Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Born and raised in Santa Barbara, Meha Agrawal grew up in a beach town. Her Dad is a professor of Computer Science, and her Mom worked at the University as well. In the 5 years before she was blessed with a sibling, her creativity and problem solving nature was cultivated by her parents. The majority of her life she was chasing gold stars - A+'s on her assignments, targeting the doctor or engi...

Kirt Debique is originally from Trinidad, off the coast of Venezuela. He came to the states to study computer engineering, at the University of Miami. On the way to attending grad school at Stanford, he did an internship at Microsoft. After being offered a full time job there, he took it - and subsequently, never made it to Stanford. He started out in a role on the OS team, but after spending 20 y...

Shaun Cooley was born and raised in LA. His Mom worked at Xerox and his Dad was an auto mechanic... so needless to say, at an early age, he was pulling things apart electronically and mechanically. He's an avid snowboarder, usually shredding some snow at Mammoth mountain, and a kite surfer. He says he is terrible at the latter, but he likes that the wind is doing most of the work for him. He a...

Hazel Savage is originally from Northeast England. She attended university, and studied politics. She's played the guitar since she was 13, and started out as a self taught player. Her first guitar was a cherry red Fender Telecaster, followed by a Fender Cyclone and a Danelectro Hodad. Recently, she's started getting more into collecting, grabbing a Gibson Goddess for her collection. She u...

How can you successfully deploy AI? When AI works, it’s nothing short of brilliant, helping companies make or save tremendous amounts of money while delighting customers on an unprecedented scale. When it fails, the results can be devastating. Most AI models never make it out of testing, but those failures aren’t random. This practical guide to deploying AI lays out a human-first, responsible appr...

Alex Yurkowski grew up in New Jersey. He has always been into tech and building things, especially in software. Like many others, it all started with a lot of video games, like Warcraft, Starcraft - basically the Blizzard portfolio. But along with that, it included Legos, Connects, and then progressed naturally into computer science. He attended Notre Dame to study CS and being a part of the fight...

A multi startup founder, Eric Futoran has always focused in on being a family man. He considers himself a multi-hat wearing person, and though most entrepreneurs say that.. Eric really means it. He has 4 degrees... no really, four - Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Juris Doctor and MBA. He REALLY likes to learn, and is constantly reading and learning from people, books, other sources, and...

Miriam Schwab is originally from Canada. She has been in Israel for 26 years, and moved there after high school to attend university. She studied English Literature in school, and she really enjoyed the focus, though it has little to do with what she is doing today. Even still, her heart was always pointed towards technology. She is a mother of 7 children, which keeps her super busy. The oldest is...

Timur Mamodev grew up in Russia, within a very loving and supportive family. His Dad was an entrepreneur, so he knew some day he wanted to do the same, or at least have some sort of brand. His Mom gave up everything to support her children, and he's very grateful for that. He was a creative kid, kept to himself with millions of hobbies - including graffiti, which was a way to escape and expres...

Abhinav Asthana grew up in several small towns in the northern part of India. A couple of those towns were Basti, 150 miles from the capital. He's been a computer geek since 5th grade, when his Dad bought a pretty sophisticated pentium for the time. The small towns he lived in were not the most connected parts of the world, and as such, he experienced the impact of computers and the internet i...

Hello listeners... its time to embark upon Season 5 of the Code Story podcast. As we step into this journey together, you an expect to hear amazing stories about MVP's, trade offs, determining feature importance, building teams - and scaling, or fighting scale, as you grow. Our guest list continues to impress, with appearances from Abhinav Asthana of Postman, Derrick Reimer of SavvyCal, Hazel...

Sophy Lee was born in China, but grew up in a lot of countries and places. She grew up in Australia, lived all over Texas, and went to Harvard for undergrad, studying economics. She is an avid bike racer, mainly on the road, and a triathlete. The combination of living in difference places, school, and racing lead her into the tech world. In fact, she moved to San Francisco to race - though he had...

This is Season 4, signing off.... Thank you for listening! Season 5 of the Code Story podcast will be starting in the next couple of weeks. Our Sponsors: * Check out Cash App and use my code CASHAPP10 for a great deal: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/mt82fpxl #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards...

Mitchell Hashimoto started programming in middle school, teaching himself how to code through open source libraries and zip files he could download on the internet. He is a pilot, and owns his own plane, which happens to be a Cirrus. He spends an hour a day studying or practicing flying, and even takes his wife and dog up every now and again, when there is something worth flying to and they can ma...

Originally posted at this link: https://anchor.fm/the-inventive-journey/episodes/Surround-Yourself-With-Good-People-The-Inventive-Journey-Podcast-For-Entrepreneurs-w-Noah-Labhart-e10a14o RECAST: Try to surround yourself with people who believe in you. So in that same example that I mentioned, that was my biggest mistake and biggest learning. My wife was absolutely amazing. She was a rock and, she...

Ofer Shaked started in on computers early. He was passionate about tech from a very early age, and started programming when he was 10 years old. He loves tech, loves reading about tech, and is excited about new things in tech - especially around the topic of tooling. He really enjoys music, having played the guitar for a while. He now focuses on this recently acquired African drum. He connects wit...

Originally posted at this link: https://www.aggiegrowthhacks.com/season-3-episode-2-changing-the-equation-for-manufacturing-w-founder-cto-noah-labhart-04/ Noah Labhart ‘04 joins us today to talk about his on-demand marketplace for manufacturing labor, Veryable Incorporated. Noah breaks down challenges, opportunities, and solutions he sees within the industry, and tells us maybe the biggest BHAG we...

Paul Biggar was born in Dublin, Ireland, and lived there most of his life. When he was young, his Dad had a couple of computers, where Paul could program in Basic and Logo. In addition to these early introductions, he was into building his own machines, and tweaking their hardware settings to get the most optimal performance out of them. He completed his CS undergrad after spending many years into...

Erik Chelstad is a child of both coasts. In his life, he spent a lot of time skiing, and carried that activity into his adult life. Funny enough though, he is actually a better boarder than skier. He volunteers with the local avalanche centers, and climbs mountains where he lives - which is the Pacific Northwest, near Mt. Ranier. In his words, climbing gives him ample time to think. He's marri...

Daniel Gallancy is a husband and father to an 18 month old son. He studied electrical engineering and physics in school, but ended up working in finance, doing diligence on tech companies for an investment fund. In 2011, he discovered bitcoin and became enamored with the concept. At that time, he bought 1 whole bitcoin for $4 dollars. Looking back, he obviously wishes he would have bought more. We...

Erik Fogg attended MIT, but failed his intro to computer science classes. It was at that point, that he punted over to mechanical engineering. So as you could guess, Erik is not the tech guy - but, he does know enough to be dangerous. He loves to work with his hands, and has a professional history in solving old problems in new ways. Speaking of working with his hands, he likes to create comic con...

Lior Sion has been doing tech for 30 years, since he was in High School. He is married with 2 amazing and a dog (a Vizsla to be specific), and is in his mid 40s. He is passionate about ultra running, which is anything larger than a marathon... which can equate to 5-6 hours of running. Yep, you heard that right. He loves the contrast between being outdoors and computers, and typically runs the trai...

Justin Mitchell started off wanting to be an actor, dreaming of going off to work for Disney or doing movies. He loved being on the stage, playing sports, and overall, being the center of attention. He loves video games, reading, and generally - he loves making things. He is married with 2 foster boys, and is expecting a new addition soon. And, a lot of the stuff he is building on the side centers...

Matt DeBergalis has been into tech since he was a boy, playing games like Flight Simulator on his Commodore 64 and reviewing the schematics in the handbook. To Matt, computers are tools to make things possible... and enable people to do it quickly. He loves community building, with his background in politics, and he loves the open source world. He finds that it's a powerful force for organizin...

As an interesting turn to the guests I have on the podcast, Dave MacLeod is not a technologist by trade. He is a serial entrepreneur, and an old school face to face facilitator, who cares a lot about what people have to say and feel. He came out of college having taken every course under the sun, and getting zero degrees.. which prepared him perfectly to be a consultant. He lives in a small ski to...