Tech-Entrepreneur-on-a-Mission Podcast

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to intelligently help the telco win the fight against fraud and revenue leakage. My guest is Rui Paiva, CEO of Wedo Technologies.Prior to co-founding WeDo Technologies in 2001, Rui Paiva was System Information Director and Deputy of Optimus Communications’ Executive Committee. Before that, Rui was the Consultancy Director at Hewlett Packard Portugal, following a career at Telecel, which then became Vodafone Portugal, heading up their Infrastructure, Operations and Help Desk Department.in 2010 Rui won the Best Leaders Award for Wedo Technologies, and In 2017 he received the Tech Personality of the Year Award by Exame InformáticaHe is an experienced Board Member with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. A strong business development professional skilled in Business Process, Marketing Management, Negotiation, Business Planning, and Requirements Analysis. He holds a post-graduate degree in Management and Administration from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, as well as a BSc in Applied MathematicsThe potential behind the problem Wedo is solving triggered me, hence I invited Rui to my podcast. We explore the growing challenges companies in the Telco industry face around revenue leakage and fraud and how their platform approach is enabling the business to stay in control. We also explore the magic behind Wedo’s ability to constantly stay relevant as a business software vendor in an industry that’s changing at the speed of light.Here are some of his quotes:On my last job was being the CIO of a telco company. One of the things that we faced at that time was, we have the main building blocks, which are typically the ERP, the billing system, the CRM. But all the additional tools that are in the middle of that normally they have to be developed from scratch in each of the implementations in each of the operators.That takes time. That means the cost of maintaining and support and evolve. All of that was a nightmare.We created a technology, Raid, to validate all the integration between different applications and guarantee that the customer at the end of the day they are not losing money, which means that without having more sales or being efficient, they can improve the bottom line directly.During this interview, you will learn three things: How to stay relevant with a platform approach – both in terms of its’ ability to meet constantly evolving industry requirements as well as being industry agnostic to scale out. Why a customer-cooperation-strategy is a very effective approach to win the hearts of 80% of the market, and never lose a customer ever. What are the 8 secrets for a software business to stay as relevant and as fresh as the moment you were founded – in Wedo’s case – 18 years ago. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation around AI that has the power to adjust at the pace of business. My guest is Zehra Cataltepe, Co-founder and CEO of Tazi.AIZehra co-founded tazi.ai together with her husband Tanju, and their focus was to develop continuously learning machine learning solutions for the banking, insurance and telco industries. Besides her role as CEO she’s also a professor at Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Computer and Informatics. Zehra received her Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees from the California Institute of Technology in Computer Science. She has more than 20 years of both industry and academia experience in Machine Learning, and in that period, she delivered 21 patents and over 80 publications on the theory of machine learning and its applications in finance, health, energy and transportation.Tazi was recently selected by Garner as May 2019 ‘Cool Vendor in AI Core Technologies’. Tazi’s products are changing the way AI is used in business – keeping business in the driver’s seat with an automated Machine Learning platform that continuously learns and adapts to new circumstances.This triggered me, hence I invited Zehra to my podcast. We explore the challenges with today’s AI and machine learning technologies in rapidly changing business circumstances. We then discuss what’s required to get AI right – both at the side of the vendor and readiness level and mindset at the customer side. Here are some of her quotes:‘What drives me personally, is a dream of making AI usable by everyone. Democratizing it so that it becomes a useful technology like automobiles or electricity.When you consider business processes, life always changes. So, you know, as an insurance company, for example, your products that you offer to your customers, your customers ability, or incentive to buy from you, your competitors’ behavior, the regulations, all of these change in time.So, you have to keep adopting whatever you were doing to new changing conditions.You cannot just have one machine learning model or one rule set, which just learned what to do, and keep doing that forever. You need AI which can continuously learn, we can continuously adopt.’During this interview, you will learn three things: Why it’s key to micro-segment your customers if you aim to deliver remarkable value How designing for scale helps both your own organization as well as your customers That taking a platform approach can turn customers into fans by allowing them to solve unusual problems See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation in Recruitment and my guest is Nachi Junankar, CEO of AvrioHe’s got a passion for building long-lasting companies that build amazing technologies that change the world. He’s been an entrepreneur for over 20 years, and in that period founded five companies. It all started with Live Wire, where he successfully imagined and built an enterprise apps company before it was fashionable to do so. His second company, Retail IQ brought him into the optimization space, and specifically real time price and offer optimization. It’s this knowledge of optimization and matching that’s part of the secret behind Avrio. Built on the thesis "Let humans do what they are best at and machines do what they are good at,” Avrio built an AI platform that uses machine intelligence to bring people and companies together way before there’s real urgency. Avrio strongly believes the hiring process is broken. With increasingly limited resources and an increasingly competitive market for talent, recruiting is harder than ever. That’s what Avrio is set out to solve. That inspired me, hence I invited Nachi to my podcast. We explore why the hiring process is broken and what challenges that brings to both employer and future employees. We then discuss the details behind the fresh approach Avrio is taking by turning a very reactive process into a pro-active process – and what benefits that provides to everyone involved. Here are some of his quotes:The premise of Avrio is to significantly accelerate the hiring cycle. So, when there is a crunch in the kinds of numbers of jobs available, that people would be able to move around a little faster so that they're not that poorly affected by it.The thing is not that there's not going to be enough jobs. There’s not going to be enough jobs all the timeThe hiring cycle right now is six to nine months, which is just ridiculous.Our vision really is to be predictive about where somebody is going in their career and their career path and where companies are going; into new markets, into new industries and having new kinds of jobs availableWe would really like to be able to match people six months before they have to look for a job and, and start the conversation.During this interview, you will learn three things: That true value is created when you choose not to further improve a traditional process, but instead approach the problem from the other end of the spectrum and turn something that’s reactive into something pro-active. Why the value of AI and Humans is not an either or. Combining the two forces in areas such as recruitment creates beyond expected results How to create solutions that help your customers grow, and make them more money at the same time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation around water transportation that has the solve some significant climate change issues. My guest is Jean Francois Barsoum, Canadian Leader, Smart Cities, Water and Transportation at IBM.Since joining IBM, Jean-François Barsoum has provided strategy advice to a diverse set of clients: financial institutions, higher education, professional associations, pharmaceutical companies and telecoms. He has also been invited to speak at conferences on the subjects of innovation, smarter transportation and climate change on four continents.For the past decade, Jean-François has participated in numerous conferences on water and environmental management, and led IBM's ties with some related research organisations and NGOs. He helped develop some core smarter cities concepts and has deepened IBM's involvement with several North American cities as a result.He is among the few Canadians trained by Nobel Peace Prize Winner Al Gore, and regularly presents the material seen in the movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ -- and subsequent scientific updates -- to audiences across Canada. He is on the board of the Climate Reality Project and of the Canadian Water Network, and is a member of the David Suzuki Foundation's steering committee. He is also a member of the Intelligent Transportation Experts' Committee, a forum initiated by the Quebec Association of Transportation (AQTr).When I learned about Jean Francois’ ideas on how to utilize technology to solve some of our largest global challenges I instantly invited him to my podcast. We explore the size of the challenge and how, by using various technological layers together, we start to reimagine transportation the way we have come to know it. We also address the need for organizations at both public and private level to work closely together to maximize the potential of the impact.Here are some of his quotes:What started it all was really a concern around environmental issuesThe problem is so bad that in some urban areas, if you take a look at cities that were especially growing after the Second World War, so many of the North American cities, the space that is dedicated to cars is about two thirds of the surface area of the city.So we dedicate twice as much room to our cars as we do to ourselves. And that is clearly not a sustainable or even preferable thing to do financially.So there's clearly a need to improve that. And I think that that's where the interest of autonomous cars is. Even assuming each individual car is not shared by multiple families at once, or multiple people at once, you could still reduce the number of cars by about a third just by sharing the existing cars that we have now. And if the cars are autonomous, and could move from one place of the city to another, to correspond to demand, it's quite possible, you could reduce the number of cars required by 80%.During this interview, you will learn three things: That to create large scale change you have to think global, but implement local Why it’s in the benefit of everyone if we remove the silo thinking in our business – not only in transportation, but universally How the change we hope for can only happen if we succeed in changing behavior. Our easy options need to be replaced by even easier alternatives. That’s clear room for innovation.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that boosts the return on investment of our advertising by turning every ad into an ethical one, and my guest is Amy Williams, Co-Founder and CEO of Good Loop.Amy is an active member of the Women in Tech and Tech For Good communities. She was recently named by Forbes as one of the 30 Under 30 most influential people in media & marketing and has recently been listed in The Drum Digerati as one of the 100 outstanding individuals excelling in the UK digital industry.Amy has worked in the advertising sector all her career. At the age of 15 she first stepped into an advertising agency. She cut her teeth at one of the world's largest advertising agencies where she worked on everything from global TV ads to scrappy social campaigns. During this time she realised that it’s really difficult for brands to get their message in front of their audience in a cost-effective and positive way. The more she learned about the industry the more she started to see a disconnect between brands and the people they were trying to talk to. Too often the transaction between advertiser and viewer is at best impersonal and at worst unpleasant. As ad blocker downloads continue to rise and quality journalism continues to suffer the consequences, she sensed that it was time for a more positive solution. That's why she founded the ethical video advertising platform, Good-Loop.This inspired me, hence I invited Amy to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the advertising industry and why current approaches to get the maximum number of eyeballs for the minimum possible cost will only make things worse, not better. We dive into the concept behind Good-Loop, and how it’s found an ingenious way to connect people, brands and publishers in more meaningful, and consequently more effective way that’s creating a winning case for everyone involved. Here are some of his quotes:The big idea behind my business is that your time, your attention and your data, all of these things online, they are valuable to someone. They're valuable to advertisers.And so, we want to basically harness that value and use it to make the world a better place.The reason I called it Good Loop actually was, I was thinking about this idea of creating a virtuous cycle: Advertising is such a big business and it funds the free internet.But it's something that people inherently resent. There's a huge erosion of public trust around advertising online.It’s illustrated by how many people use ad-blockers. Hundreds of millions use ad blockers, and then it kind of leaves you the question: ‘How are we going to keep the internet free if we can't find a way for advertising to be perceived more positively?’So, we're on a mission to make ethical advertising the new normal. And that means that whenever you see an ad online, it shouldn't be something you block, it should be something that you're pleased to see because it means that the world is being made a better place.During this interview, you will learn three things: Why, in order to create breakthrough innovation, it’s key to frame the problem in the correct way i.e. name the true villain in your story How, by making your solution outcome oriented, or in other words only make customers pay for success, you can create an offer that’s a no-brainer for every stakeholder to get involved in Why, by simply starting, you will be 10 times further ahead than most people who just talk about an idea, but hope for all stars to align. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This podcast interview focuses on the responsibility for all of us to ensure the AI’s we invest in are ethical and deliver explainable, transparent output. My guest is Vikram Modgil, founder of TheGoodAI.orgThroughout his career Vikram has helped his clients succeed in achieving their goals by truly leveraging the power of data that they already own using Machine Learning. To do so, he’s built an ecosystem company - Pi Square – that consists of employees, associates & partners located in US, Europe & India.Prior to founding Pi Square, Vikram was part of multiple successful startups and wore many hats including business portfolio management, consulting and delivery of AI services. Recently he founded “TheGoodAI.org” in Seattle, which brings together groups of professionals & leaders from business, non-profit, education, legal, and technology backgrounds with the mission to empower every human to contribute by spreading awareness, facilitating engagement and inspiring actions towards ethical aspects of AI.And this triggered me, hence I invited Vikram to my podcast. We explore the reasons why ethical AI is so important to sustain a world we like to live and work in. We also discuss the various aspects of ethical AI and what we can do as individuals, groups or organizations to ensure we get what we want and hope for.Here are some of his quotes:“There are some unnecessary, or unconscious biases that come into our businesses. They creep in. And if you're not conscious, if you're not alert, they can impact lives.That is something that should not happen.So, with that thought, knowledge and understanding, I wanted to contribute back and I started looking for forums where I could get involved. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything, which was exactly what I wanted this to become.Normally, everybody is hesitant on starting something like this on their own, because it takes a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of people.I wanted to challenge that thinking and start something which is focused on helping one person at a time. And even if two people showed up, that would be a success.The three big things that we want to empower people to do are: create awareness, engagement and actions around the ethics and biases of AI and trustworthiness of AI.Being in Seattle is a is a very huge advantage for us. If we could influence Seattle, we can influence the whole world”During this interview, you will learn three things: That in order to encourage innovative ideas from within your organization on areas where AI could deliver impact, simply stick to 4 basic rules: It has to deliv ver a shift in value, be feasible, scalable and responsible. Why the quality of your ideas for innovation will increase significantly once you ensure diversity in the room to look at the problem through different lenses That it’s every software vendors responsibility to raise some very tough questions whether their AI technology is ethical, explainable and transparent – It all starts by doing the right thing – and that can be very profitable. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation focused on democratizing access to AI across industries that haven’t got the connections and salary budgets of the Tech Giants. My guest is Naomi Goldapple, Head of product for transportation and logistics at Element AI.Naomi’s career combines technology and business consultancy and entrepreneurship. Her specialties are Business & growth strategies, product commercialization and marketing plans. She has an International MBA, specializing in developing markets in Latin America, from the Schulich School of Business as well as a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University.She was the Director e-business for Royal LePage Commercial, one of Canada’s largest commercial real estate companies. She started up and ran Maman, bébé et café inc., which won various awards, and worked at ModelCom, using her expertise to help technology entrepreneurs with strategy and financing. She was the VP Business Development at Nexalogy, responsible for commercializing the suite of products, forging channel partnerships and growing the sales. Nexalogy developed a next generation software for mining, cleaning and analyzing unstructured data with powerful data sculpting capabilities. And this experience has led to her current venture as Program Director with Element AI, an innovative model that works with and creates companies that are leveraging artifical intelligence. The goal is to spin out hundreds on AI-first companies in Canada over the next 5 years.This triggered me, hence I invited Naomi to my podcast. We explore how the momentum around AI is picking up fast, but how various industries experience significant challenges to get access to AI talent, and in line with that, solutions. We discuss how Element AI is solving this issue, and how this helps chronically understaffed industries and attack large global problems such as safety and climate change.Here are some of her quotes:“The big idea behind the company, if I had to sum it up in one word, is really to democratize the access to AI.One of the issues that is happening right now is many people are getting excited about AI, however, there really isn't enough talent out there.They're usually courted away very quickly by the tech giants.The manufacturing industry, insurance, other industries that are not one of the tech giants, they really don't have access to this talent.So, our role was really to concentrate in some of those verticals, build products specifically for them and kind of allow them to leverage these technologies to really improve their businesses.”During this interview, you will learn three things: That significant value can be delivered to the quality of human work by using AI to eliminate Dull, Dangerous and Dirty work Why it is key to first learn about the impact AI can deliver, rather than to regulate it upfront How the sum of the parts will be far greater when every organization takes an active approach to share its data with its peers See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This podcast interview focuses on [product innovation] that has the power to [xxxx], and my guest is Sachin Duggal, CEO of Engineer.ai.Sachin Dev Duggal is an innovator, serial entrepreneur, and an advocate of enterprise software that touches lives and benefits the world at large. His profile is an unusual mix of experiences & serendipity. Sachin started his public foray very early in life. At the age of 12 he went on stage in front of 1200 people and the world media to demand something be done about the state of the environment. He worked for the United Nations and helped write the declaration of youth rights before he completed his first degree from Imperial College. At the age of 15 he co-founded nivio with a view to disrupt the old compute model. Four years later, nivio was selected as a technology pioneer at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where at the same time he made history in being the youngest attendees.Sachin’s an avid and recent believer of Vipassana and that life is a zero-sum game – so its essential to spend our time giving; this is one of the main reasons he and his partner put aside stock in all major businesses to their foundation that’s on their 100x50 mission i.e. educate 100m kids in 50 years.He’s been awarded MIT TR 35 Indian Innovator of the Year, the PriceWaterhouseCoopers Leader of Tomorrow, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist, the BBC Young Asian achiever of the Year and UNEP Global 500 Youth Award. His aim is to build technology that simplifies the lives of every day users and increases the penetration of information technology to those who do not have it today. And that’s what Engineer.ai is all about. Engineer.ai is on a mission to democratize software development. Their promise ‘Together we bring your idea to life. Twice as fast. 1/3 the cost. Enterprise grade.’That intrigued me, and hence I invited Sachin to my podcast. We explore the state of the market in which technology is often not delivering on its promise. Beyond that we address why the traditional approach to starting and delivering software projects is broken, and how a new, fresh approach, could transform things for the better, not only for large enterprises but also the small business owner.Here are some of his quotes:“One of the things that I'm driven by every day is the ability for technology to transform people's lives.We're in a world today where a lot of folks feel somewhat disenfranchised by the technology promise, something that was meant to help them grow, help them make more money, help them have more time at home. And instead, it's done, in many cases, the opposite.We think that there's a really strong opportunity to transform how software is built.We're moving from a world where software means working with a cottage industry, where everything is slow, requires traditional know-how, is inefficient, and super risky.And so, there's often a tradeoff that we see in our customers between the fear of being irrelevant, then they come up with an idea, and then it's basically the fear of failure.Until they cross the line of fear, they're not really building or moving ahead.And really, that's the problem we're solving”During this interview, you will learn three things: How traditionally unserved markets can be unlocked by eliminating conventions and traditional barriers, and beyond that, think exponential  That segmenting the market by need, rather than size or segment, opens up new ways to create differentiation That to create momentum you have to exceed expectations, not meet expectations. So instead of delivering on-time on-budget, start delivering ahead of time, and ahead of budget. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation around seemingly ‘ignored’ areas of data, and my guest is Danny Goh.Danny is a serial entrepreneur and an early stage investor. He is the General Partner of G&H Ventures fund, which invests in early-stage start-ups primarily in Southeast Asia. G&H Ventures has invested in more than 20 portfolios in deep tech and is building its third fund to help start-ups into the growth stage.He has also co-founded Innovatube Frontier Labs (IFL), which later merged with Nexus. Innovatube is a technology group that operates an R&D lab in software and AI developments and acts as an incubator to foster the local start-up community in Southeast Asia. It has a team of researchers and engineers to develop cutting-edge deep technology to help start-ups and enterprises bolster their operational capabilities.Danny currently serves as an Entrepreneurship Expert at the Said Business School, University of Oxford and is also an appointed Fellow at the Center for Policy and Competitiveness at the École des Ponts Business School. He is an advisor and judge to several technology start-ups and accelerators including Microsoft Accelerator, Startupbootcamp IoT, and LBS Launchpad. Danny serves as a visiting lecturer at various universities in Europe and he is a speaker at various conferences including TEDx and World Economic Forum.Last but not least he’s the Founder and CEO of Nexus FrontierTech, an AI research firm that easily integrates AI into organisations’ processes by using natural language processing to transform idle information into structured data, enabling them to run better, leaner, and faster.And that promise intrigued me, hence I invited Danny to my podcast. We explore the enormous value opportunity that millions of organizations leave untouched around unstructured data simply because the ‘can’t manage it’. We also explore Danny’s vision on how the world is changing from an app-centric world into a skill-centric world and how that will influence the way we can create solutions going forward. Here are some of his quotes:One key area that has been helping clients the most, which is to actually help clients to manage their data in a better way.And the biggest problem is, they don't know how to manage those data. And when I say those data, they are like, maybe PDF, graphics, and so on. Those data are not really useful. And what we did, we created the engines, the machine learning engines, to read those documents, and then extract it out. And then human can use all their analytical skills and statistical models to create something out of it.The advantage that we give to them, is they’re one step ahead of their competitors.That to the client is unimaginable beforeThe efficiencies and the accuracies that we bring to them allows them to imagine a lot more. It allows them to create more business opportunities.When they have a new tool that suddenly upgrades their level to the next level, then suddenly they know they can go beyond their limits.During this interview, you will learn three things: That incredible innovation opportunity is often right in front of us, we are just too busy or too ignorant to see it How ‘skills’ will be the answer to making AI and Machine Learning more accessible and change the way we’re creating solutions  Why, in order to be successful, you have to stay persistent and remove the temptations to drift away from your vision See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This podcast interview focuses on a product innovation that has the power to radically change the way recruitment is done. My guest is Tulika Tripathi, Founder and CEO of Snaphunt.Tulika has been in the recruitment space for almost two decades and has worked across many countries. She’s worked as a Managing Director for Michael Page in Singapore where she was responsible for South East Asia. Later on, she took on the responsibility for Michael Page’s entry strategy into India as well as setting up and growing its Indian operations. In 2013 she took on the MD role at Hudson, where she led their recruitment business across Asia. And in February 2017 she founded Snaphunt.It was the big idea behind Snaphunt that triggered me, hence I invited Tulika to my podcast.We explore what’s broken in the recruitment industry and how that is slowing down complete sectors. We then discuss how, by taking a radically different approach to the problem, hiring cost can be reduced by up to 99% and hiring speed increased by at least 30% Here are some of her quotes:The best way to describe Snaphunt is this: Snaphunt is a specialist recruitment agency, with no human recruiter.What I realized over the course of my career is that recruitment hadn't changed much in the last 20 years.I just realized over time that there was a way to leverage technology to do the same thing in a much more effective way.I saw this trend, and I felt rather than trying to reshape an existing business model to meet this, there was a phenomenal opportunity to create a new category of recruiting solutions from scratch.I didn't want to be the person who said, I also had this idea a few years ago, but I didn't do it. So I've done it, because it needs to be made.So I'm disintermediated the whole thing.During this interview, you will learn three things: That by taking a platform approach you can deliver unexpected shifts in value for your customers. How elegance and simplicity always wins – and that this requires you to cut everything away that seems ‘cool’. Why you should be open to agree on the outcomes you want, rather than being fixed to how you think you are going to get there.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This podcast interview focuses on the power of entity resolution, and how this powerful technology has the ability to give any organization a competitive advantage. My guest is Jeff Jonas, Founder and CEO of Senzing.Jeff Jonas is an acclaimed data scientist. He is at the forefront of solving some of the world’s most complex business and big data problems for governments and organizations in a variety of industries. A former IBM fellow, Jeff is the leading creator of entity resolution systems. National Geographic recognized him as the Wizard of Big Data, and today numerous organizations rely on his systems to extract useful intelligence from tsunamis of data.He has tackled many high-profile challenges, including identifying potential terrorists, detecting fraudulent behavior in casinos, connecting loved ones after a natural disaster, and modernizing voter registration systems. Jeff is a three-time entrepreneur and sold his last company to IBM in 2005. Jonas is a highly sought-after speaker. He regularly meets with government leaders, industry executives and think tanks around the globe about innovation, national security and privacy.In 2016, Jonas founded Senzing, based on a one-of-a-kind IBM spinout of the G2 technology. His team and patent portfolio – and was founded on the vision to revolutionize and democratize entity resolution. The story behind Senzing inspired me, hence I invited Jeff to my podcast. In the podcast, we explore the power behind entity resolution as the fuel to create the most advanced fraud detection, scoring, recommendation or intelligence systems. We also address the need to democratize this type of technology, so that it can be of benefit to anyone anywhere. And last but not least, we address what’s required to create solutions that people want to tell others about. Here are some of Jeff’s notable quotes:“I became particularly focused, well really obsessed, with this thing called entity resolution, which is technology that figures out when two people are the same.It's a hard problem for folks, and when you can solve that well, you can solve all kinds of problems and create all kinds of competitive advantage.But if you look at these solutions, they primarily require experts to make them operate. They're pretty darn expensive, the good stuff’s at least a million.So, the big idea is to democratize that.Not just to help the big elite organizations understand who-is-who in their data, but what about the small nonprofit who just got duplicates in their Christmas mailing list? What about them?That's the big idea.If you can take 10 x out of the complexity of getting it going, then why not take 10 x out of the price? So, when you change simplicity that much, and you change cost that much, it opens the door to being able to democratize something.”During this interview, we hope you’ll learn these three things: Why you should sometimes bite the bullet to make the hard parts work in order to create real shifts in value That with today’s technology there’s a multitude of opportunities to democratize capabilities that up to now were only available to the elite  What the ingredients are to create the solutions that turn customers into evangelists See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation in the enterprise business software that has the power to turn average companies into disrupters in their category. My guest is Frederic Laluyaux, President and CEO of Aera Technology.He’s got more than 20 years of experience as a leader in the Enterprise Performance Management sector. Fred has built his career focusing on providing solutions that help organizations worldwide achieve financial and business excellence. Fred started his career in the area of CPM, otherwise known as Corporate Performance Management, leading ALG‘s global operations until it was acquired by Business Objects. When Business Object was acquired by SAP he acted as the SVP and GM for SAP Applications for EPM, GRC, and Finance Line of Business. He then became the President and CEO of Anaplan which he led for over 3 years.That’s where he joined Aera Technology.I got intrigued by the promise of Aera Technology – being the company building the cognitive technology enabling the Self-Driving Enterprise – hence I invited Fred to my podcast.We explore how a variety of industries around the world are being disrupted, and why many traditional business software solutions are not up to par anymore. We discuss why many businesses need a different breed of solutions to rethink everything they do in order to thrive, not just survive in their market.Here are some of his quotes:I remember writing this paper one night, I worked all night on what is the next big wave post transaction automation. So basically, the massive wave of globalization fueled by the relational database and the ERP layer.The next big idea is how do we tackle the big pyramid that sits on top of those ERP systems.The question that I was asking myself is: Why do companies grow so deep, so fat, when they grow big? How are our decisions being made?So I’ve been thinking about this for a long, long time, and really being convinced that the next topic would be delayerisation, organization getting flatter, more nuclear, as opposed to these big, rigid pyramids.For that you need to enable decisions to be closer to the point of impact. For that you need to enable people to measure in real time the impact of the decisions that they have to take. There is a whole logical flow.During this interview, you will learn three things: Why the way to survive as a business software vendor is to aim your product strategy at solutions that allow your customers to do things differently, rather than do the things that have not changed for decades a bit better. How solutions that are connected outside-and-in, always on, thinking, learning and autonomous in their behavior will create the winners of tomorrow To become remarkable as a software business you have to surround yourself with people that are not attached to the traditional way of doing See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help marketers become best in class in marketing, and my guest is Parry Malm, Co-founder and CEO of PhraseePhrasee uses AI to power email subject lines, Facebook and Instagram ads, and push notifications that outperform copy written by humans. Some of their global clients include Virgin, Domino’s, and The Times. Phrasee won 2017’s Most Innovative AI Company by CB Insights, and was one of the first AI companies in the world to implement an AI ethics policy.Parry is a well-known digital marketing dude and an unconventional thinker. He has worked with countless brands and media outlets to help them optimise their online results, and is one of the world’s leading experts on email marketing. He started his career coding middleware for CRM software, then sent out millions of emails for global brands, before running the strategy department for an ESP. He holds a BBA in Marketing & Statistics.It was indeed the unconventional approach Phrasee is putting across that triggered me, hence I invited Parry to my podcast. We explore how he and his team have created a new category, something that ‘experts’ in the market perceived to be impossible. We talk about how Phrasee’s solution is creating a win-win for digital marketers and the business they represent, and what was required to achieve the level of impact they are creating. Here are some of his quotes:To synthesize our big idea into one statement is, we believe that marketers can use technology to produce better copy than they had done previously.So what we have now is a very advanced deep learning system that can predict the efficacy of language before it's sent out. So, would you mind those two technologies, what you got is the most luminous copywriter on the planet who can create more copy then 1000 monkeys on 1000 typewriters, with the best predictor of effective copy in the world? What that means is our customers get a small amount of very effective copy every time they log into our platform.So, what we're actually doing is, we're alleviating the least favorite task, which humans are not well suited to, just because we get sort of desensitized or we just sort of get bored of doing the same thing over and over. So, we take away that burden, and we let humans focus on the copy that humans are good at.During this interview, you will learn three things: How, with the right mindset and persistence, you can do what’s never been done before and succeed Why it can be a blessing to finish second in a pitching contest – and as such have to hustle to win real customers and build a product which has wide appeal Why creating Human/Machine combo’s ultimately delivers more value than the sum of its components See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation in the Utility industry, and my guest is Abhay Gupta, CEO of Bidgely.Abhay founded Bidgely, with the mission of leveraging data to transform the utility industry. Today, Bidgely is very well positioned with the technology and knowhow to not only help the utility industry go to market quicker, but also how to optimize their customer engagements.As the CEO of Bidgely, Abhay has led the company from concept to market leadership. Prior to Bidgely, Abhay worked at a combination of energy and technology companies including Grid Net, Echelon and Sun Microsystems. He holds a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, a Master of Science from University of Southern California and M.B.A. from Santa Clara University.It was the big idea behind Bidgely and the fact some of their customers decided to mention it in their television campaigns that led me to invite Abhay to my podcast. We explore the challenges the utility industry is facing on three levels: Their infrastructure, their operation and their customers. We dive deep into the opportunity that’s ahead of us, and why this can only be solved with the support of the latest technologies. Here are some of his quotes:I ended up in product management and building smart meters for the energy industry somehow in my career. And we were building smart meters, we realized all this data that is produced by smart meters has so much potential. It's just not being used for its potential. So, we identified this opportunity to disrupt the decision-making process and the whole opportunity energy industry because if you look at the retail, internet, medical, any of the industry the data is used for so much and so much personalization. So much of value creation. The energy industry is lagging behind massively.The utility industry has not changed for decades. The primary business for most of the utilities in the world has been about how to keep the lights on, how to build power plants, how to keep the distribution and transmission of the energy correctly happening.This is the opportunity for the utility and energy industry to completely change and morph themselves into something, what I call at par with the Google and Amazon of the world.During this interview, you will learn three things: How a byproduct of your core innovation could end up giving your customer the ultimate point of differentiation How to make strategic decisions in situations where there are multiple solid routes to solving a problem How focusing on customer experience can result in radical cuts in internal operational cost at the same time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation in the marketing arena, and my guest is Paul Roetzer, Founder of the Marketing AI Institute. Paul Roetzer is also the founder and CEO of PR 20/20. He is the author of The Marketing Performance Blueprint and The Marketing Agency Blueprint, and creator of the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference (MAICON).Paul is an international keynote speaker on the topics marketing talent, technology, strategy and artificial intelligence. He’s a graduate of Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, and he has consulted for hundreds of organizations, from startups to Fortune 500 companies.I’ve been following Pauls work for a while and got triggered by his efforts to educate marketing professionals on what to anticipate now that AI is entering the marketing space. This is why I invited him to my podcast. We explore how the marketing space is changing due to the capabilities of AI, where the changes are most profound today. Based on that insight we discuss a range of approaches for Marketers to prepare themselves.Here are some of his quotes:I believe the industry is just going to transform like, nothing we've ever seen before.If you think about what email and mobile and the internet itself did, I truly believe AI is going to dwarf that.It's just going to transform everything in the next decade, and that includes career paths, and what we're teaching at university.The great irony of marketing automation is that it's manual. So if you're using a marketing automation platform, CRM platform, you as the humans set all the rules of what it does.When AI really gets into the picture and is infused in everything we do, it starts doing that.It starts learning and it never forgets.If you think about the ability we have now to manipulate behavior, to play with emotions, to use fear to trigger actions.And we're doing that with very basic level technology.Now, when that technology is 10 times more powerful or 100 times more powerful, there's very real concerns that you use those tools to do evil instead of good, and it might not be intentional. It could spiral out of control.During this interview, you will learn three things: Why we have to be more pro-active in understanding the impact of AI on our jobs and the impact we can make on the business That every marketeer can benefit from AI today, and it’s our responsibility to explore those opportunities That as an industry we have to drive the conversation to steer the effect AI could or should have on jobs, education and the humanization of our brands See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.