Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Brendan Falk is originally from Australia. Growing up, he was always into computers, sports, extra curricular activities - he was the kid who always had a side hustle going on. Once he got to college, he built a currency converting startup to help him pay his tuition fees... and he has been toying around with startup ideas ever since.His partner, Matt Schrage, is from San Fran originally - and he confesses, that its hard to escape tech when you are from the area. He started coding as early a middle school, and hasn't stopped since. And outside of tech... he builds more tech! Tinkering with embedded hardware, robotics and mini-machines.After applying to Y Combinator, they were invited to interview with the accelerator. During the interview, they decided to change from their original idea. After that, their YC partner advised them to pivot yet again... so change has been a regular occurrence for this team since the beginning. They realized that every time they went to get setup on a new project, they had to go through the same commands on the terminal, over and over again. Every time, they either forgot what they were, or encountered an issue with their environment that needed to be dug into. They thought, how can we solve the problem of making the terminal easier to use?This is the creation story of Fig.SponsorsTandem PodcastingLinksWebsite: https://withfig.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanfalk/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-schrage-957b6843/Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts Amazing 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

Jeff Meisner is an electrical engineering grad from Waterloo in Canada. Post college, he settled in to the DFW area, and worked for several tech companies, mostly on the business development side.He loves to travel with his family - his wife of 34 years, 2 daughters & sons in laws, and a couple of grand dogs in the dachshund, beagle and black lab family. In addition to this, he enjoys watching sports, mainly golf and football. Fun fact, he has a 3rd degree black belt in taekwondo, but he doesn't keep up with the discipline anymore. Some of his biggest influences are the 10 commandments and the books - good to great, crossing the chasm, and traction.He started his agency 6 years ago to create award winning live, 3d experiences for brands like American Airlines, Halliburton, Galderma and other large organizations. When COVID hit, live events were no more, which created a problem for his industry. In response to this, his team built a new platform to connect his clients to their customers... virtually.This is the creation story of Sector 5 Digital, and S5D Rush.LinksWebsite: https://www.sector5digital.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffmeisner/https://www.sector5digital.com/news/s5d-rush/Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts Amazing tools we use:If you want the best publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people - use Transistor.fmWant 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 FREECredits: 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

At 18 years old, Dan Robinson was 100% convinced that he was going to be a mathematician. He went to college at Stanford, and when he got there, he realized that math beyond high school was very different.. and as such, he didn't want to make that his day job. He always enjoyed making stuff, specifically with computers, and he started leaning into computer science and deep learning projects.He loves to hike, and be outside with his friends. Recently, he has gotten addicted to chess online - though he claims he's not any good at it. So addicted, that he had to have his close friend hold onto his account password for him.Dan is originally from Boston, which is his excuse for being direct and difficult to work with. In fact, he finds it so strange that people don't interrupt others more in the bay area.Previously, the CEO of Dan's current venture was a PM at Facebook - and he couldn't get basic answers to how people used the platform. Similar problems were popping up for Dan at Palantir, causing long cycles just to get a single question answered. They both were thinking - there HAS to be a better way.This is the creation story of Heap.SponsorsPodcornUnidragonLinksWebsite: https://heap.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-robinson-a6930726/Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts Amazing tools we use:If you want the best publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people - use Transistor.fmWant 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 FREECredits: 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

Mitchell Hashimoto started programming in middle school, teaching himself how to code through open source libraries and zip files he could download on the internet. He is a pilot, and owns his own plane, which happens to be a Cirrus. He spends an hour a day studying or practicing flying, and even takes his wife and dog up every now and again, when there is something worth flying to and they can make the oxygen work for then dog.He attended college at the University of Washington in Seattle, which was located equidistance from Amazon, Google and other cloud focused infrastructure companies. As you could guess, there was a huge focus on this topic while he was at school, and he was able to gain access to vast resources through his computer lab and research projects. It was these projects put the ideas in his head, on what he could make in order for infrastructure to work better.This is the creation story of HashiCorp.LinksWebsite: https://www.hashicorp.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchellh/Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts Amazing tools we use:If you want the best publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people - use Transistor.fmWant 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 FREECredits: 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

Natalie Nagele came to the states in 1989 as a Jewish refugee from Russia. She watched her parents go from nothing and utilizing furniture from trash, to building big businesses and supporting their family.She met Chris, her husband when she was 18. And they have been working together ever since, as he is the co-founder of their business. They have 2 kids together, and love to travel - specifically to the Caribbean, since it is a quick flight from Philly (and of course, its warm). Despite that, she would love to live in Italy one day.Their company started off as a remote consulting company, but launched their first product in 2003 - and they were immediately hooked. In 2009, they stopped doing client work and focused solely on products. And haven't looked back in 20 years.This is the creation story of Wildbit.SponsorsUnidragonWyld GalleryLinksWebsite: https://wildbit.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-nagele-b9aa42/Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts Amazing tools we use:If you want the best publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people - use Transistor.fmWant 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 FREECredits: 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

Daniel Hauschildt lives in Germany, in a town called Bochum. He comes from a family of craftsmen, which means that he wasn't involved in tech at an early age. He stayed busy with friends and sports, more specifically archery, where he learned about patience, concentration and competition. In his younger years, he clung to a long bow, but steadily moved towards using a higher tech, compound bow in later years.When he was 14 years old, he got into cracking video games, which lead him down the path of coding, and learning the assembly language. He recalls the first game he cracked was X Wing vs Tye Fighter.In 2008, his current company started out as an image hosting service for Twitter (you may remember seeing the links while using the platform). When Twitter built their own, it pretty much shut down the first product. During that time, many customers of the agency 9 Elements were asking for tools around image processing, resizing, etc. So they started building a tool to do those things.This is the creation story of Img.ly.SponsorsShape & FosterJennifer BrazerLinksWebsite: https://img.ly/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielhauschildt/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_ThrunLeave us a review on Apple Podcasts Amazing tools we use:If you want the best publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people - use Transistor.fmWant 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 FREECredits: 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

Hrishi Dixit was born and raised in India. He wrote his first program when he was 13 years old... and he was hooked on computers from that point forward. He comes from a family of teachers and book store owners, so he was kind of an outlier - and, as a kid, having a computer was a luxury that his family couldn't afford. In his undergrad, he studied mechanical engineering, as computer science wasn't available. However, he brought in programming as much as possible. His graduate studies were completed at Cornell, where he worked side by side with Xerox scientists on interesting micro-mechanical systems problems.Books have always been a thing for Hrishi - loving the tactile sense of holding a book. He also enjoys a good whisky, along with traveling - and he'd love to retire living in Scotland within walking distance of Laguvulin.. if he can convince his wife to brave the winters in Scotland. He worked for Schlumberger for a while on robotic drilling tools, but then followed the activity in California, around the time where the internet was evolving and Google was taking shape. He wanted to be apart of that.Towards the end of his time in San Fran, he worked in fintech - loving the connection point between math, science and software. He was the founding CTO of LearnVest, which was sold to Northwestern Mutual. Around the time of the sale, he met the founder of his current venture and joined the team as a consultant, and then advisor. During that time, he built out the makings of an alternative investment platform - in fact, the first of its kind.This is the creation story of Yieldstreet.SponsorsPodcornShape & FosterJennifer BrazerLinksWebsite: https://www.yieldstreet.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hrishi-dixit/https://www.crunchbase.com/person/hrishi-dixithttps://www.yieldstreet.com/blog/article/cto-interviewhttps://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2884038Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts Amazing tools we use:If you want the best publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people - use Transistor.fmWant 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 FREECredits: 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

 Davit Buniatyan is originally from Armenia. He completed his high school years there, until he was 17, when he started to pursue his undergrad in the UK at UCL. He entered into his college years, excited about animation from seeing Pixar movies. He learned all about 3d models, graphics and rendering - but then found out there was no course or curriculum specially for animation. So he switched to comp sci, which ended up being perfect.He is into swimming, tennis and shotokan - which is traditional Japanese karate. Along with these, he's been playing chess since he was 5 years old, and is an avid fan of the show Queen's Gambit on Netflix.When he started in on his PHD at Princeton, he started working with large data sets to recreate neural networks. In doing so, he realized how much computational power was required to learn from even a small - large scale data set. With this, he set out to build a tool to make companies more efficient at learning from their data.This is the creation story of Activeloop.SponsorsPodcornWildbitShape & FosterWingLinksWebsite: https://www.activeloop.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbuniatyan/Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts Amazing tools we use:If you want the best publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people - use Transistor.fmWant 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 FREECredits: 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

Charlie Depman grew up in Connecticut, then went to college in Canada - pursuing environmental studies. His first job out of college was to be the Asia regional coordinator for an environment NGO, or non-government organization. He writes short sci-fi stories, and as he was learning to code, he discovered that he could now create these future stories with code, rather than just write them. He's been into bicycles since his first trip to China, prior to college - and has bought, built and used many different types of bikes... including an ice bike with metal studded tires.Chinmay Malaviya grew up in New Delhi with engineers as parents - so math and science was always a thing growing up. He ended up doing his undergrad in Singapore, studying computer science. Funny enough, he is the trained engineer in his current venture. After trying out big companies and computer research early on in his career, he realized that he didn't like either one. He took the leap into the startup world with Food Panda, and eventually got involved with Lime, the popular micro mobility platform. At Lime, Chinmay was exposed to the environmental challenges we are facing as a society, especially around transportation.Charlie & Chinmay got together early in 2020, with a shared passion for reducing transportation related emissions by creating the one stop e-mobility shop - complete with a marketplace and vetting system for the best micro mobility options available.This is the creation story of RidePanda.SponsorsShape & FosterWingLinksWebsite: https://www.ridepanda.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cdepman/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chinmaymalaviya/Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts Amazing tools we use:If you want the best publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people - use Transistor.fmWant 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 FREECredits: 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

Veryable is a marketplace for on-demand labor for manufacturing and distribution, which provides businesses with higher productivity and fewer administrative burdens and workers with flexible work arrangements.Noah Labhar is a startup founder, CTO, and podcast host. Noah shares his startup story and personal experience building an engineering team of non-CS grads.In a tech startup, how do you get from an idea on the back of a napkin to a fully functioning product? Code Story is a podcast hosted by Noah featuring tech leaders, reflecting the roads they travelled and the products they created.He interviews tech visionaries on his show, digging into the critical moments of what it takes to change an industry and build & lead a team that has your back. Code Story is a window into the digital startup world. In their own words, tech veterans share what it feels like to create a world-class product, how to recover from critical mistakes, and how to scale your solution to the masses.We talk about all this and the shifting landscape for on-demand workers, and the tech hurdles Noah has overcome in his career.Useful Linkshttps://noahlabhart.comhttps://veryableops.comhttps://codestory.coSupport 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