Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Faisal Bhutto is a family man, and the proud father of 2 girls and a boy. He is based out of Houston, and enjoys the outdoors - hunting, sports, and working on his off-road rig. When discussing sports, the mentioned he was lucky enough to go see the World Cup recently. And when I asked about hunting, we yammered on about white tail and pheasant, as your host is an avid hunter too. Prior to his cur...

Navid Alipour has spent many years in the world of medicine and AI, supporting and admiring doctors. He jokes that his wife and he are the black sheep of the family... because they aren't actual doctors. He's the co-founder and managing partner at Analytics Ventures, as well as serving on the board of multiple San Diego based companies. Outside of his professional ventures, he enjoys watch...

Joe De Pinto was born and raised in Los Angeles, and was drafted to play professional baseball in the minors for the White Sox. He's always had an active lifestyle, and now lives at the beach and surfs regularly. In 2015, he and his current co-founder started a company called Barpay, which makes it easier to get drinks at busy bars. In January 2021, Joe and his co-founder are sitting in their...

Welcome back listeners, today we are kicking off a special series of the Code Story podcast, entitled Growth Mode: On!, sponsored by our good friends at GrowthMatch. GrowthMatch helps tech companies grow their audience, supercharge their sales, and activate thought leadership in their industry. They are turning entrepreneurs into thought leaders, one video at a time, by utilizing fractional growth...

Paul McCarthy grew up in Cork, Ireland, and went to school there. He lives around the corner from the sea, and likes to dip in now again - literally, swim in the ocean. He calls it a great shock to the system, but ensured that I know he doesn't spend a full hour in the water. Five years ago, Paul was fed up with the archaic ways that properties were managing their safety, maintenance and work...

Kyle Tut started out his life wanting to be a car mechanic. His Mom affirmed his aspirations, but gave him the advice to make sure he owned the mechanic shop. He's taken interesting paths through the auto world, marketing, and eventually, into the tech world. Outside of tech, he is originally from North Dakota but now lives in Nebraska, and enjoys the practicality of the way people think in th...

Nanxi Liu is from Colorado, and went to school at UC Berkeley. In college, she immediately started her entrepreneurial journey by starting a bio tech company, and then eventually starting tech companies. She built and sold a company called Enplug, which was the #1 open digital signage software company. Outside of tech, she has kept a full life as well - producing TV shows - them winning an Emmy, s...

Alex Embiricos comes from an interesting background, having grown up all over the place - between Asia, the Caribbean, and Switzerland. He came to the states for college, and found his way into software after a stint in Aerospace. Ultimately, he found himself interested in the intersection between business and building technology. During his career, he spent a lot of time working at Dropbox, follo...

Sydney Davis really enjoys art. She enjoys immersive exhibits and loves to paint. She's a Mom, and digs spending time with her son and traveling to different exhibits. She loves the intersection between elemental art, digital art, and art from repurposed elements. She introduced me to a new term for immersive exhibits - selfie museums, which I hadn't heard before. When Sydney was leaving t...

Tanmai Gopal studied computer science, and specialize in computer vision and machine learning. He found himself frustrated with the pace at which his research work was getting exposure, so he expedited his jump into industry, which help solidify the foundation for his current venture. Outside of tech, he reads a lot, hikes and travels. For the readers, he highly recommends N.K. Jemisin, Charlie Ja...

Ken Babcock grew up outside of Buffalo, and as such.. is a big Bills fan. He attended Cornell, and has spent time in NYC, San Francisco and now Chicago. He's a family man, with an 11 month old, and loves to ski. His favorite mountain was Tahoe, specifically Palisades, where he mentioned spending many hours on the slopes. He mentions that his busy life of a startup and family life is a dangerou...

Hello again listeners! Today I have yet another special return episode for you. I'm speaking with Arjun Narayan, Co-founder & CEO of Materialize. He told us the creation story of the product and company in Season 4, Episode 11, which I would encourage you to go back and listen to. Similar to yesterday's episode, Arjun is returning to the podcast since his prior appearance to give me ma...

Hello Listeners! We have a treat for today's episode. On the show, I'll be interviewing Joe, the CEO of Pulumi, to get an update on all that has gone on within the company. As a reminder, Pulumi is Infrastructure as Code technology, that allows you as an engineer, developer, architect - to deliver infrastructure with high velocity and scale, through software engineering. You can learn more...

Arjun Bhatnager has been coding since he was 10 years old, and in general, his family is full of entrepreneurs, running their own businesses. In fact, his brother is his co-founder in his current business. He loves to read, write, and play tennis in his spare time, along with playing music. In fact, playing music was a large part of his life, starting out playing the trumpet. In general, he is pas...

Derek Osgood comes from a family of entrepreneurs, and has always known he wanted to start something himself. Prior to that, he worked for other companies, large and small, in product and marketing roles. Some of the companies he worked for included Playstation, Rippling and BBVA. Outside of his profession, he loves to travel the world, and is a huge fantasy story nut. It's worth noting that w...

Raj Bains grew up in India, North of Delhi, and comes from a family who, as he says, does "whatever is best to do" at the time. They moved around quite a bit when he was a kid, and his family dabbled in a number of different trades. After doing an internship in France and then, completing his undergrad, he moved stateside and has called many different states home. In fact, in those states,...

Ian Small is a Canadian, and claims that is the most important thing about him. Tech started for him when he was 12 years old, when he got a bad grade on a homework assignment, bought the manual, and became an expert on the machine. Outside of tech, he likes to do home renovation. As he says it, when there is a power tool in your hand, that could potentially cut your arm off, you tend to focus on...

Jeremy Wood grew up in Portland, and has been heavily influenced by that upbringing. He enjoyed really strong maker communities, supporting local craft artists to thrive and build their business. He moved to the Bay Area for school, and was surrounding by optimism, tech focus, and sheer intelligence. I was under the impression that Portland was beautiful all year round, but Jeremy clued me in that...

Max Lukichev is a deeply technical guy, which means his hobbies have been related to tech since the early days. He is a PhD in computer science, and has always been interested in building things. In fact, and his words, he has been building drones since back before they were cool. Overall, he likes to figure out how things work. Outside of tech, he is a family man, and make sure that his kids have...

Hadi Radwan is an amateur biohacker, which was a new term for me, and means trying to DIY your own biology. He is a family man, and enjoys playing fantasy sports. He's also a podcaster, and regularly interviews founders on his podcast, the First 100, to learn how those people obtained their first 100 customers. When it comes to family, he just had a newborn, so most of his time is devoted to t...

Nick Ippolito has been involved with youth work for many years, and stumbled into web design and taught himself how to code. He's been married for 15 years, and he and his wife have 3 children - along with a budding startup the run together. They enjoy mounting biking in New Zealand and all things tech. For Rowan Findlay, tech has always been his blood, with his family members working in the i...

Casey Kipfer is a family man. He's married with 3 kids, and there is a lot of excitement and noise at his house - which is says is wonderful. He enjoys golfing and fishing, and tries to spend as much time outside as possible, including spending time with his brother paying some hockey in the winter. They also worked together for around 12 year at a prior venture of his brothers. Through their...

Nora Jones has been in tech her entire career. She originally thought she was going to get into hardware, but was always focused on reliability and safety. She has quite the track record, in regards to companies she has worked for - Jet.com, Netflix, and Slack. She lives in Denver, and likes to get outside and do dangerous activities (post studying the risk of course). She loves to ski, and really...

Alex Svinov has very few things to talk about outside of the business world. He likes to jog, play tennis, and has a family with three kids at home. He likes to travel with his family and try new things, which he admits is complicated with the kids. Personally, he is driven each day to create something new. When it comes to food, his favorite is curry chicken, which according to him, he could eat...

You might remember in Season 6, episode 15 , I interviewed Itiel, the Co-founder of Komodor . Today I have a special episode of the Code Story podcast, bringing back our friends at Komodor . I'm chatting with their Open Source Dev Leader, Andrey Pokhilko, about the latest initiatives at the company, including some exciting tooling around Helm and further advances in Kubernetes troubleshooting...