Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S6 E6: John Myers, Gretel.ai

John Myers comes from a big military family. He was convinced he was going to be a pilot his whole life. When he was a junior in High School, he started doing C++ programing and he got hooked. After graduation, he got accepted to RPI in update New York, and started suiting computer science. He eventually joined the Air Force, and focused on information systems. Through an interesting turn of events, John got accepted to the NSA, while a good friend of his took his deployment spot to Iraq. This job launched him into the world of cyber security, which took him to Afghanistan doing engineering for the military. When he came back to the states, he jumped head first into the startup world. John is married, and just bought a fixer upper house with his wife. He is into exercise, likes to bike in the summer and ski in the winter. Mostly, he likes to do simple things and decompress with his friends and family.

Post acquisition of his first startup, John stared working on a bunch of projects, one of them requiring him to aggregate a large amount of data and anonymize it. This took a lot of work, and there wasn't anything out on the market that provided this type of functionality.

This is the creation story of Gretel.

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Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S6 Bonus: Jim Fagan, Global Cloud Exchange

Jim Fagan has had a long and winding road into the tech world. He grew up in New Jersey, and post school, started out in Finance. Slowly, through those roles, he drifted towards operations, and then eventually, towards technology. Personally, he loves to be outside, doing stuff that involves the water. He enjoys surfing, wakeboarding, skiing, you name it. Through his profession, he has travelled the world, and visited many amazing places, including spending 9 years in Hong Kong. He found great pleasure in learning the cultures - personal and business - and how to reach out across languages to make connections.

Jim found himself in an opportune position, to join a company and not only bring it back to life, but to take advantage of a massive global connectivity solution, providing managed network services for over 140 multi-national companies. The question he was hired to answer was - how do we combine infrastructure with software?

This is the pivot story of Global Cloud Exchange.

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Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S6 Code Story on Goodpods!

Hey y'all, hope everyone is having an awesome day!

Do you ever find yourself about to put your earbuds on, or jump in the car, but don't really know which podcast to listen to. And you REALLY wish someone would give you a recommendation?

I wanted to let you in on a new, award winning podcasting app out there called Goodpods. And this app does just that. Just like you can get with books or music, you can now get with podcasts. On the Goodpods app, you can get recommendations from experts you admire, or friends you trust - or even better, you can be the one making the recommendation, and sharing your favorite episodes or shows with your friends. Its chock full of other features too, around chatting, following hosts, bookmarking episodes for later, and much more.

And guess what? Code Story is on Goodpods too.

Thats right, you can download Goodpods today, and listen to the Code Story podcast right there. In fact, my ask is this... please go pick out your favorite episode of the podcast on the app, and recommend it on the platform. It would be a huge help to Code Story, to Goodpods, and to your friends, of course.

Go to codestory.co/goodpods on your phone to download the app, follow the podcast, and recommend your favorite episode.

https://codestory.co/goodpods



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Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S6 E5: Blake Garrett, Aceable

Blake Garrett had the good fortunate to grow up in the Bay Area. He got to observe his father and his involvement in startups. Though none of them were massive successes, his Dad would bring him around and he got to watch him bring together teams of really smart people to solve customer problems. Blake was a sports player growing up - mainly, basketball and football. He was starting quarterback in football for a while, then transitioned to playing safety. Though, he admits that his heart was still into playing offense. He's married with a 2 year old, and one more on the way.

Blake decided he wanted to execute on one of his ideas. He taught himself several key areas to get himself started, and built a handful of mobile apps. Post this, he pitched an idea to some investor friends of his - which, ultimately turned down his idea. However, they saw potential within the focal areas of his ideas, and gave him some advice on how to proceed. Once he nailed down markets of required learning, that could be translated to a mobile experience - he was able to finally take off.

This is the creation story of Aceable.

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Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S6 Bonus: Michel Tricot, Airbyte

Michel Tricot has been in the data space for the past 15 years. He really enjoys gathering information, and gaining insight from it. As a kid, he would gather data in analog ways, grouping together movies or internet articles in categories, and extracting info from it. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids, and loves a nice afternoon in the backyard cooking BBQ. He does both fire cooking, and smoking, though he admits that he not smoked a brisket yet because he doesn't want to get up in the middle of night and check the temperature.

In his prior role, Michel was a Director of Engineering and Head of Integration at LiveRamp, where he and his team were managing thousands of connectors, responsible for moving massive amounts of data everyday. His big realization was that every company needs to have a way to move data, and to do it in a dead simple way.

This is the creation story of Airbyte.

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Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S6 Bonus: Vedran Cindrić, Treblle

Vedran Cindrić grew up in a small town, in rural Croatia. As far back as he can remember, he has been tinkering with computers - messing around with DOS, and of course, gaming. From the very early days, computers became his passion. When he finishing college, he started his own successful design agency before building his current venture. He likes to watch movies and TV shows, and loves to barbecue. I learned that in Croatia they don't smoke meat as much as we do in the states, and stick mainly to pork over beef. One thing I loved that Vedran said was "the best way to eat a salad is when you are having barbecue - otherwise, you wouldn't eat a salad".

When business was booming, Vedran and his team built a tool to help them keep track of all the API's they were supporting. After putting it down several times, they finally figured out how to scale it properly and decided to finish building it... and share it with the world.

This is the creation story of


Treblle.

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Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S6 E4: Mike Boufford, Greenhouse

Mike Boufford has no hobbies anymore, and for good reason... he has two 6 month old daughters and a 3 year old toddler, so its an exciting and very busy time for the family. He used to play guitar and enjoyed cooking, but now he exclusively focuses on family and work. His family loves to go to the park and taking walks around the neighborhood. Along with that, they sing songs, read stories, doing art projects and with the 3 year old, Mike does dramatic play. Recently, his daughter was Belle from Beauty and the Beast, and promptly decided that Mike was Gaston. He's not sure if that means she thinks he is arrogant or the strongest man she knows.

When Mike interviewed at a large company, he expected that there would be some sort of structured process and for it to be organized. He found out it wasn't... he chatted with multiple people, who all asked him the same questions. When approached to join a team, and build something to solve these problems - it took him no time at all to figure out he could build something better.

This is the creation story of Greenhouse.

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Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S6 Bonus: Lindsay Tjepkema, Casted

Lindsay Tjepkema is married with three kids, living in Indianapolis. Her children are all boys, and she lovingly describes them more like bear cubs, that don't actually walk anywhere, they just kinda roll around and growl. They've been known to have many a family night playing Mario Kart or watching avengers movies.

Lindsay has been a B2B marketer for over 15 years. While working in the space, she wanted a platform to help her maintain, manage, and make the most of audio and video content made for her company. When she looked around for a solution, she couldn't find one. So of course - she and her co-founders decided to build their own.

This is the creation story of Casted.

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Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S6 Bonus: Rob Carpenter, Valyant

Rob Carpenter was born and raised in Dillingham, Alaska - and no... he can't see Russia from his back steps. He has been a long term space ship nerd, and confesses that one of the reason he got into entrepreneurship is because he wants to eventually secure a ticket to space. Currently, he lives outside of Boulder, Colorado with his young family, and really enjoys the outdoors, growing his company, and taking good care of his little ones. While his kids are young, he loves to take the kids hiking, swimming at the pool, and going to the zoo and local animal sanctuaries.

Rob started a company, wanting to originally create holographic employees, using a gaming engine - and they even named this employee Holly. What they figured out during that process was that conversational AI hadn't been solved yet, and if they were ever going to make their original idea work, they would have to solve it. So... they got heads down solving it.

This is the creation story of Valyant.

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Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S6 E3: Matt Pierce, Immediate

Matt Pierce has been a tech guy for his entire 17 year career. Coming out of grad school, he started out in healthcare tech for a decade or so. Eventually, he started down the path of being an entrepreneur. He is married with 3 daughters - 2 in third grade and one that is a 2 year old. He mentioned the entrepreneurial dilemma of picking 3 of the 5 life choices - family, business, sleep, exercise and friendships - and notes that his three are family, business, and sleep.

After spending nights and weekends burning the midnight oil on a healthcare tech solution, Matt sat down with a prospective client and did the best pitch ever. The client's feedback was that it didn't solve her real problem which was turnover, which boiled down to money. After chatting with the client and a mentor, Matt uncovered the best potential solution to financial stress - on demand pay.

This is the creation story of Immediate.

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