Ep20 Adam Lehde — Family Values, Ukrainian Excellence: Creating the Ideal Workplace
Episode Summary
Adam Lehde, co-founder of Happen Technologies, discusses building a hybrid software development company that partners US-based strategy with Ukrainian technical talent. He shares his journey from mobile developer to entrepreneur, the cultural strengths of Ukrainian developers, and his philosophy of building a family-first company culture while maintaining high performance through direct communication and ownership mentality.
Key Quotes
"Ukrainian developers are incredibly direct and own their work—if they say they'll do something, you don't have to check in the morning. You just pull up the link and know the deliverables are there."
"My wife told me: 'You've been clear with employers about what kind of employee you are. With your own company, you're constantly on. Are you going to build a company that you would work for?' That changed everything."
"It's not uncommon to hire a senior QA who was a practicing scientist teaching at PhD level, or literal rocket scientists. The top talent in Ukraine left other careers for tech because they could make four times as much."
Transcript
Hi, welcome to Tales From The Sky Lounge. It's a podcast about business consulting and venture investing. We get out there in the world and we talk to people who are making it happen and we get their stories. If you could like and subscribe, it would really help us get our story out there.
So today we have Adam Laddy. Hi Adam.
Hey Todd, great to have you today. Yeah, looking forward to chatting.
Well, why don't you kick us off and who are you and what are you working on?
Yeah, for sure. So Adam Laddy, I run a company with a co-founder called Happen Technologies. We do software development. We do both custom software projects and some staffing partnerships. We're located here in St. Louis, Missouri. I grew up around here. My partner is from Ukraine, so we met and do some staffing out of Eastern Europe. Yeah, looking forward to chatting with you today.
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