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 FoundersFounder Chats - Daulet Amirkhanov
Today, we are dropping another episode in our "chats" series, specifically on the founder side - hearing from those scaling the companies themselves…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: The Human In the Loop Bottleneck: Moving Beyond Static Models to Unleash Autonomous, Recursive Self-Improving AI with Kunal Bhatia, Co-Founder & CEO of Hexo Labs
Kunal Bhatia is originally from India, but moved to the Bay Area to start building his company. He admits there is quite a contrast between the two places, but…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E20: The Agentic Privileged Access Crisis: Why Making AI Agents "Well-Behaved" Fails and How to Structuralize Their Blast Radius with Ofir Stein, Co-Founder & CTO of Apono
Ofir Stein is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, born and raised in Jerusalem. He spent many years in the Israeli air force, in infrastructure and security, before he…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: The Bearer Token Trap: Why API Secrets are Leaking and the Rise of Dynamic, Zero-Trust Machine Identity Providers with Anusha Iyer, Founder & CEO of Corsha
Anusha Iyer is a first generation immigrant, born in India. She moved to the states with her family, when her Dad was going grad school at Ohio State. She…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E19: The Real Estate Draw Nightmare: Automating Underwriting and Risk Mitigation Across $3T in Real Estate Finance Data with Thomas Schlegel, Principal Software Engineer at Built
Thomas Schlegel lives in Nashville, TN, but grew up in rural Virginia. He didn't have the internet for a large portion of his childhood - but, his friends did!…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: 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 E18: Legacy Planning Gaps: Why Static Legal Paperwork Fails Modern Families and the Rise of the Continuous, Compassionate Estate OS with Brooke Hipps, Founder of Weekend Will
Brooke Hipps currently lives in Fort Worth, TX but grew up down the road in DeSoto. She is entrepreneur through and through, from the early years of learning…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersMaking 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: The AI Tribunal: Turning the Gawker Playbook into an Automated, Crowd-Sourced Jury for Media Accountability with Aron D’Souza, Founder & CEO of Objection AI
Aron D'Souza is originally from Australia, the son of a Chinese mother and an Indian-Portuguese father. He is a graduate of Oxford, and got his PhD from the…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E16: The LLM Wild West: Moving Beyond Fragile Notebook Prompts to Build a Multi-Model Enterprise AI Control Plane with Nikunj Bajaj, Co-Founder & CEO of TrueFoundry
Nikunj Bajaj was born in India, and completed his undergraduate studies there. The intrigue of Silcon Valley in 2013 brought him to the Bay Area, where he got…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: Why Your Enterprise AI Pilots Are Stalling and the Unsexy Data Pipeline Fix for 10x Engineering Velocity with Tyler Hochman, Founder & CEO of FORE Enterprise
Tyler Hochman got started early in the world of entrepreneurship. In Middle School, he got into Gemology, fascinated by the formation of gems, becoming a young…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E15: The Copilot Fallacy: Why Pure Automation Fails the Real World and the Rise of the Hybrid AI-Human Lifestyle OS with Meghan Joyce, Co-Founder & CEO of Duckbill
Meghan Joyce comes from a long line of people living life to the fullest. She takes a lot of influence from her grandmother, who was an entrepreneur, making…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersThe AI Ultimatum: Preparing for a World of Intelligent Machines and Radical Transformation with Steve Brown
Today we have a special guest and author on the Code Story podcast, Steve Brown. Steve is a former DeepMind futurist, and recently published a book called The…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E14: The "Ship and Pray" AI Trap: Moving Beyond Vibe Checks to Give Product Managers a Code-Free Validation Engine with Catalina Turlea, Co-Founder & CEO of Lovelaice
Catalina Turlea is originally from Romania, growing up in the countryside there. Post getting her bachelors, she moved to Austria for her masters, and landed…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: Fusing AI-Powered Predictive Malware Inference with Content Disarmament and Reconstruction (CDR) to Neutralize Silent File Attacks with Dr. Aqib Rashid, Applied AI Lead at Glasswall
Dr. Aqib Rashid was born and raised in London. He spent a lot of time around computers and tech growing up, and his parents pushed him towards becoming an…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E13: The Death of Legacy VDI: Ditching Costly Virtual Desktops to Secure Enterprise BYOD Laptops Locally with David Matalon, Founder & CEO of Venn
David Matalon grew up in Great Neck, outside of New York City. He's always been interested in tech, way back in the early days of PCs, DOS, Windows and even…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersFounder Chats - Vadim Dedov
Today, we are dropping another episode in our "chats" series, specifically on the Founder side, - hearing from those scaling the companies themselves…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: Intercepting Risky Prompts and Deploying Local LLMs to Neutralize Data Leakage via Pragatix with Yoav Crombie, Co-Founder & CEO of AGAT Software
Yoav Crombie was born and raised in Israel, serving in the army for 6 years as an engineer. He's been in the tech industry of 35 years, but doesn't see this…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E12: The Rogue Agent Epidemic: Moving Beyond Laptop Prompts to Build a Centralized, Production-Grade AI Control Plane with Robert Brennan, Co-Founder & CEO of OpenHands
Robert Brennan grew up in Boston and loved it so much that he ended up calling it home again. He spent time in New York between his bookend times, but he…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: The Predictive Model Trap: Moving Beyond Static LTV Forecasting to Unleash Causal AI and Dynamic Multi-Armed Bandits with Tobias "Tobi" Konitzer, PhD, VP of AI at GrowthLoop
Tobi Konitzer was born in Germany, and studied cultural studies as an undergraduate student. Eventually, he went to Duke to get a PhD in political science. And…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E11: The Security Operations Center "Hellscape": Moving Beyond Broken Threat Feeds to Empower Overworked Cyber Analysts with Human-AI Collaboration with Brian Carbaugh, Co-Founder & CEO of Andesite
Brian Carbaugh has a non-standard path to being a CEO in the startup world. He was in the marine core for 5-6 years in active duty, before attending Georgetown…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: Why Paper-Heavy Back-End Portals Fail Agents and the Rise of Client-Facing, Real-Time Transaction OS with Reannah Wyatt, Founder & CEO of The Real Time
Reannah Wyatt is from Bandera, TX, raised on a 4th generation cattle and horse ranch. Eventually, she went to West Texas for school, rodeoing for Howard…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E10: The Childhood Smartphone Epidemic: Re-Engineering Android OS to Stop Social Media Addiction and Teach Kids Digital Wellness with Dane Witbeck, Founder & CEO of Pinwheel
Dane Witbeck grew up in Georgia, and has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. He was the kid selling ripped CD's in school, along with other odds and ends. He…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: The Social Curation Revolution: Moving Beyond Messy Bookmarks to Build an Intuitive, Shareable "Stacking" Ecosystem with Martina Zrnec, Co-Founder & CTO of Stacklist
Martina Zrnec is located in Croatia and grew up playing basketball, spending every minute she could on the court. And when I say every minute, I mean it - she…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E9: Breaking the 30-Second Video Processing Barrier to Deliver Sub-Second, Interactive Generative Media with Mitesh Agrawal, Co-Founder of Positron
Mitesh Agrawal has a background in Mechanical Engineering. He was one of the co-founders of Lambda, a company in the supercomputing space, where he spent 8.5…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: Why Spray-and-Pray Job Applications Are Quietly Destroying Your Tech Career Momentum with Ashwin Agrawal, Founder & CEO of MobiusEngine
Ashwin Agrawal came to the US when he was 17, to Rochester for school. He now lives in the Bay Area, and admits he misses his friends on the east coast, as…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersDeveloper Chats - Oleksandr Piekhota
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 E8: H1B Paperwork Nightmare: Why HR Teams Stumble on Visas and How Digital-First Frameworks Shift Ownership Back with Satya Mishra, Co-Founder & CTO of WayLit
Satya Mishra was born and raised in India, in one of the smaller tech hubs on the eastern coast. He came to the states 25 years ago on an H1B visa, working in…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersFounder Chats - Max Denevich
Today, we are dropping another episode in our "chats" series, but expanding the audience set to include more folks. This episode is Founder Chats -…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: Pioneering Female-Led Logistics: How to Build and Fund a High-Density Micromobility Platform in Rapidly Growing Markets with Nouran Farouk, Founder & CEO of Dosy
Nouran Farouk grew up in Egypt, which she notes the culture has a deep root in family. She and her sister have always been drawn to social entrepreneurship…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E7: Fusing Bring-Your-Own-AI Logic with Governed Orchestration to Bridge Enterprise System Gaps Without the Migration Risk with James Davies, CEO of Kinetic Data
James Davies lives in the Maryland area, and started his career at the crossroads of tech and the auto industry. His first girlfriend's father owned some car…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: Deliverability Death Trap: Why Your Cold Outreach is Hitting the Spam Folder and the AI Engine Keeping Domains Out of Gmail Jail with Daniel Shnaider, Co-Founder & CEO of Warmy.io
Daniel Shnaider came from a family that worked 9 to 5 jobs - engineers, doctors, etc. He was a military officer in Isreal, and while he was there, he met the…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E6: Moving Beyond Simple Chatbots to Run end-to-end B2C Support and Operations via Agentic AI Layers with Michael Fester, Co-Founder of 14.ai
Michael Fester grew up in Denmark, the son of a French mother and a Danish father. He was always interested in tech, math and the arts, initially wanting to go…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: The Accountability Economy: Why "Buying Developer Capacity" is a Scam and the Blueprint for 400% Faster Engineering Velocity with Prashanth Tondapu, Founder & CEO of Innostax
Prashanth Tondapu was born and raised in India, now living in New Delhi, the capital there. He claims to be a textbook nerd, loving technology and information…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersThe Gene Simmons of Data Protection - AI Inference-time Guardrails
The Gene Simmons of Data Protection: Protegrity's KISS Method Today, we are releasing our final FINAL episode from our series, entitled The Gene Simmons of…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E5: The Flying Drone Fallacy: Why Forklift Computer Vision Beats Full Automation and the Rise of the Autonomous Warehouse AI Agent with Marc Gyöngyösi, Founder & CEO of OneTrack
Marc Gyöngyösi has had a lifelong passion for building and technology, shaped early on by time spent crafting wooden projects and tinkering with…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: Why Traditional Nearshore IT Outsourcing is Broken (And How "Own It, Prove It" Dev Stacks Fix It) with Johnny Halife, Partner & CTO of SOUTHWORKS
Johnny Halife was born and raised in Argentina. As such, he takes soccer very seriously. He is a die hard fan of Boca, and has taken his family to live games…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersImpact: How to Inspire, Align and Amplify Innovative Teams with Keith Lucas
Today, we have a special guest on the podcast, Keith Lucas, a startup advisor specializing in product, growth, people and culture. Keith led product and…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: Stripping Away Platitudes, Defining Clear Categories, and Storytelling for AI-Search Discovery with Marlena Sarunac, Co-Founder & Fractional CMO at The Company Advice
Marlena Sarunac is a first generation American, her family being from Croatia. She started her career at Mastercard, left to travel around Europe (before it…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E4: The Accent-Biased Workplace: Shifting from Extractive Transcripts to Local, On-Device "Listener-Side" Phoneme Translation with Arto Minasyan, Co-Founder & President of Krisp.ai
Arto Minasyan is originally from Armenia. He's a serial entrepreneur, having started 7 companies, selling 4 of them. He used to be into the sciences, having…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: Why Staff Augmentation is Quietly Starving Your Product Innovation: Dmytro Ovcharenko, Founder & CEO of Alcor
Dmytro Ovcharenko lives in Palo Alto, CA. He graduated from Berkeley in 2015 - not as an engineer, but as a lawyer. His first connection to tech was in his…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: Dismantling Legacy HR Silos to Automate Onboarding, Scheduling, and Compliance for the Deskless Economy with Arjun Vora & Tito Goldstein, Co-Founders of Teambridge
Arjun Vora was born and raised in Mumbai. He grew up in a family that wasn't financially stable, which drove him to come to the states for new opportunities…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E3: Overhauling Enterprise Deal-Making via Real-Time Dynamic Deal Rooms and Autonomous Investor Analytics with Arsham Ghahramani, Founder & CEO of Ribbon
Arsham Ghahramani lives in Toronto, but grew up in rural countryside of UK, out in the middle of nowhere on a farm. He was surrounded by tractors, chickens…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: Overcoming Broken Right-Sizing Models to Automate Real-Time, Non-Disruptive 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 Bonus: Decoupling Compute and Storage to Solve the Petabyte-Scale Log Cost Crisis and Power Real-Time AI SRE Engines with David Sztykman, Chief Architect & VP of Product at Hydrolix
David Sztykman lives in Paris, but used to live in New York for a time. He has always been into video, streaming and photography. For the latter, as a kid, his…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E2: Why Pure AI Automation Fails Enterprise Procurement and How "Customer Assurance" Unlocks Hidden Deal Velocity with Pukar Hamal, Founder & CEO of SecurityPal AI
Pukar Hamal was born in 1991, and is originally from Katmandu, Nepal. He grew up with no plumbing and no electricity, prior to moving to the states to grow up…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: Why Your Favorite Luxury Hotel Is Quietly Replacing Front-Desk Forms with AI Agents with Harman Singh Narula, Co-Founder & CEO of Canary Technologies
Harman Narula lives in NYC with his wife and 2 young kids. He was born in the states, from parents who immigrated to the country from India. The "immigrant…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 Bonus: The Death of the Black Box POS: Solving the Menu API Nightmare and Scaling Unified Commerce Across 2,000+ Locations with Niko Papademetriou, Co-Founder & EVP of Qu
Niko Papademetriou lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and son. He has had an interesting background professionally. He got into finance, and experienced…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS12 E1: The Blast Radius Nightmare: Shifting from Blind Static Terraform Plans to Real-Time Predictive Change Intelligence with Dylan Ratcliffe, Founder & CEO of Overmind
Dylan Ratcliffe lives in San Francisco (for less than a year), but grew up on a farm in the bush in Australia, riding motorbikes and playing video games. He…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS11 Favorite: The Agent Authentication Crisis: Moving Past Prompt Engineering to Build Zero-Trust Tool Execution and Secure zkTLS/MCP Actions Planes with Sam Partee, Co-Founder & CTO of Arcade.dev
Sam Partee started out his love for tech/engineering by working on cars. After many y ears of working on cars, and even starting his own car stereo…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS11 Favorite: The API Sprawl Cure: Moving Beyond GraphQL Federation to Composable, Type-Safe API Gateways for the Agentic Era with Jens Neuse, Founder of WunderGraph
Jens Neuse grew up in Germany, originally planning to be a carpenter. In his 2nd year as an apprentice, he was in a motorcycle wreck that thrust him into a…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS11 E30: The $20 Trillion Paper Trail: Why Contracts Are Financial Assets (Not Just Legal Documents) and How Multi-Agent AI Slashes Enterprise Procurement Waste with Brandon Card, Co-Founder & CEO of Terzo
Brandon Card has always been involved in sports. In High School, he was a 3 sport athlete and still plays today, along side working out, doing yoga and…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS11 Bonus: The Myth of "Sales as an Art": Transitioning from Gut-Based Forecasts to Algorithmic CRM Forensics and Pipeline Cadence with Juan DeAngulo, Co-Founder of Inselligence
Juan DeAngulo was born and raised in South America - then eventually, came to the status in 2017 for college to play Tennis. He kept playing throughout college…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersDeveloper Chats - Petr Petrenko
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 FoundersS11 E29: The 60-Second Behavioral Blueprint: Why "Great-on-Paper" Candidates Fail and How Voice AI Biomarkers Predict Real-World Team Chemistry with Sarah Lucena, Founder & CEO of Mappa
Sarah Lucena lives in San Francisco, and starts here day at 4:30 am to lead her LATAM team. She's originally from Brazil, born and raised on the north east…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS11 Bonus: Headless Observability: Why Dashboards Are Disappearing and How "Context Engineering" Achieves a 90% Drop in AI SRE Costs with Tucker Callaway, CEO of Mezmo
Tucker Calloway grew up in Alamo, California, in the Easy Bay Area. And has returned to that area to raise his family - 25-30 minutes outside of the San…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS11 E28: The Temporal Correctness Crisis: Why Static RAG Context Leads to Broken AI Agent Actions and How to Engine-Unify Real-Time Streaming Data with Hojjat Jafarpour, Founder & CEO of DeltaStream
Hojjat Jafarpour lives with his family in California. He got his PhD in databases and data streaming, back when the landscape was different and data streaming…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersDeveloper Chats - Svyatoslav Babinets of Meta
Today, we are kicking off a new series, entitled Developer Chats - hearing from the large scale system builders themselves. In this episode, we are talking…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS11 Bonus: The New AI Engineering Reality: Decoupling Testing and Orchestrating the Next-Gen Software Factory with Spriha Baruah Tucker, Field CTO / Executive Leader at Buildkite
Spriha Baruah Tucker has spent time in a number of places - growing up in India, attending boarding school in Singapore, and now living in San Francisco. She…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS11 Bonus: Dismantling the "Upwork Middleman Tax" and Scaling a Global Freelance Network Without Percentage Slices with Gajus Kuizinas, Co-Founder & CTO of Contra
Gajus Kuizinas lives in Mexico City, and travels between there, New York and San Francisco. He had a non-traditional upbringing for an engineer, as all of his…