Cory O'Daniel has had an interesting path to technology, growing his career in a number of cloud architect roles at Ripple, DealScience and The RealReal. He has rich experience in DevOps, the cloud and platform engineering. But outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids, living in Southern California. He loves driving (and destroying) RC cars - like the ones that go 65-70 miles per hour. He jumps them off a lot of ramps, his highest jump behind 20 feet upwards... which of course, he landed.

Cory noticed that there is a huge knowledge gap regarding the cloud, especially during his time doing professional services. He would leave a project post completion, and see a major gap in how the client understood what was built. He and his co-founders had the idea to build a product to allow platform engineers to diagram their infra - and fuel developers engineering process.

This is the creation story of Massdriver.

Sponsors

• Rapyd Cloud
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://www.massdriver.cloud/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/coryodaniel

Torrey Leonard lived in Maryland prior to moving to New York City. In 7th grade, his claim to fame was building the world's largest Minecraft server in the world. In early high school, he had over a million users, made 6 figures, and was fueled by open source software that still runs on most Minecraft servers today. Outside of tech and gaming, he loves to play pickleball and really enjoys skiing - though he confesses that in New York, it's harder to do these hobbies, financially and logistically.

Last summer, Torrey built a platform that allowed you to build out voice agents. After doing so, he realized that there wasn't a good way to do this through a UI, and he realized this was an obvious thing that needed to be built. He decided to leave his prior company to pursue this vision - which headed towards the Zapier for call center agents.

This is the creation story of Thoughtly.

Sponsors

• Rapyd Cloud
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://thought.ly/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/torrey-leonard/

Today, we are releasing another episode in our series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai.

Dubai is the new global center of gravity, connecting the world in a way few places can. As a hub for trade, tourism, innovation, and finance, Dubai offers the ideal environment for startups and scale-ups to thrive. Entrepreneurs find a home here, whether in health-tech, fintech, AI, or renewable energy, supported by SME-focused programs that empower high-potential companies to scale globally. From flexible regulations to tax incentives, world-class infrastructure to access to global investors managing $1 trillion, Dubai understands what businesses need to scale fast.

Today, we are speaking with Dr. Marwan Al Zarouni, CEO of AI for the Dubai Department of Economy & Tourism. Dr. Marwan. He is going to help walk us through how Dubai is creating a foundational hub for AI, Blockchain, and the intersection of both.

• Questions:

1. Tell me and my audience a little bit about you.
2. You are CEO of AI for the DET. What does that entail? What are you driving in this position, leading your department?
3. It feels like blockchain is still trying to find its place in the mainstream, i.e., utility, security or currency, while AI is settling in some - where are both of these areas going?
4. While AI is a major focus, Dubai has also exceedingly been adopting blockchain. How do you see these two technologies interacting in various sectors, especially since you're also the CEO of Dubai Blockchain Centre.
5. How is Dubai addressing ethical challenges in AI adoption, especially in areas like data privacy and transparency?
6. AI is rapidly evolving globally, but how do you see Dubai positioning itself as a leader in the AI space?What’s your outlook for the city’s AI ecosystem in the next 5-10 years, and how are you working towards it today?
7. What is Dubai doing to attract promising and leading AI and blockchain companies to Dubai? What does the city offer companies in this space from a competitive advantage standpoint?

Links

• http://marwan.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmarwan/
• https://blockchaincenter.ae/
• https://dubaiaicampus.com/
• https://www.difc.ae/
• https://www.investindubai.gov.ae/en/why-dubai/d33-agenda

Joni Klippert has spent many years in startups. Post getting her MBA, she built her early career in Boulder, CO, and became very technical learning new technologies throughout the businesses she worked for, liked VictorOps and Splunk. Outside of tech, she is married with 2 dogs. Her favorite thing to do is travel with her husband to visit Michelin star restaurants. One of her favorites was called Azuermendi in Spain, as it was not only delicious, but an immersive experience.

Joni had been building software for engineers for a long time, as a product person. At one point, she started researching the last mile of DevOps, and was surprised how far this particular group was behind, in regard to tooling. She dreamt of automating the pen-testing remediation process, and stumbled upon an opportunity as it relates to DAST - dynamic application security testing.

This is the creation story of Stackhawk.

Sponsors

• Rapyd Cloud
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://www.stackhawk.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/joniklippert/

Eric Leebow was born in New Jersey, and bounced around a few states growing up. He has always been a gadget and tech enthusiast, growing up curious. At a young age, he could be found drawing, creating new things, and tinkering with headsets. Outside of tech, he is into juggling, playing and watching basketball. He's based in New York, and has been a vegetarian since he was a kid.

When he went off to college, Eric had with him picture books. He noticed that there were key words next to each person, which indicated their interests. He thought, wouldn't it be interesting if we can use this information to connect people within school?

This is the creation story of FreezeCrowd.

Sponsors

• Rapyd Cloud
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://www.freezecrowd.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericleebow/

Mihri Minaz is originally from Turkey, and has 4 siblings in different industries. Being good at math and problem solving, he was drawn go study computer engineering, and eventually was in the industry for a while before starting her current venture. Upon reflection, she feels it was supernatural for her to live in Turkey, be a woman, and end up in software. Eventually, she moved to Berlin and continued to be a unique case in the industry. Outside of tech, she enjoys watching art movies and shows, like Turin Horse or Fargo. She is learning piano, but travels so much for work, she has picked up DJ'ing, cause she can't bring a piano with her.

In the past, Mihri's experienced problems with her team, as far as measuring and optimizing productivity. This was related to the different number of tools used, along with the lack of a unified view of these tools. She and her co-founder clicked on this problem, and decided to build a solution.

This is the creation story of Beams.

Sponsors

• Rapyd Cloud
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://usebeams.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mihriminaz/

Wes Tatters has had a crazy, diverse career history. He is been in IT for around 40 years, and started in the days before the internet. He has had two paths - multimedia and information technology, of which both merged early in his career. He has been writing books since the early days of the internet. But outside of tech, he is married with kids, and in their downtime, they enjoy being together and sharing the world with one another.

Ten years ago, Wes started in on the Wordpress space. He immediately saw that most experiences utilized shared hosting, and he also had customers wanting to build community environments. The problem was most hosting providers didn't perform well enough to support the components needed for these types of sites.

This is the creation story of Rapyd Cloud.

Sponsors

• Rapyd Cloud
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://rapyd.cloud/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/westatters/

Thomas Hansen was born and raised in Denmark. He's also lived in South Africa, Thailand, Turkey and then Seattle. He is married to his wife Ingrid, with 3 older kids. His real passion is wind surfing, which he started when he was 14 years old. He even engaged in the support at the semi professional level as a teenager. His favorite spot is in Maui, which includes all the wind surfing options you could want. He also spends an hour in the gym every morning to start the day with endorphins.

Thomas was introduced to his current venture through an early investor in the company. He met with the co-founder, Spenser, and sparks flew. There was a great fit and chemistry between them, and he was invited on board to push the company forward to new heights.

This is Thomas's creation story at Amplitude.

Sponsors

• Rapyd Cloud
• Speakeasy
• QA Wolf
• SnapTrade

Links

• https://amplitude.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasneergaardhansen/