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

Buchi Reddy lives in North Austin, having recently moved there with his family. He is originally from south India, and grew up in a farming family before moving to the metro and studying engineering. Post college, he spent many years building high frequency trading systems, before moving to Silicon Valley and joining companies there, just as Cisco and Traceable, which you as the audience are very familiar with. Outside of tech, he is married with a 7 year old son. He and his family enjoy hiking, overnight camping, and living just far enough away from the craziness of downtown Austin to still enjoy it.

While he was interviewing customers at a prior company, Buchi spotted a wide gap for enterprises, where API's were not tested properly before going to production. Baffled by this, he wanted to go bridge the gap, and build something to automate this testing.

This is the creation story of Levo.

Sponsors

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

Links

• https://www.levo.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/buchireddy/

Evan Henshaw-Plath, also known as Rabble, was born in Berkeley while his Mom was a student. His parents were hippies, and he grew up near Silicon Valley, which gave him access to work with startups as early as High School. He founded Odeo, which eventually became Twitter. He got the name Rabble cause it was founded by three Evan's, which didn't work - so he went with his online nickname. He has a cool track record of working not only on Twitter, but Flickr, Palm, and other big names. He lives in New Zealand, enjoying all the outdoor activities, and participates in activism in digital rights and environmentalism. Being a Vegetarian, he admits that his comfort food is Mexican cuisine, which he doesn't get a lot of in the land of the Kiwis.

Rabble was disappointed when Twitter shut down its open app capabilities. He wanted something like Twitter, but built to where someone couldn't take away his access. He started to dig into protocols, and eventually landed in San Francisco to tell his friends that he was going to make social media work like email and messaging.

This is the creation story of Rabble Labs & Verse.

Sponsors

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

Links

• https://www.verse-pbc.org/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/rabble/
• Rabble's New Podcast!

Jesse Pollak grew up in Washington, DC, attending a Quaker school through graduating in high school. He played competitive soccer, which was a huge part of his life. Eventually, he moved to SoCal to attend school at Berkley. He got the bug to start a company, and only lasted 2 years at school - before he ventured out on his own. Eventually, his company got acquired by Coinbase, which opened up a whole new world for him. Outside of tech, he is married with a 4 month old boy. He doesn't drink caffeine, but daily, enjoys a decaf cappuccino.

In December 2021, Jesse and his team were wondering in the desert for a while, trying to figure out what was next on-chain. After considering what AWS and Heroic was for Web 2.0, they figured out that in order to go build the apps that companies like Coinbase had, they needed a foundational layer in the ecosystem to fuel that development.

This is the creation story of Base.

Sponsors

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

Links

• https://www.base.org/
• https://www.coinbase.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessepollak/

Gaurav Bhattacharya grew up in New Delhi, in a blue collar family. He lost his Dad early in his life. He took influence from his older brother and his love for programming, getting hooked on C/C++. He loves building things, including video games, of which he built his first one at the age of 12. In High School, he pursued a startup idea that led him to skip college, and eventually exit. Outside of tech, he lives in San Francisco and continues his love for gaming. He also enjoys watching live sports - the Dodgers, Lakers and Warriors.

At his prior startup, Gaurav and his team were working in the healthcare space. They became learners of go-to market strategies, how to do sales, and how to do marketing. They enjoyed it so much that they grew to want to start their next company in that space.

This is the creation story of Jeeva AI.

Sponsors

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

Links

• https://www.jeeva.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhattacharyagaurav/

Artem Rodichev was born and raised in Kazakhstan, surrounded by the mountains. He loves hiking, and pretty much all outdoor activities. He jokes that he was raised by computers, as he was always playing games, trying to learn hacking, and more. He has always be interested in stories, in particular science fiction. He read a lot of books and watched movies, being fascinated with plots around empathetic AI like Blade Runner and Joy. These movies sparked his motivation to move forward to bringing this world to life.

Artem spent several years building a Core AI stack at Replica. What he noticed was that people really enjoyed connecting with their digital friends - and, he noticed the limitations of this experience. He aimed to correct that limitation, in starting a new venture focused on boarder empathetic AI.

This is the creation story of Ex-Human.

Sponsors

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

Links

• https://exh.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/art-rodichev/

Keren Fanan doesn't come from a tech based family, yet has worked in tech for the last 15 years. She's not a developer herself, but has always been drawn to software in general, as in her words, software runs the world. She studied Industrial Engineering, but quickly moved into product roles, working for AT&T, Gett and Moon Active in the past. Deep down, she always wanted to found a company of her own. Outside of tech, she lives near Tel Aviv in Israel, and has lived there her whole life. Her and her 3 kids like to travel, go camping, and be in nature as much as possible.

Keren and her co-founders felt similar pains in the industry, all from different angles. No matter how good their ideas were, no matter the initiative, there is always a long process in software dev to bring it to life. This was especially true for non technical founders. They wanted a way to bring their ideas straight to production, without having to wait on the full life cycle.

This is the creation story of MyOp.

Sponsors

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

Links

• https://www.myop.dev/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/keren-fanan/

Michael Sacca didn't start out coding - he started out as a musician. In college, he studied music business and wanted to go into that world. Eventually, he figured out that people didn't care that you had a music business degree, and he ended up waiting tables for a few years. After watching his roommate write software and get paid well to do it, he decided to learn to code himself. Outside of tech, he lives in Vancouver with his wife and 2 kids, coaching soccer and flag football. He mentioned it can be a pain to go out to eat with him cause he has celiac, and avoids gluten.

Prior to his current role, Michael was the Chief Product Officer at Dribbble. After he left that company and dabbled in some other ventures, he was approached about a CEO role at a well known darling company in Minneapolis.

This is Michael's creation story at Leadpages.

Sponsors

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

Links

• https://www.leadpages.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelsacca/

Ofir Bibi grew up in Jerusalem, and is where he is today because of his love for photography. He has always been a tinkerer, taking apart of radios and such, and was drawn to the early days of training neural networks and computational photography. He spent a number of years in academia, but eventually was drawn outside of that world. Outside of tech, he is married with 3 boys who play sports. His family is surrounded by nature, so they enjoy biking and walking as much as they can.

In 2012, a company was formed around bridging the gap between imagination and creation, through video, apps, and studio grade tools. Ofir recently celebrated 10 years with the company, and came in with the title "Neural Networks" guy.

This is Ofir's creation story of Lightricks.

Sponsors

• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://www.lightricks.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/ofirbb/

Austin Federa has a non-traditional path into the blockchain world. In college, he studied political & environmental science, and economics. Interestingly enough, those studies map a lot to the blockchain first principles. He was seriously looking to do his PhD, but fell out of love with that space, and joined NPR as a journalist for a while. Then, of course, he got bit by the startup bug. Outside of tech, he enjoys living in Brooklyn, photography, and engaging in some form of learning at all times. He enjoys reading, mention the Children of Time series, as though it was fiction, it had a lot of interwoven psychology and communal themes.

Austin acknowledges that though we all love the internet, it's actually not very good... for high performant systems. And though companies are trying to build dedicated networks in the world, there hasn't been one created for blockchain - IE, not centralized around single party.

This is the creation story of DoubleZero.

Sponsors

• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://doublezero.xyz/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/austin-federa/

Tim Eades grew up poor, but forced himself into college. He is a 4 time CEO, an investor, and on the boards of several different companies - but more interestingly, he is an old punk. He saw the Sex Pistols live back in the day, which he mentioned had great sound quality. He's been married for 25 years, and is on the board of a charity that his wife runs. That charity delivery 20,000 birthday cakes to underprivileged children a year.

Being a multi-time CEO, Tim has some experience around starting companies. He interviewed many cybersecurity leaders, asking about identity and why vulnerabilities around it was still a problem. During a Liverpool game, he downloaded a powerpoint template and put together a pitch to build a company and solve this problem.

This is the creation story of Anetac.

Sponsors

• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://anetac.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/tieades/