Code Story Podcast Season 1: Founder Interviews & Tech Startups

A gap used to exist in the world of music licensing. The Musicbed set out to change that, by providing an online marketplace for music licensing. Tanner Hearne took on the role as the first in house developer - with the job and goal to take the product to new heights.

For Bill Eager, his interest in tech paralleled his desire to play music. After attending music school, he became disillusioned with music as a day job and pursued tech - still moonlighting as a performing musician. As he pursued a role with a startup, he was introduced to the founders of Nomad Health - and instantly connected with the idea. He jumped on the ground floor, and created a marketplace to serve clinical nomads.

When Rylan Barnes started creating a solution for mobile phone barcode scanning, he had no idea it would lead to the formation of his most successful venture and exit - called ShopSavvy.

Eric Sharp grew up with a unique background. With vivid memories of growing up in poverty, he recalls being distinctly inspired towards education when his mother went back to school to be a teacher. She instilled in him curiosity and a desire to learn, which made a big difference in changing his life trajectory. Using this passion, he and his co-founders were motivated to build the vision for a SaaS learning platform called Degreed - enabling learners and businesses to build the skills they need for the future.

Bernard Worthy loves to travel the world with his wife, spend time with his family and stay connected with his friends. Born and raised in Atlanta, he is a long time entrepreneur and technologist, spending many years in consulting and startups. Through some research and discovery, he figured out that community lenders were using multiple disconnected systems to accomplish important tasks. He set out to solve this problem - to bring all of these systems under one piece of software to make the loan origination process more efficient. This solution would eventually be called Loan Well.

Early in his career, Brandon Hilkart shifted from a mechanical engineering focus to tech support for a school district. This led him to create Bark, an internet safety solution for parents and kids, aimed at alerting them to potential online dangers.

Ben Milne grew up in a small town and has had a pretty normal life. His journey in the tech world led to the creation of Dwolla, a payment processing infrastructure that enables others to process ACH payments without the need for credit cards or hefty fees.

Sean Washington is the CTO of Design Kollective, and the Co-Host of Does Not Compute - a popular podcast on the Spec.fm network, about the lives and workflows of modern web developers.

Along with being a startup founder, Dennis Steele is a family man and a triathlete. A non-tech grad from BYU, he went through a software development bootcamp - called DevMountain - to enable him with practical dev skills. He took the base knowledge, and he and his co-founder built Podium - a way for businesses to manage their online reputation, through one single platform.

The process of building a product can take many twists and turns, based on the path that is chosen. This trailer introduces the key questions and challenges faced in product development, from team building to launching an MVP.

Through a chance internship in LA, Jonathan Perichon made his way from France to the United States. In doing so, he fell in love with the culture and opportunity. After working for a startup requiring background checks for its users, he saw first hand how antiquated and slow the process can be. After about 6 months, he and his co-founder set off to build an API driven solution, facilitating the submission, reporting and workflow of background checks for candidate workers… and much more.

Growing up in Tel Aviv, Israel, Omri Mor learned to appreciate music, art, food and other sensory experiences. After selling his first company, he and his now co-founder got together to catch up over some pita and hummus, leading to the creation of Routable, a modern bill payments, payouts and invoicing system that speeds up payment processing through a secure platform.

Tech has always been a part of Aalok Shah's life, influenced by his parents. After a diverse career in nuclear medicine and web consulting, he became the CTO of EnergyFunders, a platform for investing in Oil & Gas, enhancing their technology features.

When Alvaro Sabido saw a picture of someone in the military holding a book up to a webcam, attempting to read to their child back home, he set out to create a solution to integrate a video chat and a children’s book - and what would eventually be called Caribu.

After getting his masters, Jonathan Campos found himself working with clients, listening to their pain points, and creating software to meet those needs. He worked his way through a handful of startups and agencies, before landing at Bottle Rocket as the chief architect, growing their web and backend practice. Not too long after, a former boss reached out about an opportunity to up-level the ride sharing experience, focusing on simple billing, safety and control over the experience. This opportunity was to become the CTO of Alto.

When Rylan Barnes started creating a solution for mobile phone barcode scanning, he had no idea it would lead to the formation of his most successful venture and exit - called ShopSavvy.

Building on the early tech he learned, Jon Buda became a ruby on rails champion - building his projects using the back and front end components of the language. Having created a Spotify like music platform - way before Spotify existed - he gained large experience in what is required to host and process audio files.

Through a chance internship in LA, Jonathan Perichon made his way from France to the United States. In doing so, he fell in love with the culture and opportunity. After working for a startup requiring background checks for its users, he saw first hand how antiquated and slow he process can be. After about 6 months, he and his co-founder set off to build an API driven solution, facilitating the submission, reporting and workflow of background checks for candidate workers… and much more.

Andy Abbott has been a tech enthusiast for a long time, doing things that techies do. He built a BBS network so his friends could play games together, he created websites on geocities, and spent spring break on the beach… learning PHP. Post graduating from Purdue, he spent many years gaining a diverse set of professional experiences - from software to consulting to domain squatting to SEO to grocery shopping. After selling the company he co-founded, called BookedOut, he felt the pains of the contract review and diligence processes. From that experience, he set off to build Heretik, to enable the streamlining of contract review at scale.

Shelby Stephens shares his journey from working at NASA to co-founding Jolly, a platform designed for gig workers. Jolly aims to enhance reputation portability and connection opportunities while providing a marketplace for finding work.

Blake Miller discusses his journey from building websites to creating innovative IoT solutions for smarter living experiences through his company, Homebase. He shares insights on property tech engineering and his involvement in the Kansas City Smart City initiative.

A tech and science minded individual, Chris Slowe has spent 9 years with Reddit. Beyond being a tech executive with the company, he is a Dad and likes to work with his hands in the machine shop.

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 for Leah Culver. So she built Breaker, an app that helps you discover new podcasts and episodes based on the content you - and your friends - like most.