Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Raja Tabet lives in Austin, TX, but grew up overseas in Lebanon. When he migrated to the states for his education, he did not speak English, and had to go through the process of learning the language to fully integrate. He studied computer science for undergrad, and computer engineering for graduate school. And eventually, went to work for companies like IBM, Freescale, and others, prior to landing in his current role. Outside of tech, he has been married for 35 years, and has 3 kids. He and his wife are empty nesters, so they love to travel, hike and explore new areas. In 2019, Raja joined Synopsys, specifically in their custom design and manufacturing group. A few years ago, and alongside the advent of AI, he changed roles and began building an AI powered solution for electronic design automation, or EDA. This is Raja's creation story at Synopsys. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, we are talking with Oliver Mitchell, Partner at ff Venture Capital, the most engaged technology venture capital firm in New York City since 2008. They have an extensive portfolio, and have created billions of dollars in market cap value. Recently, Oliver has released a book titled A Startup Field Guide in the Age of Robots and AI. In the book, he sets the stage to mentor - and provide mentors - around building a hardware startup in modern day times. The book is full of advice, real life stories from the trenches, and practical information to help you succeed. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Alex Halkin can't remember a time where he wasn't doing tech. Funny enough, he does remember a time before internet was common place. In 6th or 7th grade, he got a computer and immediately disassembled it. And eventually, he built an internet service provider for his community, eventually dropped out of university, and sold his internet provider. Outside of tech, he has always been into sports - cycling, motorcycles, etc. And though he doesn't have much time for it anymore, he is big into Brazilian Jujitsu. At his old role, Alex started to pitch subscription pricing for their products. The timing wasn't right for deep machine learning for pricing, so his boss turned him down. Several years later, he and his team are leveraging the power of Contextual AI to calculate and optimize price combinations. This is the creation story of Competera AI. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Harish Chandramowli grew up in a small town in India. The goal was simple early on - study well, go to university, and get a job. After undergrad, he realized he can do so much more, eventually coming stateside to get his masters, and meet a ton of really smart people over the last 10 years. Outside of tech, he is a broadway show fanatic, seeing 1-2 on a regular basis. He also follows Manchester United, which can be difficult watching the lose on the regular. Harish used to work for MongoDB, and spent some time on call and in the weeds. At that time, he realized how much data is used by a business. When he eventually supported the fashion industry, specifically the back office, he wanted to build a solution to make the lives of those back office individuals as easy as possible. This is the creation story of Flaire. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Madhavan "Maddy" Malonan has always been in - and around - technology, and fell in love with building things early on. He got a video game console early on, and found it a little boring. BUT, when his Dad got a computer and he played Age of Empires, he got excited about all the possibilities, trying to tinker with building things that mimicked these computer games. Even these days, he writes a lot of code, building side projects with Claude Code. When he's not coding, he's playing sports, primarily tennis. Maddy and his team identified that verification of age, credentials, employment history, etc. was a big, big problem. So much so, that it was difficult to do so in a tamper proof, zero knowledge proof manner. They set out to create a solution - and protocol - to solve this problem. This is the creation story of Reclaim Protocol. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Chris Kline grew up in Aurora, Colorado, and went to school in Boulder to study finance and leadership. He has lived through several significant events that led him to take a risk, and spend some time in small business and entrepreneurship. And eventually, he took a leap of faith, sold everything he had, and flew to California. Outside of tech, he is married with a 12 year old daughter. He is fascinated by macro economics, and loves to dig into alternative assets like real estate and gold. Chris started to get into crypto back when it was still in the fringes, and people didn't really know what Bitcoin was. Ten years later, his company is solving the retirement process with alternative, crypto assets. This is the creation story of BitcoinIRA. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Theo Bergqvist is an entrepreneur who enjoys working a lot. He started his first venture in 1999 in the gaming industry, building Paradox, which is now listed on the Nasdaq. Of all his ventures, the common core to them all was technology. Outside of tech, he lives a life dedicated to Japanese martial arts. He practices 5-6 times a week, and have made several trips to Japan with his Sensei, focusing on the art 10 hours a day. At one point during his career, Theo was working for Ericson around their transformation. He noticed how difficult it was for enterprises to adopt AI tooling and automation. He decided to raise some funds and get started trying to create something to help... and started the build and pivot game. This is the creation story of Turbotic. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Jens Neuse grew up in Germany, originally planning to be a carpenter. In his 2nd year as an apprentice, he was in a motorcycle wreck that thrust him into a process of surgery and healing. Eventually, he decided he wouldn't be doing carpentry, and got into sysadmin work. Once he got bored with this, he moved into startups, learned how to code, and starting digging into programming, API's and eventually - GraphQL federation. Outside of tech, he is married with 3 young kids. He loves to sit ski on the mountain - which is the coolest carbon fiber chair on a ski, where you steer with your knees and hips. After chasing building a better Apollo, Jens and his team ran into a point where their prior product and company was doomed to go under. When they accepted this fact, they started to think about what people actually wanted - and started to dig into the federation of GraphQL. This is the creation story of Wundergraph. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Adam Cohen grew up in Toronto, in North York. He showed early signs of entrepreneurship by putting his lemonade stand on a wagon, and taking it door to door - or hustling his friends to buy souvenirs on a school field trip. His Dad was in VC, and was a big influence on his life, pushing him to succeed. Outside of professional life, he is big into sports, specifically basketball. In the past, he loved playing fantasy sports, which also influence how he built his business ventures. Adam and his team went through several iterations of AI tooling - summarizing AI, integrating git and JIRA, etc. While they were doing this, they realized that the best way to make a difference, was to first focus on the data itself. This is the creation story of Weave. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Alan Fisher started his career as a computer programmer. Early on, he was hired by the 1st or 2nd largest freight railroad in the world, Union Pacific. He describes their technology group as having a punk rock spirit, leaning towards building their own solutions over buying them, which he found great value in. Outside of tech, he has been married for 30 years, and has 3 kids. He is an avid runner, landing someplace between a marathon runner and a mile in the morning kinda guy. He also loves to read the classics, drawing inspiration from them, along with restoring old homes. Given his rich history in the rail industry, Alan has led the charge in growth, innovation, and most recently, logistics, analytics, and digital mine. As his company started to look to the future in how to solve the industry's most pressing problems, his team executed the acquisition of a portfolio of companies and products - driving by automated inspection. This is a creation story of KinetiX at Wabtec Corporation. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

We are bringing you a special episode, as our friends at Strata return to the podcast. You might remember our interview from Season 8 with Eric Olden, Co-founder & CEO of the company. Eric took us through the creation story of the company. Today, we will be talking with Granville Schmidt, Chief Architect at Strata, who has been instrumental in architecting and building identity orchestration for AI agents from the ground up. In our chat, we are going to be discussing how the enterprises need to take advantage of identify for agents, and can do so seamlessly, no matter their level of tech debt, disconnection, or complex migration path. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Derek Ting grew up in Canada-land, enjoying all the things of the area but especially hockey. He mentioned he has a bit of ADD, which made it hard for him to make it through a chapter in school. Nowadays, he has 2 kids. His oldest son plays hockey, and he and his family enjoys rooting on the Toronto Maple Leafs. When asked about food, he claimed to be one of lives to eat, as he loves food. In fact, the more exotic food the better - but not as far as insects or something. When Derek figured out that carriers wanted to charge for texting, on top of the fees he was already paying for his phone and associated services. He found this atrocious, and he wanted to figure out a way to text for free - and eventually, all phone service. This is the creation story of TextNow. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Alex Kihm just turned 40, and has been into computers for 36 years. He was given his first hand me down computer at the age of 4 by his parents, and also grew up with lego bricks and building things. He is an engineer by training, but eventually switched to econometrics on the big data side. Outside of his professional life, he is married and describes himself as water affectionate. He enjoys swimming, diving - and free diving. In fact, he studied diving during his semester abroad. His free diving is mainly a hobby, but he has deep respect for the professional free divers of the world. At his original startup, Alex started to dive into LLMs and immediately ran into RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation). When he observed the wrong information being returned, along with a ton of resource consumption in the process - IE cost - he set out to solve the problem, and figured out the solution was in the chunks. This is the creation story of POMA AI. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, I'm talking with Dan Eyman, the Managing Director at Meld Valuation, specializing in independent, audit ready valuations for VC backed startups and VC firms. He is an expert in the valuation of complex instruments such as convertible debt and SAFEs. Dan is going to illuminate the common mistakes of founders, how valuations differ, and what founders should understand about dilution and how fundraising affects their cap table. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Avi Perez has been in the data and analytics space for more than 25 years. He began his career in banking and finance in Australia, but quickly grew tired of crunching numbers for the big wigs, wanting to find a better way to calculate this information. Outside of tech, he enjoys a wide array of music, from classical to modern trance. He's a big science fiction nut, enjoying shows like Aliens and the Matrix, and cooks up some exquisite cuisine on occasion. Within his prior startup, Avi and his co-founders built out a way to make intelligent decisions for their business using data. After they exited the business, they wanted to continue their data stint, but in particular, commercialize the analytics solution they built. This is the creation story of Pyramid Analytics. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Goutham Rao grew up in Brooklyn, a nerd all his life. Back in the day, his Dad bought him a Commodore 64, from which he started to learn to write code in BASIC. Eventually, he attended the University of Pennsylvania to get his Masters in Computer Science. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids. He likes to travel, and likes to run. He used to compete in half marathons, but nowadays, he does his running as more of a mental exercise. Goutham saw that IT telemetry logs have a lot of complexity within their data. Fast forward to today, he and his co-founders noticed the way that LLMs were processing data. They thought they could build something to interpret this data, and "clone" themselves to create something that mimics issue triage. This is the creation story of Neubird. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Matt Hamann knew he was going to be in tech way back in his younger days. His Dad worked for IBM, so there were always fun things to talk about and play with. He got his first family computer when he was 4 years old, and started programming BASIC when he was 8. Eventually, they got dialup through AOL - and he took off building websites with PHP & MySQL. Outside of tech, he is married with 3 kids. He loves to travel and spend time with his family. He also plays several instruments, including the piano and pipe organ, and enjoys tinkering with smart home devices. Right around the time of the pandemic, Matt and his co-founder were pitching a new company idea in Y Combinator, around data privacy. After receiving the feedback that there wasn't a big market for the original idea, they started to jam on ideas on how to pivot - and quickly landed on how cool it would be to have password-less authentication. This is the creation story of Rownd. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Greg Shove was born in Canada, raised in Britain, and eventually moved to the United States. Through all of these places he lived, he learned to believe in equal access for people, never to quit, and to work hard and win - all of this, respectively. When he moved to California, he was told to visit the local grocery store to meet more tech people than he would in a year in Canada. After business school, he worked for Apple and has launched or participated in 7 startups. Outside of tech, he loves to BBQ Argentinian style, inspired by the chef Francis Mallman. Six years ago, Greg started a company to teach people skills and how to become the best manager and executive they could be. The business did well, but mainly it was because of the pandemic. In 2023, he started playing with GPT, and he realized that he needed to pivot himself, and his business as well. This is the creation story of Section. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ravi Madabhushi finds that all of the stops along his professional journey were accidental. He grew up in a tiny village in the south of India - so small, it would take you 10 minutes to sprint across it, end to end. His goals back then were common - get a job, get married, etc. - but after he moved to Bangalore post school, he got acquainted with startups... and was hooked. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids. He enjoys playing tennis, badminton, and squash. He got introduced to squash when he was playing tennis, it started raining, and they were forced inside to play "inside tennis"... IE squash. Ravi and his team had a successful exit from their prior company, and decided to give startups another go. They wanted to solve the authentication problem for builders wanting to focus on their product - not building auth. What they found was a new arena in the world of AI, agents, and authentication of everything in between. This is the creation story of ScaleKit. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Trevor Stuart was born in Florida, but raised in Seattle. He was the son of a tech CFO and an Episcopalian minister - so he learned life at many different angles. He graduated from Boston College, and went into investment banking at Morgan Stanley. Beyond that, he worked at RelateIQ prior to being acquired by Salesforce, which then led him to start his own thing. Outside of tech, he's married and expecting his first child soon. He lives in Sonoma, and loves wine - which type depends on his mood and the time of year. At RelateIQ, Trevor and his team had a core problem - pushing more code, and looking to move faster, but limiting the amount of quality issues. His co-founder built the early workings of a system he had seen at LinkedIn, around gate keeping features. Eventually, post acquisition of this company, they decided to start building this solution on their own... which led them toward their own acquisition. This is the creation story of Split andHarness. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story-insights-from-startup-tech-leaders/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy