Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Tigran Nazaryan started out doing science in University. In fact, he was studying physics, and then went on to do his PhD in Astronomy in Astro Physics. He never imagined he would eventually become a CEO of a company. He's a research guy, and introvert naturally, who likes to read, hike, and do nothing... and by do nothing, he means watch a sunset or the waves of the ocean.After school, he joined a company with his friends creating Wordpress plugins. At first, he though engineering wasn't that interesting. But, as it turns out, he decided it was not less interesting than science and research.Eventually, he and his business partners decided that they could do more than plugins... by hosting and automating the entire ecosystem. He saw great potential that this type of opportunity could grow big.This is the creation story of 10Web.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://10web.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tnazaryan/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 Kodumal grew up really into computers. And, he is old enough that during his childhood, it was abnormal to be so into computers. To illustrate just how much he was into computers, he told me a story about how he taught himself to touch type in grade school.. using the DVORAK keyboard layout. He is a family man, with 2 children - a 7 year old daughter and 5 year old son. Outside of family, he has a ton of hobbies and interests, including climbing. In fact, his last trip before COVID hit, he took a bunch of friends and co-workers to ice climb in Colorado.Over his entire career, John has been thinking about ways to deliver software better. He did a PhD in programming languages, and he worked at Atlassian for a number of years. When he got connected with his co-founder, Edith Harbaugh, they started to explore just how big of an opportunity they had around feature flags.This is the creation story of LaunchDarkly.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://launchdarkly.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkodumal/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

Brian Singer has always been interested in computers. He into gaming in high school, which he claims is what led him to an engineering degree in college. He got his start in the industry with low level stuff, designing ASIC chips. Post that, he branched into product development, got his MBA, and funny enough, starting working in marketing for the software industry.Eventually, he started his own company. From his professional journey, a big takeaway for him was its hard to start a company fresh out of school... cause you don't know anything. He has two boys at home, and is a soccer coach, avid golfer and skier. He finds that the most creative moments for him are away from the digital space, doing analog activities with other people.His prior company was called Orbitera, which he eventually sold it to Google in 2016. He spent the first year at Google, migrating the product off of AWS, on to GCP. Once this was done, it was inquired of him about what the SLO's were for the product. This led to the spark of his current venture.This is the creation story of Nobl9.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://nobl9.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briantsinger/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

LaKeisha Turner is a strong woman. She has her hands full, as a single mom of a 16 year old girl, and an 8 year old boy. She is a breast cancer survivor, and lover of classical music - previously playing instruments in her high school days.She chose a tech path at a very early age, heavily influenced by her grade school computer science teacher, ultimately leading to her decision to pursue a career in technology. When she's not building technology, she likes to take trips with her kids. Each weekend she tries to plan something fun and exciting for them to do as a family.A bit a go, LaKeisha was approached by her founder, Ronnie Green, about utilizing her tech expertise to build out his vision for automated, algorithmic trading and portfolio management.This is the creation story of AlgoPear.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://algopear.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lakeisharturner/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

Lyric Jain comes from a family of business people, and is an engineer by training. He was born in India, and spent the first half of his life there. When he was 12, he moved to the United Kingdom. He has always been fascinated in physical engineering, mostly, which is interesting since he plays in the digital space now.He is a huge football fan - thats European football, or soccer for us in the US). In fact, he was obsessed with it while he was attending University, playing the console games and memorizing the rosters and stats for the live sport. He specifically loves Manchester United, and typically spent around 20 hours a week watching football.In 2015, Lyric unfortunately lost his Grandmother, to what he states as health misinformation from forwards. This combined, with the Brexit happenings, the US elections, and general world happenings, he started to see first hand the trend, that behavior was being influenced by online activity.This is the creation story of Logically.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.logically.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lyricjain/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

Hey guys, today I want to tell you about a new podcast I'm digging. It's called Compiler, an original podcast from Red Hat, who also brought you the popular show Command Line Heroes.Anyway, the show Compiler is hosted by two tech veterans, Angela and Brent from Red Hat, and on the show, they discuss tech topics - big, strange and small. I checked out the first episode, titled “Should Managers Code?”, and I was intrigued by the discussion and the topic. There were differing opinions, but one common thread was this... managers, VP's, leaders, etc. - that came from a coding background - STILL love to code!But... what I appreciated was the approach that these managers took to the coding they still love. My takeaway was that managers don't want to get in the way of their team from coding, solving problems, and delivering their contributions.Though difficult, a manager should keep to an 80/20 rule - 80% management, 20% coding - and in my experience, this allows you to keep your eye on the proverbial ball... of leading your team to their success, which is ultimately, your success as well.Have a listen to Episode 1 "Should Managers Code?" from the Compiler podcast. 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.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

Veena Somareddy is from India, and came to the US in 2012 to peruse her Masters degree in Game Design & Development. Technology has been an integral part of her life, as she was a big time gamer in high school and after, playing such games as GTA, Doom and Diablo. She also likes to keep watch on the latest tech gadget on Kickstarter. Outside of tech, she plays sports recreationally, and grows hydrophobic plants for a hobby.While she was working on her PhD for medical simulation and training, Veena was contacted by her now co-founder. He let her know that he wanted to add virtual reality to his clinic. She thought wow, this is an amazing opportunity, to make the therapy experience better for patients.This is the creation story of Neuro Rehab VR.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.neurorehabvr.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/veenasomareddy/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

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