Sharad Kumar lives in Pleasanton, California with his wife and 2 kids. He enjoys playing all musical instruments, and spending time with his family. He has a 2 year old daughter, and a 14 year old son into robotics. He is also passionate about giving back to the community, through their company foundation. Harshit Omar lives in San Francisco, and is married with a 4 year old son. He used to be a street racer in his college days, loving fast cars and taking risk. Nowadays, he is a big marvel and ...
Jan 22, 2026•37 min
David Sztykman lives in Paris, but used to live in New York for a time. He has always been into video, streaming and photography. For the latter, as a kid, his Dad had a film developing lab in their basement, so he spent many hours doing that before digital changed it all. As a student, he used to tinker with open source video streaming libraries, and eventually worked for Alkamai, responsible for the streaming media for Europe (think the Olympics or Super Bowl). Outside of tech, he has 2 kids a...
Jan 21, 2026•30 min
Pukar Hamal was born in 1991, and is originally from Katmandu, Nepal. He grew up with no plumbing and no electricity, prior to moving to the states to grow up in Queens. Eventually, he moved to the Bay Area to attend Stanford, and fell in love with the area and the forward thinking culture. Outside of tech, he's been married for a few years. He enjoys listening to podcast about tech, finance, and economics, along with playing tennis every now and again. In his past venture, Pukar was on the one ...
Jan 20, 2026•26 min•Season 12Ep. 2
Harman Narula lives in NYC with his wife and 2 young kids. He was born in the states, from parents who immigrated to the country from India. The "immigrant household" was one that focused on hard work and ethics - and it was fueled by the lore of his grandfather's entrepreneurial adventures. He's a big Knicks fan, and likes to take in a game when he can. And prior to NYC, he lived in San Francisco for 10 years or so, and picked up bike riding. Though he hasn't picked it back up just yet, he hope...
Jan 15, 2026•20 min
Niko Papademetriou lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and son. He has had an interesting background professionally. He got into finance, and experienced all the downside that 2008 had to offer. Post all of that, he started a restaurant at the age of 26 with some folks, and quickly realized how difficult it was. After 4 years, he met some guys and wanted to start a new thing. Outside of tech, he and his wife spends a lot of time watching his son play hockey, and engaging with the team at the ...
Jan 14, 2026•34 min
Dylan Ratcliffe lives in San Francisco (for less than a year), but grew up on a farm in the bush in Australia, riding motorbikes and playing video games. He fondly remembers the days whenever you could get a free version of Age of Empires from a cereal box. He was always into computers, and earned a scholarship to head into Melbourne for University. He left his first job as an auditor with KPMG to join a startup called Puppet. Outside of tech, he still rides motorbikes, and has a super small one...
Jan 13, 2026•33 min•Season 12Ep. 1
Sam Partee started out his love for tech/engineering by working on cars. After many y ears of working on cars, and even starting his own car stereo installation business, he decided that cards were finite and moved onto computers. He fell in love with the space, and the rest is history, filled with super computers, AI, distributed training, Redis and the lot. Outside of tech, he loves to take long hikes with his snowy husky. Sam and his team built a prior solution, an agent to solve bugs for you...
Jan 06, 2026•22 min
Jens Neuse grew up in Germany, originally planning to be a carpenter. In his 2nd year as an apprentice, he was in a motorcycle wreck that thrust him into a process of surgery and healing. Eventually, he decided he wouldn't be doing carpentry, and got into sysadmin work. Once he got bored with this, he moved into startups, learned how to code, and starting digging into programming, API's and eventually - GraphQL federation. Outside of tech, he is married with 3 young kids. He loves to sit ski on ...
Dec 30, 2025•33 min
Brandon Card has always been involved in sports. In High School, he was a 3 sport athlete and still plays today, along side working out, doing yoga and pilates. He's heavily interested in holistic healing and alternative medicine, mentioning a big interest in quantum frequency healing, using the sun and ocean to add voltage to the body. He has also started a foundation around mental health, as sadly, he lost his co-founder to suicide, and wishes to remove the stigma from the mental health conver...
Dec 23, 2025•22 min•Season 11Ep. 30
Juan DeAngulo was born and raised in South America - then eventually, came to the status in 2017 for college to play Tennis. He kept playing throughout college and into his 40's, at which point he switched to golf and never picked up a racket again. He's been married for 25 years, with 2 older kids - one in law school, and one studying software development. As a family, they enjoy comedy, which funny enough was an acquired taste for Juan. They also love being outdoors, anywhere they can get out ...
Dec 18, 2025•28 min
Today, we are continuing our series, entitled Developer Chats - hearing from the large scale system builders themselves. In this episode, we are talking with Petr Petrenko , Senior PHP Backend Engineer. Petr will take us through his developer journey, in working on large scale backends, managing the tension between stability and innovation, and designing systems to interact with culturally different economies. Questions You’ve worked on large-scale backends that serve millions of users. At what ...
Dec 17, 2025•15 min
Sarah Lucena lives in San Francisco, and starts here day at 4:30 am to lead her LATAM team. She's originally from Brazil, born and raised on the north east side of the country. She studied in South Paulo, and spent 5 years in Uruguay, which was a huge influence in her career today. Outside of tech, she is a big cat lover, having 2 at her home. When it comes to Brazil, she recommends people visiting Rio, which condenses everything good about Brazil into one city. In the past, Sarah felt empty at ...
Dec 16, 2025•28 min•Season 11Ep. 29
Tucker Calloway grew up in Alamo, California, in the Easy Bay Area. And has returned to that area to raise his family - 25-30 minutes outside of the San Francisco area. He studied computer science at Cal, but eventually moved into sales engineering - and then sales. But outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids - one in college, and one in the latter years of high school. There is lots of change going on his family's life right now, but Tucker finds time to do woodworking and build his own cabi...
Dec 11, 2025•24 min
Hojjat Jafarpour lives with his family in California. He got his PhD in databases and data streaming, back when the landscape was different and data streaming wasn't "cool" yet. He was an early member at Confluent, but also spent time at Quantcast, Informatica, and NEC Labs. Outside of tech, he has a family with young kids. He enjoys traveling, and can't wait until the kids are old enough to take on big trips. Hojjat joined Confluent in their early days. He was on a project that built out kSQL, ...
Dec 09, 2025•22 min•Season 11Ep. 28
Today, we are kicking off a new series, entitled Developer Chats - hearing from the large scale system builders themselves. In this episode, we are talking with Svyatoslav Babinets , Engineering Manager at Meta . Svyatoslav helps to illuminate teh approaches he takes when building larger scale systems, connecting millions of users, and motivating users and developers alike. Questions You’ve worked on everything from large-scale multiplayer worlds to social technologies that power digital presenc...
Dec 08, 2025•31 min
Spriha Baruah Tucker has spent time in a number of places - growing up in India, attending boarding school in Singapore, and now living in San Francisco. She spent many years at Google, before founding her own startup called Aviator . Outside of tech, she really likes music, having a soft spot in her heart for Bollywood, but really digging into the jazz world these days. She enjoys the guilty pleasure of trashy romance TV, and tends to travel to get the best food - her favorite being Nashville. ...
Dec 05, 2025•38 min
Gajus Kuizinas lives in Mexico City, and travels between there, New York and San Francisco. He had a non-traditional upbringing for an engineer, as all of his family were into the arts - so he had to make his own way. He started in Lithuania, and eventually was recruiting to setup computers and networks for dating platforms. Eventually, he got into freelancing, and started his first startup in the UK. Outside of tech, he has a garden, which doubles as an ecosystem for his free roaming hedgehog a...
Dec 04, 2025•21 min
Today, we are dropping our final episode in the series "The Railsware Way", sponsored by our good friends at Railsware . Railsware is a leading product studio with two main focuses - services and products. They have created amazing products like Mailtrap , Coupler and TitanApps , while also partnering with teams like Calendly and Bright Bytes. They deliver amazing products, and have happy customers to prove it. In this series, we are digging into the company's methods around product engineering ...
Dec 03, 2025•26 min
Raj Dosanjh grew up in Coventry, which he calls the Detroit of the UK. He still enjoys following the football team, and hopes they rejuvenate the city some. He eventually left for University and moved to London. He likes to dig into how people think and how things are built. Outside of tech, he is engaged to be married in 2026. As such, he has recently taking up physical training - which results in a lot of working out, and meals filled with chicken. In the past, Raj's now co-founder reached out...
Dec 02, 2025•38 min•Season 11Ep. 27
Emmanuel Straschnov grew up in rural France, which is interestingly enough where he started doing computer stuff (he mentioned there wasn't much else to do in the 90's). He grew up sailing, as he lived next to the shore in Normandy. He never really thought he would end up coding, but after obtaining his MBA, he ended up doing just that. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 children. He mentions that most of his hobby time is devoted to them, but on occasion, he likes to travel, continue sailing...
Nov 25, 2025•28 min
Today, we have a special guest on the podcast, Kate Lowry, CEO coach , author and comedian. She is a long time startup founder, spent time in VC, is leading a values driven coaching and advising firm called Scaleheart , and recently, just published a book. The title of the book is Unbreakable: How to Thrive Under Fear-Based Leaders , and is a tactical guide to help smart, caring people get unstuck to they thrive under fear based leadership. In our conversation today, Kate is going to enlighten u...
Nov 20, 2025•16 min
Today, we are another episode in our series, sponsored by our good friends at Railsware . Railsware is a leading product studio with two main focuses - services and products. They have created amazing products like Mailtrap , Coupler and TitanApps , while also partnering with teams like Calendly and Bright Bytes. They deliver amazing products, and have happy customers to prove it. In this series, we are digging into the company's methods around product engineering and development. In particular,...
Nov 19, 2025•20 min
Marco Rodrigues was born and raised in Canada, but now lives in the Bay Area. His tech genesis was around the time when the internet came out, when he spent an entire summer indoors, worrying his mother. He eventually attended university in Toronto, and went to work for Juniper Networks. Past that, he went towards the startup world - running product teams, and taking part in the ownership and selling of solutions and service offerings. Outside of tech, he is married with twin girls in the Naval ...
Nov 18, 2025•27 min•Season 11Ep. 27
Today, we have a special episode correlated with Fraud awareness week, and brought to you by our friends at SEON - the command center for fraud prevention and AML compliance. SEON connects first party data signals to show you what other solutions can't - by enriching data, understanding context, and taking action from one place... to prevent fraud. In this episode, we are talking with Husnain "HB" Bajwa , SVP of Product & Risk Solutions. He has been a fraud and risk leader for 30+ years, and...
Nov 17, 2025•25 min
Praveen Ghanta recently turned 47 and started to look at the things he wanted to do - but potentially couldn't do in the future. He's married with 3 teenage kids, and has been into running for quite some time. So much so, that he attempted to run a 5 minute mile... and almost made it. Also, he recently signed up for soccer classes, after having been beat by some eighth grade kids, who helped him realize he needed training in his ball handling skills. In his prior startup, Praveen and his team st...
Nov 13, 2025•37 min
Today, we are another episode in our series, sponsored by our good friends at Railsware . Railsware is a leading product studio with two main focuses - services and products. They have created amazing products like Mailtrap , Coupler and TitanApps , while also partnering with teams like Calendly and Bright Bytes. They deliver amazing products, and have happy customers to prove it. In this series, we are digging into the company's methods around product engineering and development. In particular,...
Nov 12, 2025•22 min
Chris Wallis lives in London, and grew up on a farm in the UK. He was the kid running around the countryside climbing trees - until his parents bought a computer when he was 15. Past that point, he didn't leave the house much, learning to code and digging into ethical hacking. Outside of tech, he is into tennis, swimming, alpine skiing and surfing. He finds himself in phases with these sports, and rotates them often. In the past, Chris was an ethical hacker, and spent a long time busting into bi...
Nov 11, 2025•20 min•Season 11Ep. 25
Erez Druk grew up in Israel, but has been in the Bay Area for many years. He has a common theme in his life of obsessing over his current thing. In the 4th grade it was the saxophone, and later on it was being Israel's board game champion, and then - he became obsessed with startups. Outside of tech, he is married and expecting his first child. He's into exercising, reading and coffee. His favorite is going to a coffee shop with his wife, and having a cappuccino and a pastry - but at home, he le...
Nov 06, 2025•24 min
Today, we are another episode in our series, sponsored by our good friends at Railsware . Railsware is a leading product studio with two main focuses - services and products. They have created amazing products like Mailtrap , Coupler and TitanApps , while also partnering with teams like Calendly and Bright Bytes. They deliver amazing products, and have happy customers to prove it. In this series, we are digging into the company's methods around product engineering and development. In particular,...
Nov 05, 2025•24 min
Mrinal Wadhwa grew up in India with a Dad in the Armed Forces, so he moved around a lot. His mother was a teacher for 40+ years, and greatly influenced his love for teaching. In addition to this, he grew up loving to build things. He was introduced to computers and the internet by his cousin - and at that point he was hooked. Outside of tech, he is married and enjoys attending concerts in the Bay Area. He plays pool, very seriously. In fact, he is the guy carrying the little bag into a party wit...
Nov 04, 2025•31 min•Season 11Ep. 24
