Code Story Podcast: Season 11 Founder Interviews

Code Story podcast episode 26 features Marco Rodrigues, founder of Exaforce, discussing his journey from Canada to the Bay Area and how years of watching security teams struggle with data overload led him to build an agentic SOC platform.

Ofir Bibi, a neural networks expert and longtime team member at Lightricks, shares his creation story on the Code Story podcast, detailing how his passion for photography and tinkering led him from academia to the company.

Code Story podcast episode 18 features Theodore Bergqvist discussing the creation story of Turbotic, an AI automation platform born from his experience witnessing enterprises struggle to adopt AI tooling during his time at Ericsson.

Code Story podcast episode 14 features Avi Perez of Pyramid Analytics, who shares his journey from banking and finance in Australia to co-founding a data analytics company after commercializing an internal analytics solution from a prior startup.

Today, I'm talking with Kolton Andrus, CEO and Founder of Gremlin. We discuss the significant changes at the company and how they are helping to assess and fix weaknesses in infrastructure.

Shamba Chowdhury shares the origin story of DeForge, a no-code builder for wiring up AI agents, born from the frustration of stitching together ideas at hackathons.

Code Story podcast episode featuring Pukar Hamal, founder of SecurityPal AI, who shares how a failed deal due to a security due diligence questionnaire inspired him to build a platform that speeds up customer assurance processes.

Rob spent many years at Salesforce, and it struck him that many of the company operations were still done on spreadsheets. When he left the company, he started exploring how to create something to support large scale data sets, within the familiar UI of spreadsheets.

In our conversation today, Kate Lowry enlightens us on what fear based leadership is, how to use the predictability of fear based leaders to your advantage, and why its having (another) moment in the tech ecosystem today.

Brandon and his co-founder realized that all software platforms around contracts were directed towards lawyers - not towards finance. This was mind blowing, as negotiations are mostly finance driven, not based on the paragraphs of legal jargon. Brandon wanted to build something to serve this need.

Maddy and his team identified that verification of age, credentials, employment history, etc. was a big, big problem. So much so, that it was difficult to do so in a tamper proof, zero knowledge proof manner. They set out to create a solution - and protocol - to solve this problem.

In this episode, Ben Lerner discusses the advancements of LLMs in understanding code and their applications in real-world scenarios. He shares insights from his time at Google and how he and his co-founders are leveraging these technologies, starting with Snowflake compute.

In this episode, Emmanuel Straschnov discusses the challenges faced by non-technical founders and how Bubble provides a solution for those with product ideas. He shares insights on empowering creators to build without needing extensive technical knowledge.

In this episode, Arnab Deka shares insights from his sabbatical, highlighting his preference for deep work and direct customer interactions over high-level strategy. He recounts his journey of meeting his co-founder in 2022 and their shared passion for podcasts, which inspired them to create something for podcast enthusiasts.

Today, I'm talking with Dan Eyman, the Managing Director at Meld Valuation, specializing in independent, audit ready valuations for VC backed startups and VC firms. He is an expert in the valuation of complex instruments such as convertible debt and SAFEs. Dan is going to illuminate the common mistakes of founders, how valuations differ, and what founders should understand about dilution and how fundraising affects their cap table.

This podcast episode features Sergiy Koralov discussing the Railsware approach to software development, contrasting vibe coding with traditional Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) methods. Listeners will gain insights into innovative coding practices and the philosophy behind Railsware's unique methodology.

In the past, Raj's now co-founder reached out to him, post shutting the doors on his prior startup. After they had felt out the market to see if a solution for billing could fit, they moved forward and eventually started enabling revenue streams for AI agents.

Brennan was one of the first customers of Invisible, which was one of the biggest trainers of LLMs. After he sold his last company, he was approached by the board to help then spin businesses out, but in a strategic way with a hold co, allowing them to work together with them zero to one, and beyond.

Harish used to work for MongoDB, and spent some time on call and in the weeds. At that time, he realized how much data is used by a business. When he eventually supported the fashion industry, specifically the back office, he wanted to build a solution to make the lives of those back office individuals as easy as possible.

In this bonus episode, Dr. Alex Kihm discusses his experiences with LLMs and the challenges he faced with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) at his original startup. He shares insights on addressing issues related to incorrect information and resource consumption while developing effective solutions.

Austin acknowledges that though we all love the internet, it's actually not very good for high performant systems. And though companies are trying to build dedicated networks in the world, there hasn't been one created for blockchain - IE, not centralized around single party.

This episode features Clément "Kero" Renault discussing his journey from school to creating Meilisearch, a powerful search engine designed to provide tailored search experiences. Kero's story highlights the importance of innovation and teamwork in developing technology that meets specific user needs.

This podcast episode features Sergiy Koralov discussing the Railsware approach to delivering value in tech projects. Listeners will gain insights into innovative strategies and methodologies that enhance project outcomes.

In this episode, Tiffany Johnson discusses her journey to becoming a product leader at a long-established payments company. She shares insights on developing a solution for embedded finance tailored for SaaS applications.

Gajus started to think about the arc of becoming a freelancer. He realized that everyone who goes through a journey as a freelancer feels like a cog in the machine, and falls off the marketplaces out there. He realized that there was a massive vacuum and gap in the internet for these folks that needed to be filled.

Derek Ting discusses his journey in creating TextNow, a service that allows users to text for free amidst high carrier fees. The episode explores his motivations and the innovative solutions he developed to disrupt traditional phone services.

Toward the end of 2022, Clayton and his co-founder, Michael, re-connected on starting something new. Given Michael had extensive industry knowledge in the podcast world, Clayton and he combined their super powers to take on the multi-platform nature of podcasting.

In this episode, Alex Halkin discusses his journey from pitching subscription pricing to leveraging Contextual AI for optimizing pricing strategies. He shares insights on the evolution of AI in pricing and how his team at Competera AI is transforming the industry.

In this episode of Code Story, Michael Sacca discusses his journey from Chief Product Officer at Dribbble to his current role at Leadpages. He shares insights on product development and leadership in the tech industry.

Mrinal is one of the minds behind Okham, a popular open source Rust toolkit to build secure communications between applications. Late last year, he observed people desiring to build the layer between agent communications and decided to build something to do it the right way.

Dave has always been building side hustles, but none of them really got off the ground. What he noticed about the process was that the process of building the infra of an app – the auth, the billing, support, etc. – always took too long. Eventually, he thought that maybe the best product would be something combining these things.

Hojjat joined Confluent in their early days. He was on a project that built out kSQL, which was a key cornerstone of Confluent. As these were the early days of stream processing, he started to think about ways to make it easier - to make this sort of tech available without all the infrastructure.

Rob's has a track record of successfully building platforms - IE figuring out how to do things once instead of multiple times. His current company was growing through acquisitions, and Rob was brought on to unify these and create a converged platform for what the company had to offer.

This episode features Erez Druk, who shares insights from his journey in the healthcare sector after witnessing the challenges faced by clinicians. He discusses his transition from a previous startup to developing solutions aimed at improving the lives of healthcare professionals.

Alan Fisher discusses his extensive experience in the rail industry, focusing on growth, innovation, and the integration of logistics, analytics, and digital solutions. He shares insights into how his team is addressing the industry's challenges through strategic acquisitions and automated inspection technologies.

Keren and her co-founders felt similar pains in the industry, all from different angles. No matter how good their ideas were, no matter the initiative, there is always a long process in software dev to bring it to life. This was especially true for non technical founders. They wanted a way to bring their ideas straight to production, without having to wait on the full life cycle.

Oliver has released a book titled A Startup Field Guide in the Age of Robots and AI. In the book, he sets the stage to mentor - and provide mentors - around building a hardware startup in modern day times.

This episode features Tucker Callaway discussing his experiences with Mezmo, a company focused on improving log management for developers. He shares insights on industry dynamics and the evolution of observability solutions.

In this bonus episode, David Asamu shares his journey from working in a fintech company to venturing into AI with his friends. They observed trends in AI and decided to collaborate on a project that advances AI through research.

In this episode, Trevor Stuart discusses the challenges faced at RelateIQ regarding code deployment and quality control. He shares insights into their journey of developing a solution inspired by systems seen at LinkedIn, leading to their eventual acquisition.

In the past, Chris was an ethical hacker, and spent a long time busting into big name systems. Eventually, he moved into one of those companies - and he realized that the tooling out there to discover attack surface weaknesses were lagging. He decided to build a platform that got the job done.

In 2019, Raja joined Synopsys, specifically in their custom design and manufacturing group. A few years ago, and alongside the advent of AI, he changed roles and began building an AI powered solution for electronic design automation, or EDA.

Artem spent several years building a Core AI stack at Replica. He aims to correct the limitations of digital connections by starting a new venture focused on broader empathetic AI.

Adam and his team went through several iterations of AI tooling - summarizing AI, integrating git and JIRA, etc. While they were doing this, they realized that the best way to make a difference, was to first focus on the data itself.

In this episode, Sarah Lucena discusses her journey in building effective teams and the challenges she faced in creating the right chemistry among team members. She reflects on the shortcomings of traditional recruiting methods and shares insights on fostering meaningful connections in the workplace.

Yaroslav & Sergiy were building software for clients, the typical Ukrainian software route. Over time, they realized that building their own products was the best way to make an impact - so much so, that they decided to start building their own.

Goutham Rao discusses the complexities of IT telemetry logs and how he and his co-founders are leveraging LLMs to interpret this data. Their innovative approach aims to create a system that mimics issue triage, enhancing data processing capabilities.

In today's episode, we are speaking with Nika Tamayo Flores, Product Lead at Railsware, specifically for the Coupler product. She's been leading complex data-driven products for over eight years, and will enlighten us on conversational analytics, and how they can change a data focused product.

Sam and his team built a prior solution, an agent to solve bugs for you. They ran into a litany of problems, but eventually figured out that there was a dire need for an authorization for the activities that agents wanted to do on your behalf. Fast forward, and they are working with Anthropic to define these auth protocols.

Gaurav Bhattacharya discusses his journey in the healthcare space and the lessons learned in go-to-market strategies, sales, and marketing from his prior startup. This podcast episode highlights his passion for entrepreneurship and the drive to innovate in the healthcare industry.

In this episode, we talk with Granville Schmidt, Chief Architect at Strata, about the importance of identity orchestration for AI agents. We explore how enterprises can leverage identity solutions seamlessly, regardless of their technological challenges or migration complexities.

This episode focuses on Fraud Awareness Week and features Husnain Bajwa discussing how SEON serves as a command center for fraud prevention and anti-money laundering (AML). Listeners will gain insights into effective strategies for combating fraud in today's digital landscape.

In this episode, Brooke Hartley Moy discusses her journey in AI and the challenges faced in making it effective. She highlights the importance of data quality and the misconceptions surrounding AI as a one-size-fits-all solution.

Right around the time of the pandemic, Matt and his co-founder were pitching a new company idea in Y Combinator, around data privacy. After receiving the feedback that there wasn't a big market for the original idea, they started to jam on ideas on how to pivot - and quickly landed on how cool it would be to have password-less authentication.

In today's episode, we are chatting with Julia Starun, Product Director at Railsware with over 17 years of experience in product management, business process automation and optimization. Julia will share her insights into where an MBA helps you manage a product team - and where it doesn't.

In this episode, Ryan Wang discusses his journey at Stripe and the challenges he faced while working on support tickets. He shares insights on the importance of workforce management and how it led to innovations in machine learning for support.

While Simon was at Oracle, he started to crave a different opportunity, but still in the Java space. He stumbled upon a company digging into powering the Java platform, to make it the most secure, efficient and trusted platform on the planet - and he, and the company, found a great fit.

In this episode, Buchi Reddy discusses his journey in identifying a significant gap in enterprise API testing. He shares insights on how he aims to automate this process to enhance efficiency and reliability in production environments.

In this episode, Tim Eades, a seasoned CEO, shares insights from his interviews with cybersecurity leaders about the persistent vulnerabilities in identity management. He discusses his journey of pitching a company idea aimed at addressing these critical issues, inspired by a moment during a Liverpool game.

In this episode, Juan DeAngulo discusses the development of proprietary algorithms that intelligently predict revenue. His current venture, incubated during his time at Harvard, focuses on predictive revenue models based on established processes.

In this episode, Greg Shove discusses his journey of starting a company focused on teaching management skills and how the pandemic influenced its success. He shares insights on his recent pivot towards integrating GPT technology into his business in 2023.

In this episode of Code Story, we conclude the series 'The Railsware Way' with insights from Oleksii Ianchuk. Discover key mistakes and lessons learned in product evolution from a leading product development company.

In this episode, Tanmai Gopal discusses the challenges developers face in accessing data, particularly with the rise of AI technologies. He and his team explore the critical issues of accuracy and trust in data access solutions.

Rabble, Twitter's first employee, shares insights on agentic programming and its influence on team dynamics. He discusses his journey to create a social media platform that prioritizes user access and control, inspired by the limitations he faced with Twitter's open app capabilities.

Yaroslav & Sergiy were building software for clients, the typical Ukrainian software route. Over time, they realized that building their own products was the best way to make an impact - so much so, that they decided to start building their own.

Harman spent a lot of his early career in hospitality. His now co-founder worked in this space as well, but primarily on the technology side, leading to discussions about the 'hotel tech stack' as a customer-facing operating system.

Ravi and his team had a successful exit from their prior company, and decided to give startups another go. They wanted to solve the authentication problem for builders wanting to focus on their product - not building auth. What they found was a new arena in the world of AI, agents, and authentication of everything in between.

In his prior startup, Praveen and his team stumbled upon a new approach to hiring that fueled the building of this startup, all the way through exit. After that success, he decided to make this approach available to others, and form a business around this very thing - fractional talent for your startup.

After chasing building a better Apollo, Jens and his team ran into a point where their prior product and company was doomed to go under. When they accepted this fact, they started to think about what people actually wanted - and started to dig into the federation of GraphQL.

Zohar and his now co-founder were digging into predictive models, as an extension of their academic studies. They were curious as to why companies, though they were running predictive models, were not making accurate predictions.

In December 2021, Jesse and his team were wondering in the desert for a while, trying to figure out what was next on-chain. After considering what AWS and Heroic was for Web 2.0, they figured out that in order to go build the apps that companies like Coinbase had, they needed a foundational layer in the ecosystem to fuel that development.

Chris started to get into crypto back when it was still in the fringes, and people didn't really know what Bitcoin was. Ten years later, his company is solving the retirement process with alternative, crypto assets.

In this episode, Avi Perez discusses how he and his co-founders developed a data-driven approach to make intelligent business decisions in their previous startup. After their exit, they aimed to commercialize the analytics solution they created, continuing their journey in the data analytics field.

In this episode, Ofir Bibi discusses his journey with Lightricks, a company focused on bridging the gap between imagination and creation through innovative video and app tools. Celebrating a decade with the company, Ofir shares insights into his role as the 'Neural Networks' guy.

Today, I'm talking with Dan Eyman, the Managing Director at Meld Valuation, specializing in independent, audit ready valuations for VC backed startups and VC firms. He is an expert in the valuation of complex instruments such as convertible debt and SAFEs. Dan is going to illuminate the common mistakes of founders, how valuations differ, and what founders should understand about dilution and how fundraising affects their cap table.

In this episode, Emmanuel Straschnov discusses the challenges faced by non-technical founders and how Bubble provides a solution for those with product ideas. He shares insights on empowering creators to build without needing extensive technical knowledge.

Austin acknowledges that though we all love the internet, it's actually not very good for high performant systems. And though companies are trying to build dedicated networks in the world, there hasn't been one created for blockchain - IE, not centralized around single party.

In this bonus episode, Dr. Alex Kihm discusses his experiences with LLMs and the challenges he faced with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) at his original startup. He shares insights on addressing issues related to incorrect information and resource consumption while developing effective solutions.

Derek Ting discusses his journey in creating TextNow, a service that allows users to text for free amidst high carrier fees. The episode explores his motivations and the innovative solutions he developed to disrupt traditional phone services.

In this episode of Code Story, Michael Sacca discusses his journey from Chief Product Officer at Dribbble to his current role at Leadpages. He shares insights on product development and leadership in the tech industry.

Keren and her co-founders felt similar pains in the industry, all from different angles. No matter how good their ideas were, no matter the initiative, there is always a long process in software dev to bring it to life. This was especially true for non technical founders. They wanted a way to bring their ideas straight to production, without having to wait on the full life cycle.

Alan Fisher discusses his extensive experience in the rail industry, focusing on growth, innovation, and the integration of logistics, analytics, and digital solutions. He shares insights into how his team is addressing the industry's challenges through strategic acquisitions and automated inspection technologies.

Artem spent several years building a Core AI stack at Replica. He aims to correct the limitations of digital connections by starting a new venture focused on broader empathetic AI.

Adam and his team went through several iterations of AI tooling - summarizing AI, integrating git and JIRA, etc. While they were doing this, they realized that the best way to make a difference, was to first focus on the data itself.

Gaurav Bhattacharya discusses his journey in the healthcare space and the lessons learned in go-to-market strategies, sales, and marketing from his prior startup. This podcast episode highlights his passion for entrepreneurship and the drive to innovate in the healthcare industry.

In this episode, we talk with Granville Schmidt, Chief Architect at Strata, about the importance of identity orchestration for AI agents. We explore how enterprises can leverage identity solutions seamlessly, regardless of their technological challenges or migration complexities.

In this episode, Buchi Reddy discusses his journey in identifying a significant gap in enterprise API testing. He shares insights on how he aims to automate this process to enhance efficiency and reliability in production environments.

While Simon was at Oracle, he started to crave a different opportunity, but still in the Java space. He stumbled upon a company digging into powering the Java platform, to make it the most secure, efficient and trusted platform on the planet - and he, and the company, found a great fit.

After chasing building a better Apollo, Jens and his team ran into a point where their prior product and company was doomed to go under. When they accepted this fact, they started to think about what people actually wanted - and started to dig into the federation of GraphQL.

Rabble, Twitter's first employee, shares insights on agentic programming and its influence on team dynamics. He discusses his journey to create a social media platform that prioritizes user access and control, inspired by the limitations he faced with Twitter's open app capabilities.

Chris started to get into crypto back when it was still in the fringes, and people didn't really know what Bitcoin was. Ten years later, his company is solving the retirement process with alternative, crypto assets.

In December 2021, Jesse and his team were wondering in the desert for a while, trying to figure out what was next on-chain. After considering what AWS and Heroic was for Web 2.0, they figured out that in order to go build the apps that companies like Coinbase had, they needed a foundational layer in the ecosystem to fuel that development.