Code Story

Avi Freedman became obsessed with tech at age 8. He was given a BASIC programming book by his Uncle in 1978, and at that point - he was hooked. Outside of tech, he has been married for 30 years, and likes to play Pot Limit Omaha (which is Poker) and to Taekwondo to keep his body healthy. Avi ran the network group at Akamai, and thought that networking observability was a solved problem. After he left, he noticed that in fact, it wasn't. He moved to the Bay Area and got started building a solution for just that. This is the creation story of Kentik. Sponsors DrataCacheFlyClearQueryLinks https://www.kentik.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/avifreedman/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Juan Barroso lives in the Bay Area but was born in Venezuela. He didn't grow up with technology around him, as his father was a farmer, and his mother was a seamstress. Neither went to University, but they made sure to push Juan to attend university and focus hard on his studies. It was during University that he fell in love with programming. Outside of tech, he likes to try new things, and doesn't stick with one hobby for too long (other than traveling). Right now, he is into mountain biking and snowboarding. Juan has been in payroll for many years, and during his tenure, he got the opportunity to build many engines and solutions for the industry. He realized that though one engine worked for one customer, others wouldn't be happy with it. He wondered if a payroll framework could be built, to allow developers to build their own. This is the creation story of Salsa. Sponsors DrataCacheFlyClearQueryLinks https://www.salsa.dev/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmbarroso/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Fabiana Clemente was born and raised in Portugal, and lived in Lisbon until 2 years ago, when she moved to Seattle. She is passionate about the arts, having a creative mind. She finds great joy and relaxation in water color painting, while also spending time with her family over fantastic Portuguese dinners. Outside of this, she enjoys traveling, learning about other cultures and cuisines across the world. As a data scientist, Fabiana realized that there were several pain points that led to her not being fulfilled in her role. After meeting her now co-founder, who felt the same paints, they decided to set out and solve the problem by building a developer platform for data science. This is the creation story of YData. Sponsors CacheFlyClearQueryLinks https://ydata.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabiana-clemente/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Kyle Carberry grew up in a very small town in Saskatchewan, Canada. He was always into tech, but mainly the pirating side of things on his dial up internet connection. He got into pogromming when he got is first Xbox, and started modding it - followed by Minecraft servers and building tools for the internet. Outside of tech, he just moved to New York and prefers the hustle and bustle over the small town quiet. Kyle and his co-founder had the abstract idea that eventually, people won't be coding on their laptops. Sort of by accident, they started in by building a consumer friendly version, but quickly pivoted to the enterprise - and took off. This is the creation story of Coder.com. Sponsors CacheFlyClearQueryLinks https://coder.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylecarbs/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Matt Levine grew up in Toronto, and played sports as a baseball catcher. During his teens, he got injured and had to sit out during the season. And during that time, he started to dig into computers, and became hooked. He started several businesses in High School, and later founded eFront. Outside of tech, he is married with a couple of kids, and likes top lay golf. While working in Arizona, Matt was approached by a now competitor called LimeLight. He knew the founders, and he was approached to become a team member - specifically to help start a network. He felt that it wasn't a good time to do that - BUT, it was a good time to start and build a CDN. This is the creation story of CacheFly. Sponsors CacheFlyClearQueryLinks https://www.cachefly.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/exile2k/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What if you had a window into the digital startup world? What if you could ask the tech veterans what it feels like to create a world class product? ...how to recover from critical mistakes... ...how to scale your solution to the masses? How do you get from an idea on the back of a napkin, to a fully functioning product? What if you could hear the human stories about how they delivered technology? What if there was a show where you could hear those stories? Sponsors CacheFlyClearQuery Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

For Puneet Gupta, his professional work and personal hobbies collide. He has been enamored with tech since his early days, and finds coding to be quite therapeutic. He spent many years launching prominent cloud solutions, and has a track record for success there. Outside of tech, he is a family man with 2 boys, living in the Bay Area with his extended family. He is into motorcycles, and is falling in love with reading again. The story of Puneet's current venture goes back over 10 years, when he found himself in the middle of the dawn of cloud computing at AWS. During that time, he was introduced to SaaS models, and how these models can grow exponential growth. Fast forward to 3 years ago, and through observing industry progression, he decided to create a solution to aid in usage based pricing models. This is the creation story of Amberflo. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Glauber Costa is a family man, with three kids at home. So he admits, that with a startup and kids, there is not much space for anything else. He made mention that the jump from 2-3 kids was hard, and we joked that he playing zone defense now over man to man. AS of this recording, he had already seen the Mario movie 3 times with his kids, and enjoys playing video games with them. But, his game to play is Civilizations, which he is highly addicted to. Glauber comes from a heavy database and systems programming background, as does his co-founders. They noticed that the buyer persona of database tech is changing. More and more frontend developers or full stack developers were responsible for these decisions. After iterating on a few projects, they figured the pillar of their data edge solution... which was SQLLite. This is the creation story of Turso. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Sefi Genis lives in Tel Aviv, and started in with technology early on in his life, maintaining the school website when he was younger. He served in the Israeli military, specifically in the cybersecurity unit, followed by working at some interesting and successful startups. Outside of tech, he loves to travel, ninja warrior, and scuba diving. One of his favorite places to dive was Thailand, which I've added to the list for my family. Sefi understood all things related to infrastructure as code (IAC). Once he was introduced to his co-founders, they set out to build a solution that helped platform and DevOps teams manage their entire cloud footprint - and do so at scale. This is the creation story of Firefly. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Naré Vardanyan has a statistically unlikely story. She grew up in Armenia, without electricity during a war. She recalls that her parents gamified the experience, which allowed her to experience it much differently than the hardship it was. Her upbringing was very community driven, focused on caring for others. Eventually, she went to work for the United Nations, in her words, so she could save the world - though eventually she was disillusioned by how slow things moved. It was at this point, where she shifted over to tech. Outside of tech, she used to love reading, but now that she has a child, she sticks to audiobooks. And, she thoroughly enjoys art, specifically, 20th century Russian-Jewish artists. When Naré started to travel abroad, she noticed that for some folks, the ability to obtain things in life, like a Visa or Passport, was a given. Yet, others were not enabled to obtain these types of things, as the process was much more difficult or unavailable. She set out to create the great equalizer, through enriched financial data. This is the creation story of Ntropy. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Alex Yarotsky got into tech as a little kid. In fact, he remembers watching the movie Toy Story, and wanting to learn how to build the tech that drove its creation. He got into University, but eventually, dropped out, and went the standard Eastern European software route, by joining a consultancy. Post that, he joined his first tech startup, and hasn't looked back since. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 fat cats. He and his wife enjoy MMA, and traveling. Twelve years ago, the founders of Alex's current venture noticed that the demand for freelancers was growing in the market. They also noticed that very few time tracking solutions existed, and they wanted to tackle this niche. Later, Alex joined the crew to take the product to the next level, as CTO. This is the creation story of Hubstaff. Sponsors CipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinks https://hubstaff.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayarotsky/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Pato Echague was born and raised in Argentina, and as such, is a huge soccer fan. He played soccer and tennis growing up, and enjoys following the Boca Juniors. He also admits to being influenced by the Messi effect as well, liking Barcelona and now the States. He is a father of 2 young kids - who also play soccer - so there are a lot of nets and practice tools in his backyard. At his prior startup, which was acquired by Salesforce, Pato and his co-founders observed that the faster they shipped things, they faster they broke production. After giving into his co-founders persistence, he decided to jump in and build a feature flagging to fix the problem. This is the creation story of Split. Sponsors CipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinks https://www.split.io/https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricioechague/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Moti Rafalin was born and raised in Israel. He spent half of his life there, and the rest of his life in the states. He is a father of 3 kids, 2 of which are in college. His family and he lives in the Bay Area, and he likes to play tennis and travel. In fact, he has been to over 65 countries in his life, and has lived in 2 continents. After attending AWS re-invent, Moti left with the knowledge that the amount of innovation happening continued to grow and grow. At the same time, there wasn't a good way to ensure that applications weren't just "lifting and shifting" but were fully taking advantage of proper functionality during their modernization process. This is the creation story of vFunction. Sponsors CipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinks https://vfunction.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrafalin/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Shaun Ritchie has lived in Salt Lake City for 20 plus years. He grew up in Phoenix, but decided it was too hot to live there. He started his first company 20 years ago, and has had some major successes, selling later ventures to WeWork. Outside of tech, he is married with 4 kids. He loves the mountains and outdoors, enjoying snowboarding, skiing, and hiking. In 2022, Shaun set out to accomplish a new goal. He put together the financial resources to acquire an organization, with the goal of transforming it into a premier services company - by leading and growing people to the next level. This is Shaun's creation story at nClouds. Sponsors CipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinks https://www.nclouds.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaunritchie/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Arunabh Dastidar has a background in engineering, starting his coding years in his teens. In fact, he was building and selling web products even prior to college. He spends most of his free time thinking about tech and startups, but when he is not, he plays acoustic guitar and attends music festivals. He enjoys traveling and trying food across the world, mentioning that Tokyo ruined Sushi for him. Arunabh was on a very important call, and his excel sheet was crashing. He looked left and right, and couldn't find anything to support what he needed. He found some co-founders, and built the solution he wished he had for the industry. This is the creation story of RealSage. Sponsors CipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinks https://realsage.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/arunabhadastidar/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Zach Wasserman lives near Vancouver, but grew up a child of the 90's in Berkeley, California. The .COM boom was happening around him, so he found himself fascinated with this era in tech, with little understanding of the details. He was a skater kid, riding around the Bay Area, typically on a short board over long board. Nowadays, he is more into the outdoors, as a mountain biker, rock climber and back country skier. He enjoys the vast selection of Chinese food at his home near Vancouver. In 2014, Zach was working at Facebook. During that time, a team member wanted to build a platform where they could know what was going on with all of their assorted machines. They ne eded a way to ask questions without writing code, and more quickly get answers about their community of devices. This is the creation story of Fleet. Sponsors CipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinks https://fleetdm.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacharywasserman/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Steven Schkolne has a standard tech story. He was good at math, and loved computers - so, he got into programming. What sets him apart in the industry though, is his passion for design, art and creativity. He is a self taught designer, but really jams when his right and left brains are firing at the same time. Outside of tech, he is married and enjoys gaming and digging into YouTube. Steven was working on a VR project in the past, and a component required some web development. What he immediately noticed was that although Unity Game Engine development was visual, but web development required you to build visually in the realm of code. He started to wonder if there was a way to bring this sort of thing to web dev. This is the creation story of MightyMeld. Sponsors CipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinks https://www.mightymeld.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/schkolne/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Somak Chattopadhyay lives 30 minutes outside of Syracuse, NY, where he enjoys the great outdoors vibe of the area. He studied engineering at MIT, but spent the bulk of his career in investing. He has been in venture capital for nearly 18 years, spending time at Edison and Tribeca. Outside of tech, he is married and passionate about food and music. He's actually a classically trained violinist, and enjoys cooking or consuming Tandoor cuisine. In 2013, a group of professors and business people noticed that early stage companies in Syracuse were required to move to NYC - primarily because there was lack of capital and access to talent. A year later, Somak and his team stepped out to solve this problem in New York regions... and beyond. This is the creation story of Armory Square Ventures. Sponsors CipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinks https://www.armorysv.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/somak-chattopadhyay-7662a/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Maxim Fateev grew up in the Soviet Union, and witnessed its collapse. He left in 1995, and moved to Brazil, where he got his Masters in Computer Science. In the late 90's, he moved to the US, eventually landing in Seattle, which loves. He's been married for 27 years, with 3 boys, and loves to hike, play ice hockey, and snowboard. He mentioned there were a number of choices, but he prefers Whistler in Canada, when he can make the 5 hour drive. During the development of open source services at Amazon, Maxim came across the idea of durable execution. Eventually, at Uber, he launched an open source library that eventually would become the basis of his current venture. This is the creation story of Temporal. Sponsors CipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinks https://temporal.io/https://www.linkedin.com/in/fateev/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ibrahim Surani grew up in Pakistan, dropped out of high school and in his words, stumbled around for a while. Eventually, he stumbled onto an IBM mainframe, taught himself to code, and has been in tech ever since. He moved to the states in 1988 and has been here ever since. Outside of tech, he is an avid hiker, and enjoys a good fantasy read, like Lord of the Rings. Jay Mishra studied mathematics and computer science. He started out at his current venture right out of college, post his masters program. Outside of tech, he is a Dad of two boys who love sports. He enjoys playing chess and golf, and likes to hike and travel. His favorite book is the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Going back several years, Ibrahim started a consultancy in 2005 or so, and mentions working on successful products in the area of mortgage banking. In 2008, the financial meltdown happened, and all of their customers (save 1) went out of business. After struggling for while, they decided take a foundational utility they had built and bridge the gap to 2.0 of their business. This is the creation story of Astera. Sponsors CipherstashTreblleCAST AI FireflyTursoMemberstackLinks https://www.astera.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/ibrahimsurani/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaymishra/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy