRoutableCTO.aiCloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.LinksWebsite: https://indieworldwide.co/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antcas/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

Leon Kuperman comes from an immigrant family, who migrated to North America in the late 70's. He was born in a city that is not part of the Ukraine, but grew up in Canada. So he was brought up in western society, but closely observed his parents and their immigrant background, grinding as entrepreneurs throughout Leon's life.He's a brown belt in Brazilian Jui Jitsu, and has been training for over 15 years. This consumes a lot of his time outside of tech. Funny enough though, when he was living in Seattle, he was a part of a group of people from Oracle, Amazon, Microsoft, etc., who all did martial arts. He finds that there is a correlation between Jui Jitsu specifically, and tech.He's married with 3 kids, and of course, likes to spend time with his kids in different ways. His older son actually trains with him in martial arts, and also does tech - building raspberry pi's and engineering different things. Leon also plays piano, as coming from a Russian family, it wasn't an option not to.At his prior startup, Leon and his CEO would get into conversations about - you guessed - his cloud spending bill. He knew that the usage was justified, but could not point to why each piece of infrastructure was allocated. And further, he could not automatically optimize it, and reduce the bill.This is the creation story of Cast AI.SponsorsCourierImg.lyRoutableCTO.aiCloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.LinksWebsite: https://cast.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itexecutivectoSupport 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

Original episode: https://www.redhat.com/en/compiler-podcast/what-is-technical-debt?pfe-ngumm8p1n=show-notesHey guys, I'm back again to share another fantastic episode of the Compiler podcast, from Red Hat. As a reminder Compiler is a show hosted by tech veterans, discussing tech topics - big, strange and small.On this particular episode - which is episode 4 - the team dives into the topic of technical debt, by first asking the question - what the heck is it? Its starts quite humorous, with the hosts slinging thoughts about financial debt and trying to bridge the gap there.There definition comes down to this - technical debt is the cost of delaying necessary work on a project or platform, so that you can hit your milestones on time. Essentially, the cost of delivering new features as a priority over bug fixes or maintenance of a platform.I think this is pretty accurate, but incomplete view of technical debt. I'd like to add my 2 cents to the definition. In my view, technical debt can also be inferior approach or framework decisions early on in the life of a piece of software, that you plan to uplevel, change or completely replace in the future. In the startup world, I find this to be the more commonly occurring form of technical debt, with the former definition occurring for more mature software solutions.At any rate, this was a great discussion on technical debt. Have a listen to Episode 4, titled "Do we want a world without technical debt." Be sure and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast catcher. I'll make sure and add a link to the show notes as well.And as always... Enjoy.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

Nate Joens was born and raised in Iowa. And in fact, he plans to spend out the rest of his days there, cause he loves it. He lovingly calls it the Silicon Prairie, though he admits that most people don't call it that. He studied at Iowa State University, majoring in Geographic Information Systems and Urban Planning - which is basically mapping on steroids. He learned how to map topography, three dimensionally, using tools like ArcGIS. Outside of tech, he loves to hike, kayak, golf, and generally be outdoors.In college, he was very interested and connected to the real estate industry, as urban planning works closely with realtors. He figured out that lead follow up was a huge pain point for realtors, which peaked his interest. And led him to build some tech to solve the problem.This is the creation story of Structurely.SponsorsCourierImg.lyRoutableCTO.aiCloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.LinksWebsite: https://www.structurely.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanjoens/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

Ryan Johnson is originally from Saginaw, Michigan, and now lives in Atlanta. He never imagined he would get into tech. In fact, when he was growing up he wanted to be an orthodontist. He got into school, and immediately saw how difficult the classes were going to be. So he switched to business, and that part of school stuck and came naturally to him. As a college elective, he took computer science as an elective (who does that?). He brags that his computer science professor still has the mortgage calculator program on hand (and it still works). Post college, he worked as a broker for Equitable, as a financial advisor, and then supported law firm with their SEO. Eventually, he got into product and is still leading the charge there.He is married, and has 2 young daughters, both in grade school. He loves to travel, and hopes to make that more of a regular thing as the pandemic slows down. He has an affinity for all things automotive as well, and has been into racing most of his life. Though he loves cars, he really prefers just to watch... and not wrench on them.Ryan joined the his current company many years ago, and was charged to build a team to expand the companies call tracking functionality... to essentially, make it omni channel, with form, source and message tracking.This is the creation story of CallRail.SponsorsCourierImg.lyRoutableCTO.aiCloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.LinksWebsite: https://www.callrail.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryandjohnson/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

Kordel France has always been infatuated with finding order in chaos - and has carried that way of living throughout his life. He is an engineer by training and schooling, but grew up on a farm. What triggered his interest in AI was the day that his father brought home autonomous driving systems for the farm equipment. His Dad let him tinker with it, and Kordel was hooked.In college, he studied Physics and Mathematics, as his father always told him that there was a lot of math involved with autonomous systems. Aligned with this, he really enjoyed studying calculus. He saw the relationship between time series and control theory - essentially, autonomous guidance of a vehicle. And to learn to code, he tried to automate the calculation of derivatives. All in all, he considers math a beautiful thing, and sees it behind everything throughout our day to day lives. Post school, he worked for defense companies, specifically on autonomous systems. He also got to work as a mechanical engineer for a while, which helped him to view things from a different discipline. To round this out, he obtained his graduate degree in Artificial Intelligence.For fun, he practices Jiu Jitsu and plays the drums. In another life, he says he might been a drummer, but in this life, he plays along with a wide spectrum of music - from punk rock to country. Both hobbies allow his brain to turn off, but at the same time, Kordel solves some of his biggest technical problems while he is doing his hobbies.Way back in college, Kordel started building a codebase around computer vision and detection. He started adding to it over time, made it quite impressive, and figured out a way to monetize the platform. However, coming from the defense industry, he and his co-founder understood the apprehension around the use of AI commercially. They set out to change that.This is the creation story of Seekar Technologies.SponsorsCourierImg.lyRoutableCTO.aiCloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.LinksWebsite: https://seekartech.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kordel-k-f-10349811b/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

Phillipe Kwiatkowski has been addicted to gaming since he was a teenager. He played games like Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Grand Theft Auto. In the process, he discovered multiplayer mods, that allowed you to play online - which was his first introduction to coding. When he was 16, he got his first freelancing gig building websites. Eventually, he studied computer science at University, and interestingly, he joined an accelerator. There were a ton of smart people, working on very interesting problems. For fun, he enjoys playing soccer, and has played ever since high school. He also enjoys running, and in fact, is sorta prepping for a marathon. Eventually he would love to do a spartan race as well.During the days when he was involved in the accelerator, Phil started noticing that many founder problems were centered around distribution - or how to get their products in front of customers. He decided to build a better cold email tool, one that solved these problems. And it worked.This is the creation story of Ubico.SponsorsCourierImg.lyRoutableCTO.aiCloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.LinksWebsite: https://www.ubico.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philkwiatkowski/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