Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Emilie Schario grew up in New Jersey, outside of Newark, and attended college in the state. Currently, she lives in Columbus, Georgia, outside of Atlanta. She mentions she got into technology so she could easily follow her husband's career geographically, and has much success in the industry. Outside of tech, she is married with 3 boys (all 5 and under)... so there is a lot of wrestling in her household. She admits she is often quoted staying she does three things in her life - work, parenting, and if she is lucky, attends CrossFit 3 times a week. In fact, she finds...

Bhaskar Sunkara grew up in Delhi, India, and moved to the states when he started working. He has lived in San Fransisco for several decades now, and has spent a lot of his professional life building systems (infrastructure, observability and now, analytics). His prior startup, AppDynamics, was eventually acquired by Cisco. In general, he stays curious about how things work, and likes to deconstruct systems to figure out how they work. Outside of tech, he is a big sports fan, enjoying football, baseball, cricket and basketball. In fact, he grew up watching Michael Jordan and the bulls.

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Today, we are dropping our final episode in our series The AI Control Loop, How enterprises govern the AI they've already deployed - sponsored by our friends at Wallarm.

Wallarm is the AI Control Platform for Enterprise AI, protecting every AI workload, API, and application in production, giving CISOs the governance they need and CIOs the speed they demand. Organizations choose Wallarm for a complete inventory of APIs, AI agents, and AI apps, patented AI/ML-based threat detection and blocking that operates at production traffic speeds.

In our final episode, we are joined by Shayne...

Irina Nazarova grew up in Russia, and has lived in Portugal, Turkey, and now, San Francisco. She got a computer science degree, but felt like an imposter in the dev world. She went on to get an economics degree, and went to work for JP Morgan. Feeling little reward from her work, she read the lean startup and jumped out to build her own, and eventually joined Evil Martians. Outside of tech, she is a person who loves hiking, traveling, and old school film and photography. She enjoys working with old film, where there is high touch, and you...

Ramiro Roballos grew up in Buenos Aires, and 6 or 7 years ago, moved to Miami and now lives in Buffalo, NY. His path to entrepreneurship has been different, as he started out as a musician, and then an orchestra conductor for several years. He eventually got into building how companies, starting his own music school and his own orchestra. Eventually, he got his MBA, worked for McKinsey and some startups before doing his own. Outside of tech, he is married to a cellist, and keeps playing music for fun. He also enjoys Formula 1, and watches every change he gets.

Today, we are dropping another episode in our series The AI Control Loop, How enterprises govern the AI they've already deployed - sponsored by our friends at Wallarm.

Wallarm is the AI Control Platform for Enterprise AI, protecting every AI workload, API, and application in production, giving CISOs the governance they need and CIOs the speed they demand. Organizations choose Wallarm for a complete inventory of APIs, AI agents, and AI apps, patented AI/ML-based threat detection and blocking that operates at production traffic speeds.

In today's episode, Craig Thomas, Sr. Solutions Engineer at Wallarm...

John Wright grew up in Arkansas, when his family moved from Wisconsin for his Dad's job. He was influenced heavy by his father, who became an entrepreneur with several successful exits. As a kid, he got to see the ups and downs, and how you ride the roller coaster of being a business owner. Outside of tech, he is an active sailor and certified instructor in yacht racing.

Growing up with a family of wood workers, he also likes to build things and make stuff with his hands. Finally, he lives in sobriety and recovery from past...

Ajay Kulkarni grew up in tech, as his father was a tech entrepreneur selling PC's in the early 80's. He went to college in MIT, and eventually founded a startup that was acquired by GroupMe (while it was being acquired by Skype... while they were being acquired by Microsoft). He's always been attracted to building things, so startups are right up his alley. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 young kids. He is a big exercise guy... he loves to run, swim and track his steps. Additionally, he loves music - to listen, and to play guitar, piano...

Today, we are dropping another episode in our series The AI Control Loop, How enterprises govern the AI they've already deployed - sponsored by our friends at Wallarm.

Wallarm is the AI Control Platform for Enterprise AI, protecting every AI workload, API, and application in production, giving CISOs the governance they need and CIOs the speed they demand. Organizations choose Wallarm for a complete inventory of APIs, AI agents, and AI apps, patented AI/ML-based threat detection and blocking that operates at production traffic speeds.

In his follow up appearance on the Code Story podcast...

Ahikam Kaufman spent most of his career in the Bay Area. After becoming a CPA, he started his career as CFO at a startup company. Over time, he has been giving multiple opportunities to not only serve finance, but serve business roles as well - which prepared him for his own entrepreneurial path. IE starting 3 companies and exiting one to Intuit. Outside of tech, he enjoys traveling the world, spending time with his family, and hiking. But, he notes that the demands of being a business owner limits the amount of time he spends in these things.

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Volodymyr Sydorenko lives in London, and collects mechanical keyboards. His most unusual hobby is that he does clay sculptures of characters, or random people at times. He has 2 cats, and likes to spend time outdoors. In fact, in 3 weeks time from this recording, he will traveling to Switzerland to do the Via Ferrata. To add to all of this, he has started to write children's books and hopes to publish them someday.

Vitalii Sydorenko currently lives in Lisbon, Portugal. He is into sports, loves to hit the gym and regularly tracks his calories. Last year he started...

Today, we are dropping another episode in our series The AI Control Loop, How enterprises govern the AI they've already deployed - sponsored by our friends at Wallarm.

Wallarm is the AI Control Platform for Enterprise AI, protecting every AI workload, API, and application in production, giving CISOs the governance they need and CIOs the speed they demand. Organizations choose Wallarm for a complete inventory of APIs, AI agents, and AI apps, patented AI/ML-based threat detection and blocking that operates at production traffic speeds.

In this episode, Craig Thomas, Sr. Solutions Engineer at Wallarm...

Volodymyr Sydorenko lives in London, and collects mechanical keyboards. His most unusual hobby is that he does clay sculptures of characters, or random people at times. He has 2 cats, and likes to spend time outdoors. In fact, in 3 weeks time from this recording, he will traveling to Switzerland to do the Via Ferrata. To add to all of this, he has started to write children's books and hopes to publish them someday.

Vitalii Sydorenko currently lives in Lisbon, Portugal. He is into sports, loves to hit the gym and regularly tracks his calories. Last year he started...

Tim Lidman lives in Denver, CO. He has had an unconventional path to being a Tech CEO. In fact, He moved from London to Sweden when he was 18... to try to be a heavy metal rock star, trying to make it big as a drummer. To earn extra income, he got into tech sales - which went really well. Eventually, he worked with WebEx (around the time it got bought by Cisco), for Success Factors (when they got bought by SAP), and then eventually, doing his own startup (which eventually got bought by Accenture). Outside of his professional life...

Today, we are dropping another episode in our series The AI Control Loop, How enterprises govern the AI they've already deployed - sponsored by our friends at Wallarm.

Wallarm is the AI Control Platform for Enterprise AI, protecting every AI workload, API, and application in production, giving CISOs the governance they need and CIOs the speed they demand. Organizations choose Wallarm for a complete inventory of APIs, AI agents, and AI apps, patented AI/ML-based threat detection and blocking that operates at production traffic speeds.

We all know that you can't secure what you can't...

Gregory M. Kurtzer is a veteran open-source pioneer, technologist, and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in high-performance computing (HPC) and large-scale enterprise infrastructure. He first gained widespread industry prominence as the co-founder of CentOS Linux, which grew into one of the world's most ubiquitous enterprise operating systems, and he later created other foundational open-source projects like the Warewulf cluster management toolkit and the Singularity (now Apptainer) container system.

In 2020, Gregory founded his current venture, with the goal of modernizing infrastructure stacks for the cloud and AI era. He and his team recognized that traditional enterprise infrastructure...

Today, we are continuing our series, entitled Developer Chats - hearing from the large scale system builders themselves.

In this episode, we are talking with Pavel Shchekotov, Founding Engineer of specializing in voice-first, conversational AI products. Pavel is going to take us through his experience as an agency founder, leading into building voice driven, consumer AI.

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Sushma Vadlamannati is originally from India, and moved to the states over 25 year ago to pursue her bachelors in at Texas Women's University. She comes from a nontraditional founder background, spending 15 years in the Fortune 100 companies, leading large programs with large budgets. About 5 years ago, she started advising startups and angel investing, which led her into the startup world. Outside of tech, she has 2 daughters and loves to do arts and crafts. In fact, she uses scrap material she finds at home to build miniature scenes and creations.

Sushma is very familiar with the startup scene in...

Today, we are kicking off a new series entitled The AI Control Loop, How enterprises govern the AI they've already deployed - sponsored by our friends at Wallarm.

Wallarm is the AI Control Platform for Enterprise AI, protecting every AI workload, API, and application in production, giving CISOs the governance they need and CIOs the speed they demand. Organizations choose Wallarm for a complete inventory of APIs, AI agents, and AI apps, patented AI/ML-based threat detection and blocking that operates at production traffic speeds.

Today's episode is entitled AI Security is API Security, and...

Alex Bowcut is from Salt Lake City, Utah originally, but has been in the Bay Area for the last 4 years. He's always been interested in computers, and was in middle school when smartphones were blooming. He took part in jailbreaking gadgets and such, and all of these things led to a natural interest in CS, mathematics - and eventually, startups. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 Australian shepherds. He and his wife enjoy hiking with the dogs, and skiing - unfortunately, without the dogs.

Alex was approached by the founder of his current venture. He was...

Ankit Dheendsa is a Canadian, born and raised, living outside of Toronto today. He claims he is fortunate to have a great ecosystem of professionals and mentor sin his area, to help advise him through thick and thin. When he was younger, he was inspired to pursue building things after he watched Iron Man for the first time. Outside of tech, he is an avid boxer and kickboxer. He loves to work out and train, but when he's away from the mat, he likes to read lots of books.

Ankit and his team quickly realized that although...

Marco Benitez lives in Naples, Florida. In the past he lived in Miami, but found Naples much more family friendly. He is originally from Mexico, along with many of his family members and businesses. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids. As a family, they love to go outside, be outdoors and visit the great beaches around Florida. In addition, Marco is a black belt in Taekwondo, and also does Jiu Jitsu.

Marco and his team was building a wearable in the past, centered around fitness. They figured out that the real value was around feeding...

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 Daulet Amirkhanov, Founding Engineer of Bead AI. Daulet is going to take us through his years at Meta and Cognee, leading into how he is building Bead AI, to take on compliance audits and AI automation.

Questions

Kunal Bhatia is originally from India, but moved to the Bay Area to start building his company. He admits there is quite a contrast between the two places, but originally he was from Bangalore, which is like the Silicon Valley of India - so the professional transition felt familiar. He's worked in AI For 12 years, and is on his 3rd company in the AI space. Outside of tech, he is married with a 3 year old daughter. He and his family love to go on hikes and be outdoors.

Kunal and his team have been researching AI technologies...

Ofir Stein is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, born and raised in Jerusalem. He spent many years in the Israeli air force, in infrastructure and security, before he moved to Tel Aviv. He's a tech guy through and through, bragging about his raspberry pi setup at home, which adjust the AC settings based on the temp outside. Outside of tech, he is married with a daughter and a dog. He's connected and close to his family, which he notes is how he refreshes and reloads as a founder, alongside playing tennis from time to time.

Ofir and...

Anusha Iyer is a first generation immigrant, born in India. She moved to the states with her family, when her Dad was going grad school at Ohio State. She fondly remembers sitting on her Dad's shoulders for Buckeyes football games, as he was fan enough for the whole family. Outside of her professional life, she has 2 kids in college who were coding since they could walk - but neither of which ended up in computer science. She loves to cook, and notes that she is not a recipe follower - she likes to use whatever is at her fingertips.<...

Thomas Schlegel lives in Nashville, TN, but grew up in rural Virginia. He didn't have the internet for a large portion of his childhood - but, his friends did! So that meant he was spending more time at his friends place, and eventually when MySpace came around, he was the guy to build everyone's custom site. He's always been the wild idea guy amongst his friends, always the tinkerer. Today, he's married with twins on the way. He loves to run, either on the road or the trails. And when he gets the chance, he enjoys a good conversation...

Yoni Avital lives in Tel Aviv, Israel, with his wife and 3 older children. The oldest kid is a boy, so Yoni and he try to see as many football games as possible. He enjoys shopping with this girls, though it's cause he is their Dad, not because he enjoy shopping. He likes to travel, hike, and enjoys a nice white wine in warmer weather. His most memorable hike was at Yosemite, when he started at 4 am and came across a lot of wildlife.

Yoni was in the virtual desktop space in the past. What he and his...

Brooke Hipps currently lives in Fort Worth, TX but grew up down the road in DeSoto. She is entrepreneur through and through, from the early years of learning from her parents, to starting three businesses of her own, in fashion, construction and estate planning. Outside of tech, she has three kids - one out of college and 2 still in college. Brooke is an outdoorsy person, enjoying spending time in nature, hiking, camping and playing a round of golf every now and again.

Recently, Brooke's sister passed away. Obviously, this was a difficult moment for her and her...

Today, we have a special guest on the Code Story podcast - Patrick Vuong, Director of Product at Moderne. Moderne is the agent tools company, building the. Knowledge, discovery and execution tools that AI agents rely on - so they can operator faster, more accurately, and at far lower cost.

In today's episode, Patrick is going to tell us about the company, and how Moderne is enabling developers to build software faster, and with the best context - using agents and agent tools. Their approach to semantic models produce deterministic over probabilistic, or inference driven, tools, which...

Jontae James has a lengthy background in athletics, with the dream of going to the NBA. He played in college, on a full ride scholarship, and played in the NBA summer league. Once he had determined that his career was coming to an end, he started to look into what is next, based on his first principles of helping people and servant leadership. Outside of tech, he is married with a 3 year old daughter. He loves anime, and enjoys fashion and a good wine tasting.

As we mentioned, Jontae is passionate about helping people, and specifically helping...

Aron D'Souza is originally from Australia, the son of a Chinese mother and an Indian-Portuguese father. He is a graduate of Oxford, and got his PhD from the University of Melbourne. A lawyer by training, he has built 12 companies and has had 5 exits - working with folks like Peter Thiel, the New York Stock Exchange and the Enhanced Games. In general, he's a problem solver, and turns all of his fun into work.

Aron made the stark realization that we are a divided society, and do not have a trusted, unbiased media source. He attempted to build...

Nikunj Bajaj was born in India, and completed his undergraduate studies there. The intrigue of Silcon Valley in 2013 brought him to the Bay Area, where he got his masters degree from Berkeley. His studies and his time after school supremely informed what he is building now, at his current venture. But outside of tech, he is an outdoorsey person, enjoying running, biking and scuba diving, with his favorite place to dive being Bali. He enjoys playing board games with his friends, and listens to a lot of audiobooks from a wide range of genres.

After joining Meta...

Tyler Hochman got started early in the world of entrepreneurship. In Middle School, he got into Gemology, fascinated by the formation of gems, becoming a young GIA certifier. This taught him to get out of his comfort zone, from which he started his first business as a junior at Stanford. Past that, it's been a similar process of identifying a problem and looking at how to build a solution. Outside of tech, he is married with a 1 year old son, and another child on the way. He loves spending time with his son, enjoying all of the things parenthood...

Meghan Joyce comes from a long line of people living life to the fullest. She takes a lot of influence from her grandmother, who was an entrepreneur, making and selling dresses in the early 1900's, influencing her to take a hold of every moment in life and capitalize on the time you have. She's led groups at Uber and Oscar, prior to starting her current venture. But outside of tech, she is the mother of 3 children. Her favorite hobby is to spend time with the people she loves, meeting them where they are. But when she has spare time...

Today we have a special guest and author on the Code Story podcast, Steve Brown. Steve is a former DeepMind futurist, and recently published a book called The AI Ultimatum: Preparing for a World of Intelligent Machines and Radical Transformation. In the book, he provides a step by step framework to guide leaders in identifying use cases for AI, turning it into business value, and obtaining buy in from employees.

In our conversation, Steve is going to elaborate on why AI is a teammate (not a threat), the top AI rollout mistakes, leadership and management tactics that...

Catalina Turlea is originally from Romania, growing up in the countryside there. Post getting her bachelors, she moved to Austria for her masters, and landed in Germany for 13 years. She is married with a 3 year old daughter and many, many pets. She loves to spend time with her family, in nature and the mountains. She used to do a lot of sports, but being a startup founder doesn't really allow for as much running or hiking. She also is into calligraphy, which she calls her hidden superpower.

Catalina has been building products for 14 years, and recently was...

Dr. Aqib Rashid was born and raised in London. He spent a lot of time around computers and tech growing up, and his parents pushed him towards becoming an expert in a discipline, being a positive influence on society. But he maintained his balance in life by playing sports, which inspired him to want to lead a team in the future. But outside of tech, he is a Dad to a one year old boy. He enjoys spending time with him outdoors, and finds that the real beauty in life is watching him grow up.

In Sept 2023...

David Matalon grew up in Great Neck, outside of New York City. He's always been interested in tech, way back in the early days of PCs, DOS, Windows and even Novell. In fact, he was the high school kid with an IT Consulting business on the side (yes, he wore a beeper to school). He graduated from NYU, and started his first company Offyx. Outside of tech, he is married with 4 kids. When asked about what he does for fun, he says that enjoys the all compassing nature of work and family life.

David's whole career has...

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.

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