Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Adam Robinson has had an interesting path into the tech world. He started out at Lehmen Brothers, and eventually Barclays, as a credit default swap trader. He spent 10 years doing the job that the movie the Big Short was written about. And he loved it.Back in the day, his first roommates in New York were the founders of Vimeo, and he was inspired by what they built and by being a tech entrepreneur in general. Once he saved up some cash, he decided to jump out and give the tech world a try. Through lots of learnings and mistakes, he eventually re-trained the way he thought to align with the way an entrepreneur thinks.Adam and his brother were eyeing an email marketing and customer review management tool. After it shutdown, they met witht the founder, who shared his secret sauce in how to collect data - specifically email addresses - from anonymous website traffic. They took this and ran with it inside of their email marketing tool. After some time, they realized email marketing is a tough space to compete in... so they switched to an area they were intrigued by, and had already built something to work with.This is the creation story of GetEmails.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://getemails.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-robinson-64409348/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

Paraag Sarva is a New York City native. He grew up in Queens, and went to college at NYU. When he started his career, he didn't think about going into tech. In 2004 / 2005 timeframe, he did what most people did or tried to do - he went to work for Goldman Sachs to learn the financial services world. Though he was good at his job, he quickly realized that he didn't love it, and moved on to work for Mike Bloomberg when he was mayor at City Hall. This was as pivotal time for the city, as this was the the time period after 9/11. It was after this that he was introduced to - and fell in love with - the startup world.He's married with 2 kids, and during the pandemic, he found that one of the early tell-tell signs that people were getting panicky was the line of cars backed up to get into... you guessed it, Costco. He loves to cook, and actually, he and some friends would get together occasionally to have ice cream club, which had one rule - you had to make the ice cream. He also has slowly found himself enamored with Formula 1 Racing.As a renter and landlord, Paraag intimately felt the pains on both sides of the equation, when it comes to security deposits. Rather than people stuffing large amounts of cash into a system that doesn't help either side, he knew there was a better way to help renters... and landlords.This is the creation story of Rhino.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.sayrhino.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/psarva/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

Matt Schwartz is a lover of food. It's been a huge part of his personal and professional life, in such areas like evidence based nutrition, exercise science, and the history & economics of our food system. As a kid, he was a picky eater. Over time, learning to eat better was a catalyst towards personal improvement for Matt. He believes that food, more so than anything else, shapes the health of our planet and the health of us, as individuals.Not surprisingly, he loves to seek out the best food nearby. But outside of food, he has become obsessed with chess, and is being coached by a grandmaster. He's proud of the fact that one of his opponents resigned after 7 moves. Beyond chess, he always working through a good book.His current venture started by researching the food industry, specifically the world of produce. Post this, Matt and his team realized that this part of the food world was ripe for disruption.This is the creation story of Afresh.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.afresh.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-schwartz-0b76a326/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

Travel is a huge part of Code Candee's life, even prior to his current venture. He has lived in a dozen different cities, travelled to over 60 countries, and has been to 49 of the 50 US states. Out of all of them, his favorite place to live was India, specifically in Bangalore. While he was there, he tried to experience all the cultures, food and people, and quite enjoyed his time.He is a minimalist.. to the tune of owning a couple of suitcases. He loves the idea of not being held down by things, and being able to move around at the drop of a hat. He reads a lot of books, his favorite one being the Alchemist, and enjoys rock climbing. But to be honest, he likes the all consuming, work centric lifestyle he leads.In 2014, he was working in San Francisco and planned to have some drinks with his friends. One of them had to go all the way home to drop off some luggage, before heading to happy hour. He took the ideas he wrote down that night, and in 2017, he set out to solve this complex problem... by just getting started.This is the creation story of Bounce.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://usebounce.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/codycandee/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 Childs doesn't have a computer science background. He grew up in Philly, and is currently based in NYC with his wife and 6 year old. His first computer experience was in 1984, with a Macintosh plus. He was immediately hooked on this extraordinary machine, that felt like it was made by humans. With no internet, it was just a playground in the beginning, but on it, he was able to explore design and learn pascal. He attended RISD, an arts school in providence, and studied painting. His goal was to go into contemporary art, but he quickly realized he didn't know anything about how to approach the art world. Throughout the program, he did learn a lot about how to think, how to look at things, and how to be creative. Post that, he ran a few web design and development agencies, before being pulled into the startup world.At a prior startup, the opinionated nature of project tools his team was using started to get in the way of their productivity... not to mention, it was not possible to get a birds eye view of direction, progress, etc. across multiple projects. During a hack day project, Andrew built a way to aggregate their tool into one single view. It was then that it clicked, and he and his co-founder thought maybe they were on to something.This is the creation story of Shortcut (formerly Clubhouse).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://shortcut.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-childs-9887552/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

Derrick Reimer got his first computer in kindergarten. His Dad was a mechanical engineer, but at home, tinkered with code.. and Derrick was always interested in the projects he was working on. In junior high, he learned Dos basics, and started to make games. He found it really fun to write utilities and tools for people, and funny enough, he even tinkered with accounting software - and tried to replicate Quicken.Even still, he ignored coding as a career path. He majored in math in college, and wasn't sure how he wanted to apply it. He needed more creativity than most math jobs offered at the time. After college, he discovered the Basecamp team and their perspective on building software. It was at that moment that his interest in tech and entrepreneurship merged together.For fun, he loves to do a lot of things. He lives in Minneapolis, and is outdoors a lot - hiking, road cycling, and playing a bit of tennis here and there. He also enjoys cooking, and coffee - but not just drinking coffee. He has gotten into hobbyist coffee roasting - with a popcorn popper. He likes to play around with the beans, the equipment, and overall, tinkering with making the perfect cup.After collecting dust in his idea notebook, in the list of markets which he knew well, he decided to venture forward to make a better calendar scheduling work tool... based on his anxiety using this type of product, and his desire to level up the status quo.This is the creation story of SavvyCal.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://savvycal.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derrick-reimer-93916020/https://www.derrickreimer.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

Greg Rather comes from a family of artists, so he always envisioned himself going in to art. From an early age, he was drawing and creating comics (funny enough, centered around his favorite animal - pigs). And back then, he was also a budding entrepreneur. In fact, in grade school, he would Xerox his comics and sell them at school for a buck a piece.In High School, he got into animation and game development, which was the catalyst for his interest in programming. He started out for doing animation by hand, drawing each cell and each frame by itself, which was super tedious. The tools he switched to was Director and Flash, allowing him to create stop animation, eventually layering programming into the mix as well. Outside of tech, he is a purple belt in jiu-jitsu. He also enjoys cycling and cooking, which both were handy hobbies during the pandemic.After feeling the pain of having to log into a myriad of tools day to day to get their jobs done, Greg and his co-founders decided to build a connected application, to drive revenue communications.This is the creation story of Troops.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: http://troops.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gratner/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 Butt always dreamed of being an airline pilot, and his passion outside of tech is flying. He has spent more time in helicopters over planes, and he enjoys that more. His family relocated to San Francisco 18 months ago, and they have been pretty much under lock down since that time. He and his wife have been doing the normal things during lock down - surfing the web, hiking, etc... but mostly keeping to themselves.In flying school, he met his co-founder growing a distribution company. They discovered a problem first hand, around trading agreements and incentives between companies. So much so, that they found a need in the industry and set off to build a product to solve the problem.This is the creation story of Enable.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://enable.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/awbutt/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

Rahul Sidhu was one of those kids who was always fiddling with computers. He even had a small tech startup in high school, to help him pay his way through college. Out of High School, he was an EMT, and studied emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. Post that, he became a paramedic crew chief, overseeing an assigned rescue crew and shift. In 2013, he became a police officer full time.He is a regular at the gym, which obviously shows that fitness is important to him, along with hanging out with his family and friends. He's a golfer, and is recently trying to get better at it. And, he likes to travel through food, as he says it, planning his trips around the best places to eat.In 2015, within the Techstars program in New York, Rahul and his co-founders were running out of cash, unable to deliver on what they were intending. After some helpful words from a friendly former Chief, he and his team decided to keep it simple, and attempt to help police departments solve the "customer service" problem.This is the creation story of Spidr Tech.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.spidrtech.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulsidhu/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

Chris Wexler had a crazy path to get where he is today. By his count, he is on his 6th career. His first job was on Capital Hill, followed up with a stint in Wall Street. After that, he produced independent theater, and then got into marketing and advertising, being one of the early adopters of ad tech.He's married with two daughters, and is a huge baseball fan (the Minnesota Twins specifically). He reads a lot of non fiction books, interestingly about public projects and how it portrays power distribution in the United States.All along his career, he was involved in the prevention of human trafficking. He has family members running organizations focused on this specific philanthropic pursuit. The opportunity came about for Chris to utilize all the different skill sets he'd obtained over his career, plus his advocacy for fighting human trafficking... and with that, it was a no brainer for him to start his current venture.This is the creation story of Krunam.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://krunam.co/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriswexler/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