Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Born and raised in Santa Barbara, Meha Agrawal grew up in a beach town. Her Dad is a professor of Computer Science, and her Mom worked at the University as well. In the 5 years before she was blessed with a sibling, her creativity and problem solving nature was cultivated by her parents.The majority of her life she was chasing gold stars - A+'s on her assignments, targeting the doctor or engineer job - which led her to attend USC and study computer science and business administration. She wound up in NY working for Goldman Sachs, and she quickly realized that she didn't like engineering, particular working on legacy systems. She left Goldman, started working for the Muse and began to fall in love with entrepreneurship. Post that, she spent some time at Stitch Fix, and there she observed how data and tech could foster magical moments for consumers.She enjoys dancing, singing, and is a huge culinary and mixology enthusiast - searching for the next speakeasy in town with her fiancé. Along with that, she enjoys reading, writing, performing, or sketching.At the end of 2017, Meha realized that despite her gratifying life, she was feeling unfilled and anxious. She picked up an empty journal, and channeled techniques and structure into her daily process of journaling. What she found was that her health improved... and she decided to create a product taking bits and pieces from bullet journaling techniques.This is the creation story of Silk & Sonder.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.silkandsonder.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehaagrawal/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

Kirt Debique is originally from Trinidad, off the coast of Venezuela. He came to the states to study computer engineering, at the University of Miami. On the way to attending grad school at Stanford, he did an internship at Microsoft. After being offered a full time job there, he took it - and subsequently, never made it to Stanford. He started out in a role on the OS team, but after spending 20 years at the company, he did many types of roles, including general manager over several different divisions.He loves to play soccer, and dabbles in chess. Above all, he loves his first born son, who recently celebrated his first birthday. He and his wife are enjoying the spoils of parenthood. Also, and to know surprise given his most recent ventures, he loves music - listening to music, making music, and helping artists.When he left Microsoft, he found himself deeply involved with people in the music community in Seattle. He had seen the independent scene go through much disruption, and decided to help artists by starting a label. Through the label, he saw the gaps in the music industry, and set out to try and fill those gaps.This in the creation story of SyncFloor.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://syncfloor.com/HomePageLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirtdebique/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

Shaun Cooley was born and raised in LA. His Mom worked at Xerox and his Dad was an auto mechanic... so needless to say, at an early age, he was pulling things apart electronically and mechanically.He's an avid snowboarder, usually shredding some snow at Mammoth mountain, and a kite surfer. He says he is terrible at the latter, but he likes that the wind is doing most of the work for him. He also spent a ton of time on a pilots license, but it got put on hold when he got busy professionally.At age 15, he went to work for Symantec, building internal websites. After some time, he got the opportunity to build an easter egg in Norton Systemworks for Windows. All in all, he spent 18 years at Symantec, before moving onto Cisco and joining the iOT side of the world.During his time at Cisco, he started to see the the fragmentation of data in the industrial environment... so much so, that he set out to create the business intelligence layer, sitting on top of the the raw network of devices.This is the creation story of Mapped.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.mapped.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shauncooley/ 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

Hazel Savage is originally from Northeast England. She attended university, and studied politics. She's played the guitar since she was 13, and started out as a self taught player. Her first guitar was a cherry red Fender Telecaster, followed by a Fender Cyclone and a Danelectro Hodad. Recently, she's started getting more into collecting, grabbing a Gibson Goddess for her collection. She used to play in an all girl punk band in London, called Ginkinta.She worked part time in HMV, a records store, stocking shelves, putting CD's out, and gaining an understanding of the music world from the perspective of a customer. And I find it interesting that she doesn't miss the physical music products, as a large collection of CD's tend to weigh a lot and are hard to move across the country.After joining an incubator, she was paired up with her now co-founder, who is deeply technical and well versed in AI. Combined with her extensive knowledge of the music industry, they set out to change the face of music... and the fingerprints found inside it.This is the creation story of Musiio.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.musiio.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hazelrebeccasavageLeave us a review on Apple PodcastsAmazing tools we use:This podcast is hosted on RedCircle, a FREE platform for podcasts and brands to scale their message. Want to record your remote interviews with class? Then, you need to use Squadcast.Code Story uses the 1-click product ClipGain, sign up now to get 3hrs of podcast processing time FREEIf you want an amazing publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people – use Transistor.fmCredits: Code Story is hosted and produced by Noah Labhart. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, Breaker, Youtube, or the podcasting app of your choice.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

How can you successfully deploy AI? When AI works, it’s nothing short of brilliant, helping companies make or save tremendous amounts of money while delighting customers on an unprecedented scale. When it fails, the results can be devastating.Most AI models never make it out of testing, but those failures aren’t random. This practical guide to deploying AI lays out a human-first, responsible approach that has seen more than three times the success rate when compared to the industry average.In Real World AI, Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger and Wilson Pang share dozens of AI stories from startups and global enterprises alike featuring personal experiences from people who have worked on global AI deployments that impact billions of people.AI for business doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Real World AI uses plain language to walk you through an AI approach that you can feel confident about—for your business and for your customers. Author Biographies:Alyssa Rochwerger is a customer-driven product leader dedicated to building products that solve hard problems for real people. She delights in bringing products to market that make a positive impact for customers. Her experience in scaling products from concept to large-scale ROI has been proven at both startups and large enterprises alike.She has held numerous product leadership roles for machine learning organizations. She served as VP of product for Figure Eight (acquired by Appen), VP of AI and data at Appen, and director of product at IBM Watson. She recently left the space to pursue her dream of using technology to improve healthcare. Currently, she serves as director of product at Blue Shield of California, where she is happily surrounded by lots of data, many hard problems, and nothingbut opportunities to make a positive impact. She is thrilled to pursue the mission of providing access to high-quality, affordable healthcare that is worthy of our families and friends.Alyssa was born and raised in San Francisco, California, and holds a BA in American studies from Trinity College. When she is not geeking out on data and technology, she can be found hiking, cooking, and dining at “off the beaten path” restaurants with her family.Wilson Pang joined Appen in November 2018 as CTO and is responsible for the company’s products and technology. Wilson has over nineteen years’ experience in software engineering and data science. Prior to joining Appen, Wilson was chief data officer of Ctrip in China, the second-largest online travel agency company in the world, where he led data engineers, analysts, data product managers, and scientists to improve user experience and increase operational efficiency that grew the business. Before that, he was senior director of engineering at eBay in California and provided leadership in various domains, including data service and solutions, search science, marketing technology, and billing systems. He worked as an architect at IBM prior to eBay, building technology solutions for various clients. Wilson obtained his master’s and bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering from Zhejiang University in China.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.amazon.com/Real-World-AI-Practical-Responsible/dp/1544518838/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=real+world+ai&qid=1624642397&sr=8-1LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiaalyssasimpson/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilsonpang/Leave us a review on Apple PodcastsAmazing tools we use:This podcast is hosted on RedCircle, a FREE platform for podcasts and brands to scale their message. Want to record your remote interviews with class? Then, you need to use Squadcast.Code Story uses the 1-click product ClipGain, sign up now to get 3hrs of podcast processing time FREEIf you want an amazing publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people – use Transistor.fmCredits: Code Story is hosted and produced by Noah Labhart. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, Breaker, Youtube, or the podcasting app of your choice.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

Alex Yurkowski grew up in New Jersey. He has always been into tech and building things, especially in software. Like many others, it all started with a lot of video games, like Warcraft, Starcraft - basically the Blizzard portfolio.But along with that, it included Legos, Connects, and then progressed naturally into computer science. He attended Notre Dame to study CS and being a part of the fighting Irish, he can confirm there is a love hate relationship with the Rudy story. Post college, he worked at IBM for a stint in North Carolina. It was at this point in his life that he got married, and then moved to LA and he's been there for about 5 years.He and his co-founder were working on projects together, and they went through multiple workflow tools that didn't fit there work style. They realized that there was a gap in the market, where people needed a tool that allowed you to work the way you want, and have all of your tools in one place.This is the creation story of ClickUp.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://clickup.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-yurkowski-70644585/Leave us a review on Apple PodcastsAmazing tools we use:This podcast is hosted on RedCircle, a FREE platform for podcasts and brands to scale their message. Want to record your remote interviews with class? Then, you need to use Squadcast.Code Story uses the 1-click product ClipGain, sign up now to get 3hrs of podcast processing time FREEIf you want an amazing publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people – use Transistor.fmCredits: Code Story is hosted and produced by Noah Labhart. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, Breaker, Youtube, or the podcasting app of your choice.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

A multi startup founder, Eric Futoran has always focused in on being a family man. He considers himself a multi-hat wearing person, and though most entrepreneurs say that.. Eric really means it. He has 4 degrees... no really, four - Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Juris Doctor and MBA. He REALLY likes to learn, and is constantly reading and learning from people, books, other sources, and of course, his family.He has found that his JD has really helped him understand the legal world, as it applies to the startup world, specifically SPAC's (special purpose acquisition group). He is digging into what the implications will be in the future withSPAC's, and the potential legal tension with their structures.He has 2 young boys, 5 and 8, and has felt the pains of many parents through the pandemic with kids being home. Other than startups and school, he likes to get outdoors as much as he can, doing some hiking or spending time at the beach.During his past successes at Scopely, one of the largest game builders in the world, he realized in the early innings of mobile that there was no mobile first data source, enabling businesses to capture all mobile session data... and more.This is the creation story of Embrace.io.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.strattic.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miriamschwabLeave us a review on Apple PodcastsAmazing tools we use:This podcast is hosted on RedCircle, a FREE platform for podcasts and brands to scale their message. Want to record your remote interviews with class? Then, you need to use Squadcast.Code Story uses the 1-click product ClipGain, sign up now to get 3hrs of podcast processing time FREEIf you want an amazing publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people – use Transistor.fmCredits: Code Story is hosted and produced by Noah Labhart. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, Breaker, Youtube, or the podcasting app of your choice.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

Miriam Schwab is originally from Canada. She has been in Israel for 26 years, and moved there after high school to attend university. She studied English Literature in school, and she really enjoyed the focus, though it has little to do with what she is doing today. Even still, her heart was always pointed towards technology. She is a mother of 7 children, which keeps her super busy. The oldest is 22 a boy, and the rest are girls, with the youngest being 8. If she does have spare time, she spends time with her extended family, or goes out with friends.Around the time she had kid number 4, she took her maternity leave to re-evaluate what she wanted to do. She started freelancing, and building people websites on a contract basis. At the time, she was exploring open content management systems, namely Wordpress. She was one of the first people in Israel to offer Wordpress as a business solution. Her business grew from just her to being an agency, building sites for businesses for 13 years.As more and more people built websites, she began to realize that the content on the site was sluggish to load... and the stack used to power Wordpress wasn't keeping up with the growth in content. As she stumbled across a new trend, around static site generation, she immediately thought she found the answer.This is the creation story of Strattic.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.strattic.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miriamschwabLeave us a review on Apple PodcastsAmazing tools we use:This podcast is hosted on RedCircle, a FREE platform for podcasts and brands to scale their message. Want to record your remote interviews with class? Then, you need to use Squadcast.Code Story uses the 1-click product ClipGain, sign up now to get 3hrs of podcast processing time FREEIf you want an amazing publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people – use Transistor.fmCredits: Code Story is hosted and produced by Noah Labhart. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, Breaker, Youtube, or the podcasting app of your choice.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

Timur Mamodev grew up in Russia, within a very loving and supportive family. His Dad was an entrepreneur, so he knew some day he wanted to do the same, or at least have some sort of brand. His Mom gave up everything to support her children, and he's very grateful for that. He was a creative kid, kept to himself with millions of hobbies - including graffiti, which was a way to escape and express himself. At the time in Russia, there weren't consequences attached to painting, and Timur got quite a rush from it.He found himself hacking playstation portables at a young age, when his cousin introduced him to programming. During his last year in University, his world got flipped upside down when his Dad's business went under. Immediately, his family dropped into poverty and his relationship to programming became about survival.He started attending hackathons as much as he could, and he met his co-founder Saba, who helped him learn how to make money contracting. They hit it off, and have been through so much together that they consider each others brothers. One day, they got fed up with the complexity of video editing software... and decided to disrupt it.This is the creation story of Veed.io.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.veed.io/tools/ai-videoLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timur-mamedov-376a5911b/https://www.ffmpeg.org/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

Abhinav Asthana grew up in several small towns in the northern part of India. A couple of those towns were Basti, 150 miles from the capital. He's been a computer geek since 5th grade, when his Dad bought a pretty sophisticated pentium for the time. The small towns he lived in were not the most connected parts of the world, and as such, he experienced the impact of computers and the internet improving lives from an early age.He enjoys reading books, and as a kid he was into fiction - reading Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, novels, Agatha Christie, etc... whatever was relevant at the at the time. Slowly, he started to drift towards popular science, design books, and non-fiction, more towards the tech sphere of the world.In 2012, the projects Abhinav was involved in has the same point - how to work with the API's that connected the front and backends of the application. And the tools he had to use never helped him develop efficiently. He thought - what would make the better?This is the creation story of Postman.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.postman.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhinavasthana/https://twitter.com/a85Leave us a review on Apple PodcastsAmazing tools we use:This podcast is hosted on RedCircle, a FREE platform for podcasts and brands to scale their message. Want to record your remote interviews with class? Then, you need to use Squadcast.Code Story uses the 1-click product ClipGain, sign up now to get 3hrs of podcast processing time FREEIf you want an amazing publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people – use Transistor.fmCredits: Code Story is hosted and produced by Noah Labhart. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, Breaker, Youtube, or the podcasting app of your choice.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