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

Jonathan Norris lives in Toronto, and has a passion for tech that started early in his life. He has participated in the First Robotics competition, which got him into mechanical engineering, building robots, and leading teams to world championships. He still actively volunteers and mentors people in the program today. Outside of tech, he is a new Dad, and stays quite busy parenting his kid, when he's not riding an eBike to work.

In Winter 2014, Jonathan and his founding team did Y-combinator and formed Taplytics. After doing this for nearly 10 years, what his team noticed was the most passionate users were developers using feature flagging over the core offering of the product. So - they decided to spin out a new brand, to focus on just that.

This is the creation story of DevCycle.

Sponsors

• Drata
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery

Links

• https://devcycle.com/
• https://taplytics.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathantnorris/

Gilad Shriki was born and raised in Israel. He loves the outdoors, and loves to travel. Skiing in a passion of his, and he loves to explore new places in the winter, mentioning that Whistler was his most recent favorite. He started digging tech very early, and his hobbies center around it as well. He loves building things in home automation, like building micro controllers that detect temperature or relay that turn the lights on and off.

Gilad has known his current founding team for many, many years, and their last product was bought by Palo Alto Networks. When looking at what was the next big problem to solve, they dug into authentication and figured out - that this was still a major problem in the ecosystem, for developers and from the standpoint of cybersecurity.

This is the creation story of Descope.

Sponsors

• Drata
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery

Links

• https://www.descope.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/gshriki/

Alex Deeb was influenced by the education space early on. He had many teachers who inspired him through his life, and his parents pushed him to do well in school on order to obtain better opportunities. Along side of that, he is interested in equitable opportunities, which is a big driver for him in his professional ventures. He is passionate about helping learn about new opportunities. He grew up in Long Island, NY - so of course, he loves pizza. He frequents the local pizza house, which in his opinion is Stellas'. He gets 2 slices of regular cheese, with a coke - which is the only time he drinks soda.

One day, he and his friends got together to have a business brainstorming question. One of the questions that came up was how can you make videos searchable? Also, how can you improve engagement within schools, perhaps with popular media?

This is the creation story of Classhook.

Links

• Website: https://www.classhook.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderdeeb/

Sahil Patel has lived in Atlanta for 12 years now, but has made a lifetime of leaving Atlanta... and the coming back. He attended undergrad in ATL, and in 2011, started a company called ER Express, which centered around patient scheduling. After building the company, he sold it for a successful outcome for him, for his team, and for the buyer. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 daughters, and loves to play music and play socer. He plays guitar in a rush cover band called the Atlanta Rush Hour, and used to play soccer competitively.

In the past, Sahil was a client of his current venture. In leading ER Express, he saw great value in a tool to predict conversion. He liked it so much, that after he sold his company and moved on, he wanted to join the team - and take it to the next level.

This is the creation story of Spiralyze.

Sponsors

• Drata
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery

Links

• https://www.spiralyze.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/sahilanamipatel

Ariel Dominguez has been an entrepreneur for most of his life. He started his first company at age 15, selling websites in Miami, hiring family members before he could drive. He continued his career later, in finance, then consumer product goods, then healthcare insurance. He loves to build things, and has started 13 - 15 businesses in his lifetime. Outside of tech, he is an avid drummer, and has been playing since he was 10 years old.

Irena Tigranyan was born in Armenia, and moved to the US in 2014. She never dreamed of being a founder, cause in the world she was raised in, youalways worked for someone else. She has diverse professional experience in retail and operations, but outside of work, she likes to explore, kayaking, tennis and being outdoors.

Fun fact - Ariel and Irena are married, IE partners in life and in business. They Met on Bumble, live in Miami, and invested their "wedding money" to found a company.

Ariel and Irena wanted to build the Expedia for healthcare - to make it simple, and abstract away all the loopholes and jargon. They wanted to innovate in a non-innovative space, and to bring the swipe right or left mentality to healthcare insurance.

This is the creation story of Healthbird.

Sponsors

• Drata
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery

Links

• https://www.healthbird.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/arieldominguez/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/irena-t-419739101/

Ayal Regev lives in Tel Aviv, and continues working hard on his startup, despite the hostage conflict in the country at the time of this recording. Prior to his current venture, he was in tech for 10 years, doing consulting in cybersecurity, healthcare, and gaming. Being a gamer for a long time, he enjoyed the technical challenges in brining a game to market. Outside of tech, he likes to write raps - and forecasts that he will perform them one day. He also likes to do rock climbing and play board games with friends.

Ayal and his co-founders noticed the trends of automation in continuous integration and development processes (or CI/CD). They also noticed that over time, this has created a lot of clutter and bloat in the ecosystem. They wanted to filter out bad practices, and build a platform to reduce feedback time and redefine CI/CD.

This is the creation story of Redefine.

Sponsors

• Drata
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery

Links

• https://www.redefine.dev/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayal-regev/

Leonardo Shapiro is originally from Mexico City. His family was from Russia and Poland, but ended up being in Mexico City after being denied from the US. He is an outdoorsy person, and loves to walk and hike. And in fact, he used to be a scuba diving instructor in college, and he loves to spend time in spaces like the underwater. He's also a foodie, and loves coffee and wine.

For Leonardo, the immigration process into the US was a very hard process. He went on the search for a product that would make this process easier, and he couldn't find it. He wanted to fix this, and provide something for his fellow "not" alien's.

This is the creation story of Not Alien.

Sponsors

• Drata
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery

Links

• https://notalien.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonardoshapiro/

Black Burch grew up in Fort Worth, attending college at TCU. Prior to his current venture, he wasn't actually a tech person. He wanted to be a music professor, specifically in percussion. But eventually, he moved over to the tech world. But, outside of tech, he plays board games, in the strategy realm, and named one that I hadn't heard of called Terra Mystica.

Previously at PMG, Blake and his company had built an internal tool called forklift, moving data between data warehouses. As it started to grow, he and his co-founder saw lots of opportunities to expand the offering - and make it a product of its own.

This is the creation story of Shipyard.

Sponsors

• Drata
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery

Links

• https://www.shipyardapp.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/blakeburch/

Reinis Simanovskis was born in Latvia. He comes from a family of exact sciences - physic, math, tech, etc. - which gave him a clear path of where to go professionally. He started coding classes in middle school, but quit to purse road cycling, of which he was very successful. He still rides today, nearly 200-300 kilometers per ride. He has worked in London, Africa, and eventually landed in Jakarta - and aligned with his travels, he is an adventurous foodie.

In the past, Reinis and his co-founders noticed that no one was approaching embedded finance in Indonesia. At the same time, he was seeing other companies be successful at this very thing in the US and other countries, and they started to realize the magnitude of the opportunity.

This is the creation story of Finfra.

Sponsors

• Drata
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery

Links

• https://www.finfra.io/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/simanovskis/

Raven Jiang grew up in Singapore before heading over to the states for college. He came to the US for undergrad because he grew up reading science fiction, and liked the idea of working with technology. He plays multiplayer video games, which helped to shape how he viewed technology and the advancements in that ecosystem. He enjoys Japanese food, and in fact, traveled to Japan regularly while living in Singapore.

Raven and his co-founders met in business school, and observed an interesting opportunity in the market. They wanted to apply consumer finance technology to create a seamless revenue financing experience. Over time, they added to create a fintech platform to accelerate your startup.

This is the creation story of Arc.

Sponsors

• Drata
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery

Links

• https://www.arc.tech/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravenjiang/