Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Noah Labhart - Startup Founder & CTO

Code Story is a startup podcast for technical founders building and scaling software products. Each episode features SaaS founders, engineers, and product leaders sharing how they built their product, found product-market fit, and navigated early-stage growth. We explore: Early engineering decisions and MVP developmentLanding the first customersPricing and go-to-market experimentsScaling challenges and infrastructure bottlenecksHiring the first teamLessons learned from growing a startupFrom first commit to first scale, Code Story focuses on the critical transition from building software to building a scalable business. If you’re a founder, engineer, or product leader interested in SaaS, startups, and scaling technology companies, this podcast breaks down how great products are built — and how they grow.

  1. S12 Bonus: Anusha Iyer, Corsha

    2D AGO ·  BONUS

    S12 Bonus: Anusha Iyer, Corsha

    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. Anusha has been in the cybersecurity space for quite some time, starting off in naval research in DC. Further down here career, she had a friend reach out to pitch an idea to build a platform for dynamic machine identification. This is the creation story of Corsha. Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks https://corsha.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/anusha-iyer/ Our Sponsors: * Check out Cash App and use my code CASHAPP10 for a great deal: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/mt82fpxl #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. See terms and conditions at https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Cash App Green, overdraft coverage, borrow, cash back offers and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. * Check out Plaud AI and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://plaud.ai Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    20 min
  2. S12 E19: Thomas Schlegel, Built

    4D AGO

    S12 E19: Thomas Schlegel, Built

    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 with good people, contemplating or pondering the bigger things in life. In the past, Thomas was a lead engineer at a professional services organization in Tennessee. While at a conference, he met the CEO of his current venture, and they hit it off. He was intrigued by their company, and several years later, he started working for the company as an individual contributor - and quickly activated his entrepreneur DNA to solve ALL the problems. This is the creation story of Built. Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks https://getbuilt.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-schlegel-678772215/ Our Sponsors: * Check out Cash App and use my code CASHAPP10 for a great deal: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/mt82fpxl #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. See terms and conditions at https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Cash App Green, overdraft coverage, borrow, cash back offers and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. * Check out Plaud AI and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://plaud.ai Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    38 min
  3. S12 Bonus: Yoni Avital, ControlUp

    MAY 14 ·  BONUS

    S12 Bonus: Yoni Avital, ControlUp

    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 team realized was that troubleshooting these virtual experiences were incredibly complicated. They started to build an enterprise task manager, to centralize a task management UI to control the endpoints. When customers started asking to use it daily, Yoni figured out they had something unique. This is the creation story of ControlUp. Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks https://www.controlup.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoavital/ Our Sponsors: * Check out Cash App and use my code CASHAPP10 for a great deal: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/mt82fpxl #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. See terms and conditions at https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Cash App Green, overdraft coverage, borrow, cash back offers and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. * Check out Plaud AI and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://plaud.ai Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    29 min
  4. S12 E18: Brooke Hipps, Weekend Will

    MAY 12

    S12 E18: Brooke Hipps, Weekend Will

    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 family, but what made it more difficult was that her sister didn't have a will. Brooke started asking the question "why bit?", and exploring building something to help Texan's with writing a love letter to your surviving loved ones. This is the creation story of Weekend Will. Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks https://www.weekendwill.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/brooke-hipps-792224116 Our Sponsors: * Check out Cash App and use my code CASHAPP10 for a great deal: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/mt82fpxl #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. See terms and conditions at https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Cash App Green, overdraft coverage, borrow, cash back offers and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. * Check out Plaud AI and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://plaud.ai Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    24 min
  5. Making AI Deterministic for Developers and their Agents, with Patrick Vuong of Moderne

    MAY 7 ·  BONUS

    Making AI Deterministic for Developers and their Agents, with Patrick Vuong of Moderne

    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 for this engineer/host, has been a point of skepticism for AI since the beginning. Questions Tell me and my audience a little bit about you.What is Moderne?Moderne is enabling developers to operate software systems at the speed of agents. Tell me about this product suite.Why do Agents need tooling? Where do we see AI in ROISomething jumped out at me... you mentioned you are not only building tooling for agents that are deterministic.As we peer into tech stacks across the industry, where does Moderne fit?OK so this is clearly a pivot for Moderne. With this, who are your customers now?What does the future like for your product - what you offer - and your team?For you personally, you are entering into a new chapter with Moderne. What makes you most excited, going from Microsoft to entering the startup world with the company?In your journey, who has influenced the way you work? Tell me about a person, or many persons, or something you look up to and why.So you worked at Microsoft for 8 years, and are now transitioning to Moderne. Say you were getting on a plan and sitting next to someone about to make this same transition - what advice would you give them?Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks https://www.moderne.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/vuongpatrick/ Our Sponsors: * Check out Cash App and use my code CASHAPP10 for a great deal: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/mt82fpxl #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. See terms and conditions at https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Cash App Green, overdraft coverage, borrow, cash back offers and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. * Check out Plaud AI and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://plaud.ai Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    25 min
  6. S12 Bonus: Aron D’Souza, Objection AI

    APR 30 ·  BONUS

    S12 Bonus: Aron D’Souza, Objection AI

    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 a rudimentary version of a solution for a tribunal of truth 20 years ago, but the tech wasn't ready for it. That is, until the most recent advances in AI. This is the creation story of Objection AI. Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks https://objection.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/arondsouza/ Our Sponsors: * Check out Cash App and use my code CASHAPP10 for a great deal: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/mt82fpxl #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. See terms and conditions at https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Cash App Green, overdraft coverage, borrow, cash back offers and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. * Check out Plaud AI and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://plaud.ai Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    20 min
  7. S12 E16: Nikunj Bajaj, True Foundry

    APR 28

    S12 E16: Nikunj Bajaj, True Foundry

    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, Nikunj realized that building machine learning models for the company is different than using public ecosystems. The realized early on that machine learning models will hit an inflection point, where the stacks will need to change and adapt. He and his team decided to take on this challenge ahead of that inflection point. This is the creation story of True Foundry. Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks https://www.truefoundry.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikunj-bajaj-10476824/ Our Sponsors: * Check out Cash App and use my code CASHAPP10 for a great deal: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/mt82fpxl #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. See terms and conditions at https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Cash App Green, overdraft coverage, borrow, cash back offers and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. * Check out Plaud AI and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://plaud.ai Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    33 min
  8. S12 Bonus: Tyler Hochman, FORE Enterprise

    APR 23 ·  BONUS

    S12 Bonus: Tyler Hochman, FORE Enterprise

    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 throw at you. Tyler built a workforce turnover solution half a decade ago, in the space of predicting employee turnover in a business. It got a lot of solid traction, but what he and his team noticed was that though people wanted to use the solution, they didn't have the infrastructure necessary to provide data to the tool. This led he and his team to swim a bit downstream to build that data pipeline for customers. This is the creation story of FORE Enterprise. Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks https://foreenterprise.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-hochman-83b547130/ Our Sponsors: * Check out Cash App and use my code CASHAPP10 for a great deal: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/mt82fpxl #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. See terms and conditions at https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Cash App Green, overdraft coverage, borrow, cash back offers and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. * Check out Plaud AI and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://plaud.ai Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    21 min

Trailers

4.7
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Code Story is a startup podcast for technical founders building and scaling software products. Each episode features SaaS founders, engineers, and product leaders sharing how they built their product, found product-market fit, and navigated early-stage growth. We explore: Early engineering decisions and MVP developmentLanding the first customersPricing and go-to-market experimentsScaling challenges and infrastructure bottlenecksHiring the first teamLessons learned from growing a startupFrom first commit to first scale, Code Story focuses on the critical transition from building software to building a scalable business. If you’re a founder, engineer, or product leader interested in SaaS, startups, and scaling technology companies, this podcast breaks down how great products are built — and how they grow.

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