- S8 Bonus: Amy & Whitney, Disruption Advisors
Whitney Johnson graduated college with a degree in Music, minoring in English. Of course, she needed a job, and became the secretary to a broker on Wall Street. After taking business courses at night and building confidence from a boss who believed in her, she moved into picking stocks. In 2005, she had an "aha!" moment leading her towards entrepreneurship, and starting a fund with Clayton Christensen, author of the Innovators Dilemma. She's the author of the many books, including Disrupt Yourself, which you can find a link in the show notes. Outside of these things, she is married, loves to play tennis, and enjoys a good Korean drama.
Amy Humble grew up in a rural part of Colorado called Rifle. Her mother was a principal, her father was a psychologist, and she studied political science during undergrad, while working in the Senate. She explored how to develop young people, and has always been rooted in her desire to develop people. In the past, she worked with Jim Collins - the author of Good to Great, who baptized and indoctrinated her into leadership development. Outside of her professional life, she is married with a young family. She enjoys skiing, hiking, biking, and playing in the water.
Amy was researching women who had become though leaders, and stumbled upon the work that Whitney was doing. They started out doing a small project together in 2015, and discovered that not only do they like working together, their strengths complimented each other - which led to the forming of a partnership.
This is the creation story of Disruption Advisors.
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- CacheFly
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Links
- https://thedisruptionadvisors.com
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-humble-6570a311/
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitneyjohnson/
- https://www.amazon.com/Disrupt-Yourself-New-Introduction-Relentless/dp/1633698785/ref=asc_df_1633698785/
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy36m | Mar 28, 2024 - S9 E17: Jake Ward, Data Protocol
Jake Ward originally from a small town in Maine, and claims to be running away from the snow by living in South Carolina now. He worked in politics for a while - in the House, the Senate, and Public Affairs before starting the Application Developers Alliance. That spurred on the next chapter of his life. Outside of tech, he has 3 kids and enjoys golf. He loves to cook and spend time with his kids, playing basketball or exploring life sciences. He also mentioned that every 5 years, he tends to buy another house, have another kid, and start a new business.
Jake figured out that 85% of developers want their content through video, over documentation or other means of info comms. He believes that developers are building the world around us - and the world is underperforming in how those people are supported. He decided to change this, and set out to build docs and guidance learnings into one video content platform.
This is the creation story of Data Protocol.
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- Porkbun: Use the link codestory.co/porkbun and get a .dev, .app, or .foo domain name for only $5!
- CacheFly
- ClearQuery
- Kiteworks
Links
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy34m | Mar 26, 2024 - S9 Bonus: Luka Yancopolis, Grapevine
Luka Yancopoulos lives in New York City, and believes whole heartedly in doing well by doing good. He grew up in the early 2000's, where the focal point was environmentalism and doing good in the world. He is an active botanist, and though there isn't much "soil to toil" in NYC, he spends his weekends filling the planter boxes with plants, on his block and around the neighborhood.
For Luka, COVID caused immediate awareness of supply chain issues. He and his buddies kicked over stones around these problems, specifically into the medical supply chain, and discovered a whole list of things needing to be addressed to support medical professionals in their buying.
This is the creation story of Grapevine.
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- Porkbun: Use the link codestory.co/porkbun and get a .dev, .app, or .foo domain name for only $5!
- CacheFly
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Links
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy25m | Mar 21, 2024 - S9 E16: James Perkins, Unkey
James Perkins did not have a traditional journey to technology, but has been in the space for 16 years. He had planned to be a special education teacher prior to switching to technology. He's worked in pre-seed startups all the way to big corporations. But outside of tech, he has a wide variety of hobbies - in particular, running and training for half marathons. This process requires about 6 weeks of training, primarily mental training over physical.
James and his co-founder were friends and colleagues before their current venture. They had an idea around building a small version of API authentication. After building and releasing this version, they wanted to see how people received it. They were overwhelmed with the response, and figured they should push harder on this to be a company.
This is the creation story of Unkey.
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- Porkbun: Use the link codestory.co/porkbun and get a .dev, .app, or .foo domain name for only $5!
- CacheFly
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- Kiteworks
Links
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy25m | Mar 19, 2024 - S9 Bonus: Zach Goldberg, Gruntwork & The Startup CTO's Handbook
Zach Goldberg was sent to computer camp when he was 12 years old. An interesting part of the story is that the prior year, he went to sports camp - and it didn't go so well. At the camp, he fell in love with tech, and eventually became a counselor. He finds the most joy and impact at the intersection of business and technology. Outside of tech, he is married, and a private pilot in California. He also admits to being a total geek, getting very excited about installing a solar panel on his roof (up to code of course, and with the permission of his wife).
A few months ago, Zach was introduced to the founders of his current company, through the executive coaching and consulting he does. They all had great conversation around approaches to DevOps and what the future of the industry is - so much so, that he decided to join the team and lead the conversation.
This is Zach's creation story at Gruntwork.
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Links
- https://gruntwork.io
- The Startup CTO's Handbook
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachgoldberg/
- https://zachgoldberg.com/
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy28m | Mar 14, 2024 - S9 E15: Saravana Kumar, Document360
Saravana Kumar is from India, near Chennai, but moved to London 23 years ago. He loves to play badminton, and is very into high quality cars. One of his favorite things to do is to engage in interesting conversations on social media, which there are ample opportunities to do. Outside of Indian food, he enjoys Chinese and Mexican, of which all three he cited having good options in London.
In past projects, Saravana encountered the need to build a knowledge base for a different product - and one that had the flexibility to serve his unique needs. After he couldn't find it, he encourage his team to build something during a hackathon - which validated the product idea, and led him to want to take this further.
This is the creation story of Document360.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy22m | Mar 12, 2024 - S9 Bonus: Craig Sellars, Self
Craig Sellars grew up near Atlanta, Georgia, and was interested in technology at an early age. He went to Georgia Tech to get his degree, and after spending many years in industry, he jumped into the blockchain in 2013. Outside of tech, he used to do competitive, 4 way formation sky diving. He mentioned this was like synchronized swimming - but in the air. Nowadays, he enjoys long road trips into the sunset.
Craig has created well known solutions in the blockchain space, notably the Tether stable-coin and the first ever NFT platform, now known as Vatom.com. Throughout his tenure in this space, he has learned that you – the user – are the most valuable asset in the world.. And in learning that, he wanted to pursue building the standard of internet identity.
This is the creation story of Self.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy16m | Mar 7, 2024 - S9 E14: Mike Bifulco, Craftwork
Mike Bifulco studied Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science in college. He was always good with computers, dating back to his High School Freshman CS classs. Coming out of school, he applied to 300 entry level jobs, interviewed for 15 of them, received offers for 3 - and turned them all down to start his own company. Outside of tech, he is into road cycling and enjoys the ritual, science and community around making - and enjoying - a good cup of coffee or espresso. He's also a musician, adding to the growing list of successful tech entrepreneurs who also are talented musicians.
Post looking for his next gig, Mike and his co-founders started to realize that the bar is very low for painting companies. It is a business that has not caught up to modern tech, so they started to think - how do we make a business thats like DoorDash for your home painting needs?
This is the creation story of Craftwork.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy30m | Mar 5, 2024 - S9 E13: David Boskovic, Flatfile
David Boskovic grew up on a farm, in a small town in Canada. He grew up milking cows, not building technology. However, when he was 12 years old, he built a website for his Dad. And after he built and rebuilt it several times, he was hooked on technology. Outside of tech and software, he enjoys playing poker with friends, gambling, and working on his new house. When asked what his favorite type of food, he said it is always something that he hasn't tried before - cause it's always better when you haven't had it yet.
In the past, David had built CSV imports into websites many, many times - even back to the site he built for his Dad at 12 years old. After being presented the need to build it again, he asked the question... when does it make sense to build this as a product, and launch a company?
This is the creation story of Flatfile.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy30m | Feb 27, 2024 - S9 Bonus: Debbie Levitt, Delta CX
Debbie Levitt is an American living in Italy, with her Italian husband, and their 5 dogs. Many years ago, she obtained a degree in Music, but now focuses on customer experience online - of which, she has been called the Mary Poppins of Customer Experience. Outside of this, she and her husband bought a used camper and quickly became camper people. Her favorite place to take their camper to is Laces, Italy - but she noted that of her 5 dogs, zero of them are allowed in the camper.
In the 90's, Debbie was helping businesses get on the web, strategizing with them around how to deploy their website and build an online presence. Fast forward many years, she has shifted into doing work and leading projects, centered around customer experience online.
This is the creation story of Delta CX.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy25m | Feb 22, 2024 - S9 E12: Yoav Abrahami, Velo by Wix
Yoav Abrahami was born and raised in Israel, never living in another country. Currently he lives in Tel Aviv, and has spent 30 years in technology. He studied High Energy Physics in college, and today, he finds similarities in how you solve problems in building products and physic. Outside of tech, he is the father of 2 children, and enjoys hiking and mountain biking in the diverse climates and terrains that Israel has to offer.
In 2006, Yoav helped his brothers get Wix started up and build it to what it is today. Fast forward to today, Wix has collected infrastructure and application partners, allowing them to offer these integrations to Wix users. What they figured out next was that people wanted it done for them, turn key, without having to learn how to spin up a server.
This is the creation story of Velo by Wix.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy21m | Feb 20, 2024 - S9 Bonus: Shauli Rozen, ARMO Security
Shauli Rozen grew up in Israel, and besides a 5 year stint stateside, he has spent his whole life there. He is married with 3 boys, and is 45 years old. Shauli loves the beach, and the ocean, spending time surfing, scuba diving and free diving. Free diving peaked my interest, and he described it as diving with fins without scuba gear, holding your breath. He has made it 26m deep, which requires him to hold his breath for 60 seconds.
In the past, Shauli noticed that the world was not actually ready for Kubernetes. The adoption curve proved to them that businesses had different problems outside of security. After spending 2 years of discovery and intimately learning Kubernetes, they spent 2 weeks to change the game in security - using open source.
This is the creation story of ARMO Security.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy22m | Feb 15, 2024 - S9 E11: Srikar Sam Yeruva, Pycube
Srikar Sam Yeruva comes from an immigrant family from India. He had a humble background, which shaped his path forward and how he approaches life with hunger. He comes from a family of engineers, and his current venture is his 3rd startup. He loves learning, believing whole heartedly in constant learning. In fact, he mentioned that education was nothing but exposure, which I found insightful. He believes in being a person that tries to understand things, and people, without judgement.
Srikar started working with hospitals in many different capacities to understand how things worked. This gave them a lot of perspective on how to help them best - administrators, doctors, nurses, etc. Once they learned how to serve them best, they pivoted to building software solutions to help them lower cost.
This is the creation story of Pycube.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy24m | Feb 13, 2024 - S9 Bonus: David Hartmann, Helio Additive
David Hartmann is a German born New Zealander, where he still lives today. His first job was to spend 17 years at Bayer, getting deep in the materials world, which triggered his passion for 3d printing. Outside of tech, he is raising 2 kids in New Zealand, which he notes is a great place to do so. He also travels a lot, which he loves, and mentioned that traditional cooking for New Zealand is something that doesn't happen often, and his cooking with hot stones under the earth.
In 2014, David took a sabbatical from his Corporate job. He started to dig into 3d printing, and ended up meeting the founder of Polymer. They started talking about why the industry hadn't accomplished much of the things they had hoped, and they realized that software was generally, the answer.
This is the creation story of Helio Additive.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy27m | Feb 8, 2024 - S9 E10: Dennis Pilarinos, Unblocked
Dennis Pilarinos was tinkerer at an early age. He always found himself wanting to understand how things were put together - and as such, he would take them apart and try to reassemble them. He grew up in Canada, and is currently based in Vancouver. He is professional driven by tech curiosity and attention to detail. Previously, he founded and sold BuddyBuild, which went from inception to acquisition within 3 years. Outside of tech, he has his private pilots license, which allows him to fly a lot and take his mind off startup life.
Dennis is a self proclaimed impatient person, and a mediocre developer - which drives his building of solutions. In context of a company, there is a lot of information that exists in the context of a company, which is necessary to know when getting familiar with a codebase. When you can't find that info, you are essentially... well, blocked. So, Dennis decided to help people solve that problem.
This is the creation story of Unblocked.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy22m | Feb 6, 2024 - S9 Bonus: Ruslan Zaripov, RiskHunter by KRIT
Ruslan Zaripov has been interested in computers since the early days. He started his career as a database developer, and eventually became a project manager. Essentially, he has been serving in information technology his whole life. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids and a dog. In the winter, he enjoys cross country skiing, and tries to keep a work life balance.
Eight years ago, Ruslan bought into the company KRIT, becoming a co-owner. KRIT builds software products for large enterprises, in the heavy energy and metallurgy plants. He and his team wanted to create a product that brought safety to the forefront each employees mind.
This is the creation story of RiskHunter, built by the team at KRIT.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy21m | Feb 1, 2024 - S9 Bonus: Erik Gross, The Tech Academy
Erik Gross had an odd journey into tech. He grew up in the redwoods of California, off the grid with no running water in a tee pee. However, there was a pivotal moment in his life when his Dad brought home an old school computer, and taught him about the internals, hardware, binary, and removed all mystery from computers. He had a career in the Navy as a nuclear reactor operator, and gained a lot from the training methods of the Navy. Outside of tech, he is married with kids, and recently moved to Louisiana. He enjoys cigars, and tasting whiskey on occasion.
Erik has a background in training, while being a working engineer. He continuously took on side gigs, where he would need to have a junior engineer join him - and he couldn't find them. He decided to build a program that created this engineers for him, and was affirmed when he found a competitor doing the same thing.
This is the creation story of The Tech Academy.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy31m | Jan 31, 2024 - S9 E9: Ryo Koyama, Remote.it
Ryo Koyama never thought he would be in technology. In the past, and in current days, he is very much into art, photography and woodworking. However, as he says it, he did was a good Asian son does and got a fluid dynamics degree. Eventually, he went on to be a product manager for graphics cards and has been in tech since. He has two adult daughters, and at one point, coached high school basketball in Palo Alto.
Ryo and his co-founder have both been in networking for a very long time. They notice that the internet was going to make this part of the industry - IE networking - invisible. They decided to encore some of the prior work to create connectivity as code.
This is the creation story of Remote.it.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy25m | Jan 30, 2024 - S9 E8: Roger Light, Cedalo
Roger Light lives in the midlands of the UK. He has his PhD in Electrical Engineering, and post graduating, he did research, then taught. But in parallel, he worked on hobby projects that eventually led him to a new venture. Outside of tech, he is married with 4 young boys and a dog - so he mentioned things get a little loud and crazy at home. He loves spicy food, but has been enjoying the visit to the local carvery lately.
In 2009, Roger attended a conference on iOT, MQTT, and how it was being used to track electricity monitoring. What he realized was that an open source version of management software didn't exist. He happened to be looking for a project at the time, and thought "this should only take a couple of months".
This is the creation story of Cedalo.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy21m | Jan 23, 2024 - S9 Bonus: Nate Henderson, BILT
Nathan Henderson grew up in Saudi Arabia, where he actually met his now co-founder, back when he was 5 years old. His wife grew up in Mexico, and as such, they love to travel internationally. They are married with 3 college age kids, two at BYU and one on a church mission in Chile. His hobbies center around his family, but on his own, he loves to scuba dive, hike and stay physically fit.
While he was at SAP, Nate worked on a concept to eliminate the paper instructions we are all familiar with today, and replace them with 3D graphical instructions. The idea was conceived, but to really bring it to life, he and his co-founder needed to take it outside the 4 walls.
This is the creation story of BILT.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy28m | Jan 18, 2024