Sam Partee started out his love for tech/engineering by working on cars. After many y ears of working on cars, and even starting his own car stereo installation business, he decided that cards were finite and moved onto computers. He fell in love with the space, and the rest is history, filled with super computers, AI, distributed training, Redis and the lot. Outside of tech, he loves to take long hikes with his snowy husky. Sam and his team built a prior solution, an agent to solve bugs for you. They ran into a litany of problems, but eventually figured out that there was a dire need for an authorization for the activities that agents wanted to do on your behalf. Fast forward, and they are working with Anthropic to define these auth protocols. This is the creation story of Arcade. 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. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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

Brandon Card has always been involved in sports. In High School, he was a 3 sport athlete and still plays today, along side working out, doing yoga and pilates. He's heavily interested in holistic healing and alternative medicine, mentioning a big interest in quantum frequency healing, using the sun and ocean to add voltage to the body. He has also started a foundation around mental health, as sadly, he lost his co-founder to suicide, and wishes to remove the stigma from the mental health conversation. Brandon and his co-founder realized that all software platforms around contracts were directed towards lawyers - not towards finance. This was mind blowing, as negotiations are mostly finance driven, not based on the paragraphs of legal jargon. Brandon wanted to build something to serve this need. This is the creation story of Terzo. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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

Juan DeAngulo was born and raised in South America - then eventually, came to the status in 2017 for college to play Tennis. He kept playing throughout college and into his 40's, at which point he switched to golf and never picked up a racket again. He's been married for 25 years, with 2 older kids - one in law school, and one studying software development. As a family, they enjoy comedy, which funny enough was an acquired taste for Juan. They also love being outdoors, anywhere they can get out and about. At a prior company, Juan and his team created proprietary algorithms to intelligently predict and tie revenue. These models were based on tried and true processes. While Juan was obtaining an advanced degree at Harvard, his current venture was incubated around predictive revenue, and these algorithms. This is the creation story of Inselligence. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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 continuing our series, entitled Developer Chats - hearing from the large scale system builders themselves. In this episode, we are talking with Petr Petrenko, Senior PHP Backend Engineer. Petr will take us through his developer journey, in working on large scale backends, managing the tension between stability and innovation, and designing systems to interact with culturally different economies. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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

Sarah Lucena lives in San Francisco, and starts here day at 4:30 am to lead her LATAM team. She's originally from Brazil, born and raised on the north east side of the country. She studied in South Paulo, and spent 5 years in Uruguay, which was a huge influence in her career today. Outside of tech, she is a big cat lover, having 2 at her home. When it comes to Brazil, she recommends people visiting Rio, which condenses everything good about Brazil into one city. In the past, Sarah felt empty at her job. In other words, she was not happy with the legacy she was leaving. She built her team many times over, but was not able to create a team with the chemistry she was looking for. And the solutions for recruiting were supremely focused on the wrong signals for these types of connections. This is the creation story of Mappa. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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

Tucker Calloway grew up in Alamo, California, in the Easy Bay Area. And has returned to that area to raise his family - 25-30 minutes outside of the San Francisco area. He studied computer science at Cal, but eventually moved into sales engineering - and then sales. But outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids - one in college, and one in the latter years of high school. There is lots of change going on his family's life right now, but Tucker finds time to do woodworking and build his own cabinets. Ten years ago, a couple of co-founders built a solution to make log management easier for developers. Tucker joined that company in the past, and observed the dynamics of the industry and the company. They all decided that to take the business of the next level, they needed to change the physics of observability. This is the creation story of Mezmo. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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

Hojjat Jafarpour lives with his family in California. He got his PhD in databases and data streaming, back when the landscape was different and data streaming wasn't "cool" yet. He was an early member at Confluent, but also spent time at Quantcast, Informatica, and NEC Labs. Outside of tech, he has a family with young kids. He enjoys traveling, and can't wait until the kids are old enough to take on big trips. Hojjat joined Confluent in their early days. He was on a project that built out kSQL, which was a key cornerstone of Confluent. As these were the early days of stream processing, he started to think about ways to make it easier - to make this sort of tech available without all the infrastructure. This is the creation story of DeltaStream. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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 kicking off a new series, entitled Developer Chats - hearing from the large scale system builders themselves, sponsored by our friends at Beyond Tech. Beyond Tech is a top tier consulting company, specializing in creating portfolios for tech and science professionals seeking the UK Global Talent Visa. In this episode, we are talking with Svyatoslav Babinets, Engineering Manager at Meta. Svyatoslav helps to illuminate teh approaches he takes when building larger scale systems, connecting millions of users, and motivating users and developers alike. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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

Spriha Baruah Tucker has spent time in a number of places - growing up in India, attending boarding school in Singapore, and now living in San Francisco. She spent many years at Google, before founding her own startup called Aviator. Outside of tech, she really likes music, having a soft spot in her heart for Bollywood, but really digging into the jazz world these days. She enjoys the guilty pleasure of trashy romance TV, and tends to travel to get the best food - her favorite being Nashville. Spriha was a founder at Aviator, and was made aware of her current company while serving her customers. He noticed that all of her customers who used this platform absolutely adored it, to the tune of making infomercials for the platform. She reached out to the founder to let him know... and the rest is history. This is Spriha's creation story at Buildkite. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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

Gajus Kuizinas lives in Mexico City, and travels between there, New York and San Francisco. He had a non-traditional upbringing for an engineer, as all of his family were into the arts - so he had to make his own way. He started in Lithuania, and eventually was recruiting to setup computers and networks for dating platforms. Eventually, he got into freelancing, and started his first startup in the UK. Outside of tech, he has a garden, which doubles as an ecosystem for his free roaming hedgehog and bunny. Gajus started to think about the arc of becoming a freelancer. He realized that everyone who goes through a journey as a freelancer feels like a cog in the machine, and falls off the marketplaces out there. He realized that there was a massive vacuum and gap in the internet for these folks that needed to be filled. This is the creation story of Contra. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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 dropping our final episode in the series "The Railsware Way", sponsored by our good friends at Railsware. Railsware is a leading product studio with two main focuses - services and products. They have created amazing products like Mailtrap, Coupler and TitanApps, while also partnering with teams like Calendly and Bright Bytes. They deliver amazing products, and have happy customers to prove it. In this series, we are digging into the company's methods around product engineering and development. In particular, we will cover relevant topics to not only highlight their expertise, but to educate you on industry trends alongside their experience. In today's episode, we are speaking with Oleksii Ianchuk, Product Lead at Railsware, specifically for Mailtrap. Thought he doesn't like to limit his activities to product development, Oleksii has spent six years in product and project management, and is keen on searching for insights and putting them to work, as well as gauging the effects of his input. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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

Raj Dosanjh grew up in Coventry, which he calls the Detroit of the UK. He still enjoys following the football team, and hopes they rejuvenate the city some. He eventually left for University and moved to London. He likes to dig into how people think and how things are built. Outside of tech, he is engaged to be married in 2026. As such, he has recently taking up physical training - which results in a lot of working out, and meals filled with chicken. In the past, Raj's now co-founder reached out to him, post shutting the doors on his prior startup. After they had felt out the market to see if a solution for billing could fit, they moved forward and eventually started enabling revenue streams for AI agents. This is the creation of Paid. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordProtect: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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

Emmanuel Straschnov grew up in rural France, which is interestingly enough where he started doing computer stuff (he mentioned there wasn't much else to do in the 90's). He grew up sailing, as he lived next to the shore in Normandy. He never really thought he would end up coding, but after obtaining his MBA, he ended up doing just that. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 children. He mentions that most of his hobby time is devoted to them, but on occasion, he likes to travel, continue sailing, and to sing. Many years ago, Emmanuel noticed that there were a lot of people searching for technical founders, and using services to find technical founders. He thought this to be wrong, as many people have product ideas and just need a product to help them build it... so, he created something just for them. This is the creation story of Bubble. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordVPN: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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 have a special guest on the podcast, Kate Lowry, CEO coach, author and comedian. She is a long time startup founder, spent time in VC, is leading a values driven coaching and advising firm called Scaleheart, and recently, just published a book. The title of the book is Unbreakable: How to Thrive Under Fear-Based Leaders, and is a tactical guide to help smart, caring people get unstuck to they thrive under fear based leadership. In our conversation today, Kate is going to enlighten us on what fear based leadership is, how to use the predictability of fear based leaders to your advantage, and why its having (another) moment in the tech ecosystem today. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordVPN: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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 another episode in our series, sponsored by our good friends at Railsware. Railsware is a leading product studio with two main focuses - services and products. They have created amazing products like Mailtrap, Coupler and TitanApps, while also partnering with teams like Calendly and Bright Bytes. They deliver amazing products, and have happy customers to prove it. In this series, we are digging into the company's methods around product engineering and development. In particular, we will cover relevant topics to not only highlight their expertise, but to educate you on industry trends alongside their experience. In today's episode, we are chatting with Julia Starun, Product Director at Railsware with over 17 years of experience in product management, business process automation and optimization. Julia will share her insights into where an MBA helps you manage a product team - and where it doesn't. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordVPN: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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

Marco Rodrigues was born and raised in Canada, but now lives in the Bay Area. His tech genesis was around the time when the internet came out, when he spent an entire summer indoors, worrying his mother. He eventually attended university in Toronto, and went to work for Juniper Networks. Past that, he went towards the startup world - running product teams, and taking part in the ownership and selling of solutions and service offerings. Outside of tech, he is married with twin girls in the Naval Cadet Core. He is a big hockey nut, rooting for the Edmonton Oilers, and enjoys taking his kids to hockey rinks all over the world. Marco spent many years watching his teams drown in data and tooling. The situations were more complex, but the outcomes weren't getting better. He started to consider the advent of AI, and asked the question - how do we solve these sorts of problems with an agentic SOC platform? This is the creation story of Exaforce. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordVPN: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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 have a special episode correlated with Fraud awareness week, and brought to you by our friends at SEON - the command center for fraud prevention and AML compliance. SEON connects first party data signals to show you what other solutions can't - by enriching data, understanding context, and taking action from one place... to prevent fraud. In this episode, we are talking with Husnain "HB" Bajwa, SVP of Product & Risk Solutions. He has been a fraud and risk leader for 30+ years, and leads innovation in fraud prevention and compliance at SEON. HB is going to touch on important topics in the fraud detection and prevention space, such as AI, regulatory pressures, and the perspectives of startups that can get them into trouble. Our Sponsors: * Check out Incogni: https://incogni.com/codestory * Check out NordVPN: https://nordprotect.com/codestory 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

Praveen Ghanta recently turned 47 and started to look at the things he wanted to do - but potentially couldn't do in the future. He's married with 3 teenage kids, and has been into running for quite some time. So much so, that he attempted to run a 5 minute mile... and almost made it. Also, he recently signed up for soccer classes, after having been beat by some eighth grade kids, who helped him realize he needed training in his ball handling skills. In his prior startup, Praveen and his team stumbled upon a new approach to hiring that fueled the building of this startup, all the way through exit. After that success, he decided to make this approach available to others, and form a business around this very thing - fractional talent for your startup. This is the creation story of Fraction and DevHawk. 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 another episode in our series, sponsored by our good friends at Railsware. Railsware is a leading product studio with two main focuses - services and products. They have created amazing products like Mailtrap, Coupler and TitanApps, while also partnering with teams like Calendly and Bright Bytes. They deliver amazing products, and have happy customers to prove it. In this series, we are digging into the company's methods around product engineering and development. In particular, we will cover relevant topics to not only highlight their expertise, but to educate you on industry trends alongside their experience. In today's episode, we are speaking with Nika Tamayo Flores, Product Lead at Railsware, specifically for the Coupler product. She's been leading complex data-driven products for over eight years, and will enlighten us on conversational analytics, and how they can change a data focused product. 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