How Many CTOs

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, host  Brad Hefta-Gaub is joined by Dr. David Bauer of Axonis AI, who shares how his background in distributed computing, startups, and the U.S. intelligence community led him to Axonis AI's federated data layer used for federated learning, data fusion, semantic ontologies, and decision intelligence. Bauer describes how encouraging engineers...

In this special episode of " How Many CTOs Does It Take? " podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub discuss Brad's experiment proving that AI can dramatically boost output for teams with strong engineering practices. Brad shares an MIT-licensed open-source SaaS template called Beaker Stack , which includes web and mobile scaffolding, CI/CD for preview/staging/production, automated setup, obs...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub interview guest Ben Wilcox , CTO and CISO of ProArch, a Microsoft-focused data and AI system integrator. Wilcox describes his path into system integration, from cloud transformation and building managed security services, and now focused on helping customers adopt AI securely. The discussion centers on...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast,  Brad Hefta-Gaub interviews John Von Seggern, founder/CEO/CTO of Future Proof Music School, about his shift from musician and online educator to building AI features using tools like Claude Code, n8n, and MCP servers. John describes the school's personalized learning approach using an AI chatbot "Cadence" integrated with student history and...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad is joined by guest Stephanie Sylvestre , founder of AvatarBuddy, an AI company started 10 years ago to help people be the best version of themselves. Sylvestre argues for "AI plus human" rather than job elimination, and tells the story of how AvatarBuddy evolved from early research and prototypes to joining the OpenAI deve...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub  discuss a high-performing engineering team that has effectively cleared its product backlog while using AI heavily, including a senior engineer who surprised Brad by running agents overnight to automatically perform fast, high-quality GitHub PR code reviews via a webhook-driven harness. The engineer bu...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub discuss Brad's viral LinkedIn post arguing that AI has collapsed the economics that drove generalized SaaS, enabling more bespoke software for underserved SMBs and vertical niches. They debate practical examples like a plumber-specific CRM versus highly custom workflows for a regional law firm, includin...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub discuss spec-driven development and SpecKit, starting with Brad's story of a product owner resisted SpecKit because it produced "too many words," alongside Scott's example of accepting a 60,000-line pull request by reviewing the spec instead of the code. They reflect on how product owners often can't de...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, host  Brad Hefta-Gaub is joined by Dr. Adam Link, former senior engineering manager at Coinbase, who shares his background leading global teams through highly technical transformations in fintech and crypto, including major infrastructure migrations. They discuss whether different kinds of change require different leadership approaches, emp...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub discuss the recurring question: when it's appropriate to hire a VP of Engineering and how to divide responsibilities so the CTO can better align product, business, and technology strategy. They define CTO vs VP of Engineering work, review Gemini's matrix (strategy/vision vs execution/people/process, ext...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub discuss a conversation Scott had with coworkers after discovering Confluence connected to Google Drive and Slack, raising questions about whether to rely on tools like Confluence or a generic layer like Claude to aggregate knowledge and enable agents. A colleague suggested "alpha flows to where building...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub " interview  Miguel Carranza Spanish-born co-founder/CTO of RevenueCat, who describes discovering subscription billing pain while building the Elevate app and turning that hard, "boring" problem into a YC-backed business. He explains RevenueCat's scale (billions of API requests/day) and the resulting pr...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub talk with Nick Cawthon of gauge.io , who shares highlights from RSA 2026 and his career designing UX for InfoSec/SecOps/DevOps tools. Nick argues that modern dashboards increasingly look the same, so strategists and researchers must find the nuances by designing for the human factor. He explains how res...

In this "What's on your mind?" episode of the "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub  discuss how non-engineers using AI tools are increasing risk, with Brad concerned about security amid recent supply-chain attacks. Brad shares how an AI agent setting up a React Native scaffold generated and transmitted database passwords and API keys in clear text, raising f...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, host  Brad Hefta-Gaub welcomes Boston-raised security speaker Robert Siciliano , who traces his path into security from early experiences with crime, teaching physical self-defense, and being hacked in the mid-1990s. Robert argues that most corporate security training is compliance-driven "security theater" focused on phishing, creating sec...

I n this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast,  Scott Porad hosts solo and interviews technologist David Espindola about AI. Espindola explains his path from engineer at fast-growing Silicon Valley companies to 10 years at Oracle implementing ERP/CRM for Fortune 500 clients, then a decade as a CIO, and now founder of Brainyus, focused on helping people thrive amid rapid AI-driven chang...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub talk with Carter Huffman , CTO and co-founder of Modulate AI , about his path from machine learning work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab to building voice AI that understands conversations. Carter explains why moderation in gaming is hard because you don't want to ban players unfairly, and contrasts big fo...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub " open with Super Bowl reactions and a meme about non-fans describing plays, then pivot to the ai.com halftime ad, where heavy spending reportedly led to a site crash for a Claude wrapper. They discuss MCP servers and "Rent A Human," noting gig marketplace challenges like trust, KYC, and fake profiles,...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast,  Brad Hefta-Gaub is joined by guest co-host Philip Rosedale to explore the multifaceted role of a CTO, comparing it with the CEO position. They discuss the joy of working on products versus managing teams, and share anecdotes such as their meeting with Steve Jobs to illustrate that being a CTO involves strategic business elements as well. T...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub " reflect on the first year of the podcast's publication, discussing Scott's ongoing questions about tech debt and struggles with refactoring, the advances made in AI assissted programming, and the insights they've gained from guests. The episode includes humorous anecdotes about project timeline estima...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub  explore the evolving landscape of interviewing for programmer positions in the age of AI-assisted coding. They discuss the relevance of traditional leetcode questions, best practices for evaluating skills when interviewees may use AI, and the importance of higher-level thinking in interviews. The conve...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub  sit down with Ritesh Patel , co-founder of Ticket Fairy . Ritesh shares his journey from coding and organizing raves to creating a powerful vertical SaaS platform tailored for the live events industry. Ticket Fairy aims to provide small event teams with the technological capabilities of much larger org...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub discuss the interplay between tech and business. Starting with comments about their own scruffiness and stories of wearing hats to interviews and fancy restaurants, they delve into how CTOs can effectively bridge the gap between technical teams and business stakeholders. They run through a crash course...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub  yet again delve into the transformative impact of AI on software engineering. Brad shares his 2025 Cursor Year in Review, revealing his record 2.9 billion tokens used, prompting a discussion about the efficiency and cost of using AI tools. They discuss the emergence of a K-shaped economy in AI coding a...

In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub discuss the role of CTOs in setting a security-minded culture and provide real-life anecdotes of security breaches and incidents. The conversation covers critical frameworks like CIS, SOC 2, and tools like Vanta, Wiz, Drata, and AWS Security Hub. They emphasize the importance of incident response, conti...