Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Sophy Lee was born in China, but grew up in a lot of countries and places. She grew up in Australia, lived all over Texas, and went to Harvard for undergrad, studying economics. She is an avid bike racer, mainly on the road, and a triathlete. The combination of living in difference places, school, and racing lead her into the tech world. In fact, she moved to San Francisco to race - though he had taught herself to program post college and had an idea brewing in her head on how to become a better engineer in San Fran.Sophy has been working on her current product for 6.5 years, starting at a different company formerly known as Shuttle. The product was built originally to map out a trip from point a to b, and have a driver give a protected ride to a child. Four years ago, her current company acquired the product, at which point she joined as CTO to lead the Technology & Information Security team.This is the creation story of HopSkipDrive.SponsorsShape & FosterWildbitLinkshttps://www.hopskipdrive.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophyleeLeave 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

Season 4 of the Code Story podcast is now live!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 Wathan has been obsessed with computers since he was a kid. In fact, he was introduced to computers by his 1st grade librarian.. and his first programming project was using Q-Basic, following a tutorial on how to make a pro wrestling simulator.During his time in university, he wasn’t enjoying the programming curriculum and ended up dropping out to play in his band, and working odd jobs to support his music career. During this, he got into the production side of music, and started a home studio to record local bands. Four years after he quit programming, he started tinkering with the same framework used to make Winamp – called reaper – and fell in love with pogromming all over again. At this point, he tried school again, but post internship, he decided to go straight into the field without finishing his degree.These days, he is married with a young family. Besides staying busy with that, he still finds time to play games with his remote friends, and occasionally trains for powerlifting. He met his business partner, Steve, in college, and hacked on side projects together. These side projects led to the creation of a mini CSS framework, which Wathan started using throughout other projects, growing it into something he was quite proud of. In fact, while live-streaming some coding, he was surprised by the influx of people asking what it was… and where they could get it. He decided to open source the framework in 2017, and it has steadily grown and grown in usage – to the tune of millions of downloads a month.This is the creation story of Tailwind CSS and Tailwind Labs.Linkshttps://adamwathan.me/https://tailwindcss.com/https://tailwindui.com/https://www.reaper.fm/index.phphttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasicLeave 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

Podcasts are a great thing – the good parts of a radio show, the powerful snippets from an audio book, with all the content control of a topical news feed. Yet, there was something missing when Leah Culver tried to find her next episode to listen to, while training for her 1st marathon. And that thing was a more powerful way to discover the podcasts you love – through your subscriptions, activity, and most of all – through the power of social networking and suggestion.So she decided to fix it – and built Breaker, an app that helps you discover new podcasts and episodes based on the content you – and your friends – like most.Linkshttps://leahculver.comhttps://breaker.audiohttps://oauth.net/https://oembed.com/http://altconf.com/https://sentry.io/welcome/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.fm.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 FREE!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

Click here to listen to the episode on the Entrepreneurial Coder podcast. Noah talks about his journey leaving corporate America to now building and running Veryable, a quickly-growing on-demand labor platform. He goes over how he started with a prototype as a side project, how he focused on starting small, and how he honed in on the correct value-adds for the market. Noah also talks about developing and running his podcast, CodeStory.Noah is the CTO and cofounder of Veryable and the founder and CEO of Touchtap, a digital solutions studio. A tech veteran himself, he’s intimately familiar with the challenges, risks and rewards of introducing new tech into the world. Noah is also the host of CodeStory, a podcast featuring tech leaders, reflecting on their human story in creating world changing, disruptive digital products.Noah's Links. Noah on LinkedInNoah's WebsiteVeryableCodeStoryClick here to listen to the episode on the Entrepreneurial Coder podcast. 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.fm.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 FREE!Credits: Season 3 of 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

Click here to listen to the episode on the Develomentor podcast. BiographyNoah Labhart is the CTO & Co-Founder of Veryable, and the Founder & CEO of Touchtap, a digital solutions studio. A tech veteran himself, Labhart is intimately familiar with the challenges, risks and rewards of introducing new tech into the world. Tune in to hear about how Noah became a two time tech startup founder.A note from GrantNoah Labhart, on paper at least, in the early part of his career, has all the hallmarks of a classic math and computer science graduate’s path through tech. He interned at places like Hewlett Packard and worked as a developer in the first few years post college before moving into management.However, for Noah Labhart, there is more to the story than punching the clock working for someone else. After 8 years working in IT management for Alcon Laboratories, Noah made the leap on his own and hasn’t looked back since.In 2015, he started his own development studio, called Touchtap, which specializes in native mobile application development. And, as if starting and running one company isn’t enough, in 2016, he co-founded Veryable, an on-demand marketplace for labor in the warehousing space. Never one to sit still, Noah also runs the popular Code Story podcast. It features tech leaders reflecting on their human story in creating world changing, disruptive digital products.-Grant IngersollQuotes“I got into math and started pursuing it but I really started to enjoy my computer science classes. In coding, I loved the creativity and I started building some websites for myself, throwing pictures up of my family and little bios. I learned html, css, javascript, and really liked it.”“At the time there was an opportunity to work for Alcon Laboratories. I had a lot of friends that worked there. Great company. Takes really good care of their employees. Pretty good flexibility. So I was like ‘I can do my band during the weekends and have a really great job during the week’. And I worked for Alcon for 8 years.”“As problems needed to be fixed, we brought on more help. We didn’t try to bite off more than we can chew. That’s how Touchtap grew and we’ve done a similar thing with Veryable. We’ve started with uncsontrained models. We’ve built things as we’ve needed them. And instead of building these intricate systems, we’ve built something, responded to market feedback, and then build it in a new way to meet the needs of the market.”—Noah LabhartKey MilestonesWhat inspired Noah Labhart to get into tech and to pursuing a comp sci and math degree at Texas A&M?Why did Noah transition into IT management after starting his career in development?Noah was at Alcon Labs when he decided to found his tech startup, TouchTap. How did this happen?How does Noah think about building teams and businesses these days?What is Veryable why did Noah decide to build another tech startup company?Noah also has a successful podcast called Code Story. What is it about? who is it for?From a career perspective, why start and run a podcast?Click here to listen to the episode on the Develomentor podcast. 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.fm.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 FREE!Credits: Season 3 of 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

Aaron White started coding when he was young, tinkering on his commodore 64 when he was sent to his room, typing in esoteric commands just to get the game to run. He was a big magic the gathering player when he was young, and his parents pushed him towards working for a startup. Coming from a family of creators, he was sort of the black sheep since he wasn't painting or doing something with physical creative elements. Started coding professionally in his mid teens, and has kept at it ever since, attending college to study computer science and make all sorts of things. He currently lives in New York with his girlfriend, and enjoys a life of professional and personal flexibility.When attempting to start an IT consulting firm, he noticed that there was not a good way to show a firm their IT landscape - what your app inventory was, who uses what, etc. So he built a tool to do just that, to help with leadgen for his firm. When it started to spread like wildfire, he figured out this was more than a leadgen tool.This is the creation story of Blissfully.Linkshttps://www.blissfully.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronmwhite/https://profiles.forbes.com/members/tech/profile/Aaron-White-Founder-CTO-Blissfully/2c1fe39c-cfed-4370-8f7b-f2571a7878ebLeave 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

Joe Howard is originally from Washington DC. He did his undergrad outside of Philly, then quickly moved back to the DC area. He's married, with a young family and most of his outside of work time is dedicated to family, and traveling to interesting places (when the pandemic allows).He likes to try and keep himself disciplined with his day to day calendar - through exercise, reading, team growth, and family focus. And he uses a pomodoro journal - on and off - to help him keep organized in blocking his time. Host of the WPMRR podcast, on which he focuses on increasing monthly recurring revenue, and for sure, mentions the latest in Wordpress world. I'd recommend checking it out.Joe started out as a Wordpress freelancer, but found it was hard to scale building websites. However, what he knew was the fact that there are a lot of Wordpress sites out there... and they need grade A support.This is the creation story of WP Buffs.Linkshttps://wpbuffs.com/https://wpmrr.com/podcast/Pomodoro Journalhttps://wpmrr.com/podcast/noah-labhart-code-story/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

Charity Majors didn't touch a computer until she was in college. In fact, she was raised in a religious, fundamentalist compound in rural Idaho, homeschooled and cultivating all of her own food. She went to college to study classical performance in piano. And though she loved piano, she decided to switch keyboards, so to speak, and pursue something in computers.Been in San Francisco since she was 19, and never wants to leave. Outside of tech, she does some hand lettering as a hobby, reads a lot - and considers serial television as the highest modern art form. She is firmly motivated by using code to get stuff done - IE she doesn't do tech for fun. And in her words, she's made a niche out of being an infrastructure engineer.Several years ago, she was the first infrastructure hire at Parse. While supporting the mobile backend as a service before and after the Facebook acquisition, she had access toa tool where she could slice and dice her infrastructure, to gain visibility into a particular section of services and answer questions. When she left - she realized that a tool of that nature was paramount to doing her job well. So she set out to build it again, and figure out how to coin the term observability.This is the creation story of Honeycomb.io.SponsorsFree Lunch Coffee - discount coupon CODESTORYLinkshttps://www.honeycomb.io/https://www.linkedin.com/in/charity-majors/https://parseplatform.org/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

Joe Mahavuthivanij was born and raised in the Bay Area, into an entrepreneurial family. Primarily through his life, he was exposed to small businesses. He went to school at UCSD in San Diego, and worked with startups of all shapes and sizes. In fact, he spent some time on the VC side of the fence as well. Tony Tran met Joe in San Diego at school, moving back to the Bay Area around the same time. He is a startup veteran, having built solutions that were acquired by LinkedIn, and creating Uber's fraud detection solutions. He even dabbled in the crypto space, which ended up fizzling out at the time that Joe was looking for a technical leader to join his latest venture.Joe is a long time collector and investor in Magic the gathering... but one day, his entire collection was stolen - which today, would have been worth a million dollars. Ouch... Being into pop culture relics, Joe wanted a way to make these assets accessible to those who love them most - without requiring them to pay huge sums of money. So he and Tony set out to build a solution to do just that.This is the creation story of Mythic Markets.Linkshttps://mythicmarkets.com/marketplacehttps://www.crunchbase.com/person/joe-mahavuthivanijhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/mahavuthivanij/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.fm.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 FREE!Credits: Season 3 of 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.https://vurbl.com/station/3UC9IzwienV/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