Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical Founders

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.

Sponsors

• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch
• Mailtrap
• .TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)

Links

• https://rownd.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthamann/

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.

Sponsors

• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch
• Mailtrap
• .TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)

Links

• https://www.sectionai.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregshove

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.

Sponsors

• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch
• Mailtrap
• .TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)

Links

• https://www.scalekit.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravibits/

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.

Sponsors

• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch
• Mailtrap
• .TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)

Links

• https://www.harness.io/
• https://www.harness.io/blog/split-joins-forces-with-harness
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevorbstuart/

Dave Berner grew up in London, and got into coding through music. He used to be the lead singer in metal and hardcore bands. His bands couldn't afford a webmaster, so he learned how to code in order to launch his band's website, along with setting up friend's custom MySpace profiles. Beyond that, he partook in many startups and side projects, loving to build on the internet. Outside of tech, he's married with 3 kids. He mentions his family is a "low tech" family, teaching their kids fundamental education without a screen. The live in Australia, in a sleepy surfer town, though he admits he hasn't learned to surf just yet.

Dave has always been building side hustles, but none of them really got off the ground. What he noticed about the process was that the process of building the infra of an app - the auth, the billing, support, etc. - always took too long. Eventually, he thought that maybe the best product would be something combining these things.

This is the creation story of Kinde.

Sponsors

• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch
• Mailtrap
• .TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)

Links

• https://kinde.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidajberner/

Tiffany Johnson is originally from Texas, but grew up in California. At a young age, she was a bit of an adrenaline junkie, partaking in skydiving, snowboarding, wakeboarding and gymnastics. In school, she fell in love with Econ, Mgmt, and Statistics - and eventually, fell into the payment industry by accident. Outside of tech, she has been married for 20 years with 3 kids. Her kids are all snow skiers, though she doesn't hold that against them as a snowboarder.

A few years ago, Tiffany was contacted about a new opportunity at a decades old company in the payments space. This company wanted to bring to market a solution around embedded finance, specifically for SaaS solutions - and Tiffany was the perfect product leader for the role.

This is Tiffany's creation story at NMI.

Sponsors

• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch
• Mailtrap
• .TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)

Links

• https://www.nmi.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffany-johnson-b339242/

Today, we are releasing another episode from our series, entitled The Gene Simmons of Data Protection - the KISS Method, brought to you by none other than Protegrity. Protegrity is AI-powered data security for data consumption, offering fine grain data protection solutions, so you can enable your data security, compliance, sharing and analytics.

In our final episode, we are speaking with Michael Howard, CEO of Protegrity. We talk about how traditional type systems often fail short in modern data management, as well as potential threats posed by quantum computing to current encryption methods, as well as how Protegrity's product embeds context and security into the data itself, in order to repel any threat.

Questions

• Tell me and my audience a little bit about you. 
• I know that you’ve referred to type systems as “lame.” Can you explain the concept of type systems in databases, why they’re lame, and why they pose challenges for modern data management?
• How is quantum computing poised to impact the current landscape of data security and encryption?
• What are some of the limitations of traditional type systems in databases, and how can they be improved to handle modern data challenges?
• Can you share insights on how Protegrity's approach to data classification and protection differs from traditional methods?
• Looking ahead, how do you envision the role of type systems evolving with the advent of quantum computing and other emerging technologies?
• One of Protegrity’s talking points has been how far behind legislation for data privacy and security is compared to today’s rapidly accelerating data landscape. What do you think needs to happen – in quantum and AI – for conversations to turn into action?

Links

• https://www.protegrity.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-howard-2b7b273/

Brennan Pothetes grew up in Louisiana, but went to High School in Portland, Oregon - two very different places. He started his career in internal audit, before he eventually helped launch Simple, the first bank on the iPhone. He has built a lot of companies since, and continues to do so. Outside of business and tech, he likes food and enjoys whipping up some cajun or greek cuisine. Recently, he picked up surfing, but also likes to sit down with real time strategy games like Civilization.

Brennan was one of the first customers of Invisible, which was one of the biggest trainers of LLMs. After he sold his last company, he was approached by the board to help then spin businesses out, but in a strategic way with a hold co, allowing them to work together with them zero to one, and beyond.

This is the creation story of Infinity Constellation.

Sponsors

• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch
• Mailtrap
• .TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)

Links

• https://www.infinityconstellation.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/brennanpothetes/

Ben Lerner was a fan of tech growing up, along side being into math and science. Right out of school, he joined a startup called Data Nitro, which attempted to integrate python into excel. Ever since then, he has been jamming in the tech and startup world. Outside of tech, he married to a computational biologist. He enjoys padel, which is kind of like Pickleball meets Tennis, and of course ping pong. Though, with his full time job as a CEO, he often finds his hobby is going home to write code.

Ben realized that LLMs are really good at understanding code, leaps and bounds better than prior ML models. While he was at Google, he was also digging into how to apply LLMs to coding in general. Applying both of these things, he and his co-founders are seeing where this can be applied to the real world, starting with Snowflake compute.

This is the creation story of Espresso AI.

Sponsors

• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch
• Mailtrap
• .TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)

Links

• https://espresso.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/espressoben/

Today, I'm talking with Kolton Andrus, CEO and Founder of Gremlin. You may remember previously when we spoke with Matt, the prior CTO of the company. Since that time frame, a lot has changed at the company, going through several arcs and foundational changes that are leading to not only assessing weaknesses in your infrastructure, but walking you through how to fix it (and eventually, fixing it for you).

Questions:

• Tell us a little bit of an overview about you.
• Your time at Amazon & Netflix were big influences on the importance of chaos engineering and reliability testing. Can you tell me what was so foundational about your time there?
• What is next iteration of Gremlin? What has changed in the platform primarily? Tell me about the arcs of the company here.
• In 2022, there was a leadership transition and you increased your focus on the product. What are some of the most exciting developments that came from these last 3 years?
• Where does AI fit into Chaos Engineering? And where does it not fit? Can you unpack your viewpoint here?
• What are you most excited about in the next chapter for Gremlin, and for the broader SRE space?
• What advice would you give a founder just getting started?

I couldn't be more excited about the future of Gremlin. Given the arcs the company has gone through, it's evident that Kolton has built foundational layers into the platform, and is steering the ship towards responsible chaos engineering, reliability, automation and much more.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you'd like to learn more about Gremlin, please visit gremlin.com.

Sponsors

• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch
• Mailtrap
• .TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)

Links

• https://www.gremlin.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/kolton-andrus-77315a2/
• https://codestory.co/podcast/e9-matt-fornaciari-gremlin/