Sam Talks Technology

SPEAKER SUMMARY Katz Kiely’s is the CEO and founder of Beep, a behavioural empowerment platform. She’s also responsible to kickstarting and bootstrapping a marvellous initiative called Frontline.Live. Frontline.Live is the first national open data rapid response platform - designed to get health care workers the PPE they need when they need it. It collects, aggregates and visualises live data so suppliers can respond to their needs quickly. How to help with Frontline.Live 1. - For health care workers Tweet a selfie with the three hashtags: #frontlinemap #workpostcode #PPEneed and they’ll be put on the map. 2. - For suppliers Suppliers of PPE sign up by completing the PPE suppliers’ form at frontline.live.

We talk about Hopin:- becoming a double unicorn worth $2.1bn in less than 18 months- hiring 800 people at 40 new people per week- the StreamYard acquisition and integration- the potential threat of Clubhouse if any?On 3rd February Johnny Boufarhat and Geige Vandentop will host a Hopin event for free to discuss the acquisition and their plans for Hopin 2021.Join here: https://hopin.com/events/hopin-2021-kickoff

Give Back Box® was founded in 2012 by Monika Wiela, who at the time was running an online shoe store. The idea was inspired by a homeless man she encountered in Chicago, who was holding up a sign saying he needed a pair of shoes. Wiela returned later that day with shoes for him, but he was gone. She spent that night thinking about what she could do with all the empty boxes in her warehouse and also help people like that man, and a new social enterprise was born. As Wiela researched further, she learned that, an estimated 11 million tons of clothing, footwear, towels, bedding, drapery, and other textiles end up in U.S. landfills every year. In addition, online shopping is now the preferred method for much of the buying public. Corrugated boxes are the dominant packaging method for e-commerce. With this knowledge, Wiela’s mission crystallized. If online retailers would use Give Back Box, shipping boxes and other items could be used a second time prior to being recycled. The impact would be remarkable. Give Back Box® has also teamed up with some of the biggest retailers in the U.S., including Overstock, Amazon, Loft, REI, Levi’s, Asics, Ann Taylor, LEGO, Nordstrom, Viva Terra, Ecru, Bonobos, Scrubs & Beyond, eBags, Lou & Grey and many others. The Give Back Box platform is open for any retailer who joins as a partner. Give Back Box has truly created a new method of waste diversion for retailers because, in addition to creating a secondary use for the shipping box and guaranteeing that it will be recycled, it helps clear closets, create jobs and offer more companies and their customers an opportunity to recycle.

There is a need for a new kind of leadership; one that bleeds personality and rings true to employees and customers alike who crave authenticity. You Lead argues that business leaders deliver superior results, communities of engagement both inside and outside of the company and true values-driven success when they are themselves and come across as genuine. Bestselling author, Minter Dial, shows readers how embracing your whole self at work encourages people to also be themselves, seek true fulfilment at work and merge the personal and professional to become true examples of what you stand for. You Lead is a call to arms to leaders to stop pretending to be who they are not, and play on their uniqueness and strengths, to allow people to do the same and develop a culture of authenticity and purpose. With practical advice, real-life stories and a simple framework, this book shows you how you can: - Be yourself, lead by example and merge the professional and personal - Stand for something and allow people to develop true purpose at work - Allow a community to flourish through the right kind of governance model - Radiate your purpose through employees and customers alike for long-term performance

Sam and Bhushan talked about the future of work and how PwC along with their clients have managed through the covid crisis and more importantly what they plan to do in 2021.We talked about how Bhushan sees 2021 as a more hybrid workplace with employees returning back to the office cautiously but only a few days a week. We also talked about how schools and universities will also adopt more online technologies for distance learning and offer hybrid schooling.Finally we ended up talking about our shared experiences of growing up in 1980’s Britain which was racist, sexist and homophobic but how much that has changed through BLM albeit Brexit and Trump have emboldened those racists once again.

Charlie Cadbury is the Chief Executive Officer of Say It Now, the award-winning voice technology company, who have teamed up with digital advertising exchange DAX to enable people to respond directly to radio advertisements using their smart speaker and only voice commands to donate to their chosen charity.

Sam and Faisal talked about his recent tenure as CEO of Blippar. Why now is the right time for an Augmented Reality (AR) rebirth and what are his expansion plans globally for Blippar.We also talked about his amazing career from the early days in Ofcom and his role in the Premier League football rights. Working with Niklas Zennström and a young Daniel Elk at Skype on their proprietary Peer to Peer platform called Jolted, before he joined Daniel at Spotify as International .Faisal also gave a surprise answer to my suggestion that Spotify and Netflix need to merge to compete with Apple and Amazon.UPDATEShortly after this interview Blippar’s AR platform was used to deliver the world’s first product launch event entirely in AR for OnePlus; the latest smartphone from premium technology brand OnePlus.

Sam talked with Mukul about how this very early beta project fits into the wider BBC strategy across multiple services to act as a trusted public service voice assistant to the vast array of content on TV, Radio and Sounds (podcasts), be it local, national or international.Mukul also talks about why Beeb today is a northern male and like Dr Who is genderless and could regenerate into a female voice in the future.We also talked about why Beeb is not going to compete with Alexa or Google but how the BBC plan to partner with a wide variety of companies to extend the role and reach of Beeb.

Sam Sethi had the pleasure to interview Martin Steers the station manager at NLive Radio and Chair of Community Radio Awards.We talked about how NLive is continuing to run their station through COVID and what software Martin is using to enable remote broadcasting.We talked. about the upcoming Community Radio Awards and what has changed and whether there will be an awards ceremony later this year.We also talked about the newly formed UK Community Radio Network that Martin has formed with a number of station managers across the UK to lobby government on our collective behalf.We ended up talking about some of the hot topics in radio. Bauer making 260 presenters redundant this September and what that means for local radio. Will DAB+ ever come to community radio and finally are podcasting and streaming services a challenge to radio audiences?

Sam talks with Nigel Eccles about his new company Flick. A companion app for sports fans who want to watch a game while chatting online with likeminded fans and friends.Nigel talks about how Flick has raised £4m and was growing nicely until Covid-19 put a stop to all live sports. He believes Flick will return to growth once live sports like football return. In fact with stadium bans it could see ever greater demand for Flick as fans try to recreate the stadium atmosphere while at home.Prior to Flick, Nigel, his wife and three engineers started Hubdub that soon pivoted into FanDuel. Nigel recalls how a WebMission to Silicon Valley in 2008 helped Fanduel grow. Some of the other companies that joined them included edocr, huddle, skimlinks, mydeo, WAYN and TrustedPlaces.Nigel talks about how FanDuel went on to raise $450m+ and experienced hyper-growth in customer acquisition. Sadly the story did not end up with Nigel and his wife growing a Unicorn, selling it and riding off into the sunset. Nigel talks at length about how the Private Equity company engineered to remove him, the executive team and all the staff who held ordinary shares from benefiting from their growth and success. In fact they ended up with zero while the board that consisted of the PE Equity partners engineered it to make themselves millions.The story does not end there. Nigel and 90 of his original staff have filed a class action suit against the PE company. We await the outcome.

Sam talks with Jay LeBoeuf about Descript’s latest version 3.4 which now includes live transcription, overdub and publishing to the web.  This is on top of its already powerful realtime audio and text synchronised editing.

Sam Sethi talks with Tommy Nagra about the BBC Big Night In and how in less than three weeks it managed to put on a live show that raised £70m. We talk about how Tommy started in the BBC and how he helped discover comedians like Sanjeev Bhaskar. Both Tommy and I are Liverpool FC “Superfans” and we talk about our passion for the reds and why so many Asians and people of colour support Liverpool more than any other team. Tommy was also at Hillsborough and we touch on the events of that momentous day. We finally discussed the modern day role of the BBC in term sof its diversity and in light of the competition from Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Sam Sethi talks with James Minter about the story of his club, Adam Street in London which not been told.James is as self-effacing as he is charming, recounting with warmth the role it played in the dotcom boom.“Adam Street was absolutely amazing,” he recalls. “It was a first, unique, and I met the most wonderful bunch of people there. No one has ever directly copied it.”Now sadly defunct, the venue off The Strand – with its bar, restaurant, library, gallery, and event space – became the go-to place for London’s tech entrepreneurs as they rallied after the bubble burst.Originally established as serviced offices by James after a career in the navy, Adam Street became a magnet for dotcom start-ups with few assets and little capital. The club itself opened in 2001 in an old watering hole for actors propping up the building.What would become the first entrepreneurs’ club in London was seeded when James noted the then itinerant nature of Julie Meyer’s First Tuesday networking club.“Back in those days it was still the case that if you went into a club you weren’t allowed to talk about business – it was not done and was meant to be a subtle under-the-radar thing,” he explains. “So I thought you have got all these people together, First Tuesday moving from venue to venue, why isn’t there a fixed place where entrepreneurs hang out?”These were the heady days of a gold rush.Nonetheless, like all roller-coaster rides, the dotcom era was marked as much by the founding as by the spectacular failure of new internet-based companies, with the Lastminute.com IPO in 2000 signalling the bursting of the bubble.“By the time we opened the club in 2001 it wasn’t such an auspicious time. It wasn’t really until 2003 that we got up to about 1,000 members, but by then a number of characters had helped gather together the bomb-burst and we had a whole layer of true entrepreneurs who came back together after the dotcom highs and lows to rebuild the tech community.”These included such characters as Michael Acton Smith, creator of Moshi Monsters; Mike Butcher of TechCrunch, who introduced James to the term “podcast”; and Richard Duvall, the man behind the first internet bank, Egg, and co-founder of peer-to-peer pioneer Zopa.The key to the club’s success was ambience shaped by an enthusiastic staff helping to select the right members in a niche that morphed from a shared workspace during the day into a nightclub for hothousing ideas at night.“There was no music during the day, but at about 5.30 we put on a little bit – and by 10.30 people were dancing on the tables. I also like to think that we introduced the espresso martini into the London cocktail scene!”Adam Street’s glory days lasted until 2008, but faded amid the global financial meltdown and the migration of tech entrepreneurs to Silicon Roundabout in East London. At that time James also had music on the mind, reopening Notting Hill’s famous Tabernacle.Although it played host to battalions of iconic digital pioneers, James believes Adam Street was not just about tech – but primarily about entrepreneurship and making connections, a skill he has taken to the digital leadership experts Hannington Tame.

Gustaf is the 'Inventor of the Vagus ECG Test'. He describes himself as a curious, open-minded brain-explorer, engineer and serial entrepreneur. For more than 25 years he has successfully started, run and exited more than ten companies globally. After the 2008 financial crisis, he had a burn-out. He says that Vagus stimulation and Vipassana meditation 'saved' his brain from self-destruction. Gustaf’s passion is to help others with his inventions for biodata collection and vagus stimulation. “I want to help people to better deal with bad stress, balance the autonomic nervous system and improve the immune response. We use my inventions - the Vagus ECG smartwatch and vagus stimulation devices to diagnose and treat immune system dysfunctions, stress and anxiety. In 2020 his company started selling our Vagus ECG smartwatch and now it is expanding research to Coronavirus early detection and disease progress. In 2021 they will launch a wellness Vagus Stimulation Device.

Formed as a Slack group on March 16th by a couple of ex-colleagues, the code4covid community now counts over 700 tech volunteers: and with other groups joining in, it keeps growing! The team's mission is to find technology solutions to help people during the COVID-19 crisis: we believe that technology can minimise the disruption caused by the pandemic and ultimately save lives.

Sam Sethi talks with Sarah Frier about why she wrote the book, how Kevin Systrom and Mark Zuckerberg clashed from the start and eventually what led to Kevin leaving instagram.  We also talk about the threats to Facebook from Snapchat, Tiktok and Instagram. 

Minter Dial serves as a keynote speaker, conference animator and consultant on branding, leadership and transformation for blue-chip companies, conferences and events around the world. Minter is an author and filmmaker of award-winning "The Last Ring Home" (Nov 2016). Co-author of the award-winning "Futureproof, How to get your Business Ready for the Next Disruption" (Pearson, Sep 2017). His latest book is “Heartificial Empathy, Putting Heart into Business and Artificial Intelligence” (Dec 2018) won the Book Excellence Award 2019 in the category of Technology and was a finalist for the Business Book Awards 2019. ---- Andrew Grill is a commercially focussed Digital Leader and trusted Board Technology Advisor, who delivers strategic digital transformation programs and has delivered $100M+ of new business across multiple industries globally. Over a 4-year period, Andrew influenced around $100M of sales via his external eminence and thought leadership with key IBM clients. He is recognised by his peers and clients as able to uniquely communicate the need for digital transformation and provide strategic leadership to any C-Suite or Board. Andrew is also a popular and sought-after presenter and commentator on issues around digital disruption, social selling, workplace of the future and digital diversity. He consults to organisations worldwide to develop their strategy in a world rife with digital disruption. An experienced corporate leader, Andrew has launched and run technology companies in Europe and Australia and worked with and for some of the world’s leading companies including IBM, Vodafone, Telstra, Nestle, BBC, American Express, John Lewis, and Unilever. He is also a seasoned TEDx speaker, having presented at 5 separate TEDx events. Andrew’s first-hand experience of the digital world and the power of social media networks spans three decades and can be traced back to the early 1980s when he found himself online via bulletin board and email. His passion and involvement in the digital world continued into later life, launching Australia’s largest commercial property website, PropertyLook, and Australian location technology company Seeker Wireless to the world stage.

Nick Dalton is the Executive Vice President, HR for Unilever. He has been in HR for over 30 years, working globally, regionally, and locally. He has also worked in all areas of HR, from leading international negotiations with trade unions to managing senior leadership development and enabling organisational change.

Sam Sethi talks with Rory Sutherland 

Sam Sethi talks with James Mulvany about how to get started quickly with podcasting.  We then talk about some of the challenges of recording, distributing and discovering a new podcast before we finally look into the future of podcasting. Google have started to auto-transcribe and index podcasts making them easier to discover.  The next challenge could well be Podcast SEO.  We also talked about the different ways podcasts can be monetised.   

Stephen Pankhurst was the co-founder of Friends Reunited along with his wife Julie. In 1999, Stephen’s wife Julie, was pregnant with their first child. She had just used the internet to track down her long lost Grandfather that she had never seen. Realising the power of the internet, and a desire to find out what some of her old school friends were up to, she came up with the idea of FriendsReunited, exploiting a gap in the UK market following the success of US website Classmates.com. Friends Reunited was officially launched in June 2000. The very first version of the site looked pretty horrible. Stephen was not a graphic designer, so he just knocked together anything. However, the functionality worked and very soon they started to get people coming to the site and registering themselves against schools. Nine months later, after a redesign, some hard work, lots of extra features, encouragement from users and the odd mention or two in the press, things started to get interesting. By the end of the year, it had 3,000 members, and a year later (2001) this had increased to 2.5 million. By December 2005, Friends Reunited had over 15 million members and was bought by British TV company ITV plc for £120 million ($208 million), plus further payments of up to £55 million based on its performance up to 2009. In 2007, ITV Chairman Michael Grade described the site as "the sweet spot" of the internet and stated that "Friends Reunited is one of the great undersung jewels in the crown ... one of the most important bits of ITV going forward, a massive presence, and profitable" That year the site made a profit of £22 million, but its market valuation had fallen sharply from the £120 million paid by ITV in 2005 and it achieved growth in UK traffic of only 1.2%, compared to Facebook's 2,393% and Bebo's 173%. In March 2008, after losing 47% of unique users in the previous 12 months, the site dropped the subscription fee required to contact members, but the decline continued. In 2009, Friends Reunited was sold for £25 million to Brightsolid Limited. By December 2011, Brightsolid estimated that Friends Reunited was worth only £5.2 million, a fifth of the price it paid to ITV two years previously. The company relaunched Friends Reunited in March 2012 with a new emphasis on nostalgia and memories. On January 2016, Friends Reunited revealed that it would be closing down the website after 16 years of operation. On February 2016 the site closed down.

Sam Sethi talked to Sháá Wasmund about where her name originated from and how she managed to work for Chris Eubank, Sir James Dyson, Sir Bob Geldof all before she was 30.We talked about how she turned down £45m by not working for Michael Birch and that surprisingly isn’t her biggest regret.We also talked about her current role as an online educator helping small business owners via her Facebook groups ‘Freedom Collective’ & ‘The 6 Figure Expert Club’.We finally talked about why Sháá joins other people’s masterminds in order to help herself grow.

Sam Sethi talks with Dr Alasdair Pinkerton and co-host Matt Hodges-Long about the recent UK general election where Alasdair stood in Surrey Heath as the PPC (Parliamentary Prospective Candidate) for the Liberal Democrats.Despite losing to Mr Gove, they managed to use social media to crowdfund £25k and increased the LibDem vote by 16%.We talked about the potential negative effect social media will have in the 2020 US election now that Mark Zuckerberg has decided not to fact check political ads.We also talked about the potential scenarios in a post-brexit Boris world given Alasdair’s PhD research work on ‘Global Britain’.

Sam Sethi talks with Dan Wagner about his three startups MAID, Venda and Rezolve. We talked about how he started MAID in 1984, when he was only 20 before the web and search engines really existed. How he came to be the youngest CEO of Brightstation PLC which was listed on the London Stock Exchange.Dan talks about the struggles at the end of MAID with the dotcom crash before he sold it to Thomson Reuters.Dan being a serial entrepreneur was soon onto his next business called Venda but this was eventually sold to Netsuite.Dan took the core Venda technology to start Powa Technologies, "the Shaazam" for shopping. Powa Technologies, was praised by David Cameron and hailed as a British “unicorn”. Unfortunately it ended badly for Dan with investors and directors.Dan dusted himself down and has now launched Rezolve. 

Andy McLoughlin is a partner at Uncork Capital in San Francisco, focusing on B2B software opportunities. Uncork Capital is a seed-stage venture firm that commits early, helps with the hard stuff, and sticks around. Really. Andy's investments include LaunchDarkly, Coder, Crossbeam, Focal Systems, Human Interest, Pattern (acquired by Workday), Test.ai, Simplify, Fountain, GreatHorn, Bigfinite, and Identify3D, as well as a number of companies still in stealth. Andy was previously a prolific seed investor into many well-known startups. Postmates, Buffer, Intercom, Pipedrive, Hullabalu, RolePoint, Tray.io, Bugsnag, Thread, Calm, Secret Escapes, Apiary (acquired by Oracle), Import.io, Zesty (acquired by Square), Marvel, Cloud66 and more. Prior to becoming an investor, Andy is best know for co-founding Huddle with Alastair Mitchell. Andy had many roles at Huddle over the years - Head of Technology, Head of Product, Head of Marketing, Head of Strategy / Business Development, GM North America - but he was most passionate about building a great team and a great product. Andy stepped back from his executive role in 2015 but remained on the board of directors until the company's acquisition in 2017, when it was eventually sold to private equity for $89m in August 2017. That sum is far less than Huddle's reported peak valuation of up to $300M when it snagged a $51 million Series D funding round in 2014.

Sam Sethi talked with Paul Fabretti about how Microsoft's culture has changed since I worked for them back in the 90's. The insular Microsoft of Gates and Balmer, focused on Office and Windows, that I worked for has been replaced by a more open Microsoft focused on Azure and Open Source.But how did this come about? Paul and I talk about the impact of Satya Nadella on the companies new culture and focus.Paul and I first crossed paths over ten years ago when he was based here in the UK working for O2. Today Paul is based in Seattle working closely with Kate Johnson, President of Microsoft USA and the executive team. 

Sam Sethi and Cary Marsh have been friends for over a decade. We first met when Cary was CEO of Mydeo and online video hosting company. In this podcast we talked about Cary's two successful kickstarter projects - Bootclaw and My Flipping World. Cary explains why she prefers to raise funds via crowdfunding instead of through more traditional Angel or VC routes having had such a harrowing time raising funds for Mydeo.Cary also talks us through how she had the idea and more importantly how she went about getting the product to market.Cary's degree in engineering from Nottingham University was 20 years ago, however there are still so few women engineers. We discussed why that is and what can be done to encourage more women.In the future Cary would like to launch more tangible products through Punchfront Innovation via kickstarter.

Jeevan was visiting my good friend Manoj Ranaweera, who runs Techelerate Ventures in Manchester.  We spoke about Jeevan's entrepreneurial journey and his entrepreneurial grandfather. Jeevan talked about the first companies he started.  He started a cab driving company while at University with friends in America. He moved back to Sri Lanka and with his brother tried to start and e-commerce company but that failed due to the Sri Lankan infrastructure and market not being mature.  Like all good entrepreneurs he pivoted to a successful idea of running Orion City, Sri Lanka’s first operational IT Park to build the infrastructure needed to help other startups.  He soon opened Hatch, Sri Lanka's largest co-working/incubator/accelerator space. Today he also runs Veracity AI an specialist outsourced company that helps other companies build their own AI solution.  He has come over to Manchester to partner with Techcelerate Ventures who work with Founding and Management Teams of Technology Product Companies to accelerate their growth and eventually reach an EXIT, including helping them with product development, customer acquisition, strategy, positioning, fundraising and M&A backed by know-how, data, tools and insights.  

Tony has been a friend for over two decades.  In this podcast we talked about the problem with immutable data and blockchain and the benefits of the Chinese Social Score and why this is all our futures.  Tony also explained why he thinks 'data is not the new oil to mine.  And finally we talked about companies having to deal with so much data that there is a board level need to manage the data, the value and also take responsibility for protecting it from leaks.  

Dan and I first met in 2013 when he launched Grabble and I was running Bagzee, my own real-time price tracking fashion startup.   In this podcast we talked about why he has started a new smart multi-vitamin, how he formed such an impressive team including Dr Tara Swart, Chief Science Officer and Alain De Botton, Philosopher, Writer, Entrepreneur.   Heights is a DNVB (Digital Native Vertical Brand) that sells directly to the consumer.  At present the site is still in beta which means only invited customers can buy the smart multi-vitamin.  Thankfully listeners to this podcast can access the online store and buy their subscription by using the code "Marlow"We also talked about why Grabble which raised nearly £2m didn't succeed.  Finally we talked about the future for Heights and how Dan hopes to evolve Heights to offer multiple different vitamin products to address different age groups.  Eventually Dan hopes that Heights will be able to offer total personalised vitamins specific to each individual.   

Chis and I go back nearly two decades.  We first met when Chris kindly invited me to a charity dinner for Comic Relief.  In this podcast we talked about his new book "Less Perfect, More Happy. - how to overcome perfectionism". Perfectionism now has a name for this mental health issue. It's called Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) a personality disorder that's characterised by extreme perfectionism, order, and neatness. People with OCPD will also feel a severe need to impose their own standards on their outside environment.  Sufferers like Chris were unaware that he had OCPD but had this need for perfectionism which caused him great angst throughout his childhood, all the way into adulthood were it took a toll on his marriage and relationship with his children.  "The feeling of not being ‘good enough’ dictated almost my entire life." - Chris WardThis book is about raising the awareness of perfectionism and highlighting the disorder OCPD.  Chris tells the story of his struggle with perfectionism throughout his life in chapters starting aged 4 all the way through to 57. At the end of the book Chirs details out his 12 step guide on "How to overcome perfectionism How to enjoy a less perfect, more happy world".  He has also created an online website https://friendfulness.com/

Sam talked with Walid about why companies are using private/enterprise blockchains and how these projects are moving from proof of concepts through to commercial rollouts.We also talked about the future of blockchains along with some of the challenges holding back the wider adoption of blockchains.

Daniel and I have known each other for over a decade. We first met when he was the Web & Internet Evangelist for Vodafone.We talked about Sir Tim's recent BBC Reith interview and Tim's new Contract for the Web.Today the web is being fragmented by countries like Russia, China and Iran to name but a few countries limiting their citizens access to stop free speech. Fake News is rife everywhere and our privacy is rapidly eroding as our permission on our data is centrally controlled.Sir Tim Berners-Lee's vision for the 'permissionless' one web space 30 years ago is in danger of crumbling under the weight of the behemoth centralised control of the GAFA's (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) and BAT's (Bidu, Alibaba and TenCent) who want to control all of our personal data for their profit.Daniel and I talked about these challenges but also the new Web 3.0 technologies like Blockchain, AI and DNS-SEC that is making the web decentralised, ethical, open, free and secure. 

Ali and I talked about what EQT Ventures look for when investing in companies.  They like to make big bets on companies and back them with significant funding.  They look for companies with teams that are led by entrepreneurs that build and code the product themselves.  i.e Bet Big or Go HomeUnlike many overly cautious European VC's who focus on short-term revenues, EQT prefer to bet big and dominate a market, a strategy based on Peter Thiel's model in his book from zero to one. European VC's are finally cottoning onto this model as US VC's enter the European market to compete for the talented startups. EQT also have a hidden secret called the MotherBrain.  An AI piece of software written in house that helps them discover and evaluate new companies across a broad spectrum of industries.  We also talked about his former company Huddle which is what brought him from the UK out to San Francisco.  

Sam Sethi talked with Ralph Cochrane about the future of video creation and consumption.Ralph and I first met some 13 years ago when he was at BT.However, that was a lifetime ago and since then Ralph has become an award-winning video creator and documentary producer who flies all around the world, living as a digital nomad, filming and/or live streaming video content for his corporate clients.I'm part of the "digital nomad" craze so I'll be heading back to Dubai and Oman at the weekend for filming and then editing with some diving thrown in.In the past year, he has filmed in Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, USA, Rwanda, Russia, China, The Middle East and across Europe.Ralph started experimenting with mobile video back in 2007, just before the iPhone was launched and his first post-big BT job was to launch a mobile phone festival with Sundance Film Festival at Mobile World Congress.Ralph is currently working on his first documentary about a kitchen fitter who teaches himself to play drums and ends up headlining Glastonbury. Working title: Impossible Drummer.Ralph has also recently started a "snack-sized video news" channel called Videosnax on Facebook.

Sam Sethi and  Martin Bryant discussed the future of journalism, podcasting paywalls, subscriptions, libra payments and fakenews.It's clear more and more newspapers are moving to paywalls to replace their dwindling ad-revenue. Is the freemium model dead? Will bloggers and podcasters follow suit as they look to monetise their content.We also discussed the recent launch of Facebook News. Having failed with Instant Articles before, will Facebook News succeed or be just another tab on Facebook wall that no one reads. Facebook News joins a growing band of news aggregation portals recently launched including Apple News+ and Amazon News on their FireTV. We also discussed the challenge of fake news and if there was anyway to prevent it.

Sam Sethi talked with Daniel Snell about the many things we have in common. We have our love for rugby, wine, running marathons and Taekwondo (both being black belts).We also have numerous mutual friends and estranged acquaintances but oddly we had never met before.We talked about Daniel's work on diversity and inclusion over the past 15 years which was truly inspirational.We also discussed why companies need to focus on the "diversity dividend" to remain competitive.We didn’t talk about our difference in height!

Sam Sethi talked with Julien Genestoux about some of the current unhealthy business models that exist today, especially those that rely on advertising for monetisation i.e Facebook or act as gatekeepers for data distribution. i.e AppleJulien talked about how Web 3.0 needs to evolve towards 'Decentralised Autonomous Organisations' and how blockchain, ethereum wallets, smart contracts and the unlock protocol can make this new business model a reality.This was a great interview about the future of the web from a true pioneer. As Alvin Toffler said "The only way you can predict the future is to build it. ... " well that is exactly what Julien is doing.All I can say is listen and learn because this is how the web will be built and function in less than a decade and forewarned is forearmed.

Sam Sethi talked with Hannah Power about what is personal branding and do we all need it?How do we go about achieving it using the 6 step process to build a personal brand?ClarityCustomerCommunicationContentChannelsConnectCollateral

Sam Sethi talked with Charles Cadbury about the development of their Alexa skill but also we talked about other Alexa features such In-Skill Purchasing (ISP), Alexa Presentation Language (APL) and name skill intent along with the challenges of internationalisation, privacy, voice SEO and developer skill monetisation.The Skill'Book it Now' allows users to search for and book recommended local services using only their voice.Our vision is to enable thousands of local businesses to be bookable via Alexa, which will be available for people to use wherever they are. - Charlie CadburyAlexa cup:Launched by Amazon in 2019 the annual Alexa Cup is a global competition designed to encourage the development of Alexa Skills (voice apps) that solve real-world problems in a way that enhances customer experience while also being commercially viable.

Sam Sethi talked with Jamie Riddell about some of his recent investments in startups and his personal goals, as well as how he sees the future of technology evolving from online advertising through to new digital currencies like Facebook's Libra.

Sam Sethi talked with Alan Watkins about the future of work, the future of leadership, the future of economics & politics as well as the future of democracy.We also talked about Alan’s next three books, his three degrees and his work with the Olympic teams.

Sam Sethi talked with Tiffany St James about digital transformation, open data in government and her new side project the Consultancy Club.