Today, we are dropping another episode in our "chats" series, specifically on the Founder side, - hearing from those scaling the companies themselves.

In this episode, we are talking with Vadim Dedov, CEO at Catchers. Vadim is going to walk us through what problem he wanted to solve with Catchers, and how his product development journey took him through architectural decisions, product optimization, team building and more.

Questions

• Before we talk about Catchers, I’d love to understand you a bit better.
• What experiences or responsibilities earlier in your life shaped how you think about work, systems, and accountability today?
• What problem were you dealing with before Catchers existed? Not as a product idea yet, but as a real operational pain you kept running into.
• At what point did you realise this couldn’t be solved with people, spreadsheets, or manual coordination anymore and that technology was the only way forward?
• How did Catchers actually start taking shape as a product? What was the very first version you built, and what did “good enough” mean in a business where mistakes affect people’s income and compliance?
• How long did it take to get to something usable, and what constraints defined your MVP?
• Looking back, what were the most important trade-offs you made early on?
• Things you consciously postponed or simplified, knowing they might come back later.
• Let’s zoom in on the product itself. What is the core product insight behind Catchers — the thing you believe differentiates it from a typical HR or staffing platform?
• How did your thinking about architecture evolve as scale increased? Was there a moment when you had to stop moving fast and redesign parts of the system properly?
• How did you approach building your core team around such a complex, operations-heavy product? What qualities mattered most in the people you trusted with this system?
• Can you share a decision that didn’t go as planned and how you and your team dealt with the consequences?
• When you step back and look at what you’ve built today, what are you most proud of not in terms of features, but in terms of reliability, impact, or how the system holds under pressure?
• As you look ahead, how do automation and AI change the way you think about workforce platforms — and what advice would you give to someone building infrastructure-heavy products today?

Sponsors

• Unblocked
• Braingrid
• .TECH Domains
• Mezmo

Links

• https://catchersjob.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/vadim-dedov-060b8935a/

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.

Sponsors

• Unblocked
• TECH Domains
• Mezmo
• Braingrid.ai

Links

• https://www.positron.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitesh7/

Ashwin Agrawal came to the US when he was 17, to Rochester for school. He now lives in the Bay Area, and admits he misses his friends on the east coast, as they all stayed back in that area - but he does NOT miss the winters. He has been building his current venture for 3-4 years, and prior to that, he was as at Google for a decade, apart of Google Cloud's huge growth trajectory. Outside of tech, he has a family with 2 middle school sons, with whom he likes to spend a lot of time with, hiking or eating good sushi.

Ashwin was laid off from a few jobs in the past. After experiencing this, he vowed to build a solution that would help people going through this sort of experience. After the last layoff, he formed his company at 4:30 am in the morning, to help anyone in point A wanting to go to point B.

This is the creation story of MobiusEngine.ai.

Sponsors

• Unblocked
• TECH Domains
• Mezmo
• Braingrid.ai

Links

• https://mobiusengine.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/agrawalashwin/

Today, we are continuing our series, entitled Developer Chats - hearing from the large scale system builders themselves.

In this episode, we are talking with Oleksandr Piekhota, Principal Software Engineer at Teaching Strategies. Oleksandr helps to show us at what point of scale platform approaches are required, when to run experiments and when to stop, and perhaps more importantly - engineering ownership beyond the code.

Questions

• You’ve moved from hands-on engineering into principal and technical leadership roles, working on architecture and platforms.At what point did you realize your work was no longer about individual features, but about the system as a whole
• Across several projects, growth didn’t break functionality — it exposed architectural limits.Can you recall a moment when it became clear that shipping more features wouldn’t solve the problem, and a platform approach was required?
• You’ve designed and supported APIs end-to-end, from architecture to real customers. How do you distinguish between an API that simply works and one that can truly support business scale?
• Internal systems like invoicing and HR workflows began as automation, but evolved into real products.What tells you that an internal tool is worth developing seriously rather than treating as a temporary workaround?
• In R&D, you explored CI/CD automation, server-less, and infrastructure experiments — not all reached production. How do you decide when an experiment should continue, and when it’s no longer worth the engineering cost?
• You’ve hired teams, set standards, and shaped long-term technical direction. At what point does an engineer stop being a contributor and start owning business-level outcomes?
• You contributed to open-source tools that later became part of your company’s infrastructure. Why do you see open source contributions as part of serious engineering work rather than a side activity?
• Looking across your projects, how do you now recognize a truly mature engineering system? Is it code quality, process, or how teams respond when things go wrong?
• If we look five to seven years into the future, which architectural assumptions we treat as “standard” today are most likely to turn out to be naive or limiting?

Sponsors

• Incogni

Links

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/oleksandr-piekhota-b675ba53/
• https://teachingstrategies.com/

Satya Mishra was born and raised in India, in one of the smaller tech hubs on the eastern coast. He came to the states 25 years ago on an H1B visa, working in semiconductors. In 2015, he decided he wanted to do something entrepreneurial and set out to do so. Outside of tech, he is married with 3 kids, which takes up most of his time. When he lived in CO, he did lots of skiing and hiking, including snowshoe hiking. Once he went to California, he switched to beaches. Finally, when he moved to St. Louis, he took up improv, enjoying connecting with people and thinking on your feet.

Satya and his co-founder, Raj, both when through the immigration process in all of its forms. They realized that no one group owns the process, as it's highly specialized, and usually fell onto the employee to keep track of. One day, they set out to solve this problem, to assist business teams to take ownership of the entire process.

This is the creation story of WayLit.

Sponsors

• Unblocked
• TECH Domains
• Mezmo
• Braingrid.ai

Links

• https://www.waylit.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/satyamishra/

Today, we are dropping another episode in our "chats" series, but expanding the audience set to include more folks. This episode is Founder Chats - hearing from those scaling the companies themselves.

In this episode, we are talking with Max Denevich, Co-founder and CRO of LoyaltyPlant. Max is going to share with us to road he travelled, entering into this industry, his go to market strategies, scaling across geographic region - and much, much more.

Questions

• Before we talk about products and scale, tell us a bit about your path to this point. What experiences shaped the way you think about business and leadership before LoyaltyPlant?
• At what point did you realise you wanted to work with complex, traditional industries rather than consumer apps or “easy” tech?
• Why foodtech, and specifically Quick Service Restaurants? What made you believe this industry had deep structural problems worth solving with technology?
• What made you decide to join LoyaltyPlant, and what potential did you see that others might have missed?
• You’re often referred to as a co-founder today. How did the transition happen from an executive role to shaping the company’s future at that level?
• LoyaltyPlant was close to running out of investment at one point. What were the first decisions that fundamentally changed the company’s trajectory?
• What were the key milestones that turned LoyaltyPlant from a struggling company into a global enterprise business, from the first major client to scaling across 30 countries?
• You’ve worked across the US, UK, MENA, Europe, and CIS. What did you learn about scaling the same product across very different markets, and what absolutely doesn’t translate?
• You built new go-to-market strategies that now generate over 90% of new sales. What did you change compared to a classic SaaS sales playbook, and why did it work in enterprise QSR?
• Margins are shrinking, aggregators dominate, and costs are rising. What’s actually happening on the ground right now in QSR and foodtech, and how should companies adapt?
• Tell us about a decision you got wrong. What did it cost the business, and what did it teach you as a leader?
• What advice would you give founders building B2B products for traditional industries today, especially around scale, partnerships, and staying relevant?

Sponsors

• Unblocked
• Braingrid
• .TECH Domains
• Mezmo

Links

• https://loyaltyplant.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/denevich/

Nouran Farouk grew up in Egypt, which she notes the culture has a deep root in family. She and her sister have always been drawn to social entrepreneurship, being drawn to building but also positively impacting the world. In addition, Nouran has a medical background, which taught her that good intentions are not enough - you need good systems. Outside of tech, she loves to travel and visit cities. She frequently observes how people move throughout the world, and how systems influence their daily life.

Nouran and her sister wanted to learn to drive scooters. In doing so, they were immediately greeted with inequitable opportunities for women in this arena. They wanted to change this situation, and deployed a back of the napkin idea into a fully operational platform.

This is the creation story of Dosy.

Sponsors

• Unblocked
• TECH Domains
• Mezmo
• Braingrid.ai

Links

• https://www.dosybikes.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/nouran-aly-farouk-msc-mbbs-31637b195/

James Davies lives in the Maryland area, and started his career at the crossroads of tech and the auto industry. His first girlfriend's father owned some car lots - so he went to work there, wrote some software, and propelled his success at those dealerships. He notes that the auto industry was fun and has a lot of moving parts, but was pretty taxing personally. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids. He grew up around construction, so he enjoys getting his hands dirty and building things. In fact, he is fixing up the barn of the recent home he bought - framing, doing the plumbing, and making it livable.

James was working for the state department as a consultant, and was a customer of his current venture. He was chosen to implement the solution, which turned out to be a successful project. Post that project, he was approached by the company to lead projects on the east coast and eventually landed in the CEO role.

This is James' creation story at Kinetic Data.

Sponsors

• Unblocked
• TECH Domains
• Mezmo
• Braingrid.ai

Links

• https://kineticdata.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswdavies/

Daniel Shnaider came from a family that worked 9 to 5 jobs - engineers, doctors, etc. He was a military officer in Isreal, and while he was there, he met the son of the founder of Waze. After learning about that journey, he knew he wanted to build something meaningful, and started building businesses. Outside of technology, he loves pushing himself to the limits. But to relax, interestingly enough he does adrenaline activities - sky diving and racing cars.

As I mentioned, Daniel started and ran many businesses in the past. One of them was centered around physical products, and led him to send emails to the mom and pop' shops they wanted to work with. To fight the spam trap, he and his team built a solution to solve the problem for themselves... and then took the next step.

This is the creation story of Warmy.io.

Sponsors

• Unblocked
• TECH Domains
• Mezmo
• Braingrid.ai

Links

• https://www.warmy.io/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-shnaider/

Michael Fester grew up in Denmark, the son of a French mother and a Danish father. He was always interested in tech, math and the arts, initially wanting to go into design. However, he did research in number theory at Cambridge, and founded his first startup in Paris, which eventually was acquired by Sonos. Outside of tech, he enjoys reading, in particular the classics - like Dostoyevsky - and biographies - like that of Einstein. He enjoys eating and living healthy, and promotes this lifestyle at his current venture.

Michael and his team noticed that despite the continual improvement of models, the process of maintaining systems using AI was tedious. Not only did this impact support operations, and building software for this area of a business, but negatively impacted the customers themselves. He and his wife wanted to build the new standard for how support operations are run.

This is the creation story of 14.ai.

Sponsors

• Unblocked
• Mezmo
• Braingrid.ai
• Alcor
• Equitybee
• Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.

Links

• https://14.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelfester

Prashanth Tondapu was born and raised in India, now living in New Delhi, the capital there. He claims to be a textbook nerd, loving technology and information. He reads a lot, primarily eastern philosophy and stuff on being enlightened, basically pointing him to skills in accepting reality. He's married with two girls, 9 and 4 years old, along with a Labrador and a German shepherd. He says that having 3 girls in the house means he has 3 supreme leaders.

Prashanth has worked for companies in the past focused on products - companies like McAffee and the Advisor Board Company. Outside of that, he started to build product after product, but no one wanted to buy his product. Eventually, he was tasked to advise a company in product delivery, which then changed everything.

This is the creation story of Innostax.

Sponsors

• Unblocked
• TECH Domains
• Mezmo
• Braingrid.ai
• Alcor
• Equitybee
• Terms and conditions: Equitybee executes private financing contracts (PFCs) allowing investors a certain claim to ESO upon liquidation event; Could limit your profits. Funding in not guaranteed. PFCs brokered by EquityBee Securities, member FINRA.

Links

• https://innostax.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/prashanth-tondapu