Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Valerie Coffman has a family in San Francisco, with 2 cats - both 18 pounds each - and 2 kids, the oldest being 3 and a half. So you could say she has a lot to juggle, even outside of a startup. Her family spends time outside, in parks, the zoo, museums, etc - as much as she can since they are opening up again post pandemic.She graduated from Cornell, with her PhD in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics - which I had to google to understand. Prior to her current venture, she was the CTO and Chief Science Officer at Xometry, an on demand marketplace for custom manufacturing - building their software team from scratch.She and her co-founder started their current venture by exploring why people resist believing scientifically backed, factual information. She wanted to figure out which messages and stories were more effective at communicating these true facts.This is the creation story of Swayable.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.swayable.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valeriecoffmanOur 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

Jay Haynes has always been interested in tech, just like his Dad. In 1979, his Dad bought and brought home an apple II plus. Though he was using it for his business to do spreadsheets, Jay began writing code so he could play video games for free, slinging code in BASIC. It's worth noting that this was back when you had to pay a quarter to play a video game.His Dad was a navy pilot, and a hobbyist sail plane flyer, which Jay flew as well, even up to 30,000 feet in the air! As he says, he got grounded as soon as he got married and had 4 kids.Early in his career, Jay got into finance and quickly became familiar with using debt to get equity returns. However, he was always interested in the core innovation problem - of why customers buy new products, and why they switch. Throughout his career, time at Microsoft, schooling, startup life, etc. - he found out that no one really had a secret sauce to innovation. He started evaluating new ways to do it, and came across the Jobs to Be Done theory, which became the foundation to what he has built today.This is the creation story of THRV.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.thrv.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayhaynes/https://jobs-to-be-done.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

Marko Anastasov has been working with computers for a long time. He grew up in former Yugoslavia in the 90's, when there was civil war, hyper inflation, and the economy was taken back 20 years. His father was an electronics guy, so there was always a computer around in the house. He found himself fascinated with information and the things you could conjure up on the "magic screens"... and, he found that computers were a place you could build things that were not influenced by the outside world.As a kid he played sports, mainly volleyball. He recalls that even at the age of 15, he and his friends were already being measured for spots on the national team. He has taken many lessons from his time playing volleyball, where a group of people have a shared sense of purpose, driving towards a goal.While building applications under the guise of his web development agency, Rendered Text, he and his fellow builders saw a need to have a way of automating processes of building, testing and integrating... and doing so fast.This is the creation story of Semaphore.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://semaphoreci.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markoa/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

Josh Millet's journey to tech was quite circuitous. He spent most of his 20's doing a PhD in French medieval history, with his plan being a professor in college. His specific time period was the era around Joan of Arc. Upon graduating, he realized that the job market for French medieval history professors wasn't super hot... and he ended up doing a startup with some of his friends from school - a small test prep company, which ended up being sold with 5 employees onboard.He's married with 2 boys, living in Los Angeles. With two boys, he mentioned that there is a lot of referring... and he feels like an adjudicator and mediator most of the time. After getting involved in the hiring process at his prior company, he felt the pain of knowing when an interview was over early on. He thought, there has to be a way to use data and tech to make the process more efficient.This is the creation story of Criteria.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.criteriacorp.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-millet-23ba192/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

Kristen Buchanan live in Portland, Oregon with her husband, cats and dog. She went to school for museum education, with a minor in art history - note the non-technical background. She was a kid who loved archeology and anthropology, and though she was going to be spending her time in museums. Personally, she loves teaching and sharing new things with people - yet, never wanted to be a teacher.Her hobbies center around learning new things and being outside, She loves to read, and used to dig into the relics in the library stacks at her school. An interesting fact, when studying the art of wax painting in an old latin book, she found a note that someone had passed their friend in latin class - from the 1950's. She is also a big DIY'er and gardener, enjoying the engineering in both of those things. In fact, she highlighted that there is a lot of math and engineering within the world of creating clothing.In 2015, she started her own business to offer learning & development services, and specializing in software engineering onboarding. She was challenged by a mentor to turn this into a software solution, and after some reflection time, she decided to do just that.This is the creation story of Edify.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.getedify.co/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristenmg/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

In his early career, Angel Munoz was an investment banker, specializing in technology. He was fortunate enough to invest in the development of MP3's in the 80's. In addition to this, he is well known for being the spearhead of what is known as eSports today.He is a father of 2 kids, and has been married for 36 years. His passion centers around interactive entertainment, specifically in the world of gaming. He tends to lean towards first person shooters - abbreviated FPS - because they have a real sense of immersion. He loves post apocalyptic games, where you have to survive in a world where our systems and infrastructure have been completely removed.After launching a successful, social media platform around the gaming community - called GTribe, he started to create experiences inside the community. So much so, he and his team attempted to integrate video game aspects into an audio video experience.This is the creation story of Beacon.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://beaconx.com/https://www.amazon.com/Being-Digital-Nicholas-Negroponte/dp/0679762906Our 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

Braden Stenning has always been interested in tech. His earliest memories include the desire to be an aerospace engineer - to be the guy to build the spaceships. He spent a lot of time exploring computers, being interested in math & science - and even founded a high school robotics team. This really opened his eyes to software development as a career, and lit up something inside of him.He is a curious person who often has a plan, and keeps his eyes open for what is happening around him. He did his undergrad at Carlton university, studying aerospace engineering - and he realized he really loved school. So much so, that he got his PhD from the University of Toronto, around the topic of space exploration robots. In Toronto, met his wife, and they decided to stick around Ottawa. They love to spend time outside in the "green space", as he puts it, getting their 2 boys outside or walking the dog.Through some projects he was working on, and networking in the tech space of Ottawa, he was introduced to his Co-founder, Martin Cloake. Together, the combined ideas around machine telemetry and the next level of insight into continuous improvement.This is the creation story of Raven.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://raven.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/braden-stenning-ba849487/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

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/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

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/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

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/ 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