Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

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.QuestionsWhen 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?Linkshttps://www.wallarm.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/cu-craigthomas/Full AbstractIn 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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 capitalYou 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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.We all know that you can't secure what you can't see, which is why AI discovery is a first principle for AI security, but what's really required for AI discovery? It's more than just LLMs and agents. Today's episode is entitled AI Discovery isn't just AI, and joining us is Tim Ebbers, Field CTO at Wallarm. Tim and I discuss the real requirements for AI discovery, and why the connections between assets and infrastructure are part of the puzzle.QuestionsSecurity teams often say, “You can’t secure what you can’t see.” In the context of AI, what exactly do they need to see? What supporting infrastructure matters most when mapping AI risk, such as APIs, cloud services, Kubernetes workloads, data stores, identities, and external integrations?Where does shadow AI typically appear first inside an enterprise environment? How can it be prevented?How do relationships between assets change the risk picture? For example, why does it matter which API an agent can call or which data source a workflow can reach?What makes AI discovery harder than traditional application or cloud asset discovery? What are the similarities and differences?How should organizations prioritize what they find? Is every AI asset equally risky?What does “continuous discovery” mean in a world where AI services can be deployed, connected, or changed in minutes?Once an organization has visibility into its AI footprint, what’s next? What are the biggest gaps in today’s AI security programs?Linkshttps://www.wallarm.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/tebbers/Full AbstractMost security teams know that you can't secure what you can't see. In the context of AI, that rule turns out to be a lot harder to satisfy than it sounds.AI discovery isn't just a matter of cataloging your LLMs and agents. The real picture includes the APIs those agents call, the data sources they reach, the infrastructure they run on, and all the AI that got deployed without anyone telling security. Building that picture requires understanding relationships, not just inventories, because risk doesn't live in assets in isolation. It lives in what those assets can do together.In this episode, Tim Ebbers, Field CTO at Wallarm, examines what a complete AI control loop actually requires at the discovery stage: what needs to be visible, why the connections between assets change the risk calculation, where shadow AI tends to appear first and how it becomes unmanaged risk, and what makes AI discovery structurally different from traditional cloud or application discovery. It also looks at what organizations should do once discovery is in place, and where the biggest gaps remain in AI security programs today.If your team is building toward continuous AI governance, this is where that work starts.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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Gregory M. Kurtzer is a veteran open-source pioneer, technologist, and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in high-performance computing (HPC) and large-scale enterprise infrastructure. He first gained widespread industry prominence as the co-founder of CentOS Linux, which grew into one of the world's most ubiquitous enterprise operating systems, and he later created other foundational open-source projects like the Warewulf cluster management toolkit and the Singularity (now Apptainer) container system.In 2020, Gregory founded his current venture, with the goal of modernizing infrastructure stacks for the cloud and AI era. He and his team recognized that traditional enterprise infrastructure was too fragmented and ill equipped to handle the next generation of data intensive computing.This is the creation story of CIQ.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://ciq.com/https://rockylinux.org/https://www.linkedin.com/in/gmkurtzer/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, we are continuing our series, entitled Developer Chats - hearing from the large scale system builders themselves.In this episode, we are talking with Pavel Shchekotov, Founding Engineer of specializing in voice-first, conversational AI products. Pavel is going to take us through his experience as an agency founder, leading into building voice driven, consumer AI.QuestionsToday you're building AI-native consumer products around conversational interfaces and user engagement. How has that journey shaped the way you think about product engineering?What did those agency years teach you about product development that most engineers never learn?What convinced you that voice could be the primary interface rather than just another feature?What are the hardest engineering and product challenges that emerge when conversation itself becomes the product?What’s one problem that seemed trivial on paper but became surprisingly difficult at scale?What did you learn about technology adoption, trust, and user behavior from building for a demographic that much of the tech industry tends to ignore?How do you decide whether a startup problem should be fixed, optimized, or completely reimagined?What does being a Founding Engineer actually look like day-to-day, and how is it different from being a senior software engineer?Where do you think people are overestimating AI today, and where are they still underestimating it?Looking forward three to five years, what do you think the most important category of AI-native consumer product will be—and what capabilities will those products need that don’t exist yet?SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/pavel-shchekotov/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Sushma Vadlamannati is originally from India, and moved to the states over 25 year ago to pursue her bachelors in at Texas Women's University. She comes from a nontraditional founder background, spending 15 years in the Fortune 100 companies, leading large programs with large budgets. About 5 years ago, she started advising startups and angel investing, which led her into the startup world. Outside of tech, she has 2 daughters and loves to do arts and crafts. In fact, she uses scrap material she finds at home to build miniature scenes and creations.Sushma is very familiar with the startup scene in Texas. As such, she has a keen understanding of the recurring problems for startups - the local talent pool. In addition to this, she noticed the disconnect between schools, workforce opportunities, and students/workers themselves. She decided to pivot into to building this intelligence layer.This is the creation story of zScale.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://zscalecapital.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/sushma-vad/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, we are kicking off a new series entitled 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.Today's episode is entitled AI Security is API Security, and joining us is Tim Erlin, VP of Product Marketing at Wallarm. We discuss the foundational link between AI security and API security, digging into the role that APIs play in the dev, deployment, and operations of AI. We explore how they contribute to the risk profile of AI transformation projects, and how securing APIs is critical for successful AI transformation.QuestionsWhen people hear “AI security,” they often think first about models, prompts, or training data. Why do you argue that AI security starts with APIs?Where do you see organizations underestimating API risk as they move AI projects from pilot to production?How does the rise of AI agents change the stakes for API security compared with traditional application architectures?What are the most common API security assumptions that break down once AI systems begin taking action autonomously?Wallarm’s ThreatStats research points to APIs as a major overlap point for AI vulnerabilities and exploited vulnerabilities. What does that tell us about where attackers are likely to focus?How should security leaders think differently about authentication, authorization, and API abuse when the “user” may be an AI agent rather than a human?What is one practical step teams can take today to strengthen API security before AI adoption expands further?Once you accept that AI security depends on APIs, what do organizations actually need to discover before they can protect it?Linkshttps://www.wallarm.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-erlin/Full AbstractIn the first episode of the AI Control Loop series, Tim Erlin, VP Product at Wallarm, examines why AI security and API security are the same problem approached from different angles, and what organizations need to discover before they can protect either one.Every AI model needs data to act on. Every AI agent needs services to call. Every AI workflow needs integrations to function. The connective tissue running through all of it is APIs, which means the security posture of any AI system is inseparable from the security posture of the APIs underneath it.That link is not theoretical. APIs are already the most targeted attack surface in enterprise environments, and AI is making that problem significantly larger. Agents that act autonomously on behalf of users do not just consume APIs the way traditional applications do. They discover them, invoke them dynamically, chain them across workflows, and do all of it at a speed and scale that makes human review impractical. The authentication assumptions, rate limiting strategies, and abuse detection models that worked for human-driven API traffic were not designed for this, and the gaps are not subtle.Most organizations moving AI from pilot to production are underestimating how much of their AI risk surface is actually API risk surface. Shadow APIs that were never inventoried, overpermissioned integrations that made sense for a human user but not for an autonomous agent, authentication patterns that cannot distinguish a legitimate AI session from an abused one. Securing AI at the foundational level means answering the API question first: what APIs does the AI touch, what can it do through them, and what would an attacker be able to reach if any part of that surface were compromised.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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Alex Bowcut is from Salt Lake City, Utah originally, but has been in the Bay Area for the last 4 years. He's always been interested in computers, and was in middle school when smartphones were blooming. He took part in jailbreaking gadgets and such, and all of these things led to a natural interest in CS, mathematics - and eventually, startups. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 Australian shepherds. He and his wife enjoy hiking with the dogs, and skiing - unfortunately, without the dogs.Alex was approached by the founder of his current venture. He was approached while he was working at another startup, to tackle the creation of AI control and scaling within the company internally. When he joined, he immediately started changing the game in creating the initial version of their assessment model, TRAM.This is Alex's creation story at Sphere.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.getsphere.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/abowcut/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ankit Dheendsa is a Canadian, born and raised, living outside of Toronto today. He claims he is fortunate to have a great ecosystem of professionals and mentor sin his area, to help advise him through thick and thin. When he was younger, he was inspired to pursue building things after he watched Iron Man for the first time. Outside of tech, he is an avid boxer and kickboxer. He loves to work out and train, but when he's away from the mat, he likes to read lots of books.Ankit and his team quickly realized that although the advent of AI was exciting, hallucinations within LLMs area a big problem. They started to dig into how to lower and/or eliminate hallucinations, and ensure that the LLMs only hold onto the most important data. And they landed on a powerful approach to vector size reduction.This is the creation story of Morphos AI.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.morphos.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankit-dheendsa/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Marco Benitez lives in Naples, Florida. In the past he lived in Miami, but found Naples much more family friendly. He is originally from Mexico, along with many of his family members and businesses. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids. As a family, they love to go outside, be outdoors and visit the great beaches around Florida. In addition, Marco is a black belt in Taekwondo, and also does Jiu Jitsu.Marco and his team was building a wearable in the past, centered around fitness. They figured out that the real value was around feeding data into these types of wearables. When they were approached by a company who was excited about this type of solution, they started to accelerate.This is the creation story of ROOK.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.tryrook.io/https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcobzg/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, we are dropping another episode in our "chats" series, specifically on the founder side - hearing from those scaling the companies themselves.In this episode, we are talking with Daulet Amirkhanov, Founding Engineer of Bead AI. Daulet is going to take us through his years at Meta and Cognee, leading into how he is building Bead AI, to take on compliance audits and AI automation.QuestionsTell me and my audience a little bit about you. You've gone from three years on high-throughput reliability infrastructure at Meta, to engineering the GraphRAG engine and semantic memory systems at Cognee, and you're now Founding Engineer at Bead AI — an a16z-backed startup building autonomous agent infrastructure for compliance audits. How did that journey shape the way you think about engineering for the age of autonomous systems?Let's zoom into the Meta years. For listeners who haven't worked at that scale — what was the exact piece of logging and reliability infrastructure you owned, what does "high-throughput" actually mean in numbers there, and what's one specific architectural decision from those years that still shapes how you build today?A lot of infra engineers stay in infra. You made a deliberate move from human-scale systems at Meta to agent-scale systems at Cognee. What did you see in that moment that convinced you AI agent infrastructure was the next distributed systems frontier — and not just the current hype cycle?Cognee is a GraphRAG and semantic memory company, and your work there was on the agent infrastructure side. Your biggest design call was decoupling the MCP architecture so multiple agentic systems can share unified memory through a standalone process, rather than each one coupling to its own Python runtime. Walk us through what problem that was solving and the key design decision you made.Give us a concrete example: an agent task that breaks when each agent has its own vector store, but works once they share unified state through the decoupled MCP architecture you built. What's the actual mechanism that makes the difference?Most engineers in this space come from an ML or applications background. You're coming at agent infrastructure from a pure distributed systems lens. What does that lens let you see that the ML-native crowd is missing?Bead is a16z-backed and going after compliance audits, which isn't the obvious first market for autonomous agents. You joined as Founding Engineer in January and are shaping the technical core now. From your seat: what makes compliance audits the right wedge for agent infrastructure, and what are the foundational decisions you're making today that will define what the product can do two years from now?Make a technical claim about agent infrastructure that most people in this space would push back on — and defend it. Where are you the dissenting voice?Without breaking anything confidential — what's the hardest unsolved problem on your plate at Bead AI right now, and how are you approaching it?Two years from now, what's the piece of agent infrastructure that we'll consider "obviously necessary" but doesn't exist yet? Who builds it, and what does it look like?SponsorsUnblockedBraingrid.ai.TECH DomainsMezmoLinkshttps://usebead.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirdnur/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Kunal Bhatia is originally from India, but moved to the Bay Area to start building his company. He admits there is quite a contrast between the two places, but originally he was from Bangalore, which is like the Silicon Valley of India - so the professional transition felt familiar. He's worked in AI For 12 years, and is on his 3rd company in the AI space. Outside of tech, he is married with a 3 year old daughter. He and his family love to go on hikes and be outdoors.Kunal and his team have been researching AI technologies within their current venture. In particular, they were focused on building self improving AI. Beyond that, they have started building and thinking about how to build the AI platform that builds all other technology.This is the creation story of Hexo Labs.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://hexolabs.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/kunalbhatia91/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ofir Stein is based in Tel Aviv, Israel, born and raised in Jerusalem. He spent many years in the Israeli air force, in infrastructure and security, before he moved to Tel Aviv. He's a tech guy through and through, bragging about his raspberry pi setup at home, which adjust the AC settings based on the temp outside. Outside of tech, he is married with a daughter and a dog. He's connected and close to his family, which he notes is how he refreshes and reloads as a founder, alongside playing tennis from time to time.Ofir and his cofounder started interviewing CISO's and security professionals on how they feel about access management. The found out that this was the first line of attack for bad actors, but from a business standpoint, access management is a slow to value feature. They decided to build a platform that was based on just in time access, over the slow to value setup plaguing the industry.This is the creation story of Apono.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.apono.io/https://www.linkedin.com/in/ofir-stein/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Anusha Iyer is a first generation immigrant, born in India. She moved to the states with her family, when her Dad was going grad school at Ohio State. She fondly remembers sitting on her Dad's shoulders for Buckeyes football games, as he was fan enough for the whole family. Outside of her professional life, she has 2 kids in college who were coding since they could walk - but neither of which ended up in computer science. She loves to cook, and notes that she is not a recipe follower - she likes to use whatever is at her fingertips.Anusha has been in the cybersecurity space for quite some time, starting off in naval research in DC. Further down here career, she had a friend reach out to pitch an idea to build a platform for dynamic machine identification.This is the creation story of Corsha.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://corsha.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/anusha-iyer/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Thomas Schlegel lives in Nashville, TN, but grew up in rural Virginia. He didn't have the internet for a large portion of his childhood - but, his friends did! So that meant he was spending more time at his friends place, and eventually when MySpace came around, he was the guy to build everyone's custom site. He's always been the wild idea guy amongst his friends, always the tinkerer. Today, he's married with twins on the way. He loves to run, either on the road or the trails. And when he gets the chance, he enjoys a good conversation with good people, contemplating or pondering the bigger things in life.In the past, Thomas was a lead engineer at a professional services organization in Tennessee. While at a conference, he met the CEO of his current venture, and they hit it off. He was intrigued by their company, and several years later, he started working for the company as an individual contributor - and quickly activated his entrepreneur DNA to solve ALL the problems.This is the creation story of Built.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://getbuilt.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-schlegel-678772215/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Yoni Avital lives in Tel Aviv, Israel, with his wife and 3 older children. The oldest kid is a boy, so Yoni and he try to see as many football games as possible. He enjoys shopping with this girls, though it's cause he is their Dad, not because he enjoy shopping. He likes to travel, hike, and enjoys a nice white wine in warmer weather. His most memorable hike was at Yosemite, when he started at 4 am and came across a lot of wildlife.Yoni was in the virtual desktop space in the past. What he and his team realized was that troubleshooting these virtual experiences were incredibly complicated. They started to build an enterprise task manager, to centralize a task management UI to control the endpoints. When customers started asking to use it daily, Yoni figured out they had something unique.This is the creation story of ControlUp.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.controlup.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoavital/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Brooke Hipps currently lives in Fort Worth, TX but grew up down the road in DeSoto. She is entrepreneur through and through, from the early years of learning from her parents, to starting three businesses of her own, in fashion, construction and estate planning. Outside of tech, she has three kids - one out of college and 2 still in college. Brooke is an outdoorsy person, enjoying spending time in nature, hiking, camping and playing a round of golf every now and again.Recently, Brooke's sister passed away. Obviously, this was a difficult moment for her and her family, but what made it more difficult was that her sister didn't have a will. Brooke started asking the question "why bit?", and exploring building something to help Texan's with writing a love letter to your surviving loved ones.This is the creation story of Weekend Will.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.weekendwill.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/brooke-hipps-792224116Our 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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, we have a special guest on the Code Story podcast - Patrick Vuong, Director of Product at Moderne. Moderne is the agent tools company, building the. Knowledge, discovery and execution tools that AI agents rely on - so they can operator faster, more accurately, and at far lower cost.In today's episode, Patrick is going to tell us about the company, and how Moderne is enabling developers to build software faster, and with the best context - using agents and agent tools. Their approach to semantic models produce deterministic over probabilistic, or inference driven, tools, which for this engineer/host, has been a point of skepticism for AI since the beginning.QuestionsTell me and my audience a little bit about you.What is Moderne?Moderne is enabling developers to operate software systems at the speed of agents. Tell me about this product suite.Why do Agents need tooling? Where do we see AI in ROISomething jumped out at me... you mentioned you are not only building tooling for agents that are deterministic.As we peer into tech stacks across the industry, where does Moderne fit?OK so this is clearly a pivot for Moderne. With this, who are your customers now?What does the future like for your product - what you offer - and your team?For you personally, you are entering into a new chapter with Moderne. What makes you most excited, going from Microsoft to entering the startup world with the company?In your journey, who has influenced the way you work? Tell me about a person, or many persons, or something you look up to and why.So you worked at Microsoft for 8 years, and are now transitioning to Moderne. Say you were getting on a plan and sitting next to someone about to make this same transition - what advice would you give them?SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.moderne.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/vuongpatrick/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://objection.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/arondsouza/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.truefoundry.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikunj-bajaj-10476824/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://foreenterprise.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-hochman-83b547130/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://getduckbill.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghanvjoyce/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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?SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinksThe 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/@futureofaiOur 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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://lovelaice.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/catalinaturlea/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.glasswall.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/aqibrashid/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.venn.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmatalon/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, we are dropping another episode in our "chats" series, specifically on the Founder side, - hearing from those scaling the companies themselves.In this episode, we are talking with Vadim Dedov, CEO at Catchers. Vadim is going to walk us through what problem he wanted to solve with Catchers, and how his product development journey took him through architectural decisions, product optimization, team building and more.QuestionsBefore we talk about Catchers, I’d love to understand you a bit better.What experiences or responsibilities earlier in your life shaped how you think about work, systems, and accountability today?What problem were you dealing with before Catchers existed? Not as a product idea yet, but as a real operational pain you kept running into.At what point did you realise this couldn’t be solved with people, spreadsheets, or manual coordination anymore and that technology was the only way forward?How did Catchers actually start taking shape as a product? What was the very first version you built, and what did “good enough” mean in a business where mistakes affect people’s income and compliance?How long did it take to get to something usable, and what constraints defined your MVP?Looking back, what were the most important trade-offs you made early on?Things you consciously postponed or simplified, knowing they might come back later.Let’s zoom in on the product itself. What is the core product insight behind Catchers — the thing you believe differentiates it from a typical HR or staffing platform?How did your thinking about architecture evolve as scale increased? Was there a moment when you had to stop moving fast and redesign parts of the system properly?How did you approach building your core team around such a complex, operations-heavy product? What qualities mattered most in the people you trusted with this system?Can you share a decision that didn’t go as planned and how you and your team dealt with the consequences?When you step back and look at what you’ve built today, what are you most proud of not in terms of features, but in terms of reliability, impact, or how the system holds under pressure?As you look ahead, how do automation and AI change the way you think about workforce platforms — and what advice would you give to someone building infrastructure-heavy products today?SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://catchersjob.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/vadim-dedov-060b8935a/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Yoav Crombie was born and raised in Israel, serving in the army for 6 years as an engineer. He's been in the tech industry of 35 years, but doesn't see this work as work. He thoroughly enjoys what he is doing, especially with what is going on with AI right now, specifically around the quick creation process. Outside of tech, he has been married for 30 years. He loves water sports - kite surfing, regular surfing and paddle boarding. In addition, he loves to cycle, and was the Israeli road champion many years ago.Yoav realized that companies were struggling that businesses were struggling to implement and adopt AI. In particular, he noticed that there was risk in publicly sharing your data. But alongside that, other companies wanted more control to how AI functioned for their country. So his company started to build a solution to solve both of these problems.This is the creation story Pragatix, a product of AGAT Software.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://agatsoftware.com/https://agatsoftware.com/secure-ai-platform/ai-suite/ai-agent/https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoavcrombie/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Robert Brennan grew up in Boston and loved it so much that he ended up calling it home again. He spent time in New York between his bookend times, but he enjoys the chill pace and great music of Boston over the fast pace of the big apple. Outside of technology, he likes to read nonfiction and fiction, specifically science fiction. He loves music, and. Has been playing guitar for 25 years now. He frequents the live music scene around Boston, and even lives near a jazz club.Robert observed the release of the first version of Devin a few years ago, which was very exciting to see agent driven development. But he and his co-founders were concerned with who was going to govern how this software was going to get written - and they hypothesized that it should be open source and community driven.This is the creation story of OpenHands.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttp://openhands.dev/https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-a-brennanOur 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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Tobi Konitzer was born in Germany, and studied cultural studies as an undergraduate student. Eventually, he went to Duke to get a PhD in political science. And that eventually changed to be a PhD in computational social science at Stanford - which is basically writing code to answer social science questions. After graduating in 2017, he joined Facebook Research for a year, then founded two AI startups. Outside of tech, he has 2 young daughters, who he likes to spend time with and take to the park. He used to be an avid trail runner, but his favorite to do is think... and to do so as often as possible.For the last 10 years of his career, Tobi has been chasing optimized decisioning and outcomes using AI. Five months ago, he decided to join his current venture, and use AI to shift the conversation from "tooling for marketers" to using AI to build an autonomous decisioning system, that learns and improves over time.This is Tobi's creation story at Growthloop.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://www.growthloop.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobias-konitzer-phd-65984454/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Brian Carbaugh has a non-standard path to being a CEO in the startup world. He was in the marine core for 5-6 years in active duty, before attending Georgetown for school. Eventually, he joined the CIA and spent 23 years, serving the country in multiple different roles and facets, primarily in para military and covert operations. While he was there, he also started to see areas where the agency could innovate, and got curious about how they could partner with private companies. Outside of tech, he is a father of 3 girls and a boy. He enjoys working out, skiing and riding on road bikes. He used to do triathlons in the past, but startup life has taken up any time he could dedicate to that.Shortly after he retired from the CIA, Brian got a call from some prior folks he knew still in the industry. He started digging into the cybersecurity world, specifically into why there was so much attrition amongst the employees themselves. He was asked the question about how he could 10x this workers, and optimize these individuals using the latest tech?This is the creation story of Andesite.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://andesite.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-carbaugh-38b339243/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Reannah Wyatt is from Bandera, TX, raised on a 4th generation cattle and horse ranch. Eventually, she went to West Texas for school, rodeoing for Howard University, specifically barrel racing. She eventually started selling residential real estate, and fell in love with the industry. Outside of tech and real estate, she is a mom and still loves horses and cattle. She doesn't ride anymore, but leans more into the breeding side of the animals.Reannah was in residential real estate for over a decade, and was in the mix when Zillow was launched. The platform helped her grow her business, and she knew this was where the industry was headed. But what she couldn't understand was... why wasn't there something built to track the end to end real estate process and transaction?This is the creation story of The Real Time.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://therealtimeapp.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/reannahwyatt/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Dane Witbeck grew up in Georgia, and has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. He was the kid selling ripped CD's in school, along with other odds and ends. He went to Georgia Tech to study engineering, and eventually went on to join a startup called Meshify, in the iOT place - which eventually was bought by a large insurance company. Outside of tech, he is married with 4 kids. He is involved in many entrepreneurial groups around Austin, and is the proud owner of a 1969 Ford Bronco - which he enjoys getting out of town in and camping.Post his prior startup, Dane was on the lookout for problems to solve. He observed his son's friend getting a hand-me-down iPhone, and it hit him that he was going to have to monitor this as his children got phones. As he started to dig into what was available, he realized there wasn't a good solution... and decided to build his own.This is the creation story of Pinwheel.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://www.pinwheel.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/danewitbeck/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Martina Zrnec is located in Croatia and grew up playing basketball, spending every minute she could on the court. And when I say every minute, I mean it - she would even skip the last few hours of school and hit the court for some practice. Eventually, her mother decided for her that she should not pursue it professionally, and should focus on her schooling. Outside of tech, she's married with 2 kids. She notes that she is not just a coding person - she likes to socialize! She plays piano, and as a family, they spend a lot of time outside, biking, playing sports and being in nature.Martina's co-founder, Kyle, had this idea that he wanted to create - a platform that allowed people to organize the products, services and experiences they love into stacks. He found Martina on a freelancing platform, and they instantly connected on the idea - and got to building.This is the creation story of Stacklist.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://stacklist.app/https://www.linkedin.com/in/martina-zrnec/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Mitesh Agrawal has a background in Mechanical Engineering. He was one of the co-founders of Lambda, a company in the supercomputing space, where he spent 8.5 years working on everything under the sun. He's very grateful to be in an industry that is booming, but also aligns with his personal interests. Outside of tech, he is married to an ultra supportive wife, and is enjoying being a new father. He enjoys playing tennis, when he can find time to get to the court, and enjoys a good sci-fi book. He mentioned the Foundation series was one of his favorites, but admits it changes depending on the season.In 2023, the officers at Mitesh's current venture noticed all of the advancements of AI - in particular, model sizes getting larger. What they realized was that when it comes to inference, memory capacity quickly became a problem... and with this, he and the team got excited about building a new architecture to make it better.This is the creation story of Positron.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://www.positron.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitesh7/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ashwin Agrawal came to the US when he was 17, to Rochester for school. He now lives in the Bay Area, and admits he misses his friends on the east coast, as they all stayed back in that area - but he does NOT miss the winters. He has been building his current venture for 3-4 years, and prior to that, he was as at Google for a decade, apart of Google Cloud's huge growth trajectory. Outside of tech, he has a family with 2 middle school sons, with whom he likes to spend a lot of time with, hiking or eating good sushi.Ashwin was laid off from a few jobs in the past. After experiencing this, he vowed to build a solution that would help people going through this sort of experience. After the last layoff, he formed his company at 4:30 am in the morning, to help anyone in point A wanting to go to point B.This is the creation story of MobiusEngine.ai.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://mobiusengine.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/agrawalashwin/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, we are continuing our series, entitled Developer Chats - hearing from the large scale system builders themselves.In this episode, we are talking with Oleksandr Piekhota, Principal Software Engineer at Teaching Strategies. Oleksandr helps to show us at what point of scale platform approaches are required, when to run experiments and when to stop, and perhaps more importantly - engineering ownership beyond the code.QuestionsYou’ve moved from hands-on engineering into principal and technical leadership roles, working on architecture and platforms.At what point did you realize your work was no longer about individual features, but about the system as a wholeAcross several projects, growth didn’t break functionality — it exposed architectural limits.Can you recall a moment when it became clear that shipping more features wouldn’t solve the problem, and a platform approach was required?You’ve designed and supported APIs end-to-end, from architecture to real customers. How do you distinguish between an API that simply works and one that can truly support business scale?Internal systems like invoicing and HR workflows began as automation, but evolved into real products.What tells you that an internal tool is worth developing seriously rather than treating as a temporary workaround?In R&D, you explored CI/CD automation, server-less, and infrastructure experiments — not all reached production. How do you decide when an experiment should continue, and when it’s no longer worth the engineering cost?You’ve hired teams, set standards, and shaped long-term technical direction. At what point does an engineer stop being a contributor and start owning business-level outcomes?You contributed to open-source tools that later became part of your company’s infrastructure. Why do you see open source contributions as part of serious engineering work rather than a side activity?Looking across your projects, how do you now recognize a truly mature engineering system? Is it code quality, process, or how teams respond when things go wrong?If we look five to seven years into the future, which architectural assumptions we treat as “standard” today are most likely to turn out to be naive or limiting?SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/oleksandr-piekhota-b675ba53/https://teachingstrategies.com/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Satya Mishra was born and raised in India, in one of the smaller tech hubs on the eastern coast. He came to the states 25 years ago on an H1B visa, working in semiconductors. In 2015, he decided he wanted to do something entrepreneurial and set out to do so. Outside of tech, he is married with 3 kids, which takes up most of his time. When he lived in CO, he did lots of skiing and hiking, including snowshoe hiking. Once he went to California, he switched to beaches. Finally, when he moved to St. Louis, he took up improv, enjoying connecting with people and thinking on your feet.Satya and his co-founder, Raj, both when through the immigration process in all of its forms. They realized that no one group owns the process, as it's highly specialized, and usually fell onto the employee to keep track of. One day, they set out to solve this problem, to assist business teams to take ownership of the entire process.This is the creation story of WayLit.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://www.waylit.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/satyamishra/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, we are dropping another episode in our "chats" series, but expanding the audience set to include more folks. This episode is Founder Chats - hearing from those scaling the companies themselves.In this episode, we are talking with Max Denevich, Co-founder and CRO of LoyaltyPlant. Max is going to share with us to road he travelled, entering into this industry, his go to market strategies, scaling across geographic region - and much, much more.QuestionsBefore we talk about products and scale, tell us a bit about your path to this point. What experiences shaped the way you think about business and leadership before LoyaltyPlant?At what point did you realise you wanted to work with complex, traditional industries rather than consumer apps or “easy” tech?Why foodtech, and specifically Quick Service Restaurants? What made you believe this industry had deep structural problems worth solving with technology?What made you decide to join LoyaltyPlant, and what potential did you see that others might have missed?You’re often referred to as a co-founder today. How did the transition happen from an executive role to shaping the company’s future at that level?LoyaltyPlant was close to running out of investment at one point. What were the first decisions that fundamentally changed the company’s trajectory?What were the key milestones that turned LoyaltyPlant from a struggling company into a global enterprise business, from the first major client to scaling across 30 countries?You’ve worked across the US, UK, MENA, Europe, and CIS. What did you learn about scaling the same product across very different markets, and what absolutely doesn’t translate?You built new go-to-market strategies that now generate over 90% of new sales. What did you change compared to a classic SaaS sales playbook, and why did it work in enterprise QSR?Margins are shrinking, aggregators dominate, and costs are rising. What’s actually happening on the ground right now in QSR and foodtech, and how should companies adapt?Tell us about a decision you got wrong. What did it cost the business, and what did it teach you as a leader?What advice would you give founders building B2B products for traditional industries today, especially around scale, partnerships, and staying relevant?SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://loyaltyplant.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/denevich/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Nouran Farouk grew up in Egypt, which she notes the culture has a deep root in family. She and her sister have always been drawn to social entrepreneurship, being drawn to building but also positively impacting the world. In addition, Nouran has a medical background, which taught her that good intentions are not enough - you need good systems. Outside of tech, she loves to travel and visit cities. She frequently observes how people move throughout the world, and how systems influence their daily life.Nouran and her sister wanted to learn to drive scooters. In doing so, they were immediately greeted with inequitable opportunities for women in this arena. They wanted to change this situation, and deployed a back of the napkin idea into a fully operational platform.This is the creation story of Dosy.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://www.dosybikes.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/nouran-aly-farouk-msc-mbbs-31637b195/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

James Davies lives in the Maryland area, and started his career at the crossroads of tech and the auto industry. His first girlfriend's father owned some car lots - so he went to work there, wrote some software, and propelled his success at those dealerships. He notes that the auto industry was fun and has a lot of moving parts, but was pretty taxing personally. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids. He grew up around construction, so he enjoys getting his hands dirty and building things. In fact, he is fixing up the barn of the recent home he bought - framing, doing the plumbing, and making it livable.James was working for the state department as a consultant, and was a customer of his current venture. He was chosen to implement the solution, which turned out to be a successful project. Post that project, he was approached by the company to lead projects on the east coast and eventually landed in the CEO role.This is James' creation story at Kinetic Data.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://kineticdata.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswdavies/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Daniel Shnaider came from a family that worked 9 to 5 jobs - engineers, doctors, etc. He was a military officer in Isreal, and while he was there, he met the son of the founder of Waze. After learning about that journey, he knew he wanted to build something meaningful, and started building businesses. Outside of technology, he loves pushing himself to the limits. But to relax, interestingly enough he does adrenaline activities - sky diving and racing cars.As I mentioned, Daniel started and ran many businesses in the past. One of them was centered around physical products, and led him to send emails to the mom and pop' shops they wanted to work with. To fight the spam trap, he and his team built a solution to solve the problem for themselves... and then took the next step.This is the creation story of Warmy.io.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://www.warmy.io/https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-shnaider/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Michael Fester grew up in Denmark, the son of a French mother and a Danish father. He was always interested in tech, math and the arts, initially wanting to go into design. However, he did research in number theory at Cambridge, and founded his first startup in Paris, which eventually was acquired by Sonos. Outside of tech, he enjoys reading, in particular the classics - like Dostoyevsky - and biographies - like that of Einstein. He enjoys eating and living healthy, and promotes this lifestyle at his current venture.Michael and his team noticed that despite the continual improvement of models, the process of maintaining systems using AI was tedious. Not only did this impact support operations, and building software for this area of a business, but negatively impacted the customers themselves. He and his wife wanted to build the new standard for how support operations are run.This is the creation story of 14.ai.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Alcor (https://alcor.com)Equitybee (https://codestory.co/equitybee)Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.Linkshttps://14.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelfesterOur 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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Prashanth Tondapu was born and raised in India, now living in New Delhi, the capital there. He claims to be a textbook nerd, loving technology and information. He reads a lot, primarily eastern philosophy and stuff on being enlightened, basically pointing him to skills in accepting reality. He's married with two girls, 9 and 4 years old, along with a Labrador and a German shepherd. He says that having 3 girls in the house means he has 3 supreme leaders.Prashanth has worked for companies in the past focused on products - companies like McAffee and the Advisor Board Company. Outside of that, he started to build product after product, but no one wanted to buy his product. Eventually, he was tasked to advise a company in product delivery, which then changed everything.This is the creation story of Innostax.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Alcor (https://alcor-bpo.com/)Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.Linkshttps://innostax.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/prashanth-tondapuOur 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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Gene Simmons of Data Protection: Protegrity's KISS MethodToday, we are releasing our final FINAL episode from our series, entitled The Gene Simmons of Data Protection - the KISS Method, brought to you by none other than Protegrity. Protegrity is AI-powered data security for data consumption, offering fine grain data protection solutions, so you can enable your data security, compliance, sharing and analytics.Episode Title: Navigating the Future of Data Management: Type Systems, Quantum Computing, and Protegrity's InnovationsIn our final-FINAL episode, we are speaking with Ave Gatton, Director of Generative AI. We talk about how AI safety doesn't end with training, it begins with inference. We explore the overlooked frontier of AI security, from prompt-injection, data leakage, and model manipulation. Ave helps to understand how you can build guardrails that operate in real time, and adapt to evolving threats.QuestionsWhat are inference-time threats and why are they becoming a critical focus in AI security? How do inference-time risks differ from training-time risks? Why is inference-time protection critical for safe, scalable AI adoption? How do inference-time threats vary across industries? Is there any industry where these attacks are most prevalent? Why are traditional security models insufficient at inference? What is the impact of inference-time breaches on AI adoption? What role does compliance play in shaping inference-time guardrails?What practical steps can organizations take to secure inference today? How can businesses balance performance with security when adding guardrails? Linkshttps://www.protegrity.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/averell-gatton/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Marc Gyöngyösi has had a lifelong passion for building and technology, shaped early on by time spent crafting wooden projects and tinkering with remote-controlled vehicles... before progressing to constructing a full 737 flight-simulator cockpit in their parents’ basement as a young teen. His interests have consistently centered on blending the physical and digital worlds, from open-source flight-simulator development to modern explorations in AI, which now occupies most of his free time. Outside of tech, he enjoys running, skiing, golf, and staying active, and although he has spent time flying, he's stepped back from it due to time constraints. He's especially fond of a well-made Austrian Wiener Schnitzel — an elusive treasure in the U.S., but one they happily track down whenever possible.In 2017, Marc launched his company Intelligent Flying Machines, which was a college project focused on building autonomous drones for warehouses. After dealing with crashes, and 12 stitches from said crashes, Marc shifted his focus from flying robots to a broader, computer vision platform capturing real world data.This is the creation story of OneTrack.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Alcor (https://alcor-bpo.com/)Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.Linkshttps://www.onetrack.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcgyongyosi/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Johnny Halife was born and raised in Argentina. As such, he takes soccer very seriously. He is a die hard fan of Boca, and has taken his family to live games in Miami and Nashville. He is the father of 2 young boys, which he notes completely changed his life. He has been slowly introducing them to soccer, as an Argentina after would do, and they love the roar of the stadium during a game. He also claims to be a really bad golfer, which I can relate to.Twenty one years ago, Johnny started working for Microsoft Engineering behind the scenes, helping them shape products. Eventually, he and his team started asking the question - if we are helping Microsoft, why don't we help other companies?This is Johnny's creation story at Southworks.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Linkshttps://www.southworks.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnnyhalife-engineering/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, we have a special guest on the podcast, Keith Lucas, a startup advisor specializing in product, growth, people and culture. Keith led product and engineering at Roblox, helping scale its infrastructure, product offerings, team and business. Most recently, Keith published a book entitled Impact: How to Inspire, Align, and Amplify Innovative Teams. All book proceeds go to charities to help young entrepreneurs, so make sure you check the link in the notes and grab the book today.In our chat, Keith is going to walk us through key concepts in the book, surrounding centering your team around the vision and mission of what you are driving towards, from recruiting to execution to "coaching out".Questions:What was your goal in writing this book? What were you hoping to accomplish?In Chapter 1, you mention purpose inspiring action. How does aligning to purpose drive urgency, without resulting in burnout or being an "antiquated mandate", like you mention in Chapter 2?You state "Culture is what you do, not what you say"... How does a leader's daily behavior - especially around micromanagement or decision-making speed - define the team's realized values, overriding the company's codified ones?I found the idea of The Cascade (Chapter 5) interesting, mapping core beliefs to execution alignment. In terms of feedback, what is the difference between "belief busting" and "hypothesis busting" feedback? How should leaders respond to each in order to maintain trust and agility?How often should entrepreneurial teams deliberately challenge and re-org autonomous pods to optimize for agility and opportunity, over long term stability?Now this is interesting - the "okay contributor", you define as a person who meets standards in all areas but shows no exceptionalism. Why is this person more damaging to a culture of mastery, than the high talent disrupter?What is a Mission Athlete? When recruiting, how does preparing a vision doc for a role shift the recruiting conversation from transactional to one focused on strategic alignment and ownership?You mention in Chapter 8 that compensation can be a distraction. What core mistakes do scaling startups make with compensation that turn it from a non-issue into an energy-sapping problem that erodes retention?You define Coaching Out as the intentional process of protecting the productive from the disruptive, treating an exit as a non-personal assessment that maintains decency and clarity. Can you describe the GYOR continuum?Why should leaders avoid formal PIP's when dealing with a struggling team member? What must replace it to ensure accountability and decency?SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Alcor (https://alcor.com/podcast)Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.Linkshttps://keithvlucas.com/https://a.co/d/fYjiHmhhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/kvlucas/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Marlena Sarunac is a first generation American, her family being from Croatia. She started her career at Mastercard, left to travel around Europe (before it was cool to do so), and then came back to join her first startup. During her travels, she figured out that she was truly an American, as she prefers the entrepreneurial pace of life. Her path has been in marketing, but she also has an engineering degree, which gives her a unique edge. Outside of tech, she is married to a chef, with a 2 year old daughter and a rescue dog. They live in Rhode Island, in the Bristol area.Marlena and her now co-founder met at a prior company, and worked well together promoting that brand. The built a playbook, and always dreamed of starting their own thing to push those playbooks. The stars aligned later in life, and they decided to give it a go.This is the creation story of The Company Advice.SponsorsUnblocked (https://getunblocked.com/codestory)TECH Domains (https://get.tech/codestory)Mezmo (https://mezmo.com/codestory)Braingrid.ai (https://braingrid.link/code-story)Alcor (https://alcor.com/podcast)Equitybee (http://codestory.co/equitybee)Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.Linkshttps://www.thecompanyadvice.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/marlenasarunac/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.aiAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy