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 FoundersS11 Bonus: Why "Vibe Coding" Fails at Scale and How No-Code Ecosystems Unlocked $1B in User Revenue with Emmanuel Straschnov, Co-Founder & CEO of Bubble
Emmanuel Straschnov grew up in rural France, which is interestingly enough where he started doing computer stuff (he mentioned there wasn't much else to do in…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS11 Bonus: The Epistemic Podcast Shift: Destroying Dashboard Fragmentation and Injecting Multi-Platform Orchestration with Clayton Gentry, Co-Founder & CTO of Podstock
Clayton Gentry has been digitally oriented his whole life. When he was younger, he was into photography and making videos with his friends and for school -…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS11 Bonus: The Weekend Prototype Pivot: Transitioning from FinTech DevOps to Advancing AI Research Infrastructure with David Asamu, Co-Founder of Nesla
David Asamu grew up in Nigeria and got into technology early, through serving his community. He attended University, and continued his community efforts there…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS11 E2: The 4x Faster Indexer: Scaling Rust-Based Search to Millions of Documents Without Infrastructure Bloat with Clément "Kero" Renault, Co-Founder & CTO of Meilisearch
Clément "Kero" Renault wanted to be an architect when he was younger. During that time, he also learned about computers and built his first website -…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS11 Bonus: The Ephemeral App Revolution: Replacing App Store Bloat with Single-Use, Frictionless Browser Workflows with Arnab Deka, Co-Founder of Metacast
Arnab Deka lives in Vancouver and loves the Pacific Northwest. He was never formally educated in computer science or software engineering - in fact, while he…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS11 E1: The 7-Year Revenue Drought: Surviving Near-Zero Growth to Build a $1.5B Cloud Analytics Juggernaut with Rob Woollen, Co-Founder & CTO of Sigma Computing
Rob Woollen lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He grew up with a Father in IT and management, and his Mother as an English teacher. He has been programming…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Favorite: Securing Intellectual Property, Minimizing Exit Risks, and Navigating Regulatory Scrutiny in the SDLC with Matt Van Itallie, Founder & CEO of Sema
Matt Van Itallie is the son of a math teacher and a coder - so this explains why he now uses code as data. He is a proud Boy Scout, making it of course to…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Favorite: The Trillion-User Scalability Crisis: Re-Architecting Bitcoin’s Layer 2 for Instant, Enterprise-Grade Global Liquidity with Kevin Hurley, Co-Founder & CTO of Lightspark
Kevin Hurley grew up in a multi-kid house, which is where he got his competitive nature. He used to play 2 on 2 with his Dad and siblings at home. He went to…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Favorite: From Employee #8 at Stripe to Challenging the Triopoly of AWS, Azure, and GCP: Fixing the Broken Cloud-Native Developer Experience with Anurag Goel, Founder & CEO of Render
Anurag Goel grew up in New Delhi, but moved to Boston after college for his first job. He worked at Stripe, as the 8th employee, before eventually moving on…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: Optimizing Remote Workplace Engagement: Replacing Flat Video Grids and Enhancing Virtual Collaboration with Real-Time Spatial Audio Ecosystems with Erik Braund, Founder & CEO of Katmai Tech
Erik Braund was born and raised in Alaska. Growing up, he played competitive hockey and built computers for his Dad's company and eventually others. He grew up…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E30: The QR Code Data Shift: Connecting Physical Interactions with Digital Marketing Fabrics and Scaling Contactless Engagement with Ravi Pratap Maddimsetty, Co-Founder & CTO of Uniqode
Ravi Pratap Maddimsetty lives in Bangalore with his family. Early on, he joined startups where his friends worked, in order to get to know the landscape of how…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: The Continuous Security Framework: Integrating Open-Source DevSecOps Controls into CI/CD Pipelines with Shai Horovitz, Co-Founder & CEO of Jit.io
Shai Horovitz grew up on a farm in Israel, 1.5 hours north of Tel Aviv. He was drafted into the army, in a unit that focused on technology - and in 2013, he…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersThe Gene Simmons of Data Protection - Are You Ready For the GenAI Data Frontier?
The Gene Simmons of Data Protection: Protegrity's KISS Method Today, we are releasing another episode from our series, entitled The Gene Simmons of Data…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E29: The Merchant of Record Shift: Scaling Global SaaS Revenue and Simplifying International Tax Compliance with Lucas Lovell, VP of Engineering at Paddle
Lucas Lovell grew up in Adelaide, Australia, before eventually landing where resides now, in London. He studied law, but he eventually decided that he didn't…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: The De-Googled Workspace Movement: Decentralizing Enterprise Tech with Private, Open-Source Productivity Suites with David Young, Founder & CEO of Federated Computer
David Young spent many years in California, but lives in Colorado Springs now. He mentioned that things outside of work are very important to him, as they are…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersThe Gene Simmons of Data Protection – Are Your Systems Smarter Than a Threat Actor?
The Gene Simmons of Data Protection: Protegrity's KISS Method Today, we are releasing another episode from our series, entitled The Gene Simmons of Data…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E28: Replacing Legacy LMS Silos and Driving Student Engagement with Institutional Communication Networks with Kavitta Ghai, Co-Founder & CEO of Nectir
Kavitta Ghai realized at an early age that she thought different than everyone else. She grew up neurodivergent, with autism and ADHD but was a lucky kid…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: The CI/CD Performance Shift: Accelerating Build Pipelines and Eliminating Developer Idle Time with Darko Fabijan, Co-Founder & CTO of Semaphore
Darko Fabijan is originally from Serbia, and splits his time between their and the US. He got is first computer in 1994, and eventually started tinkering and…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersThe Gene Simmons of Data Protection - Fortifying Your Data Defenses
The Gene Simmons of Data Protection: Protegrity's KISS Method Today, we are releasing another episode from our series, entitled The Gene Simmons of Data…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E27: The Nearshore Engineering Era: Sourcing Elite Latin American Tech Talent and Eliminating Time-Zone Fragmentation with Gino Ferrand, Founder & CEO of Tecla.io
Gino Ferrand is originally from Peru, and moved to the United States when he was 12 years old. Now, he lives in Seattle, and is enjoying all that the Northwest…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E26 P2: The Physical AI Revolution: Translating Complex Sensor Telemetry into Real-World Insights with Ivan Poupyrev & Nick Gillian, Co-Founders of Archetype AI
Ivan Poupyrev grew up in the Soviet Union, studying rocket science. He moved to the US in 2013 to pursue the early days of VR. He has worked at Disney and…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersThe Gene Simmons of Data Protection – KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid): A Data Security Dilemma
The Gene Simmons of Data P rotection: Protegrity's KISS Method Today, we are kicking off a new series on the podcast, entitled The Gene Simmons of Data…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E26 P1: The Physical AI Revolution: Translating Complex Sensor Telemetry into Real-World Insights with Ivan Poupyrev & Nick Gillian, Co-Founders of Archetype AI
Ivan Poupyrev grew up in the Soviet Union, studying rocket science. He moved to the US in 2013 to pursue the early days of VR. He has worked at Disney and…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: The Workplace Play Shift: Combating Hybrid Remote Loneliness and Engineering High-Engagement Slack Game Networks with Quinn Li O’Shea, Founder & CEO of Braid
Quinn Li started into tech well before college. In High School, she was into fashion and would take pictures of herself and her friends. She wanted to share…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E25: Modernizing Blue-Chip Alternative Assets and Scaling Digital Portfolio Management with Alberto Simon, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer of Masterworks
Alberto Simon is an immigrant from Mexico, moving to Florida with his small family when he was very young. At a young age, he got interested in computers…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: The Decentralized Data Engine: Monetizing Enterprise AI Datasets and Regulating Model Training Access with Don Gossen, Co-Founder & CEO of Nevermined
Don Gossen is Canadian, but at this point, in name only. He lives in Portugal with his wife and 2 daughters. He grew up all over the world, and his career has…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E24: The Causal AI Shift: Providing Deterministic Context to AI Agents and Automating Cloud Reliability with Shmuel Kliger, Founder of Causely
Shmuel Kliger is a self proclaimed old man. He was born in Israel, and served in the army for 6 years. It was in the army where he obtained his passion for the…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersPodcasthon & the American Cancer Society
Hello Listeners. Today is going to be a special episode, a bit out of the ordinary to our normal programming. I'm participating in Podcasthon, which gives Code…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: The Agentic PM Shift: Replacing Product Requirements Documents with Code-Ready Task Architectures with Tyler Wells, Co-Founder & CTO of BrainGrid
Tyler Wells lives outside of Austin, TX. He moved there 4 years ago, but spent most of this time in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. Outside of tech, he is…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E23: From the Netscape Era to the Multicloud Era: Building a 15-Year Infrastructure Moat and Designing Remote-First Culture with Anthony Eden, Founder & CEO of DNSimple
Anthony Eden is a gray beard in terms of internet time, being around when Netscape was released. He was studying music at the University of Miami, and decided…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: Optimizing Software Delivery Intelligence: Integrating Signals Across Git and Jira to Audit AI Token Efficiency and DORA Metrics with Andrew Lau, Co-Founder & CEO of Jellyfish
Andrew Lau is located in Boston now, but is a California native. He grew up in Oakland, and calls himself the odd duck who went west instead of east, like most…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E22: Zero Tax Liability from Day One: How to Automate Global SaaS Compliance and Sell in 220+ Countries with Ayush Agarwal, Co-Founder & CPTO of Dodo Payments
Ayush Agarwal is a techy trying to code his way out of things. He graduated with a degree in Computer Science, but more importantly, he discovered…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: Moving Beyond Passive Organic Growth and Automating B2B Customer Acquisition at Scale with Josh Ho, Founder & CEO of Referral Rock
Josh Ho was into tech at a young age. In high school, which was around the time of bulletin boards and AOL online, he had to code a way to connect windows to…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E21: Replacing Fragmented Agencies with Integrated High-Velocity Product Teams with Austin Vance, Co-Founder & CEO of Focused Labs (Focused.io)
Austin Vance grew up in Oklahoma, but takes residence outside of Denver, Colorado now. He is a father of 3 boys, who are also 3 in under - so he's quite busy…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: The Education-First Fintech Shift: Using AI Decision Engines to Simplify Investing for Everyday Earners with Jason Schappert, Co-Founder & CEO of Moola
Jason Schappert grew up in an entrepreneurial family. His Mom and Dad were always working together, and never had jobs. Jason's first job was working for his…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E20: Accelerating Cloud-Native Tooling and Engineering Blameless DevOps Culture with Tameem Hourani, Founder & CEO of RapDev
Tameem Hourani was born in the Middle East, on a small island. He came to the states, Boston specifically, for school in 2006. He planned on 4 years of…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: Leveraging Kernel-Level eBPF to Eliminate Sampling Blind Spots and Track AI Pipelines with Shahar Azulay, Co-Founder & CEO of Groundcover
Shahar Azulay has had many opportunities to get into tech throughout his life. He started digging into cyber security when he was 17 years old, where he…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersMinting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, with Imad Gharazeddine, CEO of Mamo
Today, we are releasing another episode in our series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai. Dubai is the new…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E19: Generative Remixes: Scaling Social Music Creation Tools and Unlocking Fair Artist Monetization with Simmi Singh, COO & Chief Product Officer of Hook Music
Simmi Singh grew up in Australia, when her parents migrated from India. She studied law and finance at university, and then went into investment banking during…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: The Agentic Database Frontier: How AI Autonomy is Rewriting Postgres Requirements and the $1B Databricks Exit with Nikita Shamgunov, Co-Founder & CEO of Neon
Nikita Shamgunov is a native of Russia, coming to the US for grad school in 2005. Eventually he worked at Microsoft on the SQL Server product. A fun fact -…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersMinting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, with Mohammad Albalooshi, CEO, DIFC Innovation Hub
Today, we are releasing another episode in our series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai. Dubai is the new…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E18: Replacing Complex IaC Plumbing with Visual Internal Developer Platforms with Cory O'Daniel, Co-Founder & CEO of Massdriver
Cory O'Daniel has had an interesting path to technology, growing his career in a number of cloud architect roles at Ripple, DealScience and The RealReal. He…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: The Voice-Native CRM Frontier: Eliminating Cold Leads and Automating Outbound Pipelines with No-Code AI Agents with Torrey Leonard, Co-Founder & CEO of Thoughtly
Torrey Leonard lived in Maryland prior to moving to New York City. In 7th grade, his claim to fame was building the world's largest Minecraft server in the…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersMinting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, with Dr. Marwan Al Zarouni, CEO of AI
Today, we are releasing another episode in our series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai. Dubai is the new…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E17: The Code-Aware DAST Era: Scaling Runtime Security at the Speed of AI Coding Assistants with Joni Klippert, Co-Founder & CEO of StackHawk
Joni Klippert has spent many years in startups. Post getting her MBA, she built her early career in Boulder, CO, and became very technical learning new…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: Utilizing Group-Photo Interactivity and Visual Memory Scrapbooks to Drive Lifetime Campus Engagement with Eric Leebow, Founder & CEO of FreezeCrowd
Eric Leebow was born in New Jersey, and bounced around a few states growing up. He has always been a gadget and tech enthusiast, growing up curious. At a young…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E16: The Meta-Layer Workspace: Consolidation of Fragmented Tech Stacks and the Zendesk Acquisition with Mihri Minaz, Co-Founder of Beams
Mihri Minaz is originally from Turkey, and has 4 siblings in different industries. Being good at math and problem solving, he was drawn go study computer…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: The High-Concurrency Crisis: Why Page Caching Fails Modern Membership Sites and Crushing the WordPress "Success Wall" with Wes Tatters, Managing Director of Rapyd Cloud
Wes Tatters has had a crazy, diverse career history. He is been in IT for around 40 years, and started in the days before the internet. He has had two paths -…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: The Data-Driven GTM Engine: Transitioning from Traditional Sales to Product-Led Growth and Agentic Analytics with Thomas Hansen, President of Amplitude
Thomas Hansen was born and raised in Denmark. He's also lived in South Africa, Thailand, Turkey and then Seattle. He is married to his wife Ingrid, with 3…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: Moving Beyond Scratch-Built Apps and Using AI to Assemble Enterprise Software from Pre-Validated Modules with Anand Kulkarni, Founder & CEO of Crowdbotics
Anand Kulkarni started his career in the dark ages of AI, as a Computer Science researcher at UC Berkeley. He published papers on human intelligence inside of…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E15: Merging Code-First End-to-End Testing with Modern Synthetics and Agentic Root-Cause Analysis with Hannes Lenke, Co-Founder & CEO of Checkly
Hannes Lenke was born in East Germany. He started tinkering with computers at an early age, and became interested in making games at the age of 10. Once the…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Favorite: The Open-Source LaunchDarkly Killer: Engineering Privacy-First Edge Evaluation with Egil Østhus, Co-Founder & CEO of Unleash
Egil Østhus is based out of Norway - which obviously means he loves skiing. But outside of this, he loves to run outdoors, through the woods and on the…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Favorite: Streaming the Paycheck: Building Real-Time Earned Wage Access with Matt Pierce of Immediate
Matt Pierce has been a tech guy for his entire 17 year career. Coming out of grad school, he started out in healthcare tech for a decade or so. Eventually, he…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Favorite: From Plaid to a $1B Unicorn: Killing the Password with Reed McGinley-Stempel of Stytch
Reed McGinley-Stempel grew up in Las Vegas, but went to school on the East Coast. Frankly, he didn't know what he wanted to do and "stumbled" into…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: The Value Pricing Revolution: Overthrowing the Hourly Hamster Wheel and Maximizing Profits for Solo Consultants with Jonathan Stark, Author of "Hourly Billing Is Nuts"
Jonathan Stark is based in Providence, Rhode Island. He attended the Berkeley College or Music, with a dual major in song writing. He ended up going back to…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E14: The Empathetic Engineering Culture: Scaling High-Performance Tech Teams and Mitigating Security Risks Without Dev Burnout with Eric Müller, VP of Engineering & CISO at Presence
Eric Müller lives in San Francisco, and explored many different paths before landing in tech. He looked into architecture, photography, but ultimately, he…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: Co-Sourcing Evolution: Moving Beyond Traditional Outsourcing to Build Fully Integrated, High-Velocity Engineering Squads with Andrey Kudievskiy, Founder & CEO of Distillery
Andrey Kudievskiy has always been fascinated by technology, and when asked about himself, he identifies as an entrepreneur. He has been a software engineer…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersMinting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, with Sonia Gokhale, VentureSouq
Today, we are kicking off a new series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai. Dubai is the new global center of…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 E13: The Scale-to-30-Billion Era: Re-Architecting Postgres and Managing Viral Traffic Surges for the World’s Largest Gaming Community with Josh Levine, CTO of Chess.com
Josh Levine lives in Brooklyn, NY. He started programming when he was 6 years old, when his Dad brought home an Apple 2. He realized that though there wasn't…
Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical FoundersS10 Bonus: Eliminating "It Works on My Machine" Complexities with Open-Source Package Management and Devbox with Daniel Loreto, Founder & CEO of Jetify
Daniel Loreto grew up in Venezuela, but moved around a lot and lived in 6 different countries. He is married with 2 kids, ages 8 and 5, which keeps him busy…