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

Steve Caldwell lives in Louisville, Kentucky - but grew up in South Louisiana, in cajun country. In the 90's he loved seeing things he typed on the screen come to life, as he built website in Frontpage 95. As he got into his 20's, he wanted to jump into professional dev. He's got 3 kids in elementary school - so with the pandemic, its been quite interesting having everybody at home. He's relatively new to Kentucky, but hopes to get out and do the bourbon trail when the timing is right. He enjoys playing music, composing, and DJ'ing.

As he puts it, he enjoys combining his passion for music with his passion for technology. In startup land, you have to be able to adlib and be flexible to change, understand your customers, and to skate where the puck is so to speak. Its the same in music - feeling the crowd, responding to your band, etc. - which is a really interesting parallel.

As the COVID pandemic decimated live music events, Steve was caught in a related riff. He found himself networking for his next gig, and while doing so, started to chat with his now co-founders about a new opportunity... where musicians could interact with fans in new ways.

This is the creation story of Mandolin.

Sponsors

Kitcaster

Unidragon Coupon: DragonStory, 10% Discount. Expires July 1, 2021

Links

• Website: https://www.mandolin.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caldwellsteve/

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.

Matt Forniciari started his career at Amazon. First gig was on the availability team, but then he was tasked with emailing Jeff Bezo's directly about what was working & not working, which he rightfully so, says was stressful.

He spends a lot of time outdoors, reading, and mostly just away from tech. He is so immersed in tech during the day, that in his free time he prefers to do analog activities... and a lot of activities that require motion. In fact... he claims that his career after tech will be something like a park ranger, taking care of the outdoors.

While he was managing platforms for other companies - like Salesforce and Amazon - he was burning the midnight oil creating something to help build resiliency in your platform reliability. A solution based on the principles of chaos engineering.

This is the creation story of Gremlin.

Sponsors

Wildbit

Links

• Website: https://www.gremlin.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattforni/
• https://www.calnewport.com/

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.

Originally from Ghana, Richard Mensah was born into an IT family. From an early age, Richard was the one fixing all of the family tech problems. He could see the potential in technology, to help aid in solving the problems his community was experiencing in Ghana. He loves his country, but he also realized that the US has more resources for innovation than his home country.

He is a huge music fan - and is a guitar player and singer. He sees the correlation between tech and music, and describes them both as understanding the rules but being able to bend them in your own way to make a product, service, or song. He also loves to dance. In fact, he recently tried to learn Salsa, which he mentions didn't go super great.

Previously, he founded a few startups and one thing he found was it was hard to scale startups past early adopters. When he met his co-founder, they immediately saw a gap in connecting startups, startup ideas and those that are looking for interesting stories. They decided to build a better way to do this.

This is the creation story of EllisX.

Links

• Website: https://www.ellisx.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-okyere-mensah/

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.

Brendan Falk is originally from Australia. Growing up, he was always into computers, sports, extra curricular activities - he was the kid who always had a side hustle going on. Once he got to college, he built a currency converting startup to help him pay his tuition fees... and he has been toying around with startup ideas ever since.

His partner, Matt Schrage, is from San Fran originally - and he confesses, that its hard to escape tech when you are from the area. He started coding as early a middle school, and hasn't stopped since. And outside of tech... he builds more tech! Tinkering with embedded hardware, robotics and mini-machines.

After applying to Y Combinator, they were invited to interview with the accelerator. During the interview, they decided to change from their original idea. After that, their YC partner advised them to pivot yet again... so change has been a regular occurrence for this team since the beginning. They realized that every time they went to get setup on a new project, they had to go through the same commands on the terminal, over and over again. Every time, they either forgot what they were, or encountered an issue with their environment that needed to be dug into. They thought, how can we solve the problem of making the terminal easier to use?

This is the creation story of Fig.

Sponsors

Tandem Podcasting

Links

• Website: https://withfig.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanfalk/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-schrage-957b6843/

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.

Jeff Meisner is an electrical engineering grad from Waterloo in Canada. Post college, he settled in to the DFW area, and worked for several tech companies, mostly on the business development side.

He loves to travel with his family - his wife of 34 years, 2 daughters & sons in laws, and a couple of grand dogs in the dachshund, beagle and black lab family. In addition to this, he enjoys watching sports, mainly golf and football. Fun fact, he has a 3rd degree black belt in taekwondo, but he doesn't keep up with the discipline anymore. Some of his biggest influences are the 10 commandments and the books - good to great, crossing the chasm, and traction.

He started his agency 6 years ago to create award winning live, 3d experiences for brands like American Airlines, Halliburton, Galderma and other large organizations. When COVID hit, live events were no more, which created a problem for his industry. In response to this, his team built a new platform to connect his clients to their customers... virtually.

This is the creation story of Sector 5 Digital, and S5D Rush.

Links

• Website: https://www.sector5digital.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffmeisner/
• https://www.sector5digital.com/news/s5d-rush/

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts

Amazing tools we use:

• If you want the best publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people - use Transistor.fm
• 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

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.

At 18 years old, Dan Robinson was 100% convinced that he was going to be a mathematician. He went to college at Stanford, and when he got there, he realized that math beyond high school was very different.. and as such, he didn't want to make that his day job. He always enjoyed making stuff, specifically with computers, and he started leaning into computer science and deep learning projects.

He loves to hike, and be outside with his friends. Recently, he has gotten addicted to chess online - though he claims he's not any good at it. So addicted, that he had to have his close friend hold onto his account password for him.

Dan is originally from Boston, which is his excuse for being direct and difficult to work with. In fact, he finds it so strange that people don't interrupt others more in the bay area.

Previously, the CEO of Dan's current venture was a PM at Facebook - and he couldn't get basic answers to how people used the platform. Similar problems were popping up for Dan at Palantir, causing long cycles just to get a single question answered. They both were thinking - there HAS to be a better way.

This is the creation story of Heap.

Sponsors

Podcorn

Unidragon

Links

• Website: https://heap.io/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-robinson-a6930726/

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts

Amazing tools we use:

• If you want the best publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people - use Transistor.fm
• 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

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.

Mitchell Hashimoto started programming in middle school, teaching himself how to code through open source libraries and zip files he could download on the internet. He is a pilot, and owns his own plane, which happens to be a Cirrus. He spends an hour a day studying or practicing flying, and even takes his wife and dog up every now and again, when there is something worth flying to and they can make the oxygen work for then dog.

He attended college at the University of Washington in Seattle, which was located equidistance from Amazon, Google and other cloud focused infrastructure companies. As you could guess, there was a huge focus on this topic while he was at school, and he was able to gain access to vast resources through his computer lab and research projects. It was these projects put the ideas in his head, on what he could make in order for infrastructure to work better.

This is the creation story of HashiCorp.

Links

• Website: https://www.hashicorp.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchellh/

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts 

Amazing tools we use:

• If you want the best publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people - use Transistor.fm
• 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

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.

Natalie Nagele came to the states in 1989 as a Jewish refugee from Russia. She watched her parents go from nothing and utilizing furniture from trash, to building big businesses and supporting their family.

She met Chris, her husband when she was 18. And they have been working together ever since, as he is the co-founder of their business. They have 2 kids together, and love to travel - specifically to the Caribbean, since it is a quick flight from Philly (and of course, its warm). Despite that, she would love to live in Italy one day.

Their company started off as a remote consulting company, but launched their first product in 2003 - and they were immediately hooked. In 2009, they stopped doing client work and focused solely on products. And haven't looked back in 20 years.

This is the creation story of Wildbit.

Sponsors

Unidragon

Wyld Gallery

Links

• Website: https://wildbit.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-nagele-b9aa42/

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts

Amazing tools we use:

• If you want the best publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people - use Transistor.fm
• 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

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.

Daniel Hauschildt lives in Germany, in a town called Bochum. He comes from a family of craftsmen, which means that he wasn't involved in tech at an early age. He stayed busy with friends and sports, more specifically archery, where he learned about patience, concentration and competition. In his younger years, he clung to a long bow, but steadily moved towards using a higher tech, compound bow in later years.

When he was 14 years old, he got into cracking video games, which lead him down the path of coding, and learning the assembly language. He recalls the first game he cracked was X Wing vs Tye Fighter.

In 2008, his current company started out as an image hosting service for Twitter (you may remember seeing the links while using the platform). When Twitter built their own, it pretty much shut down the first product. During that time, many customers of the agency 9 Elements were asking for tools around image processing, resizing, etc. So they started building a tool to do those things.

This is the creation story of Img.ly.

Sponsors

Shape & Foster

Jennifer Brazer

Links

• Website: https://img.ly/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielhauschildt/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Thrun

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts

Amazing tools we use:

• If you want the best publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people - use Transistor.fm
• 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

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.

Hrishi Dixit was born and raised in India. He wrote his first program when he was 13 years old... and he was hooked on computers from that point forward. He comes from a family of teachers and book store owners, so he was kind of an outlier - and, as a kid, having a computer was a luxury that his family couldn't afford. In his undergrad, he studied mechanical engineering, as computer science wasn't available. However, he brought in programming as much as possible. His graduate studies were completed at Cornell, where he worked side by side with Xerox scientists on interesting micro-mechanical systems problems.

Books have always been a thing for Hrishi - loving the tactile sense of holding a book. He also enjoys a good whisky, along with traveling - and he'd love to retire living in Scotland within walking distance of Laguvulin.. if he can convince his wife to brave the winters in Scotland. He worked for Schlumberger for a while on robotic drilling tools, but then followed the activity in California, around the time where the internet was evolving and Google was taking shape. He wanted to be apart of that.

Towards the end of his time in San Fran, he worked in fintech - loving the connection point between math, science and software. He was the founding CTO of LearnVest, which was sold to Northwestern Mutual. Around the time of the sale, he met the founder of his current venture and joined the team as a consultant, and then advisor. During that time, he built out the makings of an alternative investment platform - in fact, the first of its kind.

This is the creation story of Yieldstreet.

Sponsors

Podcorn

Shape & Foster

Jennifer Brazer

Links

• Website: https://www.yieldstreet.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hrishi-dixit/
• https://www.crunchbase.com/person/hrishi-dixit
• https://www.yieldstreet.com/blog/article/cto-interview
• https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2884038

Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts

Amazing tools we use:

• If you want the best publishing platform for your podcast, with amazing support & people - use Transistor.fm
• 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

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.