S10 Bonus: Erik Braund, Katmai Tech
Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders
Noah Labhart - Startup Founder & CTO
4.6 • 216 Ratings
🗓️ 1 May 2025
⏱️ 42 minutes
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Summary
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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Rohan Kare Mandy. |
| 0:01.5 | And I'm Phil Hawthorne, and we're the hosts of the Home Assistant podcast. |
| 0:04.6 | We're guessing you're into technology. |
| 0:06.5 | Home Assistant is the number one open source contributor project on GitHub, with a focus on privacy and local control. |
| 0:12.5 | Join us every other week as we'll break down the latest features of Home Assistant |
| 0:16.0 | and talk to everyday users who are automating their lives with Home Assistant. |
| 0:19.5 | From feeling like you're living in Star Trek with lights turning on in rooms when you walk in, |
| 0:24.9 | to automating, flushing the toilet. |
| 0:27.0 | Home Assistant can integrate with virtually anything, |
| 0:29.4 | and we've interviewed everyday people like yourselves, |
| 0:32.1 | and that have done some pretty crazy automations. |
| 0:34.5 | Listen to the Home Assistant Podcast wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, |
| 0:37.3 | or find us on |
| 0:38.3 | YouTube or visit home assistant.fm. |
| 0:44.1 | We can build any environment in 3D. |
| 0:46.9 | Send me a couple pictures of your house. |
| 0:48.3 | We're going to build your house. |
| 0:49.2 | We can put you there. |
| 0:50.3 | So it's like people can share this experience in a place together in a pretty different way. While we were productizing it, I've been introduced to lots of people to say, |
| 0:58.8 | hey, this guy Eric's got some pretty compelling technology. One of them was with Starbucks. |
| 1:03.1 | We hosted the first meeting in Katmai. And we had built from scratch the first Starbucks in |
| 1:09.1 | Pike Place Market in Seattle. And I remember when their team loaded in that gave us this look of, |
... |
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