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 FoundersS6 Favorite: The Pop-Culture Video Engine: Bootstrapping & Scaling ClassHook to Acquisition with Alexander Deeb
Alex Deeb was influenced by the education space early on. He had many teachers who inspired him through his life, and his parents pushed him to do well in…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Favorite: Solving the Data Blindspot: How Hustle Fund-Backed Pyrl Cryptographs Commerce with Adam Newman
Adam Newman grew up in the suburbs of New York and Brooklyn. Now, he lives in the DC / Maryland area. His grandparents were immigrants, and owned a bakery and…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: Killing Security Alert Fatigue: Building Developer-First AppSec with Harshil Parikh of Tromzo
Harshil Parikh is the father of 2 daughters, as well as the father of 2 dogs. Most of the time spent outside of work is with his family, although he does love…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: What If Git and MongoDB Had a Baby? Building a Version-Controlled Knowledge Graph with Gavin Mendel-Gleason, TerminusDB
When asked what he does for fun, Gavin Mendel-Gleason likes to program for fun. He builds stuff in his spare time, as tech dominates his life. Outside of tech…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: The $1.3B Idea: Interviewing 1,200 Executives to Found Scribe with Jennifer Smith
Jennifer Smith had an abnormal path to tech. She was born in upstate New York, and was not exposed to tech or startups or building companies during her early…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 E30: From a Failed Sneaker Side-Hustle to Building the Backbone of Composable E-Commerce with Liam Gerada, Krepling
Liam Gerada comes from an eCommerce background, building websites, stores, etc. He is passionate about providing people ways to find cheaper products through…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersMicrosoft Careers with Girish & Junior!
Today's episode is sponsored by Microsoft! Guests: Girish Bablani and Junior Diarrassouba, two Microsoft employees at different stages in their career. One…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: Fixing What Kafka Broke: Architecting Next-Gen Event Streaming with Addison Higham of StreamNative
Addison Higham is a father of 2 kids, and has been married for 12 years. His family is of the utmost importance to him, and he has been happy to be able to…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersTutelage of Treehouse - Graham Morby, Sr. Software Engineer
Tutelage of Treehouse, sponsored by Treehouse! Guest: Graham Morby is a Senior Software Engineer who works as a dev for hire. He has developed applications in…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 E29: Bringing GPT to Voice: Architecting Telephony Intelligence and Speech NLP with Irina Bednova, CTO of Cordless
Irina Bednova started programming when she was a kid, starting out with a smash the cockroach game written in Delphi (which is object oriented pascal). She…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: Defeating GenAI Fraud and Location Spoofing with André Ferraz of Bessemer-Backed Incognia
Andre Ferraz was influenced heavily by his parents, as they were both computer scientists. When he was 10 years old, his first science project was themed…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: Processing 20% of Global Equities: Engineering Real-Time Data Fabrics with Robert Cooke of 3forge
Ever since he was a little kid, Robert Cooke always had a fascination with computers. Even when he was super young, when he didn't know much about them, he was…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersTutelage of Treehouse - Daniel McElroy, WV Coding Club
Tutelage of Treehouse, sponsored by Treehouse! Guest: Daniel McElroy is the Founder of the West Virgina Coding Club. He has been helping young people thrive…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 E28: Stop Drawing Diagrams: Automating 3D Multi-Cloud Visuals & Drift Detection with Tyson Kunovsky of AutoCloud
Tyson Kunosvsky was born in South Africa, and travelled a lot as a kid. When he was a kid, he was majorly influenced by his parents, who ran the Gottman…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: Stop Building Boring Forms: Engineering No-Code Interactive Funnels with Saksham Sharda of Outgrow
Saksham Sharda likes to make short films, or anything that is related to videos. In fact, he has narrowed that down to creating trailers, which he attributes…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: Bypassing the Gatekeepers: Building a 60-Second Video Pitch Marketplace with Mike Cruz of Protégé
Mike Cruz grew up in Guam, near Japan. He spent 18 years before moving to the US for college. He has always been in tech - everywhere from the Discovery…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersTutelage of Treehouse - Dustin Usey, Treehouse
Tutelage of Treehouse, sponsored by Treehouse! Guest: Dustin Usey is a Treehouse graduate and a full time technical evangelist for Treehouse. He has pursued…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 E27: Escaping the Social Media Algorithm: Building a $100M+ Community SaaS with Gina Bianchini of Mighty Networks
Gina Bianchini grew up in Cupertino in the 70's & 80's, which was a place where people were tinkerers and creators. What she learned from that experience was a…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: The Documentation Debt Trap: Why Static Readmes Are Sabotaging Dev Velocity and the Shift Toward Continuous Code Understanding with Omer Rosenbaum, Co-Founder & CTO of Swimm
Omer Rosenbaum lives in Tel Aviv, with his wife and 3 month old son. He loves to teach, and he shares his knowledge on his YouTube channel. He loves coffee…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: The Startup Code Doctor: Triage for Broken Tech Stacks & Technical Debt with Andreas Creten of madewithlove
Andreas Creten has been in tech for as long as he can remember, and even started a company when he was 18 years old. He is a family man, with 3 kids, which is…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersTutelage of Treehouse - Cynthia Kao, Operation Code
Tutelage of Treehouse, sponsored by Treehouse! Guest: Cynthia Kao is the Executive Director at Operation Code. Previously, she has spent time as a combat…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 E26: From a Genomics PhD to a Deloitte Exit: Engineering AI Grant Matching with Aria Hahn of Pocketed
Aria Hahn grew up in Okanagan, in British Columbia, Canada. She's always been on the entrepreneurial train, though at times she says she may not have known it…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: Moving Beyond Legacy Manual Testing to Drive High-Velocity Digital Assurance and DevOps Optimization with Chakri Devarakonda, Head of Quality Engineering at Tavant
Chakri Devarakonda finds it strange how he got into Quality Engineering starting out as a security guy. That being said, he can definitely see the intersection…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: Moving Beyond Real-Time: Engineering Zero Trust Payment Precision with Ben Turner of Verituity
Ben Turner's grandfathers were both an entreprenuer. One grandfather went to Cornell, but ended up buying a fishing boat and then eventually, a hardware store…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersTutelage of Treehouse - Jason Gilmore, Treehouse
Tutelage of Treehouse, sponsored by Treehouse! Guest: Jason Gilmore is the CEO of Treehouse. He is also a principal at Xenon Partners, along with a startup…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 E25: Why Webhooks are Broken: Building the Twilio for Webhooks with Tom Hacohen of Svix
For Tom Hacohen, coding started when he was 9 years old. He took after school robotics classes which required coding... and once he stepped into the…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: From Oracle & AWS Aurora to CTO of MongoDB: Scaling Document Databases with Mark Porter
Mark Porter has always been fascinated with puzzles, so tech just fit for him and a great journey for him. He got his first 4k computer in middle school, and…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: From BMW Deep Learning to Virtual Cities: Training Autonomous Systems with Maria Meier of Phantasma Labs
Maria Meier grew up bilingual, as her Mom was from Poland and her Dad was from Germany. In her free time, she participates Olympic weight lifting (which she…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersNotifications North Star - Stephanie Griffith, Marketing Expert
Notifications North Star, sponsored by Courier! Guest: Stephanie Griffith is an email and SMS marketing expert, and a marketing strategy consultant. She is a…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 E24: Killing the Feature Request Black Hole: Engineering Product Feedback Systems with Matt Young of UserVoice
Matt Young claims to have been born with a tech spoon in his mouth, having his Dad work for IBM and providing early access to computers. In the 80's, he was…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: Building a Hyper-Converged Console: Zero-Trust RMM Infrastructure with Tyler Rohrer of Remotely
In his words, Tyler Rohrer is best described through his spirit animal, Curious George. He likes to write and try new things. He has 3 grown children, one who…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: Trading While You Sleep: Building a 24/7 Algorithmic Engine with Andrew Salvadore of Coinrule
Andrew Salvadore is a father of 2 young boys, and when he is not working, they fill up his schedule. He and his boys live half an hour from the forest, so they…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersNotifications North Star - Troy Goode, Courier
Notifications North Star, sponsored by Courier! Guest: Troy Goode is the Co-founder & CEO of Courier. He is a multi startup veteran, a Y Combinator veteran…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 E23: Engineering Global Mobility: Building a B2B SaaS for Cross-Border Teams with Franzi Löw of Localyze
Franzi Low doesn't have the usual CTO path. She studied economics, and was doing her PhD in econometrics, prior to her current venture, and was a teaching…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: Scaling EdTech Infrastructure: De-Siloing the Digital Classroom with Shaunak Roy, CEO of Yellowdig
Shaunak Roy spent 10 years in the tech industry before deciding to be a tech entrepreneur. In undergraduate, he studied mechanical engineering and eventually…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersNotifications North Star - Vatasha White, Courier
Notifications North Star, sponsored by Courier! Guest: Vatasha White is a Senior Software Engineer at Courier. Previously, she built software at Lacework…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 E22: Stop Over-Provisioning: Automating Kubernetes FinOps with Machine Learning with Matt Provo of StormForge
Matt Provo has been married for 16 years and has three kids. So between the Provo household and his startup, there is never a dull moment. He is originally…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: Solving the Legal Relocation Bottleneck: Scaling Fintech-Infused LegalTech with Temilola Adebayo of HumanSquad
Temilola Adebayo is in tech, but her background is in film production. She grew up most other life in Nigeria, but then moved to Canada. She has been producing…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: The API for Everything: Scaling a $175M+ Universal Communications Engine with Christine Spang of Nylas
According to Christine Spang, she is secretly Canadian, being born in Toronto. She moved to Upstate New York when she was 3, and grew up there. She came from a…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersNotifications North Star - Patrick Malatack, Matrix Partners
Notifications North Star, sponsored by Courier! Guest: Patrick Malatack is a partner at Matrix Partners, early stage investment firm. Prior to that, he spent 7…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 E21: The Code-First Data Stack: Bringing DevOps Best Practices to Data Pipelines with Douwe Maan of Meltano
Douwe Maan started programming when he was 9 years old, and grew up with his Dad pushing Linux on him over Windows. He was raised in the Netherlands, outside…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: From Zencoder's Exit to a $170M+ Twilio for Video Platform: Engineering Low-Latency Video APIs at Global Scale with Jon Dahl of Mux
Jon Dahl was a philosophy major in college, and eventually, obtained a graduate degree studying theology. He thought he would go into academia, but he quickly…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersNotifications North Star - Eric Koslow, Lattice
Notification North Star, sponsored by Courier! Guest: Eric Koslow is the Co-founder of Lattice, the people success platform. Prior to Lattice, he spent time…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 E20: Eliminating the Flaky Test: Engineering AI-Driven Low-Code QA with Izzy Azeri, Co-Founder of mabl
Izzy Azeri has been in the tech industry for 20 years, starting out at places like EMC and VMWare. He's married with three kids, living in Franklin…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: From Elite Triathlete to Stanford Bioinformatics: Automating Longevity with George Georgallides of Basis Health
George Georgallides is originally from a small island in Europe called Cypress. He grew up there, joined the army, and competed in Track & Field and…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: From Corporate Lawyer to Building an Enterprise AI Powerhouse with Sarvarth Misra of Leah AI (formerly ContractPodAi)
Savarth Misra didn't start out in tech. In fact, he was a lawyer, working as a corporate commercial lawyer in Asia and the UK. During this time, he noticed how…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 E19: Turning Chaos into Order: Building a Media Graph for Unstructured Data with Kirk Marple of Unstruk Data
Kirk Marple has been a family man for 20+ years now. His kids are older now, in their 20's, which he finds amazing. He's been in tech for most of his whole…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: From First Line of Code at Hootsuite to Building a Network for Tech Talent with Beier Cai of Commit.dev
Beier Cai has been in the tech space for 16 years, almost exclusively in early stage startups. The third startup he worked at did pretty well, which was…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: The Fractional CTO Fallacy: Move Beyond Fragmented Freelance Code and Build a Dedicated, Entrepreneurial Product Engine with Patrick Bryant, Co-Founder & CEO of CODE+TRUST
Patrick Bryant lives in Charleston, South Carolina, and splits time in Washington, DC. He loves entrepreneurship, and believes it is the number one change…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 E18: Never Rebuild Permissions Again: Engineering Full-Stack Authorization and Policy-as-Code with Or Weis of Permit.io
Or Weis has been a programmer or engineer since the age of 5. He started playing with DOS commands super early in his life. He made a significant leap in his…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: Swipe Right for a Job: Engineering Mobile-First Recruiting and Winning over Richard Branson with Stephanie Florio of Swob
Stephanie Florio's journey to tech started in the world of advertising. She always knew that she wanted to be an entrepreneur, but didn't really know what it…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 E17: The Real-Time Smoke Alarm: Engineering Automated Evidence Collection and GRC Architecture with Girish Redekar of Sprinto
If you would have told Girish Redekar while he was in college that he would eventually be writing software, he would have been shocked. His studies focused on…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: The Ubiquity of OpenTelemetry: Standardizing Global Cloud Observability with Austin Parker of Lightstep
Austin Parker started out at a young age with computers, writing programs in BASIC and hanging out on bulletin boards. Prior to his tech career, he held many…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: The Algorithmic Rebalancer: Engineering Deep Learning Ensembles and Automated Downside Protection with Stephen Mathai-Davis of Q.ai
Stephen Mathai-Davis grew up in a family where he was expected to go into the buy side of Wall Street. Originally, he rebelled against this, pursuing…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 E16: Engineering the 4x Revenue Engine: Building an AI-Powered Renter FinTech Network with Jimmy Jacobson of Stake
Jimmy Jacobson grew up in Snoqualmie, about 45 minutes east of Seattle, Washington. He graduated from college in 2020, as the pandemic was breaking - but…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: The B2B Revenue Matrix: How Dreamdata Automates Complex Algorithmic Attribution at Scale with Lars Grønnegaard
Outside of technology, Lars Grønnegaard is an avid cyclist. He stats that if you've been to Copenhagen, where his from, you would know that a lot of people do…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: The Evolution of a $1.4B Unicorn: Modernizing the SOC, Leading to an Exit to Databricks with Jack Naglieri of Panther Labs
Jack Naglieri grew up in Ohio, but moved to Virginia when he was 10. He had a normal east coast family up-bringing, but he focused on tech early on, even as a…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 E15: Mastering Day 2 Kubernetes Chaos: Building Autonomous AI SREs and Raising $67M with Itiel Schwartz of Komodor
For Itiel Schwartz, it's hard to remember life before his current venture. He studied computer science and psychology in school, and during that time he…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: Scaling the Technical Mindset: From Self-Taught Dev to Engineering Leadership with Todd Larsen of Tech Leaders
From the time he was very young, Todd Larsen was always interested in technology. However, he ended up studying audio engineering so found his way to tech…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS6 Bonus: From AWS S3 to Multimodal AI: Engineering the Search-for-Everything Engine with Marin Smiljanic of Omnisearch
Marin Smiljanic was born and raised in Croatia. He attended a local math school, which actually got him into tech. Post attending college, his first…