Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Gabriel Isserlis grew up in London with an artistic background in the creative industries. His Dad is a professional cellist, which is the instrument that he chose as a young musician. As a teen, he became highly interested in making films, and decided to give it a try. He studied film in upstate New York, and realized he liked making sci-fi films about the future. Instead of films though, he deci...

Nathan Yap has a tight knit family, that he spends a lot of time with. So traveling and enjoying good food with his family is winning to him. Outside of that, he is enjoying the Pickleball craze, and he was heading into his first tournament at the time of this recording. He also loves to ski as well, and mentions really enjoying Crested Butte and Vail. Prior to his current venture, Nathan was impo...

Satish Jayanthi was born in India, and attended school there. When he was growing up, his Mom was a teacher and his Dad was dabbling in different businesses. After he graduated, he started working for a software company, which ultimately sent him to Europe, and then eventually to the US 22 years ago. Outside of tech, he spends a lot of time with his family, his 2 kids, and he loves to play tennis...

Jeff Grass had his career start more traditionally, as a bond underwriter, graduating from Wharton, and then being a serial entrepreneur. Outside of his business ventures, he is married with 2 kids, and used to run marathons... including one into Athens with his bare feet. When he's not running, he's spending time with his kids and their activities. Jeff's current venture started out a...

Rob Moore was previously on the Code Story podcast back in Season 2, when he was building Floom - a marketplace built to make monetizing SaaS products easier. Three years ago, he moved to London with his now wife, as they got married a few months ago. Another update is he enjoys studying philosophy and how people think... and he tends to find good insight from Seneca. He applies a lot of his learn...

Back in 1986, Juan Soberanis and his family got a personal computer for the house - a Commodore 128. He asked his mother if he could take it to his room, and taught himself how to program, and of course, he did some gaming on it as well. This was the genesis of his career path, which picked back up in college. Outside of tech, he has kids in their 20's, and spends a lot of his free time hiking...

Olga Stern considers herself an onion, with a lot of different layers. She loves to try out new things, which has produced a lot of different hobbies in her life - like underwater rugby, floor hockey, knitting and squash. Recently, she became a dog owner, and listens to podcasts to learn more about being a good dog parent. She splits her time 50% in Stockholm, and the other half in a small village...

Hello listeners! Today have Nick Donorio on the show today. Nick Donorio is a second generation American. His grandparents were poor, Italian immigrants - and his family was hard working, focused on value creation. They were poor, but never thought of themselves as poor - they always had food to eat, and always sat down at the table for dinner at night. Nick spent 44 years of his life at IBM, as a...

Michael Zuercher has been in tech since he was young, starting his first company when he was 19 years old. A lot of his path to his current place is through that prior company. He is married with 3 kids, living in South Dakota, and is a pilot. Beyond these things, he is a machinist as a hobby - in fact, he created logos for his current team as they shipped their MVP. In his prior company, Michael...

Krish Ramineni grew up in Silicon Valley, observing tech all around him. But really excited him was the innovation happening the in the last 5 years. He used to play sports as a kid - tennis, baseball, etc. - and he was always excited about filming his games or practice, and utilizing software to analyze how he executed the craft. He brings his analytical mainframe into his current venture, and st...

Shawn Ramirez spent a decade as a political science professor, studying terrorism and strategic negotiations. Five years ago, she switched into tech, in order to make a positive impact, joining startups with great missions. She has created training programs, worked in AI, scaled teams, and dug into the data science world. Outside of tech, she lives in Seattle with her family, and loves all the out...

Shaheeb Roshan is a family man. He's been married 16 years and has a 10 year old daughter. It's his family that drives how he looks at the world - teaching his daughter how to swim and be safe in the water, and learning how to do new things. For example, he got into baking, which ended up into 13 cakes on his counter table (yes, I'm wondering my invite was too). The pattern for him is...

Roi Ravhon path to tech started in the Israeli military, like many other founders in Israel. In fact, the very first introduction he had to computers was when he joined the services. It was a great experience, that taught him everything he knows. This is a common story with founders in the area, as I've noticed from other interviews I've done. He lives in Tel Aviv, and he is a big fan of m...

Mike Malone is a nerd from way back (his words, not mine). In the 6th grade, he bought a Borland C book and learned how to code. Back when Napster was round, he hosted an open Nap server in his basement, and ran a few things on IRC. He graduated from Virginia Tech with a Business Information Systems degree, and worked for Accenture for a hot second... then joined a 3 person startup, and hasn't...

Kateryna Sytnyk is originally from Ukraine, but moved to the states 15 years ago after winning the green card lottery. Her background is in applied mathematics, and she grew up surrounded with logical brains - for example, her grandparent was literally a rocket scientist. When she moved to the US, she dove right into the world of entrepreneurship. Outside of tech, she travels a lot, being a digita...

Benjamin Wilms started his career in 1999 as a developer. In the little free time he has, he does mountain biking, spends time with his family, and visits the ocean a few hours away. For mountain biking, he finds that it helps him to keep life balanced away from a screen, and the ocean - well... he just likes to watch his kids play on the beach. Seven years go, Ben started getting into the topic o...

John Rush has been in tech since he was a child, so its hard for him to think of a time where it wasn't a part of his life. Since 2008, he has been building apps, websites, etc. and a lot of what he was doing was client work. During this time, he noticed that a lot of his tasks were similar, repetitive, and he wanted to find ways to get repeat use out of the work he was doing. Outside of tech,...

Tom Medema is Dutch, and grew up in a small village in the Netherlands. This allowed him to explore what else was out there, which led to him living in 5 different countries. Alongside that, he loves to travel and reads a lot of fantasy novels. We had a good chat about Tolkien books, Dune, and he recommended that I check out the Cradle series. We both highly recommend the Licanus Trilogy, for anyo...

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,...

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...

Justin Clegg grew up all around the world, living in countries like Puerto Rico, Mexico City and Brazil. He spent 2 years on mission in Africa, and 5 years in India as well. Through these experiences, he has learned empathy, gratitude, and how to be a better listener, which helps him in his business ventures. He is multi-lingual, and interestingly, he mentioned that selling religion helped him to...

Will Falcon did not have a traditional path to tech. He is originally from South America, and moved to the US when he was a teenager. Later in life, he went through Navy Seal training and served the country for 6 years, doing primarily special reconnaissance. After leaving the military, he taught himself how to code and "fell into" the world of AI. He finds the dynamic of uncertainty in th...

Conor Carmody lives just outside of Dublin with his wife and has 3 lads - aka boys. Professionally, he worked in Eastern Europe around the time of the Berlin Wall, through some dramatic change in society. He learned a ton about setting up businesses in a society that was rebuilding itself. Today, he does a lot of advising and consulting around establishing and growing a business. Outside of his cu...

Mark Stouse was a CCO and CMO in large companies like Honeywell Aerospace. He claims that he is not a data scientist, but can play one on TV. He got to a high degree of organizational maturity, and could understand and speak to the needs of a data scientist. If he wasn't pursuing his current venture, he would likely be a history professor, as he is seriously passionate about 15th century innov...

Jake Vacovec started his career in sales, and eventually moved into the product world. He loves to cook, and finds it relaxing, and a good way to unwind from startup world. Primarily, he loves to cook steaks and likes to integrate chemistry into cooking, which aligns with the recipes he likes. Also, he loves to mountain ski, starting out when he was a 1 year old (he was the kid on the leash, he sa...