Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

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/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

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/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

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.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

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/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

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/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

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/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

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/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

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/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

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/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

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/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