Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Mentorcam - Book your mentor session with promo code CODE for 20% off !  Topic: All Things Product Bio: Benjamin Balazs is the Co-founder & CTO of Mentorcam. At the age of 15, Benjamin taught himself how to code and hasn't stopped since. Before co-founding Mentorcam, he single-handedly designed and developed apps for companies like Lamborghini, Visa, and Maserati, enabling businesses to in...

Panos Siozos and his co-founders go back 25 years or more. They all studied Computer Science together in Greece and did their post graduate studies on educational tech. His hobbies have been on pause for the past few years, given the growth of his business, but his main passion is his family, and his 8 year old daughter. They are building a 3d printer together, and tend to create using lots and lo...

Barak Schoster claims he's generally a boring guy. What he does professionally, he also loves to do in his free time - which is coding. He contributes regularly to open source projects. Outside of this, he loves sea kayaking, and equates the ups and downs of the sport to software engineering. He is married with 2 sons, both under 5 years old. They are into building puzzles together and playing...

Mentorcam - Book your mentor session with promo code CODE for 20% off !  Topic: How VC's see your startup Max Samuel is a venture capitalist and lawyer. He formerly worked at Thiel Capital, Wilson Sonsini and Credit Suisse. A graduate of Yale, Penn Law School and Wharton, Max is passionate about mentoring both startup founders and people looking to break into the VC industry. Questions: What i...

Ev Kontsevoy wanted to be an engineer when he grew up, and this was directly influenced by his engineering parents. When he was younger, computers were relatively uncool still. But as they grew in popularity, he started to explore how to make computers do what he wanted them to do, specifically to interact with hardware. He recalls burning up a monitor once, because he was tinkering with changing...

Prabhjot Singh has been in enterprise software for the last 22 years - so he has seen a thing or 2. He joined Citibank out of school, and did a leadership program there for 10 months. Post that, he progressed into the startup world... and never left. He got to be apart of early stage growth, acquisitions, and scaling businesses over a short period of time. He's married, and the father of a fou...

Mentorcam - Book your mentor session with promo code CODE for 20% off !  Topic: Funding your startup For the first installment of Mentorcam March, we chat with Rune Hauge, the Founder and CEO of Mentorcam . Rune is an expert in funding your startup, and is a multi time founder. Prior to Mentorcam , he founded three startups and had one successful exit. He has raised millions of dollars in venture...

Brian Vallelunga loves to build things - products, companies, or silly things on the side. In Elementary school, he was asked by one of his friends, "why can't you put a movie on your phone?". This got Brian's mind racing, and he went home, ripped a movie into the specific format for his flip phone, and shared it immediately with his friend. Post that, he competed in science fairs,...

Raghav was a product developer, starting a young age. He was creating interesting products for science exhibitions as a kid. Once, this professor asked him to do a cancer research project, which introduced him to the story of Steve Jobs and his entrepreneurial journey. He was highly influenced by this story, and still is today. In the early days, he focused more on the hardware side of computers....

Happy Wednesday to all of you listeners. First and foremost, thank you for being just that - a faithful listener. Thank you for tuning in to the show each week, I hope you are enjoying the amazing stories from the builders, founder and leader we have on the show. As a thank you, we are doing something special in March. We are partnering with a new friend of ours, the folks over at Mentorcam . Ment...

John Myers comes from a big military family. He was convinced he was going to be a pilot his whole life. When he was a junior in High School, he started doing C++ programing and he got hooked. After graduation, he got accepted to RPI in update New York, and started suiting computer science. He eventually joined the Air Force, and focused on information systems. Through an interesting turn of event...

Jim Fagan has had a long and winding road into the tech world. He grew up in New Jersey, and post school, started out in Finance. Slowly, through those roles, he drifted towards operations, and then eventually, towards technology. Personally, he loves to be outside, doing stuff that involves the water. He enjoys surfing, wakeboarding, skiing, you name it. Through his profession, he has travelled t...

Hey y'all, hope everyone is having an awesome day! Do you ever find yourself about to put your earbuds on, or jump in the car, but don't really know which podcast to listen to. And you REALLY wish someone would give you a recommendation? I wanted to let you in on a new, award winning podcasting app out there called Goodpods . And this app does just that. Just like you can get with books or...

Blake Garrett had the good fortunate to grow up in the Bay Area. He got to observe his father and his involvement in startups. Though none of them were massive successes, his Dad would bring him around and he got to watch him bring together teams of really smart people to solve customer problems. Blake was a sports player growing up - mainly, basketball and football. He was starting quarterback in...

Michel Tricot has been in the data space for the past 15 years. He really enjoys gathering information, and gaining insight from it. As a kid, he would gather data in analog ways, grouping together movies or internet articles in categories, and extracting info from it. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids, and loves a nice afternoon in the backyard cooking BBQ. He does both fire cooking, and...

Vedran Cindrić grew up in a small town, in rural Croatia. As far back as he can remember, he has been tinkering with computers - messing around with DOS, and of course, gaming. From the very early days, computers became his passion. When he finishing college, he started his own successful design agency before building his current venture. He likes to watch movies and TV shows, and loves to barbec...

Mike Boufford has no hobbies anymore, and for good reason... he has two 6 month old daughters and a 3 year old toddler, so its an exciting and very busy time for the family. He used to play guitar and enjoyed cooking, but now he exclusively focuses on family and work. His family loves to go to the park and taking walks around the neighborhood. Along with that, they sing songs, read stories, doing...

Lindsay Tjepkema is married with three kids, living in Indianapolis. Her children are all boys, and she lovingly describes them more like bear cubs, that don't actually walk anywhere, they just kinda roll around and growl. They've been known to have many a family night playing Mario Kart or watching avengers movies. Lindsay has been a B2B marketer for over 15 years. While working in the sp...

Rob Carpenter was born and raised in Dillingham, Alaska - and no... he can't see Russia from his back steps. He has been a long term space ship nerd, and confesses that one of the reason he got into entrepreneurship is because he wants to eventually secure a ticket to space. Currently, he lives outside of Boulder, Colorado with his young family, and really enjoys the outdoors, growing his comp...

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 started down the path of being an entrepreneur. He is married with 3 daughters - 2 in third grade and one that is a 2 year old. He mentioned the entrepreneurial dilemma of picking 3 of the 5 life choices - family, business, sleep, exercise a...

Adam Newman grew up in the suburbs of New York and Brooklyn. Now, he lives in the DC / Maryland area. His grandparents were immigrants, and owned a bakery and were Taylors. So the entrepreneur and self starter characteristics found in Adam are deeply rooted. He's married with 4 kids, and loves to spend lots of time outdoors and living vicariously through his childrens sports activities. He spe...

Matt Cowell didn't start out in tech. In fact, he studied the chemical world heavily in school, getting his Bachelors in Chemistry and Masters in Chemical Engineering. So - by trade, he was clearly a chemist. However, when he joined Accenture, he started in with programming and establishing the SDLC methodology for the company. Matt is married with 2 kids, loves sports - specifically Illinois...

Trevor Marshall grew up in NY, and has been living in the state his whole life. His path into technology was not a direct one. Prior to school, he was on the road to becoming a professional musician, studying at Juilliard. However, early on in his schooling, he found the same sort of joy he got from music in other areas, initially through economics and combinatorics - and he was hooked on math and...

Alex Deeb was influenced by the education space early on. He had many teachers who inspired him through his life, and his parents pushed him to do well in school on order to obtain better opportunities. Along side of that, he is interested in equitable opportunities, which is a big driver for him in his professional ventures. He is passionate about helping learn about new opportunities. He grew up...

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 management consulting. When I dug into how someone stumbles into this profession, he mentioned that early on he got some sage advice from his older brother about not rushing to law school because... being a lawyer isn't that fun. So, he...