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: The App Is Dead, Long Live the Outcome: Why Autonomous AI Agents Are Rewriting Data Infrastructure and Transforming PostgreSQL Into a Dynamic Scratch Pad with Ajay Kulkarni, Founder & CEO of Tiger Data

    16 h fa

    S12 Bonus: The App Is Dead, Long Live the Outcome: Why Autonomous AI Agents Are Rewriting Data Infrastructure and Transforming PostgreSQL Into a Dynamic Scratch Pad with Ajay Kulkarni, Founder & CEO of Tiger Data

    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 and drums. Ajay and his co-founder met 30 years ago at MIT. They reconnected after years of doing their own thing, starting to dig into the iOT world. In doing this, they built a database because they the best solution to store this data... and in doing so, they unlocked their next venture out of this necessity. This is the creation story of Tiger Data. Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks https://www.tigerdata.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajaykulkarni/ 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
  2. The AI Control Loop: Detection is not Enough - with Tim Ebbers of Wallarm

    1 g fa ·  Contenuti extra

    The AI Control Loop: Detection is not Enough - with Tim Ebbers of Wallarm

    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, Tim Ebbers, Field CTO at Wallarm, discusses why detection alone is insufficient for AI-driven systems, what real enforcement looks like at the runtime level, and what accountability becomes possible once all four stages are in place. Questions Security teams are used to detecting incidents and responding after the fact. Why is that model insufficient for AI-driven systems?What does “enforcement” usually mean today, and why can actions like restarting pods or rotating credentials come too late?Why does AI behavior require controls that operate closer to runtime?What changes when enforcement happens at the kernel level rather than only at the network, identity, or application layer?Can you explain what it means to revoke or contain a compromised AI session without touching the broader deployment?How does real-time blocking change the risk equation for AI agents that access sensitive data, external services, or production workflows?What kinds of AI behaviors should organizations be able to stop immediately?How do teams balance strong enforcement with the need to avoid slowing down AI development and deployment? Once organizations can discover, observe, and enforce AI behavior, what does accountability look like at the enterprise level?Links https://www.wallarm.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/tebbers/Full Abstract Tim Ebbers, Field CTO at Wallarm, discusses why detection alone is insufficient for AI-driven systems, what real enforcement looks like at the runtime level, and what accountability becomes possible once all four stages are in place. Detection tells you what happened. It does not stop it. For most security incidents, that tradeoff is manageable. For AI systems that can access sensitive data, call external services, and trigger downstream actions at machine speed, the gap between detection and response is where the damage happens. The enforcement model most security teams operate today was built for a slower threat. Restarting pods, rotating credentials, and updating policies are all responses to something that has already occurred. Against an AI agent that can exfiltrate data, invoke a production workflow, or violate a compliance boundary in the time it takes to page an on-call engineer, that response model is not enforcement. It’s cleanup. Closing that gap requires controls that operate at the layer where AI behavior actually executes, not at the perimeter, not at the identity layer, not at the application boundary. Kernel-level enforcement changes what is possible: a compromised session can be revoked by user identity or trace ID, connections can be terminated at the workload level, and enforcement can happen without a pod restart, a deploy cycle, or any impact to the broader environment. That is what it means to complete the AI control loop. Discover what is running, observe what it is doing, enforce what it should not be doing, and govern with evidence that the enforcement worked. Organizations that can only do the first two are solving half the problem. 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

    13 min
  3. S12 E25: From Processing $500B at Intuit to Building the Fraud-Proof Ledger: Eradicating Financial Misstatement with Ahikam Kaufman, Co-Founder & CEO of Safebooks AI

    2 gg fa

    S12 E25: From Processing $500B at Intuit to Building the Fraud-Proof Ledger: Eradicating Financial Misstatement with Ahikam Kaufman, Co-Founder & CEO of Safebooks AI

    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. Ahikam started to think about how automation can positively impact financial operations, specifically around managing data in the office of the CFO. After the first AI models were released, he got excited, realizing that these models would continue to get better and better, alongside operating with agency. This is the creation story of Safebooks. Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks https://safebooks.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahikam-kaufman-688310/ 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

    27 min
  4. S12 E24 P2: Why Off-the-Shelf APIs Fail Complex Web Workflows and the Blueprint for High-Velocity Product Engineering with Volodymyr & Vitalii Sydorenko, Co-Founders of Gearheart

    25 giu

    S12 E24 P2: Why Off-the-Shelf APIs Fail Complex Web Workflows and the Blueprint for High-Velocity Product Engineering with Volodymyr & Vitalii Sydorenko, Co-Founders of Gearheart

    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 playing tennis and finds that he can't stop. He enjoy hiking, which is great in Lisbon. And in the past, he spent many years building startups, exiting, and also in venture capital You may have noticed that Volodymyr and Vitalii have the same last name... that is because they are brothers. As kids growing up, they did a lot of boxing together, as well as cling to classic films like Back to the Future. Fourteen years ago, Volodymyr got interesting in building solutions, and realized he could only get so far by himself... so he decided to build a team to deliver these solutions. Two years ago, Vitalii and Volodymyr started to consider all the of the shifts in the SDLC, and what that meant for the current business. Vitalii decided to bring his prior startup and VC experience and join the team. This is the creation story of Gearheart. Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks https://gearheart.io/https://codestory.co/podcast/e6-jon-darbyshire-smartsuite/https://www.linkedin.com/in/gearheart/https://www.linkedin.com/in/vitalii-sydorenko-%F0%9F%92%AA%F0%9F%87%BA%F0%9F%87%A6-24b4ba35/ 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

    15 min
  5. The AI Control Loop: When AI Goes Rogue - with Craig Thomas of Wallarm

    24 giu ·  Contenuti extra

    The AI Control Loop: When AI Goes Rogue - with Craig Thomas of Wallarm

    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, examines what rogue AI actually means in practice, where the risk materializes, and what it takes to move from detection to control. Questions When we say "rogue AI," what do we actually mean? Is it only malicious AI, or can legitimate systems become risky too?What are the most common ways AI systems drift outside intended boundaries? Once an organization understands what rogue AI looks like, where does that loss of control typically begin, and who is responsible for preventing it?How do shadow LLMs, unsanctioned agents, and unmanaged AI workflows create risk even when no attacker is involved? If AI drift often starts with normal business activity, where do shadow AI systems fit into that picture?Why can an AI action look legitimate in isolation but still create serious business, security, or compliance risk when viewed as part of a larger sequence of actions? As these shadow systems become more embedded in everyday workflows, why is it so difficult to recognize risk in real time?How do APIs, integrations, and connected systems amplify the impact of those seemingly legitimate actions? What changes once those actions begin flowing across APIs, business applications, and interconnected systems?What kinds of unexpected outcomes worry CIOs and CISOs most today when AI systems are operating across those interconnected environments? As that connectivity expands, what are security and business leaders most concerned about?And given those concerns, what does meaningful oversight actually look like when AI systems can act at machine speed? How should organizations distinguish between the experimentation they want to encourage and the unmanaged AI behavior they need to control? One challenge is balancing governance with innovation. How do organizations avoid slowing down AI adoption while still maintaining control?We know that many organizations can detect risky AI behavior after the fact. But if they can't stop it in real time, what critical gap still remains? Even with governance programs in place, many organizations are still operating reactively. In closing, what's the key difference between detecting AI risk and actually controlling it?Links https://www.wallarm.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/cu-craigthomas/Full Abstract In this episode, Craig Thomas, Sr. Solutions Engineer at Wallarm, examines what rogue AI actually means in practice, where the risk materializes, and what it takes to move from detection to control. Not every AI threat starts with an attacker. Some of the most consequential AI risks organizations face today come from systems that are working exactly as designed, just not quite as intended. An agent that calls an API it was never supposed to reach. A workflow that exposes PII because nobody mapped the data path before deployment. A shadow LLM standing up in an AWS account because a developer needed to move fast and approval processes were slow. None of these require malicious intent to create serious business, security, or compliance exposure. Rogue AI is a broader category than most governance frameworks account for. It includes the unsanctioned, the unmonitored, and the unpredictable: AI systems that drift outside intended boundaries, take actions that look legitimate in isolation but create risk in sequence, and operate at machine speed in ways that make after-the-fact detection feel like a consolation prize. The gap most organizations have is not in detecting that something went wrong. It's closing the loop fast enough to matter. Meaningful AI governance requires more than policy and discovery. It requires the ability to observe AI behavior at runtime, understand what triggered each action and what it touched, and enforce boundaries before consequences compound. That closed AI control loop, from knowing what is running to seeing what it does to stopping what it should not, is the operational standard AI transformation demands. Most organizations are not there yet. 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

    23 min
  6. S12 E24 P1: Why Off-the-Shelf APIs Fail Complex Web Workflows and the Blueprint for High-Velocity Product Engineering with Volodymyr & Vitalii Sydorenko, Co-Founders of Gearheart

    23 giu

    S12 E24 P1: Why Off-the-Shelf APIs Fail Complex Web Workflows and the Blueprint for High-Velocity Product Engineering with Volodymyr & Vitalii Sydorenko, Co-Founders of Gearheart

    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 playing tennis and finds that he can't stop. He enjoy hiking, which is great in Lisbon. And in the past, he spent many years building startups, exiting, and also in venture capital You may have noticed that Volodymyr and Vitalii have the same last name... that is because they are brothers. As kids growing up, they did a lot of boxing together, as well as cling to classic films like Back to the Future. Fourteen years ago, Volodymyr got interesting in building solutions, and realized he could only get so far by himself... so he decided to build a team to deliver these solutions. Two years ago, Vitalii and Volodymyr started to consider all the of the shifts in the SDLC, and what that meant for the current business. Vitalii decided to bring his prior startup and VC experience and join the team. This is the creation story of Gearheart. Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks https://gearheart.io/https://beyondthewow.iohttps://codestory.co/podcast/e6-jon-darbyshire-smartsuite/https://www.linkedin.com/in/gearheart/https://www.linkedin.com/in/vitalii-sydorenko-%F0%9F%92%AA%F0%9F%87%BA%F0%9F%87%A6-24b4ba35/ 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

    23 min
  7. S12 Bonus: The Microsoft File Trap: Moving Beyond Manual PowerPoint and Excel Workflows to Build an AI-Native "Consulting" Layer with Tim Lidman, Co-Founder & CEO of Clyde AI

    18 giu ·  Contenuti extra

    S12 Bonus: The Microsoft File Trap: Moving Beyond Manual PowerPoint and Excel Workflows to Build an AI-Native "Consulting" Layer with Tim Lidman, Co-Founder & CEO of Clyde AI

    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, he is married with 2 girls. From his music years, he extracts skills that drove his success to date, which is the ability to product development and execution down the same way you do music. In the days of his first startup, Tim's solution was used by consulting firms to power client engagement. Post exit, while overseeing things at Accenture, he noticed that the whole industry was powered by Microsoft files (PowerPoint, Excel, Word, etc.) - IE, driven manually. He started to wonder if he could codify the consulting process, to remove the manual burden. This is the creation story of Clyde. Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks https://meetclyde.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/timlidman/ 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

    28 min

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Descrizione

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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