Explore every episode of the podcast Code Story

Jon Perl is originally from Virgina, growing up on a computer. Mom is an architect and Dad is an electrical engineer. Jon picked up programming at his first job, when he automated a companies manifest creation. He has been passionate about programming ever since. Now, he lives in Seattle with his wife, young family, and dog. He enjoys all that Seattle offers, including the touristy stuff, and finding places for his daughter to pick up leaves.

At his previous company, Jon observed a failure in systems that required his customers to fall back to manual processes. The pain of this situation led him and his current co-founders to have a strong desire - to make sure something like this never happened again.

This is the creation story of QA Wolf.

Sponsors

• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://www.qawolf.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/perljon/

Nigel Smart is from Britain, but currently lives in Belgium. He has a PhD in mathematics, but headed into the world of cryptography early on. He has started a few companies in the past, both of which have successfully exited, one to Coinbase. But outside of technology, he loves to cycle and attend concerts. When asked about food, he said he loves all food - as long as it doesn't include eggplant.

Very early on, Nigel got involved with one of his current ventures. As an advisor, he stated to spend more and more time with the company, supporting it through its many iterations in building next level encryption for application builders - and doing so through open source.

This is the creation story of Zama.

Sponsors

• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://www.zama.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/nigel-smart-3196b85/

Michael Louis grew up in South Africa, spending the first 25 years of his life there. From a young age, and being surrounded by an entrepreneurial family, he was always curious. He got into robotics and coding early, and stayed competitive and active as he grew up. Outside of tech, he loves to play squash, workout in CrossFit, run, and do anything where he has an opponent. Also, per South Africa culture, he enjoys spending time with friends at any social event involving drinking.

Michael built a successful eCommerce company, where you could order different items from stores and have them delivered. Because the margins in eCommerce are low, he and his team wanted to figure out how they could optimize their operation using machine learning. The tools out there weren't ideal, and the process was hard - but they did revolutionize their operation. Post exit, he decided to build a solution that made this optimization process easier.

This is the creation story of Cerebrium.

Sponsors

• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://www.cerebrium.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-louis-94104a113/

Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz has a background in physics and computer science. At some point, he decided to ditch the science and pursue open source, which is what got him started on his 20 year passion for tech. Outside of tech, he longs to feel like a useful member of society and engages in extracurricular projects to support this. He also is into traditional archery - IE wood bow and arrows - and finds joy in connecting with the old way of doing things. He also enjoys gardening and reading, of which, fantasy is one of his favorite genres.

Pablo built a company called Kaleidos, which aids in the creation of software solutions. They hold a core belief that there should be a close connection between designers and developers. What they found in the tooling to support these disciplines is that they weren't built to embrace this concept. So, they decided to incubate a product, and make it open source.

This is the creation story of Penpot.

Sponsors

• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://penpot.app/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/pruizmuzquiz/
• https://elenya.net/
• https://kaleidos.net/

William Neill had an interesting childhood in New Zealand, rooted in being an entrepreneur. As a kid, he helped write business plans with his parents, or build makery stuff for projects. Living this type of childhood, combined with the creativity of music, it started a lifelong trend of building businesses and products. Rooted in his love for being an entrepreneur, he has always longed for a flexible life, to keep him present for his young family, and to allow for the option to travel. He loves spending time with his kids on the beach, and exploring the country as a family.

William and his co-founder met in a coffee shop in London. As they were chatting about prior projects, they figure out there was a lot of overlap in the things they were interested in. Eventually, they returned and built some solutions together - and off the back of a prior wishlist project, they decided to make an online shopping cart to end all others.

This is the creation story of Basket.

Sponsors

• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://www.trybasket.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/willneill/

Rohith Varanasi grew up in Jersey and had a chill childhood, playing videos games and sports from a young age. He wanted to learn how to build a video game, and upon googling it, decided he should build a website first. At that point.. he was hooked on coding. He got into jailbreaking the playstation and writing real code to mod games. Eventually, he got into hackathons and ended up building a web browser based on SMS called Cosmos - which went viral. Outside of tech, he is into paddle, loves going to the gym, and hanging with his girlfriend and their 1 year old cat.

Ro and his co-founder have been building a bunch of different consumer products. The latest product they built allows people to earn in game rewards by walking, and do so in a non-deterministic way. Under the hood, they are using generative AI to create endless outcomes, and optimal replay-ability.

This is the creation story of Block Party.

Sponsors

• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://blockparty.game
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/brohith/

Jason Harbert grew up in the middle of nowhere, Ohio. He got into video games, which led him into programming... which led him to Linux and internet security and joining the hacking club. He studied computer science at the University of Cincinnati, but left his senior year to hit the startup scene in the Bay Area. Outside of tech, he lives in Ohio, and is married with a 13 month old son. He loves to travel, and spend time with his family, trying new restaurants.

Jason and his co-founder, Ben, were having a beer, coming out of their prior startup life. Over the beer, Ben was sharing some stories about tight warehouse space and product distribution. They started to ask the question - how can you add flexibility to warehousing? They decided to set out and build something to create this solution.

This is the creation story of Flowspace.

Sponsors

• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://flow.space/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-harbert/

Today, we are releasing another episode for Cybersecurity Awareness month, in our series entitled the Haunted House of API’s, sponsored by our friends at Traceable AI. In this series, we are building awareness around API’s, their security risks – and what you can do about it. Traceable AI is building One Platform to secure every API, so you can discover, protect, and test all your API's with contextual API security, enabling organizations to minimize risk and maximize the value API's bring to their customers.

Today’s episode is titled A Portal to the Beyond: Securing Gen AI and other Third-Party APIs in Your Applications, with Allison Averill. Developers are building exciting new features with Gen AI, often leveraging 3rd party APIs. Doing this isn’t new, but are these integrations secure? These APIs open a portal to the beyond – and introduce supply chain risk to your applications. Allison is a Generative AI and product management expert at Traceable, and she will explore the risks lurking in generative AI and other 3rd party APIs, sharing best practices for securing these integrations, so you can ensure they don’t become the stuff of security horror stories.

1. How are application developers leveraging 3rd party APIs today, and how is the landscape changing?
2. How do third-party APIs introduce risks to applications and what are some common mistakes organizations make when integrating with third party APIs?
3. How are generative AI APIs different from other third party APIs? What unique risks do they introduce?
4. Have you encountered any 'nightmare' scenarios where an insecure third-party API caused a security incident?
5. What best practices should organizations follow to ensure secure integrations?
6. How can organizations balance the need for innovation with the necessity of maintaining strict security controls when working with external partners?

Sponsors

• Traceable

Links

• https://www.traceable.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisonaverill/

Today, we are releasing another episode for Cybersecurity Awareness month, in our series entitled the Haunted House of API’s, sponsored by our friends at Traceable AI. In this series, we are building awareness around API’s, their security risks – and what you can do about it. Traceable AI is building One Platform to secure every API, so you can discover, protect, and test all your API's with contextual API security, enabling organizations to minimize risk and maximize the value API's bring to their customers.

Today’s episode is titled Phantom Threats: The Ghosts Haunting Your API Security, with Adam Arellano. API security threats often go unnoticed, hiding like ghosts in your infrastructure. Bots, sophisticated fraud attempts, account takeovers and attackers disguising themselves within legit traffic… these all pose risk to your organization, and can bypass traditional security measures, wreaking havoc without detection – until it’s too late. Adam is a tech advisor, Global CISO at Traceable, and will guide listeners through the world of phantom threats haunting API security.

1. What are "phantom threats" in the context of API security, and how do they go undetected?
2. Can you explain how advanced botnets and fraud attempts exploit APIs while blending into legitimate traffic?
3. Do you have a real-world example of a phantom threat that caused significant damage to an organization?
4. What makes detecting these phantom threats so challenging, and why do traditional security measures often fail?
5. What are the best strategies or technologies organizations can adopt to detect and eliminate these hidden threats before they cause harm?

Sponsors

• Traceable

Links

• https://www.traceable.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamrossarellano/

Shashwat Sehgal has been in the tech industry broadly for 15 years. He started out as an engineer, but eventually, worked his way towards product and the business side. Outside of tech, he enjoys spending time with his family. He's into sports, loves to play tennis, but admits he hasn't played pickle ball yet because the courts are always booked. He also enjoys reading, in particular historical narratives or autobiographies.

In his prior years, Shashwat noticed that developers spend a large amount of time securing business assets in the cloud. He dreamt of a world where this was just an abstraction layer on top of the cloud, making it easier for developers to complete the task.

This is the creation story of P0 Security.

Sponsors

• P0 Security
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://p0.dev/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/shashwatsehgal/

Today, we are releasing another episode for Cybersecurity Awareness month, in our series entitled the Haunted House of API’s, sponsored by our friends at Traceable AI. In this series, we are building awareness around API’s, their security risks – and what you can do about it. Traceable AI is building One Platform to secure every API, so you can discover, protect, and test all your API's with contextual API security, enabling organizations to minimize risk and maximize the value API's bring to their customers.

Today’s episode is titled The Haunted Web: Navigating API Sprawl and Creepy Crawlers, with Traceable’s Chief Security Officer, Richard Bird. As organizations scale and evolve, so does the complexity of their APIs. API sprawl, the uncontrolled expansion of APIs, creates a tangled web where vulnerabilities linger in the shadows. These unseen APIs become “creepy crawlers” of your digital infrastructure, creeping through your systems and posing security risks. Richard will discuss how unmanaged and undocumented APIs contribute to blind spots in security, the risks they create for organizations and the best strategies for securing a sprawling ecosystem.

Discussion questions:

1. Can you explain what we mean by "unknown APIs" and the different types, like shadow, rogue, zombie, and undocumented?
2. Why do these APIs often go unnoticed, and how do they become security risks?
3. What makes these APIs such an attractive target for attackers, and can you share an example of how one has been exploited?
4. How can organizations begin to uncover these hidden APIs, and what tools or strategies are effective in doing so?
5. In your experience, what are some common mistakes organizations make that lead to these unknown APIs being created or overlooked?

Sponsors

• Traceable

Links

• https://www.traceable.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/rbird/
• https://richardbird.com/

Today, we are releasing another episode for Cybersecurity Awareness month, in our series entitled the Haunted House of API’s, sponsored by our friends at Traceable AI. In this series, we are building awareness around API’s, their security risks – and what you can do about it. Traceable AI is building One Platform to secure every API, so you can discover, protect, and test all your API's with contextual API security, enabling organizations to minimize risk and maximize the value API's bring to their customers.

Our episode today is titled The Dark Corners of APIs: Uncovering Unknown API’s lurking in the shadows, where we speak with Katie Paxton-Fear. APIs are the gateway to your digital infrastructure, but hidden deep in the recesses of your system are unknown APIs – shadow, rogue, zombie, and undocumented API’s. Each of these present a unique threat to your organization and can be exploited by hackers. Katie is an API hacker and researcher, and today, she will take us on a journey through the API graveyards, where hidden APIs lurk, waiting to be exploited – sharing real life examples of how these API’s have been attacked, and best practices for ensuring they don’t become your companies next security nightmare.

Discussion questions:

1. Can you explain what we mean by "unknown APIs" and the different types, like shadow, rogue, zombie, and undocumented?
2. Why do these APIs often go unnoticed, and how do they become security risks?
3. What makes these APIs such an attractive target for attackers, and can you share an example of how one has been exploited?
4. How can organizations begin to uncover these hidden APIs, and what tools or strategies are effective in doing so?
5. In your experience, what are some common mistakes organizations make that lead to these unknown APIs being created or overlooked?

Sponsors

• Traceable

Links

• https://www.traceable.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiepf/
• https://insiderphd.dev/
• Katie's YouTube Channel

Today, we are kicking off an amazing series for Cybersecurity Awareness month, entitled the Haunted House of API’s, sponsored by our friends at Traceable AI. In this series, we are building awareness around API’s, their security risks – and what you can do about it. Traceable AI is building One Platform to secure every API, so you can discover, protect, and test all your API's with contextual API security, enabling organizations to minimize risk and maximize the value API's bring to their customers.

In today’s episode, we will be talking with Jayesh Ahire, an expert in API testing and OWASP, will guide us through the "brew" of common vulnerabilities that haunt API ecosystems, focusing on the OWASP Top 10 for APIs. He’ll share how organizations can use API security testing to spot and neutralize these vulnerabilities before they become major exploits. By emphasizing proactive security measures, Jayesh will offer insights into creating a strong API testing framework that keeps malicious actors at bay.

Discussion questions:

1. What are some of the most common vulnerabilities in APIs that align with the OWASP Top 10, and why are they so dangerous?
2. Why is API security testing crucial for detecting these vulnerabilities early, and how does it differ from traditional security testing?
3. Can you share an example of how an overlooked API vulnerability led to a significant security breach?
4. How can organizations create an effective API testing framework that addresses these vulnerabilities?
5. What tools or methods do you recommend for continuously testing APIs and ensuring they remain secure as they evolve?

Sponsors

• Traceable

Links

• https://www.traceable.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayesh-ahire/
• https://owasp.org/

Elkhan Shabanov was born in the Soviet Union, and started out in the tech world. He eventually left tech to try some other types of businesses, but eventually returned. He has done a few early stage startups in the past, in particular in the 3d printing space before it was cool. Six years ago, he joined his current venture. Outside of tech, he enjoys traveling, and is in a competition with his daughter to see how many countries he can visit. When he reads, he prefers to go back to the books he has read and enjoyed before, and being in Texas, he is a big fan of grilling out on his big green egg.

As I mentioned, six years ago Elkhan joined a company that wanted to be more than a software development shop. He and the founder of the company wanted to build a company that did more than throw bodies at a problem - but actually because a long term partner to their clients.

This is the creation story of Digicode.

Sponsors

• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://www.mydigicode.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/elkhanshabanov/

Vishal Agarwal was born in India, and did his schooling in Darjeeling. He noted that this city exports some of the best tea in the world! Prior to his current venture, he was the chief marketing officer for Choxi. Outside of tech, he is an avid tennis lover and follows cricket and basketball closely. Though, he admits, now that he has a 2.5 year old child, his time is mostly dedicated to him.

In attempting to solve the problem of "splitting the check", Vishal discovered that restaurants had a real problem with having multiple tablets for the many order and delivery services - like GrubHub, DoorDash, etc. When he saw this problem proliferate, he validated that people were willing to pay for a solution.

This is the creation story of Checkmate.

Sponsors

• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://www.itsacheckmate.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/vishalagarwal82/

Heiki Riesenkampf is from a tiny country called Estonia, later studying computer science in London and doing his post grad in Zurich. He has been into machine learning since before all of the hype it has now. Outside of technology, he dreams of being a macroeconomist, and spends a ton of time reading about the topic. He lives in New York now, and frequently takes in the architecture, fashion and local art scene.

Previously, Heiki spent time working for a VC, eventually building a product in a completely different domain. After personally realizing that he didn't want to be known for the product he was building, he pivoted towards building something that impacted him personally as an immigrant.

This is the creation story of Commonbase.

Sponsors

• P0 Security
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://commonbase.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/heikir

Guy Guzner first computer when he was 5, which was a Commodore 64, where he learned to program in BASIC. As a teed, get started getting into the internet, back with dialup and a modem. He startec hacking into places where he shouldn't be, and eventually got into trouble - but now, he has flipped that for good and works to protect systems now. Outside of tech, he plays tennis, and likes to ski. He also plays guitar, jamming Led Zeppling and 80's / 90's rock.

After selling his past company to Symantec, he stayed on to help existing and future companies. What he realized was that people were still mis-using their identities. He observed this behavior, and decided to take identity to the next level.

This is the creation story of Savvy Security.

Sponsors

• P0 Security
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://www.savvy.security/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/guyguzner/

Rob Grazioli started his life in Brooklyn NY, but moved to Italy for his Dad's job, and lived there from age 5 to 13. He ended up moving back to the states for High School and College, and finds that it's difficult to separate tech and work from his life. Outside of tech, he enjoys exercising, and has always been an athlete, most recently picking up basketball. He really loves to make things, learn how things work, and to munch on Oreos.

Eight years ago, Rob and his partners started a company called Density, allowing businesses to count the number of people in a room. After growing that business, Rob realized that he wanted to get back to building things. And, after working with early businesses, he found his passion in being founders for hire.

This is the creation story of Bread.

Sponsors

• P0 Security
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://www.madebybread.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-j-grazioli/

Sebastian Raffaele grew up in a small, working class family in Australia. He had a crazy life, growing up in social housing, having to find his way. He found inspiration from his family members, who always pushed him to follow his passions. He left high school early, and jumped straight away into the work force. In 2014 he was introduced to crypto, and got hooked. Outside of tech and finance, he has always been into the creative spaces, specifically music. He likes to spend time with his fiancé, likes trying new foods, and tries to surround himself with high quality people.

Sebastian realized that the manual processes for a trader are overwhelming, along with making it difficult to be consistent. And alongside this, he saw the cycle of manual traders returning the money they made to the market - sort of like "the house always wins" in casinos. He wanted to build something close the gap for these traders, and solve this problem.

This is the creation story of Minotaur Trading Systems.

Sponsors

• P0 Security
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://minotaurtradingsystems.com/

In August of 2021, we interviewed Brendan Wood on the podcast to tell the creation story of Passiv. After the recording, the company decided to pivot into a new market, focusing on solving their biggest pain point for other platforms. They were running into the problems surrounding integrations into brokers. In fact, they were spending 80% of engineering time on integrations. People started to reach out to his team to ask if they could use the integrations... and they started ideating about making this its own product.

This is the creation story of SnapTrade.

Sponsors

• P0 Security
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf

Links

• https://snaptrade.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendancalebwood/
• https://codestory.co/podcast/bonus-brendan-wood-passiv/

Hello listeners.

Today, I have an awesome follow episode from our friends at Swob. You may remember our episode with Stephanie Florio in Season 6 over 2 years ago, where she clued us in on the creation story of the company. Today, I'm speaking with her co-founder and brother, Alex, to hear the update on Swob and what the team has been up to since then. Have a listen now

It's very cool to hear the successful update with Swob, adding over 7 million jobs to the platform, scaling for businesses and candidates, and ensuring they have the right team in place to carry out the vision.

If you would like to learn more about Swob, go to swobapp.com.

Sponsors

• P0 Security
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf

Links

• https://www.swobapp.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderflorio/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-florio-51397765/
• https://codestory.co/podcast/bonus-stephanie-florio-swob/

Kevin Hurley grew up in a multi-kid house, which is where he got his competitive nature. He used to play 2 on 2 with his Dad and siblings at home. He went to school for electrical engineering, and funny enough, interviewed for a computer science job by accident, effectively stumbling into the trade. Outside of tech, he spends his free time with his fiancé, planning for the wedding, and visiting Manhattan beach for a good walk .

Kevin was part of the team that attempted to launch crypto at Facebook. Although that didn't work out, they realized that the backbone of the system needed to be built on something more common - and something that was lightning fast.

This is the creation story of Lightspark.

Sponsors

• P0 Security
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf

Links

• https://www.lightspark.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-p-hurley/

Hello listeners.

Today, I have an incredible follow episode from our friends at Turso. You may remember our episode with Glauber Costa in Season 8, where he told us the creation story of the platform. Today, I'm speaking with his co-founder, Pekka, to hear the update on Turso and what the team has been building over the past year.

Now with Turso, you can not only have embedded replicas on your device or browser, with multi-tenancy and syncing to Turbo's edge network - but now the tool powers vector search from on the device itself, leading to natively server less, low latency sql lite production loads. Turso continues to push the envelope with their product, and expanding use cases for developers.

If you would like to learn more about Turso, go to turso.tech. If you'd like to learn more specifically about vector search, go to turso.tech/vector.

Sponsors

• Speakeasy

Links

• https://turso.tech/
• https://turso.tech/vector
• https://codestory.co/podcast/bonus-glauber-costa-turso/
• https://codestory.co/podcast/bonus-dor-laor-scylladb/

Matt Van Itallie is the son of a math teacher and a coder - so this explains why he now uses code as data. He is a proud Boy Scout, making it of course to Eagle Scout and beyond. After being a management consultant, he found his way to ed tech, and fell in love with improving code. Outside of technology, he is married with 3 amazing kids. He likes to run, play ultimate frisbee, and has a wicked cool collection of minor league baseball hats.

Sitting a room with the head of Sales, Matt noticed that there were systems like Salesforce that were built to assess the state and future opportunity for business. He then thought, where are these systems for the code itself?

This is the creation story of Sema.

Sponsors

• Speakeasy

Links

• https://www.semasoftware.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mvi/

Anurag Goel grew up in New Delhi, but moved to Boston after college for his first job. He worked at Stripe, as the 8th employee, before eventually moving on and launching his current venture. Outside of tech, he is married, living in San Francisco. He likes to read science fiction, especially prior to bedtime. He also enjoys eating Thai food on the regular, though he mentioned he could eat pizza every day.

Post leaving Stripe, Anurag decided to work on an ambitious problem, and he started doing this by building a bunch of stuff in many different domains. After noticing a common problem in building out Kubernetes, he decided to start a new business to abstract these problems, and allow builders to focus on the differentiating factors to their solutions.

This is the creation story of Render.

Sponsors

• Speakeasy

Links

• https://render.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/anuragoel/

Sagar Batchu was born in Sacramento, but moved to Bangalore after a decade. He has always been interested in how things work, and majored in Physic at his University. Towards the end of his studies, he crammed in a ton of CS classes and fell in love with the craft. He's worked on firmware, enterprise software, and eventually went to LiveRamp, building new experiences for them. Outside of tech, he loves pickleball, enjoys growing coffee and loves readying about historical events.

In his past, Sagar and his team took on API initiative to invest in internal API experience. Through this project, he spent a lot of time thinking about how to make this happen. He immediately saw the need across the industry, with the absence of time and money to fill the need. He decided to take it on and start a company.

This is the creation story of Speakeasy.

Sponsors

• Speakeasy

Links

• https://www.speakeasy.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/sagar-batchu-981b3738/

Mark Porter has always been fascinated with puzzles, so tech just fit for him and a great journey for him. He got his first 4k computer in middle school, and then moved into doing programming for the Department of Education. His big learning from this was that you can use tech to do social good. He's married with 5 kids, and as he puts it, they put up with his deep tech obsession.

Mark joined the board of MongoDB in 2019. What got him excited about the company was the world changing nature of the product. So much so, that he asked to step off the board to be CTO - and carry the banner to the developer community about the power of their doc based, distributed system performing DB transactions.

This is Mark's story with MongoDB.

Links

• Website: https://www.mongodb.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marklovestech/

Egil Østhus is based out of Norway - which obviously means he loves skiing. But outside of this, he loves to run outdoors, through the woods and on the streets. He has not done a full marathon yet, but dreams of doing the New York marathon someday. He's a family man, married, with 2 boys - none of which like to run with him, but they all enjoy being active and hiking.

In a past role, Egil's co-founder (and brother, FYI) was looking for a tool that would help him release code into the wild, in a rapid - yet safe - manner. He couldn't find anything to meet his high standards - so he built his own. When the open source version started to get a lot of attention, Egil joined his brother to bring the solution to the enterprise.

This is the creation story of Unleash.

Links

• Website: https://www.getunleash.io/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/egilconr/

Matt Cowell didn't start out in tech. In fact, he studied the chemical world heavily in school, getting his Bachelors in Chemistry and Masters in Chemical Engineering. So - by trade, he was clearly a chemist. However, when he joined Accenture, he started in with programming and establishing the SDLC methodology for the company. Matt is married with 2 kids, loves sports - specifically Illinois basketball - loves to play music and golf. He likes to travel with his wife to see family, and make frequent visits to their lakehouse.

In his professional past, Matt had held several roles in SaaS companies and startups. He met a company that was an artificial intelligence consultancy, which had a POC around assessments. They wanted to start up a separate company to support launch this POC and take it to market. This is when Matt got involved.

This is the creation story of QuantHub.

Links

• Website: https://quanthub.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcowell/

Prince Ghosh was born in Bangalore, India, and moved around a lot during his life - to the US, then to Europe, then back to the US. But he spent his formative years in Princeton, New Jersey. He majored in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, as he wanted to build planes and engines. Eventually, he fell out of love with building planes, and because obsessed with supply chain tech. Outside of tech, he is a tennis player, occasional basketball player, and is an avid reader. He is enthusiastic about tech, the economy, and of course, the supply chain.

Prior to his current venture, Prince started Workbench while his co-founders created an agency, which was more like an operations company in a box. When they started working together, they realized there was a large opportunity to combine forces and simplify quality control.

This is the creation story of Factored Quality.

Sponsors

• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://www.factoredquality.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/princeghosh/

Anish Dhar grew up in the Bay Area, but now is located in New York. He felt lucky to be surrounded by technology, being in the Bay Area and having his Dad as a software engineer. His earliest exposure to tech was hacking his Wii - and at that point he was hooked. He eventually joined Uber and experienced many of the problems he is solving today. Outside of tech, he enjoys tennis and playing piano. He loves making music and attending shows to hear other artists, in particular EDM.

While he was at Uber, Anish noticed that the company was a prime example of microservices gone wrong. Developers were going outside of standards building services, not documenting them properly. He realized that every company he talked to had the problem of service cataloguing, and he felt confident to apply to take the challenge on and apply to YC.

This is the creation story of Cortex.

Sponsors

• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://www.cortex.io/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/anishdhar/

Rick Caccia was born and raised in Silicon Valley - and just stayed. He is married with 2 teenage daughters, one about to go to college. Between him and his wife, they have worked in 13 different startups - so you could say they have a startup family through and through. Outside of tech, he is a cyclist in a bike club, and enjoys spending time with his family.

After speaking with a number of security officers at companies, Rick realized the enterprise situation with AI - most companies are stuck, trying to figure out how to enable their employees to use new tooling, while still maintaining the level of security and control they have over data. Rick was asked to join a founding team to solve this problem.

This is the creation story of WitnessAI.

Sponsors

• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://witness.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/rcaccia/

Shalin Madan immigrated to the US when he was 6 years old. He spent 20 years in the financial markets, of which he got into when he was a teenager. HIs first and best memory of the industry is when Netspace IPO's, and the stock went up 300% in the first day. Outside of finance and tech, he enjoys cooking, frequents the gym, and loves to travel. He's also a learner, studying philosophy, relationships, and of course, the macro economy.

Shalin found himself frustrated with working for others, which drove him into entrepreneurship. When he came across his current venture, he invested in the firm, became a part of it, and eventually, became the last co-founder, in a company administrating funds with cutting edge technology.

This is the creation story of Formidium.

Sponsors

• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://formidium.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/shalin-madan-caia-b00239/

Konrad Niemiec lives in San Francisco. He is very close to his family, of which his parents are polish immigrants. He started coding when he was 11, while working for his Dad. His core values are curiosity and community, which drives a lot of what he does outside of tech. He likes to learn things, and his current hobby set includes surfing and spike ball, of which he is working on perfecting his spin serve.

Konrad worked at Uber, on the self driving team. After a few years, he wanted to be less of a cog in the machine and joined a small startup. He introduced a feature flagging platform, and realized how quickly configuration bloat appeared on the platform. He also realized how dynamic configuration could take the platform beyond the limits of feature flags.

This is the creation story of Lekko.

Sponsors

• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://www.lekko.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/konrad-niemiec/

Jason Hill was born and raised in New York, and post college, went back to New York and joined the financial services - though, he was always into technology. Eventually, he moved to South Florida because every time he was in New York, he couldn't wait to leave. He enjoys playing poker, pickleball, and spending time with his two kids.

Jason has been a podcaster for many years, interviewing founders and creators of new startup and tech solutions. When COVID hit, he was struck with how difficult it was to connect with individuals via audio call. He validated an idea he had, and combining his ambition and a little bit of boredom, he got a crew building a solution.

This is the creation story of Owwlll App.

Sponsors

• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://owwll.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejasonrhill/

Adam Jacob grew up in Vancouver, but now lives North of San Francisco. He's married with a teenage daughter, and grew up in the era of the internet that was bulletin based. He likes music, specifically heavy metal. He was raised on 80's hair metal, but also enjoys modern and Swedish metal, of which your host is very familiar. He also loves cats, and at one point, had a bengal, which is a cross between a tiger and a domestic cat.

Previously, Adam was the creator of Chef, and has spent many years building a successful platform, extending DevOops value with automated security and compliance. He and his now cofounder reached the limits of what could be achieved using conventional approaches in the space - and decided build a new tool, to enable engineers to tackle complex infra and app management without compromising control.

This is the creation story of System Initiative.

Sponsors

• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://www.systeminit.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjacob/

Berkay Atatop is originally from Turkey, but now lives in Germany. He loves to travel, and living in Germany allows him to be close to family, but enable him to live a nomadic life. He split his college time in Turkey and America, and while he was stateside, he discovered hackathons - which is the origin spot for his current venture. Outside of tech, he played water polo for 10 years, and enjoys playing the guitar. He finds inspiration in bands like Pearl Jam, who is coming to Europe soon, which Berkay is excited about.

After getting into hackathons, Berkay and his co-founder built a prototype of their current company solution - an automatic transcription solution for voiceovers. Once they graduated, they decided to start a company and move into subtitles and beyond.

This is the creation story of Maestra.

Sponsors

• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://maestra.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/batatop/

Umaimah Khan grew up in San Diego, but now lives in the Bay Area. A fun fact about her - she was home schooled until college, and growing up, loved puzzles and math. She planned to be a math professor until she eventually got into startups and tech. She is a curious person, with many hobbies and interests. In fact, she loves to cook and was a chef at two different Michelin star restaurants. She also likes to garden, growing food and also interesting plants.

In the past, UK found herself drawn towards real world problems in real time.

What she found herself noticing was that access management was incredibly messy - and that people weren't willing to look behind the curtain to fix the problem. After she noticed that this problem kept surfacing , and decided to solve it.

This is the creation story of Opal Security.

Sponsors

• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://opal.dev/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/umaimah-k-b7466a249/

David Cauthron grew up in Dallas, TX and attended UTD for undergrad. Post that, he spent 22 years at Texas Instruments - who makes a whole lot more than calculators - serving in numerous roles in IT, the latter being e-commerce. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids, and really enjoys spending time with his family - going to Disney, biking and running. In addition to this, he plays Minecraft with the kids, and attending gymnastics meets and Boy Scout campouts.

David was contacted by his current founder and friend, who was going through an intra-prenuership program at SAP. After winning the program, but having the program shut down, he asked David if he was available to start a company and create the Concur for small to medium businesses.

This is the creation story of Outpave.

Sponsors

• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://www.outpave.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-cauthron-15806a8/

Omry Hay is 41 years old, married, with 3 young kids. He has lived his whole life in Israel. Unlike many founders in Israel tech, he did not serve his military service in a technology group, but as a commanding officer in the infantry. Outside of tech, he is passionate about all things sports, and loves to follow Liverpool FC. Mostly, he enjoys chilling out, catching a movie or listening to music.

Omry and his cofounder used to work together at a prior big company in Israel. They encountered problems scaling environments efficiently and fast. Back then though - there was no cloud, it was just getting started. When they started building something internally to solve this, they encountered infrastructure as a code - and the game changed.

This is the creation story env0.

Sponsors

• Permit
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://www.env0.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/omryhay/

Neil Patel has always been a hacker - electronics boards, radios, etc. - being interested in how things work, mechanically or digitally. He learned hard work at his Father's convenience store, while also reading every computer magazine on the rack. He is a pharmacologist by study, but landed in tech cause he is passionate about it. Outside of tech, he loves architecture and design. He also loves to read, in particular sci fi, and enjoys eating Gujarati food, which is purely vegetarian food with tons of flavors.

Prior to 2020, Neil and his team was attempting to build tooling around understanding the data around events. After a while, they realized that no matter what was done on top of an event store, you couldn't realize value without storing all events. So they pivoted, and focused on fixing the data store problem first.

This is the creation story of Axiom.

Sponsors

• Permit
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://axiom.co/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/njpatel/

Sanjay Nagaraj started his journey in India, where he was born and raised. He earliest influences started at home, as his father taught him honesty and integrity and his mother heavily influenced his growth as an individual. Though he spends most of his time in tech, anytime outside of work is dedicated to time with family, where he gets to see the world through his wife and kids - along with fueling his passion for singing and following his favorite sports team.

For Sanjay, one thing that was clear to him was that application builders exposing APIs, you are responsible for making sure those API's are secure. Prior to his current venture, he and his co-founder built AppDynamics, and they saw the growth of API's first hand. As such, businesses were looking for products to help understand API's and protect them - in real time.

This is the creation story of Traceable.

Sponsors

• Permit
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://traceable.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjaynagaraj/

Nic Beique was born in Odessa, Texas, but moved when he was very young to Montreal. Later in his teens, he moved to Alberta, which he describes as the "Denver of Canada". He loves his work, and spends most of his time thinking about how to expand his new venture - but outside of this, he lives in a beautiful city, with tons of hiking, skiing and snowboarding. He also enjoys a lego set here and there, keeping close to his building roots.

Nic started his first payments business a decade ago, which lived under the shadow of the bank. After many years of negotiation, he convinced the powers that be to let his company become its own payment processor. And after 3 years, he built a giant MVP to build the Square for grown-ups

This is the creation story of Helcim.

Sponsors

• Permit
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://www.helcim.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicbeique/

JJ Tang grew up in mainland China, though eventually he came to the US for University and stayed. He found a job, started working and eventually, moved to Canada, as the entrepreneur ecosystem was quite friendly. He has worked for companies like Instacart, IBM and Cisco, gaining vast experience in a myriad of roles. But outside of tech, he is engaged to be married in 2025, and is big into road cycling. In addition, he has a dog named Nova, which his current venture centers their merch design around.

At Instacart, JJ started to build a tool for infrastructure monitoring. When he realized that building it was cumbersome, and nothing existed in the market, he decided to take one of the companies best SRE and start a company, building this very product.

This is the creation story of Rootly.

Sponsors

• Permit
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://rootly.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjrichardtang/

Alex Gallego was born and raised in Colombia. He has always identified as a builder, and as a kid, he would help his Uncle re-build dirt bike engines, and was the kid that would take apart his friend's computer when they weren't looking. Once he arrived in the US, his Dad got a computer, which started his love for tech and cryptography. Outside of tech, he is married with three boys, so his time is consumed with being present with his boys, to which he stated he loves being a Dad. Beyond that, he enjoys mentally reseting by doing mountain biking and road cycling.

Alex was working with a large dataset in ad tech. After this startup did well, he was hooked, he went on to build a computing framework, which eventually sold to Alkamai. During his time at that company, he started playing with squeezing every bit of compute out of hardware - and decided to combine this in order to optimize storage.

This is the creation story of Redpanda.

Sponsors

• Permit
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://redpanda.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandergallego/

Adam Sandman grew up in Wales, in the United Kingdom. He went to university to study physics, because he had a fascination and desire to understand how things in the world worked. It was during this time that he ended up falling in love with tech, and has been in the industry ever since. Outside of tech, he is married with older children. He mentioned he was a scout master in the past, which he really enjoyed how the Scouts were led by the Scouts themselves.

In the past, Adam realized that there were not great tools out there for QA testing. He noticed a lot of people were using Excel and Word, along with manual testing through the industry. Given his experience as a project manager and architect, he saw an opportunity in the market - and set out to build a solution.

This is the creation story of Inflectra.

Sponsors

• Permit
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://www.inflectra.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamsandman/

Vlad Sadovskiy is a first generation immigrant from the Ukraine in the early 1990's. He has been in the payments space for 30+ years, so he knows a thing or two about the space. But outside of this and tech, he is a cancer survivor, and ex professional chess player. He mentions that along with ping pong, he still plays chess as a hobby - and sometimes, to help resolve arguments with his wife.

A few years ago, Vlad acquired a number of businesses in the payment space. Having spent many years in the payment space, he decided it was time to be a founder and create something in the payment space with a twist - specifically, for the "reseller community".

This is the creation story of Netevia.

Sponsors

• Permit
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://www.netevia.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladsadovskiy/

Sasha Mitchell living in Bangkok, Thailand, but grew up in London. He stared in the creative industries, as one side of his family are architects and the other side are musicians. This inspired him to study music production, which allowed him to enjoy the intersection of tech and creativity. During his time in film tech, he discovered the blockchain and started his journey into this industry. Outside of tech, he enjoys snowboarding, skateboarding, and of course - music and film.

Being in the space for a long time, Sasha has been witnessing what he describes as the drop in the value of currency, by manipulation. He wanted to see decentralized, smart contracts create a smart economy - as part of a new internet.

This is the creation story of BeL2.

Sponsors

• Permit
• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://bel2.org/
• https://elastos.info/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/sashmitchell/

Roman Sevast was born in a small city in Ukraine. When he met his girlfriend, he wanted to take her out to dinner - but he didn't have the money to do so. So he started to learn software engineering to make a little money - and his tech career started. Outside of tech, he loves to play a myriad of different video games, and enjoys DJ'ing - either for himself or for his friends. He tends to play techno or house music, but has thrown in some classical music from time to time.

Eight years ago, Roman met his co-founder Stacy on Tinder. After dating for several years, she showed him some buggy apps she had tried to create, and Roman stepped into help. After a few failed startup attempts, they set out to build a space where companies meet design talent - within the same day - and have these designer's projects managed with AI.

This is the creation story of Awesomic.

Sponsors

• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://www.awesomic.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/roman-sevast/

When asked about his life outside of tech, Björn Kolbeck stated "Is there anything outside of tech?". He has made his hobby into his job, being exposed to his first computer at 11 and dreaming of being a programer. Outside of tech, he is a father of 2 kids. He loves going to the gym and traveling, which he mentioned was a luxury at his current venture. For personal travel, he loved visiting Costa Rica, as the people are friendly, the country is beautiful - and it's safe.

Björn started a PhD program, and was part of a large project with the goal to build a distributed version of Linux. Within this program, he met his now co-founder, and they were responsible for a package within that project, surrounding data management. Little did they know that their exciting part of the project would later turn into a separate distributed file system.

This is the creation story of Quobyte.

Sponsors

• CacheFly
• ClearQuery
• Kiteworks

Links

• https://www.quobyte.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjorn-kolbeck-37925033/