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

Tools and Weapons, hosted by Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, features conversations with leaders in government, business, and culture that explore the world’s most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

This episode’s guest is Strive Masiyiwa, a pioneer of Africa’s telecoms industry and influential global tech tycoon.

He and Brad discuss Strive’s work to ensure that all 1.3 billion+ Africans get access to digital infrastructure, close the digital skills gap, and invest in the continent’s young entrepreneurs to find innovative solutions for healthcare and food insecurity.

Follow or subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith wherever you get your podcasts.

Links

• Website: https://news.microsoft.com/tools-and-weapons-podcast/

Rene Morkos is a builder. When he was younger, his Dad told him that he could study anything he wanted, as long as it wasn't Civil Engineering. So... that is exactly what he did. He has built amazing things all over the world, and also, obtained his PhD at Stanford. Outside of technology, he likes to alternate hobbies, and has currently settled into Mountaineering, after spending some time doing Kite Surfing.

Rene was in Afghanistan working on a project, trying to repair the runway that had been struck by RPG's. He was struck by how hard it was to find the optimal way to do a simple project. While he was studying his PhD, he also noticed that constructions sites were under utilized... so he and his team invented a simple algorithm that knew how to build.

This is the reaction story of Alice Technologies.

Sponsors

• Airbyte
• Doppler
• Host.io
• IPInfo
• mabl
• SupportZebra

Links

• Website: https://alicetechnologies.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renemorkos/

Valentin Vasilyev has always been interested in the open source world. His Github account was created way back in 2008 when they started. He always dreamt about contributing to Ruby on Rails, since he developed with it in the past. Outside of tech, he loves cycling - road and mountain, and enjoys good coffee and online shooting games. He's married with 2 kids, and loves living in the midwest, specifically Chicago.

Post getting his green card, Valentin wanted to experiment with the open source library he created, which its worth noting, was starred 6000 times. He decided to keep his library, but spin off a pro version which included a backend. Then he followed up with some landing pages, and payment mechanisms. And then began his focus on accuracy.

This is the creation story of Fingerprint.com.

Sponsors

• Airbyte
• Doppler
• Host.io
• IPInfo
• mabl
• SupportZebra

Links

• Website: https://fingerprint.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valentin-vasilyev/

Sam Lambert is originally from the UK, and has lived quite a few places during his life. He went to school in India, but now resides in San Francisco. He finds software to be a creative, playful process, and sees people trying to build that away from the process. He feels very lucky to building something that provides fruit and solves problems. Outside of tech, he is married with a 4 year old, and is into cooking and art. I asked about NFT's, given his tech background, but he's not super into that form of art at this time.

Sam spent time working at Github as a VP of Engineering, specifically focusing on infrastructure. He and his team came across Vitess, the backend that ran YouTube, and he took this amazing framework into his current venture to remix their approach of design and scalability.

This is the creation story of PlanetScale.

Sponsors

• Airbyte
• Doppler
• Host.io
• IPInfo
• mabl
• SupportZebra

Links

• Website: https://planetscale.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isamlambert/

Ruben Izmailyan grew up in Armenia originally, then moved to Russia when he was 12. When he was 14, he and his family came to the US, eventually attending school at Brown in Rhode Island. He's an avid BBQer, which fits perfectly now that he is living in Texas with his young family. However, he let me know that he even was into this style of cooking when he was living in Brooklyn - against the wishes of his landlord at the time.

In a previous role, Ruben was made aware that although financial institutions and brokers had access to useful data, normal consumers did not. Starting out with a budgeting app, he and his team ended up pivoting to creating the tooling and infrastructure needed to interact with financial data sets. And this abstraction started to gain traction.

This is the creation story of Quiltt.

Sponsors

• Airbyte
• Doppler
• Host.io
• IPInfo
• mabl
• SupportZebra

Links

• Website: https://www.quiltt.io/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubenizmailyan/

Welcome back listeners, today we are dropping episode in our series entitled The New Notification Stack for Developers, brought to you by our long time friends and sponsors of the Code Story podcast, Courier. As a reminder, Courier is developer infrastructure for product notifications, making it easier to deliver the notification experience that your customers expect. Check out their product to learn more at Courier.com

Guest: Drew Youngwerth, Software Manager at Courier

Links

• Website: https://courier.com/codestory
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-youngwerth/

Manik Suri calls himself a jack of all trades. He went about his career doing lots of different things, and figured out most of what he didn't want to do. He started out an academic, then went into private equity investment, then did a spin in Government, then went to law school - and finally, landed in the tech world. He grew up in Fresno, and ended up back in Cali, specifically in the Bay Area. Outside of tech, he is married with a young family, and a dog named Espresso.

Lucas Tepman was originally born in Argentina, and came to the US around 5 years ago. He started out his career in public affairs and politics, working at an NGO and promoting the acceleration of sustainability. He came to study at UC Berkeley as a recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship, and eventually he explored solutions via high impact venture capital. This is where he met Manik.

Manik and Lucas stumbled into the problem they are solving today. A decade ago, Manik wanted to solve big public problems. He saw opportunities in the food industry, and created a software solution to replace the clipboard. What they figured out was most people were checking temperatures, and did need a digital clipboard - the needed the process automated.

This is the creation story of Therma.

Sponsors

• Airbyte
• Doppler
• Host.io
• IPInfo
• mabl
• SupportZebra

Links

• Website: https://www.hellotherma.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maniksuri/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucas-tepman-0474783b/

Tapan Pattnayak life revolves around technology - his friends, professional colleagues, etc. and even his wife is an engineer, who he met at a company he was working at. He's passionate about making kids fall in love with science, and inspire a generation of young people to roll up their sleeves and dig into hardware. He believes that engineering is taught from the passion of other engineers. Outside of tech, he used to play sports, specifically cricket. When time limited the play of cricket, he started reading philosophy and history, with the goal of predicting what is happening in macro or societal trends.

While growing up in India, Tapan was contacted by his good friend in the states to join his company. At first he was hesitant, but he came to a point in his life where he felt he needed to do something different - something that was high energy, open, and impactful to the rest of the world.

This is Tapan's creation story at Addverb.

Sponsors

• Airbyte
• Doppler
• Host.io
• IPInfo
• mabl
• SupportZebra

Links

• Website: https://addverb.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tapanpattnayak/

Welcome back listeners, today we are dropping episode in our series entitled The New Notification Stack for Developers, brought to you by our long time friends and sponsors of the Code Story podcast, Courier. As a reminder, Courier is developer infrastructure for product notifications, making it easier to deliver the notification experience that your customers expect. Check out their product to learn more at Courier.com

Guest: Maria Irizarry, Technical Lead Manager at Courier

Links

• Website: https://courier.com/codestory
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mairizar/

Sean Stavropoulos grew up in Southern California, His journey to technology started in 7th grade, when he started programming for fun in Visual Studio, breaking his friends computers along the way. He studied aerospace engineering in college, but enjoyed tech and pogromming way more and joined the LA development community 12 years ago. Outside of tech, he plays beach volleyball, hikes, and enjoys little vacations here and there.

Sean and his co-founder had an idea to build a modern appointment scheduling solution, specifically for salons and spas - so called self care businesses, traditionally underserved. They interviewed owners and built and built until they had a solution to power a 6 person salon.

This is the creation story of Boulevard.

Sponsors

• Airbyte
• Doppler
• Host.io
• IPInfo
• mabl
• SupportZebra

Links

• Website: https://www.joinblvd.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanstavropoulos/