The Tech Blog Writer Podcast

A recent Gartner survey revealed that nearly 80% of workers are using collaboration tools for work in 2021, up from just over half of workers in 2019. While many organizations relied on productivity platforms before the pandemic, the emergence of remote and hybrid work models has proven just how vital an all-in-one solution is to maintain workplace collaboration and efficiency. ClickUp, the world's first productivity platform, recently announced they raised $400 million in Series C funding -- the largest funding round to date in the workplace productivity market. This funding puts ClickUp at a $4 billion valuation, which will be used to support the creation of 600 European jobs, a regional European HQ, and a new development center. ClickUp's unique offering in the market has fueled their success as one of the fastest-growing SaaS startups in the world -- ClickUp is the only solution that replaces all individual workplace productivity tools within a single, unified platform. In less than 18 months, the company has raised $535 million in funding ($35M Series A in June 2020; $135M Series B in December 2020.) In the last year, the company has tripled its revenue and grown its user base from 200,000 to 800,000 teams worldwide and has more than 85,000 paying customers, including teams at McDonald's, Booking.com, and Netflix to name a few. Zeb Evans, ClickUp founder, shares how he has taken ClickUp from a 50-person Series A startup to a $4 billion-dollar company.

Before launching this daily tech podcast and writing about technology, I was an IT guy. So I was the first port of call for any problems with Finance applications and upgrades to applications like SAGE in a corporate environment. The shift to digital-first accounting is seen as imperative by nearly all accountants – with new Sage research showing 99% of accountants are using some form of digital accounting. Fast forward six years, and I will be talking to SAGE about their new product that accountants design for accountants, 'and it's called Sage for Accountants. It's a practice management suite that provides client onboarding, connected client management, productivity tools, data collection and intelligent reporting, bookkeeping, payroll, and compliance. The product applies to general practices of all sizes. Chris Downing, Director of Product Marketing, Sage & Gerty Bester, Director of Product Marketing, Sage, join me on Tech Talks Daily to share their stories. They are both former chartered accountants. They will be discussing why they've invested so much time and resource into this new product, how they involved their customers in its development and how it can help accountants meet practical demands in a challenging marketplace. Designed by accountants for accountants, I learn how Sage for Accountants is removing the friction from practice management by providing onboarding, connected client management, and productivity tools, truly digitized data collection and intelligent reporting, bookkeeping, payroll, and compliance. We also discuss how by digitising business processes and relationships with customers, suppliers, employees, banks, and governments, the SAGE digital network connects SMBs, removes friction, and delivers insights. Knocking down barriers also means using our time, technology, and experience to tackle digital inequality, economic inequality, and climate crises.

With the announcement of the UK publishing its first AI Strategy - a ten-year plan fit to make the UK an AI Superpower - it will be to businesses' detriment to not capitalize on the power of AI and automation. However, with this rapid shift towards automation, one of the primary areas of value is often overlooked — enabling humans to focus on what matters and strategically control the acceleration. Romain Picard, Vice President EMEA, of the recently acquired multi-billion-dollar enterprise data cloud company Cloudera, believes in a world dominated by robots, chatbots, drones, and other machine learning and artificial intelligence-powered technologies, the power of human touch is still relevant. Romain joins me on Tech Talks Daily to share his insight on why acceleration shouldn't run rampant without control. We also discuss how it is essential that, alongside automation, we form bold strategies that keep our focus on what's essential — human ingenuity. Finally, we talk about the ability automation provides for teams to bring their A-Game more, increase productivity and growth. Maybe now is the time for businesses to reimagine their culture to one that uses automation to its fullest value and celebrates human capabilities at their best

Over the last two years, the lockdowns have seen adults flirt with burnout as they now find themselves permanently tethered to their office. Children have also experienced stress with masks in schools, being socially distanced from their friends, etc. However, in a world where people of all ages are feeling stressed, I invited Liam Joe Blackwood from Stressbox on the podcast to discuss how technology contributes to stress and how it can also help relieve it. I learn how StressBox provides a psychological assessment and treatment service for individuals experiencing stress, anxiety, and other related difficulties.

In 2022 (and beyond), personalization is more important than ever. There is no room for broad, generalized marketing. Instead, customers crave and expect personalized experiences that subtly enable them to discover and find products they actually want. Data science is a powerful way to take personalization to the next level. However, it's not always readily accessible or actionable without engineers or data scientists. Breinif is a personalization platform on a mission to democratize data science by finding ways to make predictive capabilities accessible to non-technical, yet data-driven marketing teams. Breinify's AI solution enables enterprise marketers to deliver predictive personalization in real-time and build more meaningful customer experiences. The platform blends traditional machine learning with temporal AI to predict a consumer's future interests, needs, and behaviors. The algorithms enable dynamic segmentation and fully individualized personalization, which minimizes the manual involvement required from marketing and tech teams while producing top-tier results. As a result, customers such as BevMo!, Duraflame, Nike, and Petsmart have experienced astronomical ROI, including millions in the new revenue and significant increases in CRM growth using the company's platform. Diane Keng, co-founder, and CEO of Breinify, talks about democratizing data science, predictive personalization, and trends in this space to watch out for in 2022.

RackN Digital Rebar standardizes the full lifecycle management of your infrastructure, mitigating risk and taming automation helping you innovate faster. Rob Hirschfeld founder RackN, an Austin-based start-up that develops software to help automate data centres joins me on Tech Talks Daily. Rob has been in the cloud and infrastructure space for nearly 15 years and has done everything from working with early ESX betas to serving four terms on the OpenStack Foundation Board. Rob believes that the technology of running data centers and applications on cloud is just part of the bigger story. We discuss why Rob believes developers often develop infrastructure incorrectly and why he is a strong advocate for lean/agile processes. We also talk about the increasing focus on automation, the impact of open-source software, and its emphasis on agility and fast decision-making.

Organizations infected with the Conti ransomware affiliate programs malware who refuse to negotiate a ransom payment are added to Conti's victim-shaming blog, where confidential files stolen from victims may be published or sold. But, sometime over the last 48 hours, US security expert Brian Krebs has reported that the cybercriminal syndicate has updated its victim-shaming blog to indicate that it is now selling access to many of the organizations it has hacked: Ilia Kolochenko, Founder of ImmuniWeb and a member of Europol Data Protection Experts Network, joins me on Tech Talks Daily to discuss why this new marketplace indicates that well-organized cybercriminals are not afraid of law enforcement agencies anymore. We also talk about how criminals create mature, agile, and multistakeholder ecosystems similar to legitimate businesses and how cybercriminals are creating online subscriptions, free trials, and discount systems for recurrent customers to maximize their profits. Finally, we explore the most significant challenges and what global governments must do to combat the issue or risk losing the battle to cybercrime.

Altruist is on a mission to make independent financial advice better, more affordable, and accessible. The company has built an all-in-one platform that reduces barriers for financial advisors to deliver great advice. As a result, advisors using Altruist can work more efficiently and substantially lower operating costs, enabling them to grow on their terms and help more people. Adam Grealish offers an overview of the state of the financial advising industry and why there's a time and place for Robo advisors. But there's a growing need for human financial advice too. About Adam Adam Grealish's career is rooted in financial innovation. Through his work (formerly at Betterment and Goldman Sachs, and now at Altruist as Head of Investments), Adam has a unique pulse on the trends and issues shaping the wealth management and financial planning technology spaces. Further, because Adam has assisted financial advisors for years in various roles, he has keen insight into how the industry has evolved and where it needs to go. Before serving as Betterment's investing lead, Adam was Vice President in the Fixed Income, Currencies, and Commodities division at Goldman Sachs. Adam was responsible for structured corporate credit and macro credit trading. In addition, Adam was part of the quantitative equity portfolio management team at New York Life Investments earlier in his career.

This episode explores the Metaverse and bridging the gap between value and enterprise through video games with Alexander Fernandez, the CEO of Streamline Media Group. The independent video games group is dedicated to publishing / developing great games, cultivating diverse talent, and breaking barriers of interactive entertainment. Alexander is a proud latinX entrepreneur passionate about bridging the gap between video games and traditional enterprise industries. He has grown Streamline Media Group from a modest gaming-focused startup to a global company with over 180 employees across three continents and various brands under the Streamline Media Group umbrella. Alexander shares his valuable insights into the entrepreneurial journey and how he became successful at what he does. Next, we discuss how the Metaverse will impact business strategies in the next five years. Finally, we talk about the best ways to promote diversity in the video game industry and how he's established an innovative and multicultural environment for his employees.

Doron Gerstel, CEO, Perion, joins me on Tech Talks Daily. Perion is a global technology innovator in the digital advertising ecosystem, providing brands and publishers with an opportunity to unlock lucrative growth opportunities. The company operates across the three main pillars of digital advertising – ad search, social media, and display/ CTV, representing a potential market of more than $300B. Perion generates revenue from both demand and supply sides, and in the last year, they signed an agreement with Microsoft Bing to drive growth opportunities. Doron shares a recap of how adtech companies performed during the pandemic, what the end of third-party cookies will mean for advertisers, and how companies will adapt. We also discuss how ongoing privacy changes will impact the adtech landscape and the importance of agnostic technology, and how it will help companies adapt to any changes in digital marketing.

In 2022, it's estimated that $7.4T worth of B2C and B2B commerce will happen digitally, however, shoppers are now demanding a faster, easier, and more visually compelling customer experience. In response, brands are creating millions of images, but they are falling short. Whether it is photography that requires a physical product to be built or the impossible task of manually capturing thousands (or millions) of SKUs, brands rely on broken processes to create visual experiences and improve their operations. Threekit, a leading developer of high-end visualization software that automates the creation of visuals and bridges the gap between the creative and commerce worlds. The company's visual commerce platform, which does not require prototype experience, engineers, or CAD artists, enables brands to create interactive, augmented reality (AR), and photorealistic 3D visuals and engage in lean commerce and asset-light manufacturing. To date, Threekit visualized products have generated over $1 billion in sales for customers. TaylorMade, Duluth Trading, and Ciroc use Threekit because it drives a 40% increase in conversion, a 90% reduction in photography costs, and an 80% reduction in returns. Matt Gorniak, CEO of Threekit joins me on Tech Talks Daily to share the story behind Threekit.

Your smartphone will probably have several different apps to manage your finances, from personal bank accounts, bills accounts, credit cards, savings, and even crypto. But what if you could have a singular view of everything. Today, I explore the role technology can play in helping people reach their financial goals and how couples can work better as a team while still having their privacy and independence. I have invited Katherine Salisbury, Co-Founder, and Co-CEO of Qapital, on the podcast. She founded the company with her partner George Friedman when they wanted a solution to provide a joint overview of all their finances and automate how their money moved to savings, investments, bills, and spending accounts. Qapital is a new kind of banking experience that aims to empower people to maximize their happiness by saving, spending, and investing with their goals in mind. By blending behavioral science with technology, Qapital provides users with the tools they need to make managing money easy and fun.

It was the End of an era for BlackBerry as the company pulled the plug on support for its classic smartphones — 22 years after the device first hit the market this week. But what these headlines didn't tell you is that over 195 million cars worldwide currently use BlackBerry software. BlackBerry IVY, developed in partnership with AWS, is the company's cloud-connected software ecosystem that equips OEMs to analyze vehicle sensor data and derive actionable insights. Blackberry revealed more about their smart car innovation at CES 2022. Peter Virk, Vice President, IVY Product & Ecosystem at Blackberry, joins me on Tech Talks Daily to talk about the announcements at CES. We discuss how vehicle data can be turned into actionable insights and how BlackBerry QNX technology is integrated across the vehicle. I learn more about how BlackBerry IVY brings together signals from various sensors across the vehicle and how configuration is then controlled via the cloud-based IVY console. Finally, we discuss how the IVY platform makes real-time AI decisions and the role of IVY "Buck": BlackBerry's physical car dashboard.

Desktop Metal recently appeared on my radar after reading how their technology is accelerating the transformation of manufacturing with 3D printing solutions for engineers, designers, and manufacturers around the world Jonah Myerberg is Co-founder, Chief Technology Officer, and SVP of Global Engineering at Desktop Metal. He joins me on Tech Talks Daily to provide an overview of Desktop Metal, Additive Manufacturing 2.0, and how it is reshaping the future of mass manufacturing by leveraging digital factories. We also discuss how additive manufacturing can impact the supply chain, lumber shortage, sustainability, and how businesses expand into new fields like space tech and healthcare. About Jonah Myerberg Jonah Myerberg is responsible for leading the technical direction of the company's 3D printing solutions and driving global engineering efforts. Before joining Desktop Metal in 2015, Myerberg held senior positions with various organizations focused on high-performance battery development, including Renovo Motors and Boston Impact, which he founded, and A123Systems. At A123Systems, Myerberg established and led the motorsports business unit, which focused on developing high-performance batteries. His products were adopted by most Formula One teams, including the McLaren, Force India, Mercedes Benz, RedBull, and other high profile motorsports teams like the Porsche 919 team, which won the 24 hours of Le Mans in 2015 and 2016. Jonah was also a race engineer for Porsche on the 919 team and the Mahindra on the Formula E team. Additionally, he helped launch Gradiant Corp., where he managed the deployment and operation of large-scale water desalination plants that converted fracking water into fresh water.

Cheetah Digital is a marketing tech platform that has collected over 2 billion data entries for brands including Arsenal FC, Hilton, BBC, Citibank, Vodafone UK, and the Postcode Lottery, McDonald's, Pizza Hut UK, Godiva, Urban Outfitters. Richard Jones, CMO of Cheetah Digital, joins me on Tech Talks Daily in a conversation about why smaller enterprise-specific marketing technology and unified data model platforms provide far more benefits for customers than those from more prominent players. For more than 20 years, I have learned how Richard has worked in technology, specifically, building marketing technology for the likes of Adobe, Oracle, and how he has been a CMO integrating martech to deliver business results. We discuss the growth of customer engagement suites that ingest various kinds of data, batch data, streaming data, point of sale data, and weather data according to a businesses' requirements. We also talk about how companies can use machine learning and artificial intelligence to segment and analyze that data. Finally, we discuss why leveraging the same data model with the customer engagement data platform at its heart is key if you're building software from the ground up.

Rich Nanda is a principal in Deloitte Consulting LLP, where he serves as the leader of Deloitte's US Monitor Deloitte practice. He has significant experience in guiding clients through strategy-led transformation to achieve profitable growth. He routinely advises boards, CEOs, and executive teams at consumer products companies on topics spanning growth, business model innovation, operating models, capability building, analytics, and technology adoption. Nanda has also co-authored a new book and sequel to The Technology Fallacy. The Transformation Myth takes a deep dive into how companies that use disruption as an opportunity for innovation emerge from it stronger, while companies that choose to weather the storm miss an opportunity to thrive. All of this is especially noteworthy as the pandemic has disrupted business – yet many companies have emerged better-positioned than before and innovated in response to changing circumstances. As a leading expert in digital transformation, Rich discusses his experience guiding clients through strategy-led transformations and key findings featured throughout the book.

Baracoda Daily Healthtech has a strategic vision focusing on preventive healthcare in a digital environment. At CES 2022, the focus is on The Bathroom of the Future. With a focus on balance, posture, spine health, oral health as an indicator of systemic health and wellness, using predictive technology to alert you about changes in your skin, your heart rhythm, your risk of falling if you're a senior. Healthtech makes it possible to monitor your wellness in a noninvasive way. And physicians have a way to monitor whether a prescribed treatment is working, all in a very non-invasive way. And for the first time – a thermometer that doesn't need batteries, so it's always ready when you need it while using minimal plastic. Healthtech meets sustainability. One example of Baracoda using proprietary software to scale a product can be seen in the partnership with Colgate. Thomas Serval, the CEO, reveals more about Baracoda's Open Innovation model, which encourages collaboration to further the preventive health mission through the bathroom of the future. We also discuss how Baracoda Daily Healthtech has received two Innovation Honors at CES 2022. The first award is for BBalance, the first connected product to use footprint recognition and merge medical indexes — posture and balance, weight, and BMI (body mass index). And the second is for bcool - the first thermometer to operate without batteries, combining healthtech with sustainability. Finally, we discuss how their partner Colgate also earned an Innovation Award at CES 2022, For their new low-price smart toothbrush - Bringing the benefits of smart technology to the general population, as we all strive for optimal wellness.  

Mobile DevOps company Bitrise recently announced Arpad Kun as its VP of Engineering and Infrastructure. In his time at Bitrise so far, he led the development of their new enterprise-grade platform, which increased the business's speed to app market by 50%, saving them time and money. Now, Kun is scaling Bitrise's technology to support enterprises with an all-in-one platform fully. In addition, the platform will automate mobile app workflows, allowing organizations more time to concentrate on creativity, customer-centricity, and innovation. Previously Arpad served as Chief Architect for Network Services at IBM Cloud and TPM at Facebook Infrastructure. Arpad shares his years of experience in the development space and discusses the importance of platforms that streamline workflows so developers can keep up with the growing demands of consumers and app stores. In today's episode, Arpad shares his story and what is on the horizon for Bitrise and mobile app development as a whole.

Dublin-based climate action fintech is a climate donation app that empowers conscious shoppers to amplify their positive impact by earning free, personalized climate donations from their spending. Amplify partners with a network of sustainable brands, allowing their customers to earn a donation for a high-impact climate cause of their choice on every purchase, at no added cost. Users choose a climate charity, securely link their bank card, and then 2% of each transaction they make with a sustainable brand in Amplify's network is automatically donated to their chosen cause for free. Supported by Enterprise Ireland and approved by the world's leading card networks, Amplify is setting out to transform the donation experience for sustainable brands and conscious shoppers, empowering them to amplify the climate action of every sustainable purchase. David Beakey, Co-founder of Amplify, shares how they combine their passions for sustainability and technology to help conscious consumers transform the impact of their sustainable spending.

Assaf Gedalia is the co-founder of WalkOut, the developer of an autonomous end-to-end checkout platform that created a smart cart solution to provide an efficient, frictionless checkout. This smart cart is an AI, computer vision-based solution mounted onto shopping carts in the form of a screen and cameras and becomes shoppers' personalized advisory board. WalkOut can identify every item placed in the cart with high accuracy, tally them up, and notify the shopper of an anomaly. That means knowing when an item is what the shopper is looking for, if it goes against a dietary need, or contains an ingredient that will cause an allergic reaction. Walkout provides shoppers with a unique experience where all they have to do is walk in, place items in the cart, and walk out. Unlike other checkout options, the tally, bagging, and payments are all done on the cart itself. Assaf Gedalia is the co-founder of WalkOut, the developer of an autonomous end-to-end checkout platform that created a smart cart solution to provide an efficient, frictionless checkout. This smart cart is an AI, computer vision-based solution mounted onto shopping carts in the form of a screen and cameras and becomes shoppers' personalized advisory board. WalkOut can identify every item placed in the cart with 99.2% accuracy, tally them up, and notify the shopper of any anomaly. So shoppers have prime convenience, and grocers can implement the affordable WalkOut solution that involves very little changes to the shop's environment and compete with the bigger players. In today's episode, Assaf shares how technology upgrades traditional brick & mortar shops and improves the shopping experience. We also chat about why smart carts are the best integration for a shop and the benefits of in-store shopping compared to online delivery and even Amazon GO. Finally, we discuss the intricacies of the different proprietary algorithms WalkOut developed to reach a 99.2% accuracy rate on product identification.  

Casa is a US-based provider of Bitcoin security services, which enables users to have total self-custody over their crypto holdings, without the risk of theft or hacks like those experienced by exchanges. Bitcoin can be purchased through Casa and deposited directly into a user's wallet on the service where they control the funds, without the company having custody over the holdings at any point. Nick Neuman, CEO of Bitcoin self-storage startup Casa shares his view that despite sovereignty being the biggest issue in the Bitcoin space, it's ultimately the one that's being addressed the least. It's not a technology problem or a process problem, but rather that the big challenge is how to make security technologies standard in an industry with an overall poor track record for keeping its customers' coins safe. Nick discusses the different Bitcoin safety solutions on the market that holders need to be aware of and why they should consider taking their coins off exchanges altogether. We also talk about why a wallet alone might not be enough and what questions investors should be asking of their Bitcoin partners to ensure they can always keep sovereignty of their coins.

Joaquin Viramontes, Director of Personalization at digital experience agency R2i, joins me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast. The seasoned expert in analytics, personalization, and all things data shares insights on personalization and why it's much more than a buzzword for marketing professionals. R2i is a digital experience agency that creates digital solutions that connect and accelerate customer experiences to drive impact for brands. I learn more about their relentless focus on combining data, insights, and technology with creative design to drive engaging and high-impact digital experiences. Joaquin shares how businesses can go beyond making a case for personalization to implementing a long-term program that shows ROI. He also explains a marketer's ideal toolkit of analytics and optimization tools that can be used to identify wins and optimal ways to invest time and resources. Finally, we discuss how to establish a company culture of data-driven decisions and build excitement around the value that tech and data can bring to all decisions in every department.      

In January 2021, the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC)began administering blanket mechanical licenses to eligible streaming and download services (digital service providers or DSPs) in the United States. The MLC will then collect the royalties due under those licenses from the DSPs and pay songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers. The MLC has built a publicly accessible musical works database, as well as a portal that creators and music publishers can use to submit and maintain their musical works data. These tools will help ensure that creators and music publishers are paid properly. It is also striving to ensure songwriters, composers, lyricists, and music publishers receive their mechanical royalties from streaming and download services in the U.S. accurately and on time. In order to pay these royalties, The MLC utilizes a portal where creators and music publishers submit their musical works data, which is then matched to the appropriate monies. Therefore, the importance of getting the word out to self-administered songwriters and collecting the necessary data is paramount in ensuring that creators are being compensated for their work. The MLC's CEO Kris Ahrend shares insights from its first full year of operations and how it has already distributed more than $106 million in royalties to songwriters.

Grant McDougall is a marketing and advertising veteran who hit a tipping point in the agency space after working with brands like AT&T and Chevron. He started BlueOcean, an AI driven platform helping companies like Google and Microsoft track, measure, and compare their brand health to competitors using AI. The company also recently announced a $15M Series A funding. As we all know, branding is one of the most critical assets for a company. It can significantly impact customer loyalty, stock price, employee retention, and other key metrics of success. So I invited Grant on the podcast to explore how conventional marketing agencies are not capable of giving their clients relevant and actionable information to outpace their competition.  The growing and future of consumer privacy compliance have allowed users to manage their data tracking, but this popular option has developed challenges for marketers across all platforms. We discuss how AI technology for data insight has become the core for services like BlueOcean who offer data input reports to help financial institutions.

Ben Brook's story started when he set out to find out what companies had collected his personal information - and he realized his data was nearly impossible to track, control, or reclaim.  Ben, who is now the founder and CEO of Transcend, raised 25M from Index Ventures and Accel, with participation from South Park Commons, Phil Venables (Board Member and former CISO, Goldman Sachs), and Dylan Field (CEO, Figma), just months after graduating from Harvard.  Since launching, Ben's company has successfully tapped into the swelling interest in data rights, privacy, consumer rights by helping customers such as Paetron, Indiegogo, etc., encode privacy across their tech stack. Ben had a great idea - give people the rights to their data by making it easy for companies to deliver. With GDPR, CCPA, and 40 different state-level bills in the US pending, this is a major issue for businesses and almost feels like perfect timing. Ben shares his startup story on Tech Talks Daily.  

Shiv Gupta, the founder of Incrementors Web Solutions, a Digital Marketing Agency, joins me on Tech Talks Daily. He shares his story, how he crafted his content marketing strategy, and how digital marketing, especially SEO, transformed his life. We discuss what types of content businesses should be creating for their industry and how to repurpose content in different ways to make it last longer. Shiv also shares tips for your content that sells your products naturally or in a way that comes across as not pushy to the customer.

One of the traditions in the UK is to watch the Queens Christmas Speech on Christmas Day. I thought I would offer an alternative for tech fans where I look at where we are now and what the following year in tech will look like.

Whether it's the concept of fold space in Dune, warp drive in Star Trek, or light speed in Star Wars, sci-fi creators and fans alike have always been intrigued by the idea of moving from one galaxy to another in the blink of an eye. Thanks to Hollywood, we associate the slow stretching of stars, streaks of particles drifting behind the exhaust pipes, and the silent rumble of engines with space ships - but what is the reality of space travel? Daniel Bock, CEO & Co-Founder at Morpheus Space, joins me on Tech Talks Daily to dig into precisely what Hollywood gets wrong, how far off commercial space travel is, and what the industry needs to do not only to make it viable but to keep ESG at the core of it. The space entrepreneur also shares his story and how he aims to enable a sustainable and safe future of our planet Earth by seeking new ventures and pushing boundaries. Morpheus Space is disrupting the NewSpace industry by introducing Agile Constellations, a fusion between advanced electric propulsion and Artificial Intelligence. The solution package enables satellite service providers to operate entire constellations as one entity. Furthermore, with the support of its groundbreaking spacecraft electric propulsion systems, each satellite can perform countless orbital maneuvers, allowing the possibility of “objective first”​ mission planning with an automated trade-off. All this provides the flexibility of satellite networks exploited by the A.I. to optimally morph the constellations to fulfill the user's objectives, ranging from revisiting frequencies to observing moving POIs.

Overair Inc. - Overair is positioned to be a global leader in advanced air mobility. In August 2021, they announced the design of their revolutionary Butterfly – an all-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for advanced air mobility. Butterfly is designed to be the most robust, efficient, and quiet aircraft in its class – a mobility workhorse that produces zero carbon emissions in flight. Overair CEO Ben Tigner talks about Butterfly's technology and how they want to change the way we live, work, and travel.

Embedded finance looks set to radically transform digital businesses and create a new benchmark for customer experience across multiple industries. According to Juniper Research, the embedded finance market will be worth $138 billion by 2026. In the near future, embedded finance will enable digital businesses to serve SMEs and micro-entrepreneurs worldwide, helping them sell to their core offering and create diversified revenue streams by embedding payments, insurance, lending, and other financial services under the banner of their existing brand. Innovative businesses are also expected to adopt embedded finance to overcome perennial challenges around handling payments across geographies, currencies, and differing regulatory zones. As a result, they will be able to offer fintech as a service to help clients implement financial services into their own business models. Frederick Crosby - Chief Revenue Officer at NIUM, joins me in a conversation about the trend towards embedded fintech and how the Nium platform enables banks, payment providers, travel companies, and other businesses to collect and disburse funds in local currencies to over 100 countries. About Frederick Frederick is the Chief Revenue Officer at Nium, an advanced global payments platform redefining how consumers and businesses can send, spend, and receive funds around the world. Frederick leads the global Business Development, Marketing, and Communications teams that have helped inform and transform business models for banks, fintechs, and other platforms that needed new payment capabilities in this quickly evolving digital age, and that have made Nium one of the fastest-growing global fintechs in the payment space. Frederick is a veteran in the cross-border payments and e-commerce space and has catapulted huge global businesses and customer bases at start-ups and enterprise companies alike. In the early days of PayPal, Frederick unlocked the potential of cross-border e-commerce by aligning eBay/PayPal's massive supply/demand, and providing new functionality for global buyers and sellers to transact. At Western Union, he led a team that transformed digital remittances into the largest growth engine at the company to attain the #1 position in all their global markets. As CRO at Veem, Frederick joined a pioneering team bent on making global SMB bank payments into a five-minute affair. His sales and marketing teams built a network of over 170K SMBs around the world who could send and receive payments in a click, and the partnership team, in turn, brought the capability into the world's largest small business accounting and e-commerce platforms.

Synergis, a globally focused technology venture capital firm whose existing investments include SMIC, WuXi AppTec, eSign, etc., launched its flagship Venture Fund I earlier this year. In addition to sectors such as SaaS, Biotech, and Consumer, the fund also has a dedicated Crypto/Blockchain strategy that has already allocated to six seed-stage funds and made one direct investment. Synergis is set to launch Shanghai-based “Synergis LaunchPad” to assist portfolio GPs and companies in expanding founder-sourcing and community-building capabilities throughout Asia. Jerry Shi is also a crypto evangelist and investor based in Toronto and New York. He institutionalized Synergis Capital with a strong team based on his differentiated model and track record with family assets and managed SPVs. I invited him on the podcast to learn more about his story.

The UK government recently launched data reforms to boost innovation, economic growth and protect the public, a year on from the creation of the National Data Strategy and a key step in its 10 Tech Priorities, which include unlocking the power of data. The proposed reforms aim to empower the ICO and businesses using data in innovative and responsible ways to benefit people's lives, in areas from healthcare to financial services. However, a new report from data analytics leader, Qlik, into the UK's FS industry suggests that while AI and predictive analytics has huge potential in FS organisations, low trust and regulatory fears are still holding back their widespread adoption in the industry. In fact, Only half (50%) of IT leaders FS organisations trust decisions made by predictive analytics solutions are without bias, 46% of IT leaders believe the regulatory burden outweighs the benefit that predictive analytics solutions could offer. Richard Spiegal, BI Centre of Excellence Leader at Nationwide, and Adam Mayer, Senior Manager at Qlik join me in a conversation on the state of regulation and trust around data in the financial services (FS) sector. We discuss how to tackle the issues laid out in Qlik's report, particularly around trust and regulation issues and the power of data analytics to help organisations build a data pipeline and democratise data in a safe, secure way with customers interests at heart. I also learn how Nationwide is exploring analytics use cases across anti-money laundering, financial crime, risk management, and supporting human decisions, for example, by triaging and helping to prioritise staff caseloads.

I recently discovered a Belgian company called Soda who focuses on data quality monitoring and testing. Think of it a bit like application or software monitoring which is now ubiquitous. Soda scans for issues caused by human error, firmware upgrades, schema changes, cross-platform integration snafus, bought data, or transformation bugs. The aim is to automate, verify, and validate the flow of data from various sources and encourage collaboration between software/data engineers and downstream business decision-makers. The big idea here is to eliminate so-called ‘silent data issues.' These are the issues that bubble up (hence the name Soda!) further downstream having gone undetected in datasets. In an era when most companies are moving towards being entirely data-driven, ensuring data is of the optimum quality is critical. I invited Soda CEO and founder Maarten Masschelein on the Tech Talks Daily to learn more. Maarten discusses why data quality monitoring is becoming a hot topic and provides examples of where bad data has caused serious problems. I also learn how Soda was listed as a data management Cool Vendor by Gartner.

It has been remarkable to witness the enterprise transition to the cloud in just a few short years -- but what is next? Multi-cloud networking is the new way for enterprises to manage applications worldwide for dispersed and remote users. Managing applications in the cloud - and through multiple cloud service providers (CSPs) -- can mean a host of benefits, including reduced latency, more affordable transit costs, and heightened security. However, we are not there yet. Most organizations are still struggling with the complex networking infrastructures needed to achieve "a multi-cloud networking Nirvana." Ramesh Prabagaran, co-founder and CEO of Prosimo, recognized the opportunity for a newer type of infrastructure -- one that would provide enterprises a better way to network to multiple CSPs - a safer, less complex, and more affordable way. As the former co-founder of Viptela, acquired by Cisco for $610 million in 2017, Ramesh is one of the pioneers in the SD Wan field - and is no stranger to overcoming serious networking challenges. Ramesh and his team at Prosimo have developed a single, vertically integrated infrastructure stack to deliver an application experience that balances performance, security, and costs across multi-cloud environments. Just months out of stealth, the team has had early success with several enterprise customers, including Flexport, announced partnerships with Google Cloud, AWS, and Verizon, and was recently included in the 2021 Gartner Market Guide for Cloud Networking Software. Multi-cloud networking is complex and not easy to do or even understand. Still, in today's episode, Ramesh breaks it down and explains it all in a language everyone can understand. He also shares his own story, which involves a series of successes and innovations.

The way we authenticate online is fundamentally broken. Technology has evolved significantly since the advent of the internet, yet we still rely primarily on passwords for authentication. Passwords pose significant security and user experience issues, negatively impacting both consumers and businesses. In addition, passwords are also responsible for the vast majority of data breaches each year. According to Verizon's 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report, 81% of all breaches involve weak or stolen passwords. In addition to being insecure, passwords also introduce significant consumer frustration. According to a recent Google study, ~75% of users report feeling overwhelmed trying to keep track of their passwords. So it's no surprise that users often re-use the same password across sites to make this process easier, but it introduces its own risks. Julianna Lamb, co-founder, and CTO of Stytch, joins me on Tech Talks Daily to explore this topic in more detail. Stytch is the first company that's built a platform for passwordless authentication so that any application or website can embed passwordless sign-up and login flows. I learn more about the story behind Stych. We also discuss how thousands of companies have used Stytch's software to eliminate password-based authentication's security and user experience shortcomings.

Consumers seem to begin their holiday shopping earlier each year. This year, it's likely that shoppers will start buying even earlier as supply chain shortages impact everything from popular toys to footwear and even coffee. So, how should retailers prepare for this shopping season? For e-commerce retailers, website crashes or slow sites are all too common during holiday shopping, leading to frustrations for customers and potentially costing companies millions during downtimes on top of ongoing shortages. As a result, IT teams can become overwhelmed trying to ensure there are no disruptions for shoppers, but there is only so much they can do. However, automating certain processes throughout the e-commerce workflow can help mitigate these issues and ensure customers don't feel any impact. And while automation is effective, many teams don't know what to automate to be most successful. Ritu Dubey from Digitate discusses how retailers should automate workflows to relieve IT teams so that they can rest easy this holiday season, knowing that their customers are having a good experience.

Fernando Lucini, Global Data Science & Machine Learning Engineering Lead at Accenture, joins me on Tech Talks Daily to discuss synthetic data. We explore how privacy concerns and process issues are still holding businesses back from developing advanced analytics initiatives – and how synthetic data (artificially generated by an AI algorithm) might be able to help. We discuss how the technology has potential across a range of industries. Synthetic data's most obvious benefit is that it eliminates the risk of exposing critical data and compromising the privacy and security of companies and customers. With synthetic data, a company can quickly train machine learning models on large data sets, accelerating the processes of training, testing, and deploying an AI solution. While the benefits of synthetic data are compelling, realizing them can be difficult. Generating synthetic data is a highly complex process, and to do it right, an organization needs to do more than plug in an AI tool to analyze its data sets. We discuss how the task requires people with specialized skills and truly advanced knowledge of AI.

Dan Greenberg, president of Sharethrough, one of the world's largest omnichannel exchanges, joins me on Tech Talks Daily. Dan has his pulse on how businesses can ensure their ads get as many eyeballs as possible. In particular, Dan has thoughts on how our desire to read through feed-based visuals will inform how we interact with advertising in the future, particularly when it comes to TV.  Dan believes that the current, catalogue-style home page that most streaming services have adopted will become obsolete and that adapting to the way we consume other media through personalized feeds on channels like social will become the norm. In addition, with streaming giants such as Netflix reporting slowing subscriber growth, streamers need to find new ways to breathe life into their UX. About Dan Dan is the President of Sharethrough, overseeing market development and customer strategy. As the founding CEO of Sharethrough, Dan is a recognized leader in the industry and the Silicon Valley tech ecosystem. Coming from a research background at Stanford in Behavior Design, Dan has been at the cutting edge of digital advertising since 2005, bringing together unique expertise in persuasive technology and native monetization.  Dan is the founding chair of the IAB Native Advertising Committee and has spearheaded the native advertising movement since its inception in 2011. Dan has been recognized as an AdAge “Media Maven,” Forbes “30 Under 30,” Inc “35 Under 35″, and AdAge “40 Under 40.” He is a regular speaker at advertising and technology conferences and contributing author for Forbes, AdAge, TechCrunch, and other industry publications.

White Shark Media is a digital marketing agency with more than ten years of experience managing pay-per-click campaigns with Google, Microsoft, and Facebook Ads. We provide custom PPC solutions and white label services to businesses, agencies, and organizations. At White Shark Media, Daniel Alvarado helps organizations use technology to create meaningful experiences, simplify complex tasks and generate value for their clients. Daniel joins me on Tech Talks Daily to share the best digital marketing strategies to implement in 2022. We discuss why automating marketing allows for better personalization in your marketing content while also being time-efficient. By obtaining data and segmenting your audience, you have a better chance at engaging your product or service with customers to convert them faster. We also discuss how making bids automatic instead of manual gives personnel more time to dedicate to other marketing efforts, and keeping business information up to date is critical as it can allow your business to achieve higher client acquisition rates.

Amira Learning CEO Mark Angel joins me on Tech Talks Daily to share how they are building a first-of-its-kind voice AI-based reading tutor for kids. With previous experience working at Nuance, which MSFT recently acquired for $19B, Mark's goal in developing Amira is to make every child a motivated and masterful reader. I learn how they have raised $11 million to scale up with a new app and growing customer base. We also talk about how 'Amira & the StoryCraft' has been named one of TIME's 100 Best Inventions of 2021. Only one of three inventions honored in the Education category. The list features 100 products and services that change how we live, play, work, and think about the future. Amira's Dyslexia Screener identifies students at risk of Dyslexia and other disorders. In longitudinal testing conducted by the University of Houston, the Screener missed only 1% of at-risk students. Finally, we talk about how Amira uses AI to generate the right reading intervention at the right time when an unproductive struggle helps create motivated and masterful readers.

Rob Carpenter is the CEO and Founder of Valyant AI, the first Artificially Intelligent "Digital Employee" to work directly alongside employees in customer-facing roles. For example, Valyant's AI "Holly" works in fast food restaurants to greet customers at the drive-thru post, answer questions and take food orders. The revolutionary nature of this technology is that it pulls AI from being a hidden back-office tool to something that feels like a real staff member, which humanizes a brand's personality and brings the AI experience front and center to a physical location. The major technological innovation of Holly is her Conversational AI. It allows her to speak with a human-sounding voice, to understand context, nuance and to be able to manage a free-form and wide-ranging conversation within the context of food ordering. After five years of development Valyant AI now has paying customers, can deliver up to 20% average order increase and has begun rolling out with two restaurant chains that have a combined 5,000 locations. Much like self-driving cars, Conversational AI has had a long and bumpy road to deployment, but the technology is maturing, and Valyant is at the vanguard of this new era of customer service automation for physical locations. Rob joins me in a conversation about the future of AI-human relations and its impact on the labor market - both positive and negative. We also discuss the developments in robotics and the commercialization of space travel.

At the end of 2020 Troy Gill, Senior Manager of Threat Intelligence at Zix, predicted in the 2020 Global Security Report that we would see attackers further personalizing and customizing their attacks this year. Over the last 8 months, it has come true over and over again. One such attack lived up to this prediction. The phishing attempt was posing as certificate errors for the recipient's website. What made it unique was it pulled their real certificate data and DNS (Domain Name System) A-record to tailor the phishing message to their domain. The payload URL also led to a credential harvesting site customized for their specific web platform admin page. While testing, we observed the generic WordPress admin login page and Shopify login pages (depending on the target). Troy Gill joins me on the podcast to discuss the rise of personalized phishing attacks and what businesses can to do protect themselves.

Transaction Network Services (TNS) is a leading global provider of data communications and interoperability solutions. Its global network and innovative services enable transactions and the exchange of information to many of the world's leading retailers, banks, payment processors, financial institutions, and telecommunication firms.  Founded in 1990 in the United States, TNS has grown steadily and now provides services to customers in over 60 countries across the Americas, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. Its reach extends to many more. TNS has designed and implemented a global data network that supports various widely accepted communications protocols and is designed to be scalable and accessible by multiple methods. John Tait joins me in discussing the important role SD-WAN will play in enabling the next generation of connected payments and what it means for merchants and consumers. First, I learn more about how SD-WAN enables a retailers to securely connect a wide range of devices to their POS system. This can be anything from ordering a delivery of milk directly from your refrigerator, to ordering new ink cartridges directly from your printer, to paying for parking, gas, or a car wash directly from your vehicle.  You can read more about the benefits of SD-WAN here: https://tnsi.com/infographics/tns-secure-sd-wan-the-benefits-of-mission-critical-payment-capability/    

The digital workplace brings the potential for numerous world-beating solutions, but many businesses don't have the resources to find the perfect solution. That's where REPL comes in, drawing on years of experience in the technology sector to provide a solution that gets results for businesses. Cerys Johnson took on the CEO role in 2017, after six years working for the company, firstly as Chief Financial Officer and later as Chief Operating Officer. Her in-depth knowledge of how the firm works have given her an unpreceded insight into how to guide the path of the company's growth globally. Her tenure as CEO thus far has seen REPL double in size, with a reported increase in revenue of 40% year over year. With over twenty-five years of experience in strategic and digital transformation roles, she knows how to ensure that companies make the most of what they have. With her unique perspective driving the strategy and execution that spans all the aspects of REPL's business model, there has been a chance to impact product development, IT, marketing, and sales. When REPL opened its doors in 2007, the aim was to enhance the capacity of businesses of all sorts. No one deserved to be left before in the technological age. This demanded an innovative approach that could scale easily and adapt effectively to suit the needs of different markets and industries. We discuss how this feels even more relevant today than 14 years ago, When it comes to the technology sector, it's easy to get lost in the hardware that goes into making a success. Cerys also shares how they have achieved your success through working closely with people.

A divisive topic for techies is quantum computing. Although still in its infancy, many wonder if it can ever live up to its hype. We can expect these debates to intensify after IBM revealed its 127-qubit quantum computer, double the size of comparable machines made by Google and the University of Science and Technology of China. I wanted to explore this topic further and found the perfect guest. Her name is Prineha Narang. She is the assistant professor of computational materials science at Harvard. She heads up NarangLab, where she and her team work on many of the most promising quantum computing technologies. We discuss why quantum technologies and what it holds for consumers, engineers, developers in the future. We also talk about how to think about quantum technologies and their impact on a spectrum of applications/industries. Finally, we explore the limitations and benefits of quantum tech across computing, networking, and sensing.

We have all searched on a website, search engine, or even a podcast app to find this episode. But when that search function does not deliver, it can be nearly as frustrating as slow wifi. Algolia solves this problem with an API-first approach that allows developers and business teams to surface relevant content when wanted. I wanted to learn more about how this tech satisfies the demand for instant gratification while also building and optimizing online experiences that enhance online engagement, increase conversion rates, and enrich lifetime value to generate profitable growth. More than 10,000 companies, including Lacoste, Birchbox, Stripe, Slack, Medium, and Zendesk, rely on Algolia to manage over 1.5 trillion search queries a year – that's six times more than Microsoft Bing, 16 times more than Yahoo, and 50 times more than DuckDuckGo (four times more than Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Baidu and Yandex combined). Bernadette Nixon is an entrepreneurial & driven CEO with a strong track record of growing and scaling global businesses and is focused on doing that at Algolia. Most recently, she led the company in a new funding round that resulted in the company closing $150 Million in funding and a new valuation of $2.25 Billion – almost QUADRUPLE the company's previous valuation.

We are currently right in the eye of the storm of the holiday season, and I find myself fascinated by how technology is raising our expectations from retailers. Everything from smart changing rooms, smart mirrors, and the evolution of virtual shopping via 3D, AR, and virtual try-on's highlights how much the industry has changed. Zakeke is empowering brands and retailers to offer their customers live product personalization and 3D / AR View. Zakeke also integrates Visual Commerce Solutions online and offline to engage their customers with a rich and interactive "design-your-own"​ experience. People are different and have unique tastes. As customers, they want to play a primary role in designing the products they use, configuring them according to their needs and preferences. Merchants are discovering the value of letting their customers create their own unique products and taking personalization a big step into mass customization. Lou Leporace joins me on Tech Talks Daily to discuss how Zakeke enables merchants to meet the increasing demand for customized products.

With Google's plan to delay killing third-party cookies until 2023, many businesses are breathing a sigh of relief that they no longer have to scramble to plan out their consumer data collection practices.   However, as the world moves toward increased consumer data privacy measures backed by legislation like the GDPR and at the local state levels in Colorado and California, the death of third-party data is inevitable and businesses need to get ahead to succeed. Alex Atzberger, CEO of Optimizely, shares why companies need to personalize based on the behaviors behind content consumption, even if the visitors are unknown. He also reveals how to build trust brands should do the following:    Offer loyalty programs, as seen recently by McDonald's and Chipotle, where customers can receive points for purchases that translate into freebies later on   Track the content your customers are engaging with to see what's resonating, even if the customer is anonymous    Glean customer feedback on their preferred channels and ensure you're engaging with them, on ones they favor   We also discuss how Gen Z and Millennials start their shopping journeys on social media apps, but most leave the apps to purchase on 3rd party sites like Amazon.

As you all know by now, I am fascinated by how we have gone from a reactive approach to healthcare to a proactive approach where we record calories, steps, sleep, and heart rate to monitor our health. HGS AxisPoint Health is a technology-enabled care management services company focused on applying whole-person interventions to improve healthcare outcomes, reduce costs, and increase satisfaction. Michele Kratz and SV Krishnan from HGS AxisPoint Health join me on Tech Talks Daily to discuss how health plans and providers are beginning to use a predictive analytics model known as "impactability" to more effectively address the multifaceted aspects of an individual's health.

There is a visibility problem within the tech industry as there is a large absence of female leaders and role models. The diversity gap among tech leadership roles is wider today than it was in 1984. A 2021 report found that 50% of women abandon tech careers by 35 and are leaving at a 45% higher rate than men. AWIT was founded to address this representation gap in tech leadership roles by giving underrepresented individuals the resources they need to exceed, including mentoring, skills-based training, and advocacy. Nancy Wang shares the story behind AWIT. In addition to being CEO and Founder of AWIT, Nancy pulls double duty. She is the GM of Data Protection Services at Amazon Web Services (AWS) — understanding first-hand what it means to climb to be a female leader within the tech industry. We discuss all of these reasons represent the need for mentorship and continuing education for women and underrepresented individuals to have the right support to accelerate their careers to the next level. I learn how AWIT has recently created the industry's first 1:1 executive mentorship program for MongoDB and teamed up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to release two online certification programs for Coursera.    

Mike Potter is the CEO and Founder of Rewind, a leading provider of cloud backups for SaaS applications that help businesses easily back up and restore their cloud data. While Mike and Rewind have experienced tremendous growth and success, supporting over 80,000 organizations across the globe, this wasn't always the case. Mike weathered the failure of two companies to get to where he is today. Mike knows the path to success isn't always glamorous. Over the years, he has learned to embrace the discomfort of pivoting or persisting. This point in growing a business is essential to its success and a founder's sanity. Mike shares his story on Tech Talks Daily. We also discuss how to balance life and work while creating a company that people love, Tips for overcoming agency challenges and what it takes to build a $100M startup.