Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical Founders

Noah Labhart | Podcast for Technical Founders & Startups

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 startup From 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. 18h ago ·  Bonus

    S13 Bonus: The Legal AI Shift: Automating Contract Workflows with AI Agents with Nick Holzherr, Founder & CEO of GitLaw

    Nick Holzherr is originally from the Switzerland, but moved to UK when he was 7 years old, to the countryside. He had no real touch to computers until he was 18, when he attended university and everything picked up for him, tech wise. Eventually, he got into building businesses, and of those, he founded a coffee company, HR software company, and whisk.com, which was sold to Samsung in 2019. Outside of tech, he is the father to two young children. He enjoys skiing and snowboarding, and jokingly, he admits that running around ensuring his agents are prompted gets in the way of his family and hobby life.  Through his entrepreneurial adventures, Nick spent large sums of money on legal contracts, ensuring that the i's were dotted and the t's were crossed. While he still feels that lawyers are very important and needed for certain scenarios, Nick wanted to create a way to level the playing field for small businesses, in the legal arena.  This is the creation story of GitLaw.  Links https://git.law/ https://nickholzherr.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickholzherr/ Current Sponsors: Tiger Data Protected Harbor Render Fitnexa Perplexity Entelligence Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/ Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor. Our Sponsors: * Check out Granola and use my code granola.ai/CODESTORY for a great deal: https://granola.ai * Check out Perplexity and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://www.perplexity.ai Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    S13 Bonus: The Legal AI Shift: Automating Contract Workflows with AI Agents with Nick Holzherr, Founder & CEO of GitLaw
  2. 1d ago ·  Bonus

    E13 Bonus: The Return of Backbox, and AI as a Trusted Advisor, with Rekha Shenoy, CEO of Backbox

    Today, we have a special return episode from our friends at Backbox, who we heard the creation story of the company back in Season 8. In this episode, we talk with Rekha Shenoy, CEO of Backbox. Since Rekha took the helm as CEO in May 2024, the company has expanded beyond traditional security automation to launch its major BackBox 8.0 platform, unifying cloud and on-prem infrastructure visibility. They’ve also integrated human-in-the-loop, advisor-focused AI capabilities - and are back to let us know some even more "big things" happening with platform, around agentic .  Questions: Tell me about yourself—your path into tech and what shapes how you lead (background, influences, hobbies, family).Tell me about BackBox. What does the company do, and what drew you in to take the CEO seat in 2024?How has the product matured? How do you build your roadmap?Zoom out — what are you most proud of in shaping BackBox?What does the future look like for your product and team?BackBox describes AI as a "trusted advisor, not an autonomous agent" — four principles: protecting infrastructure, repeatable/verifiable results, supporting (not replacing) engineers, and transparency about how AI reaches conclusions. Where did that philosophy come from, and why hold that line while competitors race toward full autonomy?What does "responsible AI" actually look like in the product — not as a value statement, but as a design constraint that shaped the engineering decision?Tell us about your recent launch and what it enables a network team to do that they couldn't before?How does the launch extend or test that responsible-AI philosophy?At what point does "AI as advisor" start to feel like a limitation rather than a safeguard?Links https://backbox.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/rekha-shenoy-950b23/ https://www.codestory.co/episodes/s8-bonus-bypassing-brittle-custom-scripts-implementing-automated-multi-tenant-configuration-backups-and-vulnerability-patching-at-scale-with-andrew-kahl-of-backbox/ Current Sponsors: Tiger Data Protected Harbor Render Fitnexa Perplexity Entelligence Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/ Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor. Our Sponsors: * Check out Granola and use my code granola.ai/CODESTORY for a great deal: https://granola.ai * Check out Perplexity and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://www.perplexity.ai Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    E13 Bonus: The Return of Backbox, and AI as a Trusted Advisor, with Rekha Shenoy, CEO of Backbox
  3. 2d ago

    S13 E4: The AI GTM Engine: Turning Intent Signals into Warm Outbound Pipeline with Connor Heggie, Co-Founder & CTO of Unify

    Connor Heggie grew up in Southern California, digging into technical things early on his life. He played with legos, was influence by Iron Man, and painted pictures on the back of schematics his Dad brought him from Boeing. He went to school at Rice in Texas, feeling a sense of agency and confidence from the program he was in. Eventually, he went to work for startups across computer vision, self driving cars, and AI. Outside of tech, he has a large black Labrador named Captain. He enjoys hiking, being outside, and playing fetch with Captain until he drops in exhaustion.  Post ChatGPT, Connor was working on a side project, creating listicles around products. As he built it, he fell in love with the space of mining information from unstructured data. Once he met up with his co-founder, they started to recognize they could build multi-agent systems that could re-think how Go-To-Market teams operate.  This is the creation story of Unify.  Links https://www.unifygtm.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/connor-heggie/ Current Sponsors: Tiger Data Protected Harbor Render Fitnexa Perplexity Entelligence Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/ Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor. Our Sponsors: * Check out Granola and use my code granola.ai/CODESTORY for a great deal: https://granola.ai * Check out Perplexity and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://www.perplexity.ai Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    S13 E4: The AI GTM Engine: Turning Intent Signals into Warm Outbound Pipeline with Connor Heggie, Co-Founder & CTO of Unify
  4. Sep 10 ·  Bonus

    S13 Bonus: The GPU Bottleneck: Democratizing AI Compute Pipelines with Christian Ondaatje, Founder & CEO of Aranya.tech

    Christian Ondaatje is originally from Los Angelas, CA. He got into GPUs as an underclassmen in college, of course through gaming and VR. He ended up starting an eGPU company in his CS program @ Harvard, though it was shut down through some cease and desist from Apple. Though he learned some hard startup lessons, his love for GPUs was only fueled more. Outside of tech, he does a lot of SIM racing. In fact, he has built his own Linus VR racing simulator rig over a couple of years He finds that the formal, online competition is very fun to participate in.  As I mentioned, Christian was way into GPUs throughout many different experiences in his life. He and his team recognized that while demand door AI inference and compute was at an all-time high, setting up bare-metal GPU infra was still complex and slow... so they set out to change it.  This is the creation story of Aranya. Links https://aranya.tech/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianondaatje/ Current Sponsors: Tiger Data Protected Harbor Render Fitnexa Perplexity Entelligence Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/ Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor. Our Sponsors: * Check out Granola and use my code granola.ai/CODESTORY for a great deal: https://granola.ai * Check out Perplexity and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://www.perplexity.ai Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    S13 Bonus: The GPU Bottleneck: Democratizing AI Compute Pipelines with Christian Ondaatje, Founder & CEO of Aranya.tech
  5. Sep 8

    S13 E3: Architecting Frictionless Creator Infrastructure & Social Commerce with Dumi Mabhena, CEO of Hilite

    Dumi Mabhena is originally from Zimbabwe, and has lived in 5 different countries. He now lives in Washington, DC, as he came to the states to attend Georgetown. Prior to that, he has been a podcast host and producer for several years, as well as starting businesses and taking part in the startup world in multiple different places. Outside of tech, he married to his wife, who he met while in South Africa. They love to travel, especially Europe in the summer, and are big into fitness and running.  Previously, Dumi started a podcast, to tell about positive experiences in Zimbabwe. As he went through the process of recording, editing, and publishing a podcast - he realized that the tools and platforms were incredibly fragmented... so much so, that it created friction in the process of telling stories. Dumi wanted to figure out a way to remove this friction from the entire process.  This is the creation story of Hilite. Links https://www.hellohilite.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/dumi-mabhena Current Sponsors: Tiger Data Protected Harbor Render Fitnexa Perplexity Entelligence Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/ Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor. Our Sponsors: * Check out Granola and use my code granola.ai/CODESTORY for a great deal: https://granola.ai * Check out Perplexity and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://www.perplexity.ai Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    S13 E3: Architecting Frictionless Creator Infrastructure & Social Commerce with Dumi Mabhena, CEO of Hilite
  6. Sep 2 ·  Bonus

    S13 Bonus: The AI DBA Shift: Automating Database Reliability & Performance with Itamar Syn-Hershko, Founder & CEO of NeverBlink

    Itamar Syn-Hershko has been a tech guy since he was a wee lad - IE he was teaching his kindergarten teachers how to use their computers. He learned how to "do stuff" tech wise through playing games back in the day. Back in the day he was one of the original developers on a document based database, as well as building a consulting company. Outside of tech, he is the father of 5 kids, all of them 7 and under... so his hands are quite full. That said, he does enjoy learning new things and traveling, when he has the time.  Itamar founded a boutique consulting agency, helping businesses succeed in data related projects. Like most smart agencies, they built tools to help them to do their jobs better. One of these tools became highly popular, and after 1.5 years of selling this tool to customers, they hit a $1m in annual recurring revenue.  This is the creation story of NeverBlink AI.  Links https://neverblink.ai/ https://bigdataboutique.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/itamar-syn-hershko Current Sponsors: Tiger Data Protected Harbor Render Fitnexa Perplexity Entelligence Checkout our Stacklist! https://stacks.codestory.co/ Hosted by Noah Labhart | Technical Founder & Startup Mentor. Our Sponsors: * Check out Granola and use my code granola.ai/CODESTORY for a great deal: https://granola.ai * Check out Perplexity and use my code CODESTORY for a great deal: https://www.perplexity.ai Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    S13 Bonus: The AI DBA Shift: Automating Database Reliability & Performance with Itamar Syn-Hershko, Founder & CEO of NeverBlink

Trailers

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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 startup From 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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