Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttp://openhands.dev/https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-a-brennanAdvertising 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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.growthloop.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobias-konitzer-phd-65984454/Advertising 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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://andesite.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-carbaugh-38b339243/Advertising 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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://therealtimeapp.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/reannahwyatt/Advertising 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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.pinwheel.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/danewitbeck/Advertising 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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://stacklist.app/https://www.linkedin.com/in/martina-zrnec/Advertising 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.SponsorsUnblockedTECH DomainsMezmoBraingrid.aiLinkshttps://www.positron.ai/https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitesh7/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Ashwin Agrawal, founder of MobiusEngine.ai and former Google Cloud engineer, builds tools to help people move from one role to another using humans plus AI. He tells the creation story sparked by layoffs. He shares customer-led product building, hiring for chemistry, scaling pains, proud client outcomes, and a vision for a seamless hiring marketplace.

Oleksandr Piekhota, a principal software engineer and platform-focused architect, shares career stories from PHP and Go systems. He talks about when teams must shift from features to system ownership. He explains triggers for platform overhauls, when internal tools become real products, and how to judge R&D experiments. He also reflects on API maturity, open source as serious work, and what makes engineering systems truly mature.

Satya Mishra, Co-founder and CTO of WayLit, built the platform after navigating the U.S. immigration lifecycle himself. He talks about founding WayLit to help lean HR teams own immigration workflows. He recounts building the first MVP, choosing Django, hiring lessons, scaling complex workflows, and selectively adopting LLMs to speed internal reviews.