Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

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 other jobs - as a short order cook, waiting tables, and taking tickets at a theater. When he stepped into this industry, he started out in test automation, followed by getting involved in open source communities, which is how he got into Deve...

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 professional kickboxing and even running his own dojo in New York. Fun fact, he has 8 black belts, and has started teaching his kids how to box. In his late 20's he came back to wall street, and experienced the 2008 crash and rebound. Along his j...

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, directly correlated with the pandemic, he didn't actually get to walk and receive his diploma. His first job out of school was the startup he is building now. Outside of tech, he rides mountain bikes, digging the trails at Tiger Mountain or...

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 cycling. He is into road or mountain biking, along with Alpine Skiing - but he does the latter outside of Denmark, in Norway or South Austria. He is a family man, with 3 kids, and he takes his kids cycling with him. Along side of this, h...

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 kid. Eventually, he went to George Mason to study Cyber Security. Outside of tech, he is into cooking and fitness. He focuses a lot on making sure that his body and brain are in a good state, through exercise, meditation, sleep and healthy e...

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 started working for Ebay. He's 32 years old (he thinks), and is married with a young family. Outside of hiking and binge watching TV, he is a big fan of coffee and bakeries. In spending a lot of time in the infrastructure world, he found o...

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 through teaching himself how to code. He gained a ton of experience at companies like Groupon and Digit.co. Outside of tech, he is a father to a 5 year old daughter, and musician, which both things occupy his time outside of business. Having gai...

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 experiences of the industry were through internships and startup involvement. Outside of tech, he likes to hike, swim, winter sports, being outdoors, etc. - and he lives in Vancouver now, which gives him great access to all of the above. He says the m...

Aaron Bromberg is living the Dad life outside of tech. His kids are 11 and 13, so he wants to spend as much time with them before they get too cool to hangout with their parents. He likes to cook, and during the pandemic, he got really into pizza making, even to the point of calculating dough hydration ratios. Previously, he was working as a management consultant, but spending his time reading abo...

Joe Pettersson is quite the renaissance man, with many interests and ventures he is a part of. He's also had an interesting path to tech. He was originally a lawyer many years go... funny enough, because he thought that after the dot com bubble burst, he didn't think people were going to make money writing software again. He hated it though, and left the legal profession as soon as he coul...

Dan Langevin grew up in Madison, CT - east of New Haven. He had a good size family, with his Dad being an engineer and Mother being a teacher. He grew up around computers, and learned how to build websites in High School. When he went to college, he didn't think he wanted to be in tech and struck out in consulting. It was during this time that he taught himself how to code, built a portfolio,...

Roy Ng moved to LA from Hong Kong when he was 10 years old, first with his Mother, with his Father following on a year later. His family moved to the stats to build a future for him, with education and opportunity. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley, doing into finance with Goldman Sachs. He eventually made his way back to Hong Kong, to help Goldman with cool deals (like taking Baidu public). Post Go...

Alexander Luksidadi came to Canada in 2002 as an immigrant, with a dream to work for IBM. However, during his time in school, he had a friend that went to San Francisco, and came back "changed", as Alexander as he put it. That same friend asked Alexander to join him in his garage, and build his startup. He started to build things around analytics and AB testing, and saw the revenue impact...

Liran Haimovitch is 34 years old, and recently married. He and his wife enjoy traveling and eating delicious foods together, and of course, taking care of their awesome dog. Although it has been a while, Liran loves to scuba dive, and enjoys a great whisky, scotch or fancy cocktail now and again. He has recently gotten into trying to make them at home, or seeking out the latest bar to try somethin...

Perry Zheng graduated in 2010 from Duke University. He became a software engineer, working for big name companies like Amazon, Twitter and Lyft. During his time at Lyft, he started tinkering with Real Estate investment, buying single family dwellings here and there. Outside of tech and real estate, he likes to travel a lot, and find the best food around. When asked what was the best restaurant he&...

Bobby Gruenewald is a lifelong learner, and an activator. He majored in Finance, but was always interested in entrepreneurship. In 1995, he built a website for a car dealership for $100, and then went on to build hondaparts.com. The dealer he worked for committed to investing in his future projects right then and there. Post that, he built several companies and sold them, creating a successful tra...

Brandy Whalen and Ryan Estes are two different folks, joined together in a unified mission. If you look up Denver guy in the dictionary, you will see a picture of Ryan, in a flannel shirt, with a dog, a truck, and speeding off to hit up his fishing spot. He's a family guy, trains in martial arts, and previously owned an agency. Brandy is not a Denver native - in fact, she grew up in Iowa on a...

Mentorcam - Book your mentor session with promo code CODE for 20% off !  Topic: Brand Building Josh Campbell is the founder and CEO of protein supplement brand Human Improvement and wine brand So Gay Rose. Formerly a Starbucks Executive and President of cannabis wellness company Dosist, Josh has founded, funded, built, and exited multiple startups in the consumer packaged goods space. He is passio...

Hywel Carver has been writing code since he was 9 years old. His first language was C, which quite a language to start out in, and his first program was a "Guess the Number" program, using binary search - and of course, with an embedded Easter egg. He is married, with 2 children. Parenting has really pushed him to learn how to focus, and he regularly has to put things down to take care of...

John Egan is a computer and electrical engineer by training. Early on, he got disillusioned by the idea of building robots - it was too slow for him. While he was working at Harvard, he was watching the early days Y Combinator, and told his wife that there was a movement going on, and they should move to be a part of it. Startups weren't common then, so it was a risky move - but John found him...

Dr. Gordon Jones just turned 60 years old, but you wouldn't know it from his energetic, vibrant tone. He has his doctorate in Health Administration, but he got into Health Technology in 1997. He lives in South Carolina, with his wife and five adopted children. Dr. Jones and his wife adopted their first child 1 year after they were married, as they felt led by God before they were married to pu...

Mentorcam - Book your mentor session with promo code CODE for 20% off !  Topic: Angel Investing Dr. Edvard "Eddie" Engeseath, MD is the Co-founder of a tele-health startup Nurx, angel investor, startup advisor, and a former family physician. He founded Nurx to make prescription birth control more accessible. The company has since grown into a full-service tele-health startup in the Rx medi...

Tommy Yionoulis has a traditional tech founder st4ry... via hotel, restaurant and standup comedy route. But in all seriousness, his Dad was literally a rocket scientist, and his Mom was a software engineer. Tommy diverted away from tech initially, and did the restaurant thing before jumping headfirst into stand up comedy, doing it for 10 years along side several hospitality businesses. When I aske...

Prior to his current venture, Verl Allen spent 12 years at Adobe. During that time, he was raising 3 kids as a single Dad, so you can imagine that during that time, it took a large part of his focus. Outside of his profession and family, he loves to ride road bikes 3-4 hours a week, but in particular, long distance rides (to the tune of 200 miles in a single day). He is also a runner, which he fin...

Today, I’m excited to share with you a preview from a new podcast I’ve been enjoying and think you will, too. You may know Jacob Goldstein as the former host of the Planet Money podcast. Now, he’s hosting a new show called What’s Your Problem? It’s a show about technology and business, where visionaries talk about the future they’re trying to build – and the problems they have to solve to get ther...