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

Today, we are dropping another episode in our "chats" series, specifically on the Founder side, - hearing from those scaling the companies themselves.

In this episode, we are talking with Vadim Dedov, CEO at Catchers. Vadim is going to walk us through what problem he wanted to solve with Catchers, and how his product development journey took him through architectural decisions, product optimization, team building and more.

Questions

• Before we talk about Catchers, I’d love to understand you a bit better.
• What experiences or responsibilities earlier in your life shaped how you think about work, systems, and accountability today?
• What problem were you dealing with before Catchers existed? Not as a product idea yet, but as a real operational pain you kept running into.
• At what point did you realise this couldn’t be solved with people, spreadsheets, or manual coordination anymore and that technology was the only way forward?
• How did Catchers actually start taking shape as a product? What was the very first version you built, and what did “good enough” mean in a business where mistakes affect people’s income and compliance?
• How long did it take to get to something usable, and what constraints defined your MVP?
• Looking back, what were the most important trade-offs you made early on?
• Things you consciously postponed or simplified, knowing they might come back later.
• Let’s zoom in on the product itself. What is the core product insight behind Catchers — the thing you believe differentiates it from a typical HR or staffing platform?
• How did your thinking about architecture evolve as scale increased? Was there a moment when you had to stop moving fast and redesign parts of the system properly?
• How did you approach building your core team around such a complex, operations-heavy product? What qualities mattered most in the people you trusted with this system?
• Can you share a decision that didn’t go as planned and how you and your team dealt with the consequences?
• When you step back and look at what you’ve built today, what are you most proud of not in terms of features, but in terms of reliability, impact, or how the system holds under pressure?
• As you look ahead, how do automation and AI change the way you think about workforce platforms — and what advice would you give to someone building infrastructure-heavy products today?

Sponsors

• Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
• TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
• Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
• Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)

Links

• https://catchersjob.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/vadim-dedov-060b8935a/

Yoav Crombie was born and raised in Israel, serving in the army for 6 years as an engineer. He's been in the tech industry of 35 years, but doesn't see this work as work. He thoroughly enjoys what he is doing, especially with what is going on with AI right now, specifically around the quick creation process. Outside of tech, he has been married for 30 years. He loves water sports - kite surfing, regular surfing and paddle boarding. In addition, he loves to cycle, and was the Israeli road champion many years ago.

Yoav realized that companies were struggling that businesses were struggling to implement and adopt AI. In particular, he noticed that there was risk in publicly sharing your data. But alongside that, other companies wanted more control to how AI functioned for their country. So his company started to build a solution to solve both of these problems.

This is the creation story Pragatix, a product of AGAT Software.

Sponsors

• Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
• TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
• Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
• Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)

Links

• https://agatsoftware.com/
• https://agatsoftware.com/secure-ai-platform/ai-suite/ai-agent/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoavcrombie/

Robert Brennan grew up in Boston and loved it so much that he ended up calling it home again. He spent time in New York between his bookend times, but he enjoys the chill pace and great music of Boston over the fast pace of the big apple. Outside of technology, he likes to read nonfiction and fiction, specifically science fiction. He loves music, and. Has been playing guitar for 25 years now. He frequents the live music scene around Boston, and even lives near a jazz club.

Robert observed the release of the first version of Devin a few years ago, which was very exciting to see agent driven development. But he and his co-founders were concerned with who was going to govern how this software was going to get written - and they hypothesized that it should be open source and community driven.

This is the creation story of OpenHands.

Sponsors

• Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
• TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
• Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
• Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)

Links

• http://openhands.dev/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-a-brennan

Tobi Konitzer was born in Germany, and studied cultural studies as an undergraduate student. Eventually, he went to Duke to get a PhD in political science. And that eventually changed to be a PhD in computational social science at Stanford - which is basically writing code to answer social science questions. After graduating in 2017, he joined Facebook Research for a year, then founded two AI startups. Outside of tech, he has 2 young daughters, who he likes to spend time with and take to the park. He used to be an avid trail runner, but his favorite to do is think... and to do so as often as possible.

For the last 10 years of his career, Tobi has been chasing optimized decisioning and outcomes using AI. Five months ago, he decided to join his current venture, and use AI to shift the conversation from "tooling for marketers" to using AI to build an autonomous decisioning system, that learns and improves over time.

This is Tobi's creation story at Growthloop.

Sponsors

• Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
• TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
• Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
• Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)

Links

• https://www.growthloop.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobias-konitzer-phd-65984454/

Brian Carbaugh has a non-standard path to being a CEO in the startup world. He was in the marine core for 5-6 years in active duty, before attending Georgetown for school. Eventually, he joined the CIA and spent 23 years, serving the country in multiple different roles and facets, primarily in para military and covert operations. While he was there, he also started to see areas where the agency could innovate, and got curious about how they could partner with private companies. Outside of tech, he is a father of 3 girls and a boy. He enjoys working out, skiing and riding on road bikes. He used to do triathlons in the past, but startup life has taken up any time he could dedicate to that.

Shortly after he retired from the CIA, Brian got a call from some prior folks he knew still in the industry. He started digging into the cybersecurity world, specifically into why there was so much attrition amongst the employees themselves. He was asked the question about how he could 10x this workers, and optimize these individuals using the latest tech?

This is the creation story of Andesite.

Sponsors

• Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
• TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
• Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
• Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)

Links

• https://andesite.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-carbaugh-38b339243/

Reannah Wyatt is from Bandera, TX, raised on a 4th generation cattle and horse ranch. Eventually, she went to West Texas for school, rodeoing for Howard University, specifically barrel racing. She eventually started selling residential real estate, and fell in love with the industry. Outside of tech and real estate, she is a mom and still loves horses and cattle. She doesn't ride anymore, but leans more into the breeding side of the animals.

Reannah was in residential real estate for over a decade, and was in the mix when Zillow was launched. The platform helped her grow her business, and she knew this was where the industry was headed. But what she couldn't understand was... why wasn't there something built to track the end to end real estate process and transaction?

This is the creation story of The Real Time.

Sponsors

• Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
• TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
• Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
• Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)

Links

• https://therealtimeapp.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/reannahwyatt/

Dane Witbeck grew up in Georgia, and has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. He was the kid selling ripped CD's in school, along with other odds and ends. He went to Georgia Tech to study engineering, and eventually went on to join a startup called Meshify, in the iOT place - which eventually was bought by a large insurance company. Outside of tech, he is married with 4 kids. He is involved in many entrepreneurial groups around Austin, and is the proud owner of a 1969 Ford Bronco - which he enjoys getting out of town in and camping.

Post his prior startup, Dane was on the lookout for problems to solve. He observed his son's friend getting a hand-me-down iPhone, and it hit him that he was going to have to monitor this as his children got phones. As he started to dig into what was available, he realized there wasn't a good solution... and decided to build his own.

This is the creation story of Pinwheel.

Sponsors

• Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
• TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
• Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
• Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)

Links

• https://www.pinwheel.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/danewitbeck/

Martina Zrnec is located in Croatia and grew up playing basketball, spending every minute she could on the court. And when I say every minute, I mean it - she would even skip the last few hours of school and hit the court for some practice. Eventually, her mother decided for her that she should not pursue it professionally, and should focus on her schooling. Outside of tech, she's married with 2 kids. She notes that she is not just a coding person - she likes to socialize! She plays piano, and as a family, they spend a lot of time outside, biking, playing sports and being in nature.

Martina's co-founder, Kyle, had this idea that he wanted to create - a platform that allowed people to organize the products, services and experiences they love into stacks. He found Martina on a freelancing platform, and they instantly connected on the idea - and got to building.

This is the creation story of Stacklist.

Sponsors

• Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
• TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
• Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
• Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)

Links

• https://stacklist.app/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/martina-zrnec/

Mitesh Agrawal has a background in Mechanical Engineering. He was one of the co-founders of Lambda, a company in the supercomputing space, where he spent 8.5 years working on everything under the sun. He's very grateful to be in an industry that is booming, but also aligns with his personal interests. Outside of tech, he is married to an ultra supportive wife, and is enjoying being a new father. He enjoys playing tennis, when he can find time to get to the court, and enjoys a good sci-fi book. He mentioned the Foundation series was one of his favorites, but admits it changes depending on the season.

In 2023, the officers at Mitesh's current venture noticed all of the advancements of AI - in particular, model sizes getting larger. What they realized was that when it comes to inference, memory capacity quickly became a problem... and with this, he and the team got excited about building a new architecture to make it better.

This is the creation story of Positron.

Sponsors

• Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
• TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
• Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
• Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)

Links

• https://www.positron.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitesh7/

Ashwin Agrawal came to the US when he was 17, to Rochester for school. He now lives in the Bay Area, and admits he misses his friends on the east coast, as they all stayed back in that area - but he does NOT miss the winters. He has been building his current venture for 3-4 years, and prior to that, he was as at Google for a decade, apart of Google Cloud's huge growth trajectory. Outside of tech, he has a family with 2 middle school sons, with whom he likes to spend a lot of time with, hiking or eating good sushi.

Ashwin was laid off from a few jobs in the past. After experiencing this, he vowed to build a solution that would help people going through this sort of experience. After the last layoff, he formed his company at 4:30 am in the morning, to help anyone in point A wanting to go to point B.

This is the creation story of MobiusEngine.ai.

Sponsors

• Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)
• TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)
• Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)
• Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)

Links

• https://mobiusengine.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/agrawalashwin/