Shows / Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical Founders
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical Founders
Code Story is a startup podcast for technical founders building and scaling software products. Each episode features SaaS founders, engineers, and product leaders sharing how they built their product, found product market fit, and navigated early-stage growth.
We explore:
Early engineering decisions and MVP development
Landing the first customers
Pricing and go-to-market experiments
Scaling challenges and infrastructure bottlenecks
Hiring the first team
Lessons learned from growing a startup…
Episodes
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: Storage to Inference: Powering High-Speed AI & NVMe Infrastructure with Eran Kirzner, CEO of Lightbits
Eran Kirzner born and raised in south Israel, then moved to Tel Aviv to be close to the technology center of the country. He isn't able to see himself outside…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: The Edge Vision Shift: Privacy-First Computer AI for Smart Security & Eldercare with Mike Link, VP of Kami Vision
Mike Link grew up in Rochester, New York, and had no intention in getting into technology... but he loves it now. His educational background was in…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 E10: Decoupling Authorization: Scalable Policy-as-Code for Enterprise Apps with Alex Olivier, Co-Founder & CPTO of Cerbos
Alex Olivier lives in London, England, and has been a tech since the early days. In fact, his Dad awarded him an old linux box - from which, he built a Harry…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: The 99% Reliability Shift: Foundation Models for Robotic Manipulation with Yash Sinha, Founder of Intelligence Factory
Yash Sinha hates losing even more than he wants to win, as the saying goes. He was born and raised in India, growing up in Delhi and competing in sports like…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: Accelerating Zero-Knowledge: Hardware-Driven ZK Proof Generation with Leo Fan, Co-Founder & CEO of Cysic
Leo Fan grew up in China, performing his undergrad and masters within the country. Eventually, he came to the states to get his PhD from Cornell. Prior to his…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 E9: Forward-Deployed AI: Moving Enterprise Pilots into Real Production with Pooja Brown, CTO at Tribe AI
Pooja Brown grew up in India, and now lives in San Francisco. Her family ran manufacturing factories that made fertilizer and medicine - IE real products, real…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: Eliminating Paperwork & Manual Data Entry in Manufacturing with Brian McKeown, Founding Engineer at Harmony AI
Brian McKeown is 24 years old, and was born and raised in Dallas, TX. He attended Texas A&M University in College Station, and was heavily involved in rec…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: Spotting Property Red Flags using the "CARFAX" of Real Estate with Jeff Emalaba, Founder & CEO of InvestFusion
Jeff Emalaba has a background that has morphed into risk mitigation over the years. He has a professional background in options trading, risk management and…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 E8: Democratizing Real Estate: Fractional Wealth Building for Modern Investors with Alex Blackwood, CEO of Mogul
NEWS: Mogul Secures Oversubscribed $15.5M Series A Led by Draper Associates to Scale Its AI-Driven Real Estate Investing Platform Alex Blackwood grew up in…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: From Lab to Market: Scaling High-Growth Tech Startups with Caitlinn McMinn, Programs Director at TechFW
Today, we have a special episode of the Code Story podcast. Joining us today is Caitlinn McMinn, Executive Director at TechFW. TechFW is a nonprofit startup…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: Automating Local Lead Growth: High-Intent Prospecting & AI Verification with David Moore, Founder & CEO of Stalex.ai
David Moore started day trading when he was 16, along with his brother. By the age of 19, he had a 7 figure portfolio, indicating some solid success. He did…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 E7: The AI Legal Shift: Giving SME Law Firms BigLaw Leverage with Dave Berner, Co-Founder & CEO of Parachute
Back in August of 2025, Dave Berner joined the podcast previously in Season 11, episode 11, as the co-founder and CTO of Kinde. A past musician, he took up web…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: The AI Marketing Cloud: Harnessing Predictive Intent to Scale Growth with Christian Monberg, CTO of Zeta Global
Christian Monberg is originally from a small town in central Maine. His mother was a mathematician, which meant he got into engineering fairly young. This lead…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: Scaling Real-Time Search Data: Secure APIs for AI Infrastructure with Alaa Abdulridha, Engineering Director at SerpApi
Alaa Abdulridha is from souther Iraq, but now lives in Austin, TX. Post wars in Iraq, the country had poor infrastructure, which got him interested in building…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: The AI SAST Shift: Eliminating Vulnerability Backlogs with Santiago Castiñeira, Co-Founder & CTO of Maze
Santiago Castineira has quite the background in international living. He was born in Argentina, but grew up in Spain, then moved to Sweden, San Francisco, and…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 E6: The Spatial Web Shift: Building Decentralized AI Knowledge Graphs with Yaniv Tal, Co-Founder & CEO of Geo
Yaniv Tal grew up in the Bay Area in the 90's with parents who were engineers. They were both in electrical engineering, specifically digital/signal…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: The Enterprise AI Chip War: Rethinking LLM Silicon & Inference with Vasanth Mohan, Director of Product at SambaNova
Today, we welcome a special guest to the podcast, Vasanth Mohan, Head of Developer Relations and Product Marking at SambaNova. SambaNova is transforming AI…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: Dynamic Observability: Eliminating Telemetry Waste at Scale with Peter Morelli, Co-Founder & CEO of Bitdrift
Peter Morelli was born and raised in San Francisco, one of the few natives of the area. He was front and center, watching the tech scene explode in front of…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 E5: The Dynamic Compute Revolution: Eliminating Cache Invalidation with Julien Verlaguet, Founder & CEO of SkipLabs
Julien Verlaguet is a self proclaimed "French guy", growing up in south of France. He studied in Paris, and moved to the US when he was 27, spending 10…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: The Legal AI Shift: Automating Contract Workflows with AI Agents with Nick Holzherr, Founder & CEO of GitLaw
Nick Holzherr is originally from the Switzerland, but moved to UK when he was 7 years old, to the countryside. He had no real touch to computers until he was…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: The Return of Backbox, and AI as a Trusted Advisor, with Rekha Shenoy, CEO of Backbox
Today, we have a special return episode from our friends at Backbox, who we heard the creation story of the company back in Season 8. In this episode, we talk…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 E4: The AI GTM Engine: Turning Intent Signals into Warm Outbound Pipeline with Connor Heggie, Co-Founder & CTO of Unify
Connor Heggie grew up in Southern California, digging into technical things early on his life. He played with legos, was influence by Iron Man, and painted…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: The GPU Bottleneck: Democratizing AI Compute Pipelines with Christian Ondaatje, Founder & CEO of Aranya.tech
Christian Ondaatje is originally from Los Angelas, CA. He got into GPUs as an underclassmen in college, of course through gaming and VR. He ended up starting…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 E3: Architecting Frictionless Creator Infrastructure & Social Commerce with Dumi Mabhena, CEO of Hilite
Dumi Mabhena is originally from Zimbabwe, and has lived in 5 different countries. He now lives in Washington, DC, as he came to the states to attend…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: From Airbnb's Chronon Engine to Enterprise Real-Time Feature Compute with Varant Zanoyan, Co-Founder & CEO of Zipline AI
Varant Zanoyan was born in Washington DC, and grew up there and in Switzerland as well. He now lives in the Bay Area, specifically San Mateo. He's spent time…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: The AI DBA Shift: Automating Database Reliability & Performance with Itamar Syn-Hershko, Founder & CEO of NeverBlink
Itamar Syn-Hershko has been a tech guy since he was a wee lad - IE he was teaching his kindergarten teachers how to use their computers. He learned how to…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 E2: Securing Enterprise GenAI: Data Privacy & Security Guardrails with Steven Walchek, Founder & CEO of Liminal
Steven Walchek is originally from the Bay Area in California, but lives in Denver now. He's been there for 8 years with his family. He comes from a family of…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: The Intention Layer: Why Coding Agents Need Product Judgment with Drew Dillon, Founder & CEO of Brief
Drew Dillon is a tech founder and product leader, centered in the Bay Area. He is a person who likes to do a bit of everything, having an engineering…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 Bonus: Why Local On-Device AI Compute is the Future of Privacy with Behnam Bastani, Co-Founder & CEO of OpenInfer
Behnam Bastani is originally from Tehran, Iran. He left the country at the age of 17, setting out for Canada, where he got his Masters and PhD, before moving…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS13 E1: The Token Winter Is Coming: Why Code Inflation Fails to Ship Real Business Value with Dave Garcia, Founder & Co-CEO of Pensero
Dave Garcia is originally from Barcelona, and recently moved stateside, to the East Coast. He started coding when he was 7 years old, on a Commodore 64, in…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Favorite - Overcoming Broken Right-Sizing Models to Automate Real-Time Cloud Cost Optimization with Sharad Kumar & Harshit Omar, Co-Founders of FluidCloud
Sharad Kumar lives in Pleasanton, California with his wife and 2 kids. He enjoys playing all musical instruments, and spending time with his family. He has a 2…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Favorite - Rewriting the Rules of End-User Computing and the Rise of Autonomous, Agentic AI IT Operations with Yoni Avital, Co-Founder & Chief Evangelist of ControlUp
Yoni Avital lives in Tel Aviv, Israel, with his wife and 3 older children. The oldest kid is a boy, so Yoni and he try to see as many football games as…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Favorite - Making AI Deterministic for Developers and their Agents, with Patrick Vuong of Moderne
Today, we have a special guest on the Code Story podcast - Patrick Vuong, Director of Product at Moderne. Moderne is the agent tools company, building the…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: Rickard's Deterministic Return: Converting Scattered Data into Autonomous, Production-Grade Apps with Rickard Hansson, Founder & CEO of Gainable
We have a special return episode, by our good friend Rickard Hansson. Rickard joined us previously on the podcast in Season 8 to tell the creation story of…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E30: Wastewater Guardians: Automating Biology to Protect Clean Water with Virginia Szepietowski, Co-Founder of Nyad AI
Virginia Szepietowski grew up in the UK outside of London, and now lives in Alabama. She's had a winding path to her current venture, including body building…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: The App-Aware Illusion: Why Infinite Compute Fails Without Underlying Infrastructure Accountability and the Case for "Boring" IT with Richard Luna, President & Founder of Protected Harbor
Richard Luna grew up in New York, never living more than 35 from where he grew up. He is a self proclaimed super nerd, and has been one since he was 13 - at…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E29: Fractional Talent: Traditional Freelance Marketplaces Fail Enterprise Workflows and the Shift Toward Managed Engineering Teams with Danny Gal, Co-Founder & CEO of Proteams
Danny Gal was born and raised in the UK, and now lives outside of London. He attended University in Nottingham... yep, the same one from Robin Hood. He LOVES…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: The Perishable Supply Chain Crisis: Why Generic ERPs Fail Fresh Food Logistics and How AI Agents Are Transforming Error-Free Order Intake with Sid Dixit, Chief Technology Officer at iTradeNetwork
Sid Dixit is originally from central India, and came to the states for college. He is a technologist and builder at heart, serving in leadership roles across…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E28: The AI Throughput Illusion: Why Splurging on Expensive Models Fails to Ship Code and How to Measure Real Engineering Output with Emilie Schario, Co-Founder & Head of Product & Engineering at Kilo Code
Emilie Schario grew up in New Jersey, outside of Newark, and attended college in the state. Currently, she lives in Columbus, Georgia, outside of Atlanta. She…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: The Dashboard Mirage: Why Aggregate Metrics Hide Revenue Leaks and the Rise of Autonomous, Agentic Analytics with Bhaskar Sunkara, Founder & CEO of Bicycle AI
Bhaskar Sunkara grew up in Delhi, India, and moved to the states when he started working. He has lived in San Fransisco for several decades now, and has spent…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersThe AI Control Loop: The Enterprise AI Accountability Moment – with Shayne Higdon of Wallarm
Today, we are dropping our final episode in our series The AI Control Loop, How enterprises govern the AI they've already deployed - sponsored by our friends…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E27: The Real-Time Scaling Tax: Why High-Volume WebSockets Kill Monolithic Performance and How AnyCable Decoupled the Real-Time Layer with Irina Nazarova, CEO of Evil Martians
Irina Nazarova grew up in Russia, and has lived in Portugal, Turkey, and now, San Francisco. She got a computer science degree, but felt like an imposter in…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: The Global Talent Mirage: Why Rigid Immigration Frameworks Fail Elite Tech Teams and the Rise of the Global Mobility OS with Ramiro Roballos, Co-Founder & CEO of Tukki
Ramiro Roballos grew up in Buenos Aires, and 6 or 7 years ago, moved to Miami and now lives in Buffalo, NY. His path to entrepreneurship has been different, as…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersThe AI Control Loop: What's Missing in AI Security Today - with Craig Thomas of Wallarm
Today, we are dropping another episode in our series The AI Control Loop, How enterprises govern the AI they've already deployed - sponsored by our friends at…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E26: Your Automated CRM Texts are Ending up in the Spam Folder (And How to Fix It) with John Wright, Co-Founder & CEO of TrueDialog
John Wright grew up in Arkansas, when his family moved from Wisconsin for his Dad's job. He was influenced heavy by his father, who became an entrepreneur with…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: The App Is Dead, Long Live the Outcome: Why Autonomous AI Agents Are Rewriting Data Infrastructure and Transforming PostgreSQL Into a Dynamic Scratch Pad with Ajay Kulkarni, Founder & CEO of Tiger Data
Ajay Kulkarni grew up in tech, as his father was a tech entrepreneur selling PC's in the early 80's. He went to college in MIT, and eventually founded a…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersThe AI Control Loop: Detection is not Enough - with Tim Ebbers of Wallarm
Today, we are dropping another episode in our series The AI Control Loop, How enterprises govern the AI they've already deployed - sponsored by our friends at…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E25: From Processing $500B at Intuit to Building the Fraud-Proof Ledger: Eradicating Financial Misstatement with Ahikam Kaufman, Co-Founder & CEO of Safebooks AI
Ahikam Kaufman spent most of his career in the Bay Area. After becoming a CPA, he started his career as CFO at a startup company. Over time, he has been giving…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E24 P2: Why Off-the-Shelf APIs Fail Complex Web Workflows and the Blueprint for High-Velocity Product Engineering with Volodymyr & Vitalii Sydorenko, Co-Founders of Gearheart
Volodymyr Sydorenko lives in London, and collects mechanical keyboards. His most unusual hobby is that he does clay sculptures of characters, or random people…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersThe AI Control Loop: When AI Goes Rogue - with Craig Thomas of Wallarm
Today, we are dropping another episode in our series The AI Control Loop, How enterprises govern the AI they've already deployed - sponsored by our friends at…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E24 P1: Why Off-the-Shelf APIs Fail Complex Web Workflows and the Blueprint for High-Velocity Product Engineering with Volodymyr & Vitalii Sydorenko, Co-Founders of Gearheart
Volodymyr Sydorenko lives in London, and collects mechanical keyboards. His most unusual hobby is that he does clay sculptures of characters, or random people…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: The Microsoft File Trap: Moving Beyond Manual PowerPoint and Excel Workflows to Build an AI-Native "Consulting" Layer with Tim Lidman, Co-Founder & CEO of Clyde AI
Tim Lidman lives in Denver, CO. He has had an unconventional path to being a Tech CEO. In fact, He moved from London to Sweden when he was 18... to try to be a…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersThe AI Control Loop: AI Discovery isn't just AI - with Tim Ebbers of Wallarm
Today, we are dropping another episode in our series The AI Control Loop, How enterprises govern the AI they've already deployed - sponsored by our friends at…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E23: Why Traditional Enterprise Linux Starves Your Multi-Million Dollar AI Hardware and How to Reclaim Lost GPU ROI with Gregory M. Kurtzer, Founder & CEO of CIQ
Gregory M. Kurtzer is a veteran open-source pioneer, technologist, and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in high-performance computing (HPC) and…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersDeveloper Chats – Pavel Shchekotov
Today, we are continuing our series, entitled Developer Chats - hearing from the large scale system builders themselves. In this episode, we are talking with…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: Skillset Mismatch: Fusing Labor Market Signals with Program Catalogs to Build a Real-Time Economic Intelligence Layer with Sushma Vadlamannati, Founder & CEO of zScale
Sushma Vadlamannati is originally from India, and moved to the states over 25 year ago to pursue her bachelors in at Texas Women's University. She comes from a…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersThe AI Control Loop: AI Security is API Security - with Tim Erlin of Wallarm
Today, we are kicking off a new series entitled The AI Control Loop, How enterprises govern the AI they've already deployed - sponsored by our friends at…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E22: The Million-Token Context Mirage: Why RAG is Far From Dead in High-Stakes, Zero-Error Global Tax Compliance with Alex Bowcut, Head of Engineering at Sphere
Alex Bowcut is from Salt Lake City, Utah originally, but has been in the Bay Area for the last 4 years. He's always been interested in computers, and was in…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: The Context Window Mirage: Why Generic Prompt Engineering Fails Enterprise Workflows and the Rise of Dynamic, Task-Specific RAG Orchestration with Ankit Dheendsa, Co-Founder & CEO of Morphos AI
Ankit Dheendsa is a Canadian, born and raised, living outside of Toronto today. He claims he is fortunate to have a great ecosystem of professionals and mentor…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E21: Why Your Health App is Drowning in Wearable Noise (And Missing Real Insights) with Marco Benitez, Co-Founder & CEO of ROOK
Marco Benitez lives in Naples, Florida. In the past he lived in Miami, but found Naples much more family friendly. He is originally from Mexico, along with…