Matt Van Itallie is the son of a math teacher and a coder - so this explains why he now uses code as data. He is a proud Boy Scout, making it of course to Eagle Scout and beyond. After being a management consultant, he found his way to ed tech, and fell in love with improving code. Outside of technology, he is married with 3 amazing kids. He likes to run, play ultimate frisbee, and has a wicked cool collection of minor league baseball hats.

Sitting a room with the head of Sales, Matt noticed that there were systems like Salesforce that were built to assess the state and future opportunity for business. He then thought, where are these systems for the code itself?

This is the creation story of Sema.

Sponsors

• Mailtrap
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://www.semasoftware.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mvi/

Kevin Hurley grew up in a multi-kid house, which is where he got his competitive nature. He used to play 2 on 2 with his Dad and siblings at home. He went to school for electrical engineering, and funny enough, interviewed for a computer science job by accident, effectively stumbling into the trade. Outside of tech, he spends his free time with his fiancé, planning for the wedding, and visiting Manhattan beach for a good walk .

Kevin was part of the team that attempted to launch crypto at Facebook. Although that didn't work out, they realized that the backbone of the system needed to be built on something more common - and something that was lightning fast.

This is the creation story of Lightspark.

Sponsors

• Mailtrap
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://www.lightspark.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-p-hurley/

Anurag Goel grew up in New Delhi, but moved to Boston after college for his first job. He worked at Stripe, as the 8th employee, before eventually moving on and launching his current venture. Outside of tech, he is married, living in San Francisco. He likes to read science fiction, especially prior to bedtime. He also enjoys eating Thai food on the regular, though he mentioned he could eat pizza every day.

Post leaving Stripe, Anurag decided to work on an ambitious problem, and he started doing this by building a bunch of stuff in many different domains. After noticing a common problem in building out Kubernetes, he decided to start a new business to abstract these problems, and allow builders to focus on the differentiating factors to their solutions.

This is the creation story of Render.

Sponsors

• Mailtrap
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://render.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/anuragoel/

Erik Braund was born and raised in Alaska. Growing up, he played competitive hockey and built computers for his Dad's company and eventually others. He grew up with a gameboy, an electric guitar, and a love for Nirvana. He eventually upgraded his setup to a computer - which led him to setup a recording studio. He was internet obsessed from a young age, partially because it was the door to a bigger world outside of Alaska. He played in bands, started a recording studio, which eventually turned into a production company in NYC and LA, delivering AV projects for numerous clients.

Erik was running his production company when COVID hit. Given people weren't doing in person projects, he started consulting and opening up his mind on how to do these types of projects remotely. He started to see a new problem, where video conferencing was not solving high connection, collaborative work.

This is the creation story of Katmai.

Sponsors

• Mailtrap
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://katmaitech.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/erik-braund/

Ravi Pratap Maddimsetty lives in Bangalore with his family. Early on, he joined startups where his friends worked, in order to get to know the landscape of how they functioned. He fell in love with the tech, team and early innings of building a business - so much so, that he eventually started his own. He has been an entrepreneur for 15 years - or in the woods, as he says. But outside of tech, he's married with 2 girls. He loves spending time with his family, playing tennis, being outdoors or skiing.

Ten years ago, Ravi was riding the wave of smartphones, tinkering with numerous technological solutions to connect users to their world via their smartphone. After moving through beacons, NFC, GPS and others - they started to think about how they could use the camera, which was on every device, to read QR codes.

This is the creation story of Uniqode.

Sponsors

• Mailtrap
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://www.uniqode.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravipratapm/

Shai Horovitz grew up on a farm in Israel, 1.5 hours north of Tel Aviv. He was drafted into the army, in a unit that focused on technology - and in 2013, he moved to the states and joined a startup. And - he loved it, eventually leading the team in building the business in Japan. Outside of tech, he loves to travel with his family and 3 kids. He is also a self proclaimed foodie, and enjoys sports - spending 11 years in Boston rooting on the Celtics.

The team at Shai's current venture was attempting to shift left the solving of security issues in production. Now, they are entering into a new era - in building the agentic cybersecurity team of the future. Two years ago, he joined to lead the charge.

This is the creation story of Jit.

Sponsors

• Mailtrap
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://www.jit.io/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/shai-horovitz-855a3a49/

Today, we are releasing another 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.

In this episode, we talk with Anthony Cammarano, CTO & VP of Engineering, as he breaks down and simplifies GenAI for companies struggling in the new frontier. There is a flood of unstructured data pouring into workflows - thanks to GenAI - and traditional security methods aren't prepared to cover this expanded attack surface. The good news is that companies already have what they need to fix this, and it's a simple mindset shift.

Questions

• What are some of the most common misconceptions or trends about GenAI, as it relates to data protection and privacy, that organizations face today?
• What are the primary business challenges facing the adoption of GenAI today?
• How do modern GenAI systems create data security vulnerabilities and what are the potential risks?
• What is crucial in the implementation of GenAI-security solutions, and how can it accelerate AI adoption?
• Can you provide examples of how attackers are targeting data during its use and the importance of securing this data?
• What are some best practices for robust data governance and how can organizations stay ahead in the rapidly evolving GenAI landscape?

Links

• https://www.protegrity.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/ac56/

Lucas Lovell grew up in Adelaide, Australia, before eventually landing where resides now, in London. He studied law, but he eventually decided that he didn't want to become a lawyer. During his time in law school, he and his crew built an app - and he was hooked on the wild ride that tech is. Prior to London, he spent 4 years in Paris, and indeed loves to travel. He also enjoys skiing, and when asked about snowboarding, he said he tried - but eventually reverted back.

Four and a half years ago, Lucas joined a company solving end to end payments, while being the merchant of record. What was missing from the platform was some function around invoicing - which started him on his journey of product creation.

This is Lucas' creation story at Paddle.

Sponsors

• Mailtrap
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://www.paddle.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucaslovell/