Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Noah Labhart - Startup Founder & CTO
  • 5.0 (213)
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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: Aron D’Souza, Objection AI

    11H AGO ·  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 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 E16: Nikunj Bajaj, True Foundry

    2D AGO

    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 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
  3. 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 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
  4. S12 E15: Meghan Joyce, Duckbill

    APR 21

    S12 E15: Meghan Joyce, Duckbill

    Meghan Joyce comes from a long line of people living life to the fullest. She takes a lot of influence from her grandmother, who was an entrepreneur, making and selling dresses in the early 1900's, influencing her to take a hold of every moment in life and capitalize on the time you have. She's led groups at Uber and Oscar, prior to starting her current venture. But outside of tech, she is the mother of 3 children. Her favorite hobby is to spend time with the people she loves, meeting them where they are. But when she has spare time to herself, she enjoys being in nature, hiking or walking on a beach, and staying active. Meghan was sitting on a bed in Amsterdam, and experienced a problem with parental technology (IE a breast pump) that was keeping her from running things at Uber. While sitting on hold with the company, trying to get another one available, she started to wish she had a solution that would help her with this, while she attended her meetings at Uber. This is the creation story of Duckbill. Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks https://getduckbill.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghanvjoyce/ Our Sponsors: * 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

    36 min
  5. The AI Ultimatum: Preparing for a World of Intelligent Machines and Radical Transformation with Steve Brown

    APR 16 ·  BONUS

    The AI Ultimatum: Preparing for a World of Intelligent Machines and Radical Transformation with Steve Brown

    Today we have a special guest and author on the Code Story podcast, Steve Brown. Steve is a former DeepMind futurist, and recently published a book called The AI Ultimatum: Preparing for a World of Intelligent Machines and Radical Transformation. In the book, he provides a step by step framework to guide leaders in identifying use cases for AI, turning it into business value, and obtaining buy in from employees. In our conversation, Steve is going to elaborate on why AI is a teammate (not a threat), the top AI rollout mistakes, leadership and management tactics that need to go, and much more. Questions:  What led you to write this book? Ultimately, what were you trying to accomplish?We often hear that AI is coming for our jobs, but you argue it’s actually our newest teammate. Can you elaborate on this more?Let's double back on something you said, around the flavors of agents. What are those 3 different flavors of agents?Over time, leaders can fall into operating out of their experience - IE assumptions about a particular endeavor. With the advent of AI, what assumptions need to be retired, and what needs to replace them?In the same vane as the last question, you mention that old-school management fails in the age of AI. What do you mean by this, why does it fail and what needs to be changed?In the book, you talk about the AI wins you can use today, effectively pointing at immediate impact teams can feel from using AI. Can you talk to 2-3 of the most important ones?Can you explain why reinvention beats reduction? If this is the case, how can leaders and employees move into this way of thinking?Today, people are trying to rollout AI and getting it wrong - from the startup to the enterprise. What are the top AI rollout mistakes for companies to avoid?Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks The AI Ultimatum: Preparing for a World of Intelligent Machines and Radical Transformationhttps://beacons.ai/aifuturisthttps://www.stevebrown.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/futuresteve/https://www.linkedin.com/company/aitransformation/https://www.youtube.com/@futureofai Our Sponsors: * 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
  6. S12 E14: Catalina Turlea, Lovelaice

    APR 14

    S12 E14: Catalina Turlea, Lovelaice

    Catalina Turlea is originally from Romania, growing up in the countryside there. Post getting her bachelors, she moved to Austria for her masters, and landed in Germany for 13 years. She is married with a 3 year old daughter and many, many pets. She loves to spend time with her family, in nature and the mountains. She used to do a lot of sports, but being a startup founder doesn't really allow for as much running or hiking. She also is into calligraphy, which she calls her hidden superpower. Catalina has been building products for 14 years, and recently was running a small tech consultancy for startups. What she observed was that a lot of products contained an AI feature, but the "feature" was based on a prompt, didn't work well, and wasn't a good fit for the users. Eventually, she and her co-founder realized they saw the same problem, and built a platform to support products teams in building valuable AI features. This is the creation story of Lovelaice. Sponsors Unblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Links https://lovelaice.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/catalinaturlea/ Our Sponsors: * 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: Dr. Aqib Rashid, Glasswall

    APR 9 ·  BONUS

    S12 Bonus: Dr. Aqib Rashid, Glasswall

    Dr. Aqib Rashid was born and raised in London. He spent a lot of time around computers and tech growing up, and his parents pushed him towards becoming an expert in a discipline, being a positive influence on society. But he maintained his balance in life by playing sports, which inspired him to want to lead a team in the future. But outside of tech, he is a Dad to a one year old boy. He enjoys spending time with him outdoors, and finds that the real beauty in life is watching him grow up. In Sept 2023, Aqib had completed his PhD around the subject of using AI to detect malware. His current venture was looking at how to implement this sort of approach into their products. Quickly, he got to work building a new product to detect malware in your files. This is Dr. Rashid's the creation story of Glasswall. Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks https://www.glasswall.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/aqibrashid/ Our Sponsors: * 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

    30 min
  8. S12 E13: David Matalon, Venn

    APR 7

    S12 E13: David Matalon, Venn

    David Matalon grew up in Great Neck, outside of New York City. He's always been interested in tech, way back in the early days of PCs, DOS, Windows and even Novell. In fact, he was the high school kid with an IT Consulting business on the side (yes, he wore a beeper to school). He graduated from NYU, and started his first company Offyx. Outside of tech, he is married with 4 kids. When asked about what he does for fun, he says that enjoys the all compassing nature of work and family life. David's whole career has been centered around helping companies deliver distributed applications. In most of recent history, virtual desktops or VDI has been the de facto solution for businesses, with lots of issues and pains baked in. David and his team heard the cries of their customers, and decided to build a better solution - one, with a blue border. This is the creation story of Venn. Sponsors UnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinks https://www.venn.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmatalon/ Our Sponsors: * 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
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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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