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

Josh Millet's journey to tech was quite circuitous. He spent most of his 20's doing a PhD in French medieval history, with his plan being a professor in college. His specific time period was the era around Joan of Arc. Upon graduating, he realized that the job market for French medieval history professors wasn't super hot... and he ended up doing a startup with some of his friends from school - a small test prep company, which ended up being sold with 5 employees onboard.

He's married with 2 boys, living in Los Angeles. With two boys, he mentioned that there is a lot of referring... and he feels like an adjudicator and mediator most of the time. After getting involved in the hiring process at his prior company, he felt the pain of knowing when an interview was over early on. He thought, there has to be a way to use data and tech to make the process more efficient.

This is the creation story of Criteria.

Sponsors

• Courier
• Img.ly
• Routable
• CTO.ai
• Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

• Website: https://www.criteriacorp.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-millet-23ba192/

Kristen Buchanan live in Portland, Oregon with her husband, cats and dog. She went to school for museum education, with a minor in art history - note the non-technical background. She was a kid who loved archeology and anthropology, and though she was going to be spending her time in museums. Personally, she loves teaching and sharing new things with people - yet, never wanted to be a teacher.

Her hobbies center around learning new things and being outside, She loves to read, and used to dig into the relics in the library stacks at her school. An interesting fact, when studying the art of wax painting in an old latin book, she found a note that someone had passed their friend in latin class - from the 1950's. She is also a big DIY'er and gardener, enjoying the engineering in both of those things. In fact, she highlighted that there is a lot of math and engineering within the world of creating clothing.

In 2015, she started her own business to offer learning & development services, and specializing in software engineering onboarding. She was challenged by a mentor to turn this into a software solution, and after some reflection time, she decided to do just that.

This is the creation story of Edify.

Sponsors

• Courier
• Img.ly
• Routable
• CTO.ai
• Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

• Website: https://www.getedify.co/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristenmg/

In his early career, Angel Munoz was an investment banker, specializing in technology. He was fortunate enough to invest in the development of MP3's in the 80's. In addition to this, he is well known for being the spearhead of what is known as eSports today.

He is a father of 2 kids, and has been married for 36 years. His passion centers around interactive entertainment, specifically in the world of gaming. He tends to lean towards first person shooters - abbreviated FPS - because they have a real sense of immersion. He loves post apocalyptic games, where you have to survive in a world where our systems and infrastructure have been completely removed.

After launching a successful, social media platform around the gaming community - called GTribe, he started to create experiences inside the community. So much so, he and his team attempted to integrate video game aspects into an audio video experience.

This is the creation story of Beacon.

Sponsors

• Courier
• Img.ly
• Routable
• CTO.ai
• Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

• Website: https://beaconx.com/
• https://www.amazon.com/Being-Digital-Nicholas-Negroponte/dp/0679762906

Braden Stenning has always been interested in tech. His earliest memories include the desire to be an aerospace engineer - to be the guy to build the spaceships. He spent a lot of time exploring computers, being interested in math & science - and even founded a high school robotics team. This really opened his eyes to software development as a career, and lit up something inside of him.

He is a curious person who often has a plan, and keeps his eyes open for what is happening around him. He did his undergrad at Carlton university, studying aerospace engineering - and he realized he really loved school. So much so, that he got his PhD from the University of Toronto, around the topic of space exploration robots. In Toronto, met his wife, and they decided to stick around Ottawa. They love to spend time outside in the "green space", as he puts it, getting their 2 boys outside or walking the dog.

Through some projects he was working on, and networking in the tech space of Ottawa, he was introduced to his Co-founder, Martin Cloake. Together, the combined ideas around machine telemetry and the next level of insight into continuous improvement.

This is the creation story of Raven.ai.

Sponsors

• Courier
• Img.ly
• Routable
• CTO.ai
• Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

• Website: https://raven.ai/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/braden-stenning-ba849487/

Born and raised in Santa Barbara, Meha Agrawal grew up in a beach town. Her Dad is a professor of Computer Science, and her Mom worked at the University as well. In the 5 years before she was blessed with a sibling, her creativity and problem solving nature was cultivated by her parents.

The majority of her life she was chasing gold stars - A+'s on her assignments, targeting the doctor or engineer job - which led her to attend USC and study computer science and business administration. She wound up in NY working for Goldman Sachs, and she quickly realized that she didn't like engineering, particular working on legacy systems. She left Goldman, started working for the Muse and began to fall in love with entrepreneurship. Post that, she spent some time at Stitch Fix, and there she observed how data and tech could foster magical moments for consumers.

She enjoys dancing, singing, and is a huge culinary and mixology enthusiast - searching for the next speakeasy in town with her fiancé. Along with that, she enjoys reading, writing, performing, or sketching.

At the end of 2017, Meha realized that despite her gratifying life, she was feeling unfilled and anxious. She picked up an empty journal, and channeled techniques and structure into her daily process of journaling. What she found was that her health improved... and she decided to create a product taking bits and pieces from bullet journaling techniques.

This is the creation story of Silk & Sonder.

Sponsors

• Courier
• Img.ly
• Routable
• CTO.ai
• Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

• Website: https://www.silkandsonder.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehaagrawal/

Kirt Debique is originally from Trinidad, off the coast of Venezuela. He came to the states to study computer engineering, at the University of Miami. On the way to attending grad school at Stanford, he did an internship at Microsoft. After being offered a full time job there, he took it - and subsequently, never made it to Stanford. He started out in a role on the OS team, but after spending 20 years at the company, he did many types of roles, including general manager over several different divisions.

He loves to play soccer, and dabbles in chess. Above all, he loves his first born son, who recently celebrated his first birthday. He and his wife are enjoying the spoils of parenthood. Also, and to know surprise given his most recent ventures, he loves music - listening to music, making music, and helping artists.

When he left Microsoft, he found himself deeply involved with people in the music community in Seattle. He had seen the independent scene go through much disruption, and decided to help artists by starting a label. Through the label, he saw the gaps in the music industry, and set out to try and fill those gaps.

This in the creation story of SyncFloor.

Sponsors

• Courier
• Img.ly
• Routable
• CTO.ai
• Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

• Website: https://syncfloor.com/HomePage
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirtdebique/

Shaun Cooley was born and raised in LA. His Mom worked at Xerox and his Dad was an auto mechanic... so needless to say, at an early age, he was pulling things apart electronically and mechanically.

He's an avid snowboarder, usually shredding some snow at Mammoth mountain, and a kite surfer. He says he is terrible at the latter, but he likes that the wind is doing most of the work for him. He also spent a ton of time on a pilots license, but it got put on hold when he got busy professionally.

At age 15, he went to work for Symantec, building internal websites. After some time, he got the opportunity to build an easter egg in Norton Systemworks for Windows. All in all, he spent 18 years at Symantec, before moving onto Cisco and joining the iOT side of the world.

During his time at Cisco, he started to see the the fragmentation of data in the industrial environment... so much so, that he set out to create the business intelligence layer, sitting on top of the the raw network of devices.

This is the creation story of Mapped.

Sponsors

• Courier
• Img.ly
• Routable
• CTO.ai
• Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

• Website: https://www.mapped.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shauncooley/ 

Hazel Savage is originally from Northeast England. She attended university, and studied politics. She's played the guitar since she was 13, and started out as a self taught player. Her first guitar was a cherry red Fender Telecaster, followed by a Fender Cyclone and a Danelectro Hodad. Recently, she's started getting more into collecting, grabbing a Gibson Goddess for her collection. She used to play in an all girl punk band in London, called Ginkinta.

She worked part time in HMV, a records store, stocking shelves, putting CD's out, and gaining an understanding of the music world from the perspective of a customer. And I find it interesting that she doesn't miss the physical music products, as a large collection of CD's tend to weigh a lot and are hard to move across the country.

After joining an incubator, she was paired up with her now co-founder, who is deeply technical and well versed in AI. Combined with her extensive knowledge of the music industry, they set out to change the face of music... and the fingerprints found inside it.

This is the creation story of Musiio.

Sponsors

• Courier
• Img.ly
• Routable
• CTO.ai
• Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

• Website: https://www.musiio.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hazelrebeccasavage

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts

Amazing tools we use:

• This podcast is hosted on RedCircle, a FREE platform for podcasts and brands to scale their message. 
• Want to record your remote interviews with class? Then, you need to use Squadcast.
• Code Story uses the 1-click product ClipGain, sign up now to get 3hrs of podcast processing time FREE
• If you want an amazing publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people – use Transistor.fm

Credits: Code Story is hosted and produced by Noah Labhart. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, Breaker, Youtube, or the podcasting app of your choice.

How can you successfully deploy AI? When AI works, it’s nothing short of brilliant, helping companies make or save tremendous amounts of money while delighting customers on an unprecedented scale. When it fails, the results can be devastating.

Most AI models never make it out of testing, but those failures aren’t random. This practical guide to deploying AI lays out a human-first, responsible approach that has seen more than three times the success rate when compared to the industry average.

In Real World AI, Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger and Wilson Pang share dozens of AI stories from startups and global enterprises alike featuring personal experiences from people who have worked on global AI deployments that impact billions of people.

AI for business doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Real World AI uses plain language to walk you through an AI approach that you can feel confident about—for your business and for your customers. 

Author Biographies:

Alyssa Rochwerger is a customer-driven product leader dedicated to building products that solve hard problems for real people. She delights in bringing products to market that make a positive impact for customers. Her experience in scaling products from concept to large-scale ROI has been proven at both startups and large enterprises alike.

She has held numerous product leadership roles for machine learning organizations. She served as VP of product for Figure Eight (acquired by Appen), VP of AI and data at Appen, and director of product at IBM Watson. She recently left the space to pursue her dream of using technology to improve healthcare. Currently, she serves as director of product at Blue Shield of California, where she is happily surrounded by lots of data, many hard problems, and nothing

but opportunities to make a positive impact. She is thrilled to pursue the mission of providing access to high-quality, affordable healthcare that is worthy of our families and friends.

Alyssa was born and raised in San Francisco, California, and holds a BA in American studies from Trinity College. When she is not geeking out on data and technology, she can be found hiking, cooking, and dining at “off the beaten path” restaurants with her family.

Wilson Pang joined Appen in November 2018 as CTO and is responsible for the company’s products and technology. Wilson has over nineteen years’ experience in software engineering and data science. Prior to joining Appen, Wilson was chief data officer of Ctrip in China, the second-largest online travel agency company in the world, where he led data engineers, analysts, data product managers, and scientists to improve user experience and increase operational efficiency that grew the business. Before that, he was senior director of engineering at eBay in California and provided leadership in various domains, including data service and solutions, search science, marketing technology, and billing systems. He worked as an architect at IBM prior to eBay, building technology solutions for various clients. Wilson obtained his master’s and bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering from Zhejiang University in China.

Sponsors

• Courier
• Img.ly
• Routable
• CTO.ai
• Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

• Website: https://www.amazon.com/Real-World-AI-Practical-Responsible/dp/1544518838/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=real+world+ai&qid=1624642397&sr=8-1
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiaalyssasimpson/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilsonpang/

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts

Amazing tools we use:

• This podcast is hosted on RedCircle, a FREE platform for podcasts and brands to scale their message. 
• Want to record your remote interviews with class? Then, you need to use Squadcast.
• Code Story uses the 1-click product ClipGain, sign up now to get 3hrs of podcast processing time FREE
• If you want an amazing publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people – use Transistor.fm

Credits: Code Story is hosted and produced by Noah Labhart. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, Breaker, Youtube, or the podcasting app of your choice.

Alex Yurkowski grew up in New Jersey. He has always been into tech and building things, especially in software. Like many others, it all started with a lot of video games, like Warcraft, Starcraft - basically the Blizzard portfolio.

But along with that, it included Legos, Connects, and then progressed naturally into computer science. He attended Notre Dame to study CS and being a part of the fighting Irish, he can confirm there is a love hate relationship with the Rudy story. Post college, he worked at IBM for a stint in North Carolina. It was at this point in his life that he got married, and then moved to LA and he's been there for about 5 years.

He and his co-founder were working on projects together, and they went through multiple workflow tools that didn't fit there work style. They realized that there was a gap in the market, where people needed a tool that allowed you to work the way you want, and have all of your tools in one place.

This is the creation story of ClickUp.

Sponsors

• Courier
• Img.ly
• Routable
• CTO.ai
• Cloudways offers peace of mind and flexibility so you can focus on growing your business instead of dealing with server management. With Cloudways, you get an optimized stack, managed servers, backups, staging environment, integrated Git, pre-configured, Composer, 24/7 support, and a choice of five cloud providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Google Cloud, and Vultr. Get up to 2 Month Free Hosting by using code "CODE30" and get $30 free hosting credit.

Links

• Website: https://clickup.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-yurkowski-70644585/

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts

Amazing tools we use:

This podcast is hosted on RedCircle, a FREE platform for podcasts and brands to scale their message. 

Want to record your remote interviews with class? Then, you need to use Squadcast.

Code Story uses the 1-click product ClipGain, sign up now to get 3hrs of podcast processing time FREE

If you want an amazing publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people – use Transistor.fm

Credits: Code Story is hosted and produced by Noah Labhart. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, Breaker, Youtube, or the podcasting app of your choice.