Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Code Story is a podcast featuring startup founders, tech leaders, CTO's, CEO's, and software architects, reflecting on their human story in creating world changing innovation, disruptive digital products - Their tech. Their products. Their stories.

Episodes

July 31, 2025 22 mins

Tiffany Johnson is originally from Texas, but grew up in California. At a young age, she was a bit of an adrenaline junkie, partaking in skydiving, snowboarding, wakeboarding and gymnastics. In school, she fell in love with Econ, Mgmt, and Statistics - and eventually, fell into the payment industry by accident. Outside of tech, she has been married for 20 years with 3 kids. Her kids are all snow skiers, though she doesn't hold ...

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The Gene Simmons of Data Protection: Protegrity's KISS Method

Today, we are releasing another episode from our series, entitled The Gene Simmons of Data Protection - the KISS Method, brought to you by none other than Protegrity. Protegrity is AI-powered data security for data consumption, offering fine grain data protection solutions, so you can enable your data security, compliance, sharing and analytics.

Episode Ti...

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Brennan Pothetes grew up in Louisiana, but went to High School in Portland, Oregon - two very different places. He started his career in internal audit, before he eventually helped launch Simple, the first bank on the iPhone. He has built a lot of companies since, and continues to do so. Outside of business and tech, he likes food and enjoys whipping up some cajun or greek cuisine. Recently, he picked up surfing, but also likes to ...

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July 24, 2025 29 mins

Ben Lerner was a fan of tech growing up, along side being into math and science. Right out of school, he joined a startup called Data Nitro, which attempted to integrate python into excel. Ever since then, he has been jamming in the tech and startup world. Outside of tech, he married to a computational biologist. He enjoys padel, which is kind of like Pickleball meets Tennis, and of course ping pong. Though, with his full time job ...

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Today, I'm talking with Kolton Andrus, CEO and Founder of Gremlin. You may remember previously when we spoke with Matt, the prior CTO of the company. Since that time frame, a lot has changed at the company, going through several arcs and foundational changes that are leading to not only assessing weaknesses in your infrastructure, but walking you through how to fix it (and eventually, fixing it for you).

Questions:

  • Tell us a ...
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July 22, 2025 19 mins

Buchi Reddy lives in North Austin, having recently moved there with his family. He is originally from south India, and grew up in a farming family before moving to the metro and studying engineering. Post college, he spent many years building high frequency trading systems, before moving to Silicon Valley and joining companies there, just as Cisco and Traceable, which you as the audience are very familiar with. Outside of tech, he ...

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Evan Henshaw-Plath, also known as Rabble, was born in Berkeley while his Mom was a student. His parents were hippies, and he grew up near Silicon Valley, which gave him access to work with startups as early as High School. He founded Odeo, which eventually became Twitter. He got the name Rabble cause it was founded by three Evan's, which didn't work - so he went with his online nickname. He has a cool track record of workin...

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July 15, 2025 34 mins

Jesse Pollak grew up in Washington, DC, attending a Quaker school through graduating in high school. He played competitive soccer, which was a huge part of his life. Eventually, he moved to SoCal to attend school at Berkley. He got the bug to start a company, and only lasted 2 years at school - before he ventured out on his own. Eventually, his company got acquired by Coinbase, which opened up a whole new world for him. Outside of ...

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Gaurav Bhattacharya grew up in New Delhi, in a blue collar family. He lost his Dad early in his life. He took influence from his older brother and his love for programming, getting hooked on C/C++. He loves building things, including video games, of which he built his first one at the age of 12. In High School, he pursued a startup idea that led him to skip college, and eventually exit. Outside of tech, he lives in San Francisco an...

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July 8, 2025 28 mins

Artem Rodichev was born and raised in Kazakhstan, surrounded by the mountains. He loves hiking, and pretty much all outdoor activities. He jokes that he was raised by computers, as he was always playing games, trying to learn hacking, and more. He has always be interested in stories, in particular science fiction. He read a lot of books and watched movies, being fascinated with plots around empathetic AI like Blade Runner and Joy. ...

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July 3, 2025 27 mins

Keren Fanan doesn't come from a tech based family, yet has worked in tech for the last 15 years. She's not a developer herself, but has always been drawn to software in general, as in her words, software runs the world. She studied Industrial Engineering, but quickly moved into product roles, working for AT&T, Gett and Moon Active in the past. Deep down, she always wanted to found a company of her own. Outside of tech, ...

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July 1, 2025 23 mins

Michael Sacca didn't start out coding - he started out as a musician. In college, he studied music business and wanted to go into that world. Eventually, he figured out that people didn't care that you had a music business degree, and he ended up waiting tables for a few years. After watching his roommate write software and get paid well to do it, he decided to learn to code himself. Outside of tech, he lives in Vancouver w...

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June 26, 2025 33 mins

Ofir Bibi grew up in Jerusalem, and is where he is today because of his love for photography. He has always been a tinkerer, taking apart of radios and such, and was drawn to the early days of training neural networks and computational photography. He spent a number of years in academia, but eventually was drawn outside of that world. Outside of tech, he is married with 3 boys who play sports. His family is surrounded by nature, so...

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June 24, 2025 28 mins

Austin Federa has a non-traditional path into the blockchain world. In college, he studied political & environmental science, and economics. Interestingly enough, those studies map a lot to the blockchain first principles. He was seriously looking to do his PhD, but fell out of love with that space, and joined NPR as a journalist for a while. Then, of course, he got bit by the startup bug. Outside of tech, he enjoys living in B...

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June 19, 2025 18 mins

Tim Eades grew up poor, but forced himself into college. He is a 4 time CEO, an investor, and on the boards of several different companies - but more interestingly, he is an old punk. He saw the Sex Pistols live back in the day, which he mentioned had great sound quality. He's been married for 25 years, and is on the board of a charity that his wife runs. That charity delivery 20,000 birthday cakes to underprivileged children a...

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Brooke Hartley May lives in Oakland, California, on the East Bay, claiming to get more sunshine than her neighbors in San Francisco. She was a history major in college, which makes her path to technology a bit different. She still enjoys writing and reading in long form to this day. Outside of tech, she is married with a 4 year old son - and a pug. She enjoys life as a parent, startup founder, but was sad that the Oakland A's l...

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Yaroslav Lazor started writing code when he was 10 years old. It took him a while to understand that making a difference in the world wasn't just about writing code - but he has arrived there these days. He is the father of 4 daughters, 2 of which are artists and a couple who are digging into their entrepreneurial roots with running their own lemonade stand. He lives in Los Angeles, and has learned to be a better person through...

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Yaroslav Lazor started writing code when he was 10 years old. It took him a while to understand that making a difference in the world wasn't just about writing code - but he has arrived there these days. He is the father of 4 daughters, 2 of which are artists and a couple who are digging into their entrepreneurial roots with running their own lemonade stand. He lives in Los Angeles, and has learned to be a better person through...

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June 10, 2025 23 mins

Rob Duffy lives in New York with his family. He moved to the states to go work for a small online bookstore that we know today as Amazon. He's married with 2 kids, and enjoys to cook. But, his main passion is flying, as he has is pilots license and enjoys flying small planes. He recalls training on a simulator with a rendering of the Seattle space needle, which he got to fly next to in the real world once he got his license. He...

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Emmanuel Straschnov grew up in rural France, which is interestingly enough where he started doing computer stuff (he mentioned there wasn't much else to do in the 90's). He grew up sailing, as he lived next to the shore in Normandy. He never really thought he would end up coding, but after obtaining his MBA, he ended up doing just that. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 children. He mentions that most of his hobby time ...

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