Starting a company or building anything is a lonely journey unless you include other people,

involve their people in it. There's no need to go at anything alone. But that network of

CTO friends in Chicago has been a very helpful sounding board to ask these questions. You know,

the bill by decision, the language choice,

the monolith versus microservices, the databases, like these are all decisions and choices we

had to make. The hardest decisions, I think, were the build by decision. What is worth building?

What is core to our business? If we didn't innovate or didn't change, wouldn't matter to the

business. I'm Mike't innovate or didn't change, wouldn't matter to the business.

I'm Mike Cruz, co-founder and CTO of Protege.

This is Code Story, the podcast bringing you interviews with tech visionaries who share in the critical moments of what it takes to change in industry and build and lead.

A team that has your back.

I'm your host, Noel Apar.

And today how Mike Cruz is building the platform for you to be discovered by submitting your art form 60 seconds at a time.

All this and more on Code Story.

Mike Cruz grew up in Guam near Japan.

He spent 18 years before moving to the U.S. for college.

He's always been in tech, everywhere from the Discovery Channel to startups like Trunk Club.

He has a young family with two boys, and his oldest is getting into programming from the

lens of gaming.

He reflects on how far games have come these days, as they were much simpler and easier to code

in the past.

In 2011, Mike and his co-founder witnessed the proliferation of boot camps for practical entry

...