Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders

Blake Garrett had the good fortunate to grow up in the Bay Area. He got to observe his father and his involvement in startups. Though none of them were massive successes, his Dad would bring him around and he got to watch him bring together teams of really smart people to solve customer problems. Blake was a sports player growing up - mainly, basketball and football. He was starting quarterback in football for a while, then transitioned to playing safety. Though, he admits that his heart was still into playing offense. He's married with a 2 year old, and one more on the way.Blake decided he wanted to execute on one of his ideas. He taught himself several key areas to get himself started, and built a handful of mobile apps. Post this, he pitched an idea to some investor friends of his - which, ultimately turned down his idea. However, they saw potential within the focal areas of his ideas, and gave him some advice on how to proceed. Once he nailed down markets of required learning, that could be translated to a mobile experience - he was able to finally take off.This is the creation story of Aceable.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://www.aceable.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blakegarrett/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Michel Tricot has been in the data space for the past 15 years. He really enjoys gathering information, and gaining insight from it. As a kid, he would gather data in analog ways, grouping together movies or internet articles in categories, and extracting info from it. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids, and loves a nice afternoon in the backyard cooking BBQ. He does both fire cooking, and smoking, though he admits that he not smoked a brisket yet because he doesn't want to get up in the middle of night and check the temperature.In his prior role, Michel was a Director of Engineering and Head of Integration at LiveRamp, where he and his team were managing thousands of connectors, responsible for moving massive amounts of data everyday. His big realization was that every company needs to have a way to move data, and to do it in a dead simple way.This is the creation story of Airbyte.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://airbyte.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/micheltricot/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Vedran Cindrić grew up in a small town, in rural Croatia. As far back as he can remember, he has been tinkering with computers - messing around with DOS, and of course, gaming. From the very early days, computers became his passion. When he finishing college, he started his own successful design agency before building his current venture. He likes to watch movies and TV shows, and loves to barbecue. I learned that in Croatia they don't smoke meat as much as we do in the states, and stick mainly to pork over beef. One thing I loved that Vedran said was "the best way to eat a salad is when you are having barbecue - otherwise, you wouldn't eat a salad".When business was booming, Vedran and his team built a tool to help them keep track of all the API's they were supporting. After putting it down several times, they finally figured out how to scale it properly and decided to finish building it... and share it with the world.This is the creation story ofTreblle.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://treblle.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vedrancindricAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Mike Boufford has no hobbies anymore, and for good reason... he has two 6 month old daughters and a 3 year old toddler, so its an exciting and very busy time for the family. He used to play guitar and enjoyed cooking, but now he exclusively focuses on family and work. His family loves to go to the park and taking walks around the neighborhood. Along with that, they sing songs, read stories, doing art projects and with the 3 year old, Mike does dramatic play. Recently, his daughter was Belle from Beauty and the Beast, and promptly decided that Mike was Gaston. He's not sure if that means she thinks he is arrogant or the strongest man she knows.When Mike interviewed at a large company, he expected that there would be some sort of structured process and for it to be organized. He found out it wasn't... he chatted with multiple people, who all asked him the same questions. When approached to join a team, and build something to solve these problems - it took him no time at all to figure out he could build something better.This is the creation story of Greenhouse.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://www.greenhouse.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boufford/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Lindsay Tjepkema is married with three kids, living in Indianapolis. Her children are all boys, and she lovingly describes them more like bear cubs, that don't actually walk anywhere, they just kinda roll around and growl. They've been known to have many a family night playing Mario Kart or watching avengers movies.Lindsay has been a B2B marketer for over 15 years. While working in the space, she wanted a platform to help her maintain, manage, and make the most of audio and video content made for her company. When she looked around for a solution, she couldn't find one. So of course - she and her co-founders decided to build their own.This is the creation story of Casted.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://www.casted.us/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsaytjepkema/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Rob Carpenter was born and raised in Dillingham, Alaska - and no... he can't see Russia from his back steps. He has been a long term space ship nerd, and confesses that one of the reason he got into entrepreneurship is because he wants to eventually secure a ticket to space. Currently, he lives outside of Boulder, Colorado with his young family, and really enjoys the outdoors, growing his company, and taking good care of his little ones. While his kids are young, he loves to take the kids hiking, swimming at the pool, and going to the zoo and local animal sanctuaries.Rob started a company, wanting to originally create holographic employees, using a gaming engine - and they even named this employee Holly. What they figured out during that process was that conversational AI hadn't been solved yet, and if they were ever going to make their original idea work, they would have to solve it. So... they got heads down solving it.This is the creation story of Valyant.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://valyant.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-carpenter/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Matt Pierce has been a tech guy for his entire 17 year career. Coming out of grad school, he started out in healthcare tech for a decade or so. Eventually, he started down the path of being an entrepreneur. He is married with 3 daughters - 2 in third grade and one that is a 2 year old. He mentioned the entrepreneurial dilemma of picking 3 of the 5 life choices - family, business, sleep, exercise and friendships - and notes that his three are family, business, and sleep.After spending nights and weekends burning the midnight oil on a healthcare tech solution, Matt sat down with a prospective client and did the best pitch ever. The client's feedback was that it didn't solve her real problem which was turnover, which boiled down to money. After chatting with the client and a mentor, Matt uncovered the best potential solution to financial stress - on demand pay.This is the creation story of Immediate.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: http://joinimmediate.com/codestoryLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/piercmb/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Adam Newman grew up in the suburbs of New York and Brooklyn. Now, he lives in the DC / Maryland area. His grandparents were immigrants, and owned a bakery and were Taylors. So the entrepreneur and self starter characteristics found in Adam are deeply rooted. He's married with 4 kids, and loves to spend lots of time outdoors and living vicariously through his childrens sports activities. He spends a lot of time helping his wife grow her education business, and she spends a lot of time supporting and encouraging him with his ventures.Through his life experiences, including losing his Father to cancer, an idea originated in him around consumers owning their purchase data, while benefitting companies who cooperate with data privacy best practices. When a few things caught up in the world - data privacy rules, the industry, and Adam himself - he was able to step into creating a win-win solution around data.This is the creation story of Pyrl.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://pyrl.io/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/newmanadam/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Matt Cowell didn't start out in tech. In fact, he studied the chemical world heavily in school, getting his Bachelors in Chemistry and Masters in Chemical Engineering. So - by trade, he was clearly a chemist. However, when he joined Accenture, he started in with programming and establishing the SDLC methodology for the company. Matt is married with 2 kids, loves sports - specifically Illinois basketball - loves to play music and golf. He likes to travel with his wife to see family, and make frequent visits to their lakehouse.In his professional past, Matt had held several roles in SaaS companies and startups. He met a company that was an artificial intelligence consultancy, which had a POC around assessments. They wanted to start up a separate company to support launch this POC and take it to market. This is when Matt got involved.This is the creation story of QuantHub.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://quanthub.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcowell/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Trevor Marshall grew up in NY, and has been living in the state his whole life. His path into technology was not a direct one. Prior to school, he was on the road to becoming a professional musician, studying at Juilliard. However, early on in his schooling, he found the same sort of joy he got from music in other areas, initially through economics and combinatorics - and he was hooked on math and computer science.Early on in life, Trevor's grandfather took him to the horse tracks, teaching him about the odds of a race. Fast forward several years post graduation from Columbia, he joined Morgan Stanley and got really excited about Bitcoin. He even went to his boss and asked if he could trade it... which he was promptly denied. However, that bold interaction solidified a match made in heaven for future working relationship.In fact, when his now co-founder left, Trevor followed him to continue working together. Being really into Crypto, they both wanted to figure out how to introduce these new value streams to the masses. In order to do so, they needed to build a banking product that made sense for everyone... not just the wealthy.This is the creation story of Current.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://current.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-kurth-marshall/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy