What Can You Tell Me About Software?

Vasanth and Faraz share spicy takes on a wide range of topics.Faraz's Twitter: @fzfromcupertinoVasanth's Twitter: @nextvasanthVasanth's Substack: nextbite.substack.comTime Stamps:01:04 - Lessons learnt over the course of the podcast04:01 - What is the most interesting technology trend or theme that played out in 2021?20:01 - What was the worst technology theme that played out in 2021?23:15 - What did you learn in 2021 that you think is a hidden gem?39:23 - What is your favorite app of 2021?46:13 - If you had to invest $100,000 in 2022 in order to maximize your return, what would you invest in?Intro Music: "Pain is the Essence" remix by @AdiSoundsGood on TwitterDisclaimer: The contents in this episode is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. 

Mart is the analyst known as Yellowbull (@Yellowbull11) on Twitter. He writes a biweekly newsletter covering relevant news in the uranium sector, coverage of uranium companies, sample portfolios and much more. Mart's Twitter: @Yellowbull11Mart's Newsletter: https://www.patreon.com/contrariancodexVasanth's Twitter: @NextVasanthVasanth's Newsletter: https://nextbite.substack.com/Time stamps:00:34 - Approach to researching companies04:45 -Jurisdictional impact on investing 07:15 - Getting exposure to the Chinese market10:24 - Seasonality/contracting13:37 - EU Taxonomy 17:01 - Public sentiment in Europe18:33 - Kazatomprom22:25 - How do Uranium ETFs determine which mining companies need to be sold and which ones need to be bought?24:54 - Interest rate yields27:15 - Impact form retail traders30:02 - Keys to writing a successful paid newsletter32:15 - What's a topic in this field that you feel isn't discussed enough?34:24 - Strongest bear case against Uranium Intro Music: "Pain is the Essence" remix by @AdiSoundsGood on TwitterDisclaimer: The contents in this episode is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Justin Huhn is the analyst and writer behind Uranium Insider, which is the leading authority in uranium market news, analysis, & identifying the best companies in the space. Justin's Newsletter: https://www.uraniuminsider.com/ Justin's Twitter: @uraniuminsiderVasanth's Newsletter: https://nextbite.substack.com/Vasanth's Twitter: @NextVasanthTime stamps:00:42 - What got Justin into Uranium.02:51 - Are we in the middle of another squeeze?04:48 - How transparent is supply?08:18 - Sprott Physical Uranium Trust (SPUT) and their influence on the market15:04 - Hedge Funds purchasing physical uranium16:50 - CRDN and jurisdictional risk19:31 - Nuclear provisions in the US infrastructure bill20:54 - Social media and it's role in the uranium markets26:07 - What piece on the demand side is not being widely recognized?29:13 - What will signal the top of the bull market?31:41 - Is there seasonality? Is Justin a buyer right now?35:18 - What is a topic in this filled that isn't discussed enough or hasn't gotten enough exposure?38:31 - Can Thorium be a substitute to Nuclear?Intro Music: "Pain is the Essense" remix by @AdiSoundsGood on TwitterArt Hyde (Segra Capital) - https://www.segracapital.com/commentary/you-say-you-want-a-revolutionDisclaimer: The contents presented in this episode is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. 

York Zhang, a propulsion engineer at Blue Origin, joins us again for a deep cut on Space. We discuss some of the future innovations we can expect and other topics of relevance currently affecting the space industry. Time Stamps:00:54 - How many space companies can the market accommodate?03:00 - Future market segmentation in space04:31 - The disconnect between marketing and reality08:09 - Varda15:31 - Varda deep cut16:08 - Will SpaceX derive significant revenue from delivering payloads for external parties?17:28 - Minimum financing required in order to contract with SpaceX?20:32 - Bidding for future payloads21:24 - Regulation around satellites 23:24 - Can we expect cooperation between the US and China on future space innovation?28:04 - Other players focused on space innovation29:00 - Is SpaceX really going to put advertisements in the sky?30:49 - How will space factor into the classic academic disciplines? 35:31 - Traditional media and space41:31 - Blue Origin and HLS44:28 - The Blue Origin Brand46:18 - Incentive misalignment between management and employees48:47 - Why did NASA go with SpaceX and not Blue Origin?50:35 - Should we be skeptical of the promises being made by SpaceX?53:36 - Did Bezos going to space help Blue Origin's brand?55:37 - How important is external validation for Blue Origin?Find Vasanth on Twitter - @NextVasanthFind Faraz on Twitter - @fzfromcupertinoIntro Music: "Pain is the Essence" remix by @AdiSoundsGood on TwitterDisclaimer: The content presented in this episode is for informational purposes only, you should not countersue any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial or other advice. 

Durable Investments tells us about the current/future state of the cloud business and AWS's interesting positioning over the next 10 years. Show Notes:01:12 - What is AWS?03:40 - What did people do before AWS?06:52 - How is AWS different compared to Microsoft/Google?12:18 - How are Microsoft and Google competing with AWS considering AWS has a significant head-start?16:23 - Google and Microsoft's strategy for acquiring customers20:36 - Market capitalization of the total cloud market26:08 - How will the cloud business look in 2030/2035?27:17 - Biggest constraint to AWS growth29:34 - AWS is recession proof33:44 - Future upstarts and disruption 42:24 - How to approach finance as a technologist?Find Durable Investments on Twitter -  @retaoxFind Vasanth - @NextVasanthFind Faraz - @fzfromcupertinoIntro Music: “Pain is the Essence” remix by @AdiSoundsGood on TwitterDisclaimer: The content presented in this episode is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Dr. Naveed Sherwani is a serial entrepreneur and technical leader in the world of semiconductors. As a professor at Western Michigan University, he wrote several books and hundreds of articles about chip design and manufacturing. He was the founder of Open Silicon, PeerNova, and was the CEO of SiFive. Currently he's the Chairman of the Silicon Federation, which aims to democratize chip design.Dr. Sherwani's Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/naveed-sherwani-2a789/Timestamps:2:11 - An explanation of the semiconductor shortage5:37 - Roadmap of chip design to final product9:25 - Semiconductors are a human right11:41 - Semiconductors are the new oil17:10 - How do we get semiconductors into the poorest countries?20:08 - Silicon Federation (https://www.linkedin.com/company/siliconfederation/about/)21:59 - How do you incentivize corporations to open source semiconductor technology?24:49 - Will a new era of hardware lead to a Cambrian explosion in startups?27:12 - The next two decades of chip development30:25 - Getting young people excited about hardware38:27 - Is China ahead of the US in artificial intelligence?43:11 - To what extent is ML a hardware problem?45:13 - Building a global education infrastructure 50:00 - How do you democratize education opportunities for the world?53:19 - In your opinion, what is the best piece of software ever built?

Jeff Moore is a real estate and stock market investor. We discuss information asymmetry in the capital markets and how to leverage them, the ongoing technological disruption and how it can dramatically improve small and medium sized businesses around the country, and the intangible things that prevent business owners from changing their operating behavior. Twitter: @ragnarisapirateBlog: Ragnarisapirate.blogspot.comTimestamps01:03 - Thrive ($THRY)05:55 - Risk/benefits of investing in small cap stocks08:45 - Information asymmetry and arbitrage14:18 - Zero fee trading and liquidity in small caps19:30 - Softwares for SMB's23:56 - What's stopping SMB operators from adopting new technology?26:59 - Do SaaS companies have a responsibility to educate their potential customers?32:12 - How accurately do we know the total addressable market for SMB SaaS companies?34:56 - What are SaaS companies not understanding about their customers?35:37 - Jeff's real estate business39:04 - Blackrock and institutional buying in real estate44:56 - Interesting stocks over the next two years/ Caveat Emptor stocks53:10 - What is something Jeff wishes more people knew about?Intro Music: "Pain is the Essence" remix by @AdiSoundsGood on Twitter

Elisabeth Bik, PhD, is a science integrity consultant who specializes in finding image duplications in scientific papers. After receiving her PhD in Microbiology at Utrecht University in The Netherlands, she worked 15 years at the Stanford University School of Medicine on the microbiomes of humans and marine mammals. From 2016-2019, she worked at two microbiome startup companies. In March 2019, she left her job to become a science integrity volunteer and occasional consultant. She can often be found discussing science papers on Twitter at @MicrobiomDigest, writing for her blog ScienceIntegrityDigest or searching the biomedical literature for inappropriately duplicated or manipulated photographic images and plagiarized text. She has reported over 4,000 papers for issues with image duplication or other concerns. Her work has been featured in Nature, Science, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Le Monde, and The Times (UK). In April 2021 she was awarded the Peter Wildy Prize by the UK Microbiology Society for her contributions in science communication.Twitter: @MicrobiomDigestNew Yorker Article - https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/how-a-sharp-eyed-scientist-became-biologys-image-detectiveFavorite Study - "Host lifestyle affects human microbiota on daily timescales" by Lawrence David - https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/gb-2014-15-7-r89.pdfIf you would like to support Dr. Bik's work, consider becoming a patron at: https://www.patreon.com/elisabethbikTimestamps:00:51 - Biology's image detective01:59 - The scope of fraud in science03:37 - What is motivating scientists to commit fraud?04:46 - Dr. Bik's early work with plagiarism 08:54 - Incentive structures that lead to fraud in science12:09 - Peer review and the role of editors at science journals/newspapers14:44 - How can we change the system?16:07 - How can non-PhD's approach reading scientific papers?18:27 - Are pre-publication sites good for science?21:14 - Hydroxychloroquine24:49 - Ongoing cases against Dr. Bik30:12 - Public perception of scientific integrity35:24 - Algorithmic fraud detector38:43 - Dr. Bik's ultimate mission 40:40 - Dr. Bik's favorite paperHosts:Vasanth Thiruvadi - @NextVasanthFaraz Abidi - @fzfromcupertinoIntro Music: "Pain is the Essence" remix by @AdiSoundsGood on Twitter 

Jenil Thakker is the founder of Coinvise - an open platform that enables creators to mint social tokens and build economic incentives around it. Coinvise - https://coinvise.coTwitter - @0xjenilTimestamps:00:59 - Coinvise02:03 - The significance of DAO's9:11 - Importance of decentralization 12:19 - Level of crypto awareness in India15:10 - Level of support from the Indian government19:30 - How does Coinvise make money?20:20 - NFT's24:31 - Turning fans into superfans28:24 - First 100 users30:18 - What is the biggest challenge ahead for Coinvise?31:16 - Competition in the crypto space33:58 - Design choices at Coinvise35:18 - Favorite piece of technology Intro Music: “Pain is the Essence” remix by @AdiSoundsGood on Twitter

Nikhil Vimal is an AI Consultant, Startup/Product Advisor + Angel, and the Co-Owner of Team Meteor. He's been in the technology/startup space for over 8 years and has been focused on different projects + ventures in the world of open source, conversational ai, customer experience, and more. He is also a frequent speaker at different tech/startup-focused events around the United States, and has been featured on VentureBeat, LinkedIn, and Business Insider. He is also currently an Independent Innovation Consultant for the National Football League.Twitter: https://twitter.com/nikvimalLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhilvimal/Company Website: Chatmode.ioPersonal Website: https://nikhilvimal.com/Team Meteor: https://twitter.com/TeamMeteorGGTimestamps:00:51 - Co-owning an e-sports team04:27 - How do you build an engaging community around e-sports?06:32 - Leveraging experience gained in e-sports into other areas09:04 - Building partnerships and being scrappy11:36 - Operating in a space that's still developing13:58 - What's most challenging about leveling up in e-sports?16:44 - Do athletes in e-sports have to have personas outside of the sport in order to be marketable?22:02 - Biggest lever yet to be unlocked in the e-sports space?24:27 - Value of experimentation 27:23 - Partnerships and experimentation32:19 - How to implement experimentation and convert users?36:25 - Building Chatmode.io44:28 - Angel investing46:47 - What is something that you wish more people knew more about?

Seemi Kazmi is currently an executive director and global lead for Digital Health Solutions at Novartis. In this role she is responsible for developing technology solutions that help patients and physicians diagnose, treat and manage disease. Seemi started her career as a nuclear physicist and in her pursuit of the cool and innovative, has explored everything from telecommunications to augmented reality at leading companies like Nokia, Qualcomm, and Amgen.Timestamps:1:37 - Sleep technology5:11 - User experience's role in changing human behavior6:45 - How do you change human behavior?11:17 - How do you incentivize people to care more about their health?14:02 - The role emotion plays in human behavior16:24 - Habit forming19:09 - Apple's consumer healthcare products25:01 - Is it possible for a small startup to take on big pharma?29:02 - Is innovation easier in countries with government provided healthcare?31:06 - Interesting consumer healthcare companies32:40 - Is the evidence burden too high?34:47 - Is America the best place to start a healthcare company?36:56 - Is digital healthcare just for the rich?39:51 - Will tech companies ever take over digital health completely?42:58 - How can someone in software break into digital health?45:24 - Seemi's favorite piece of technology

Josh Ogundu is currently a product operations lead at TikTok, previously worked in consumer product across media and communication tools. Outside of product he has an affinity for entertainment as well as college sports. Shoutout to The Big Ten & PAC 12.Twitter handle: https://twitter.com/JoshuaOgunduMost recent article feature: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/11/tech-comedians-poke-fun-at-employers.htmlTime Stamps:00:50 - Josh's most non-consensus opinions3:06 - How to make engaging content on TikTok?5:32 - The value of 100 true fans7:50 - How important is distribution?10:06 - How can non-technical people recruit technical people to join their startup?13:38 - Launching distribution for a new startup16:47 - How to leverage new media for startups?24:11 - How do you amass social capital?27:04 - The value of a college education in tech31:39 - What challenges are Black and Latinx people facing in tech that others are not?36:36 - Best piece of technology according to Josh

York Zhang is a propulsion test engineer at Blue Origin. York thought propulsion was cooler than being a chemical engineer, but completed his degree anyways. He too believes humanity should be a multiplanetary species and the path to transhumanism is inevitable. He spends his time binging video essays and visiting universities.Time Stamps:00:15 - What does York do?1:05 - What does the future of space exploration look like for humans?3:05 - Anti-fragility 4:19 - Chaos monkeys5:47 - Augmenting the human body for space7:05 - Abundance and untapped potential on space12:31 - Advances in neurotechnology14:20 - What is the size of the neurotechnology market?15:51 - What is the difference between SpaceX and Blue Origin?19:35 - Why should environmentalists be rooting for Jeff Bezos?23:09 - What will the second generation of space technology look like?26:07 - How much of the public's resources should we allocate to space innovation?30:41 - Lowering cost of access to space33:44 - What is the rest of the world doing in regards to space?34:18 - Rocket reusability39:07 - How long will it be before we're taking commercial space vacations?40:55 - Can we experience space while sitting at home?46:31 - York's favorite piece of technology

Courtney Greer is a Program Manager at Microsoft on the Commercial Software Engineering team. She is also a Black LGBTQ woman in the tech industry with insights on diversity, inclusion and what more can be done within the tech industry to support people from all backgrounds. Timestamps:1:41 - Diversity in tech compared to other industries4:01 - Retaining people of color in tech6:33 - What topics should people be allowed to discuss at work?13:27 - How much innovation are we missing out on by excluding certain groups?16:00 - What is covering?21:25 - Does the majority group within a population ever cover?24:22 - Allyship27:33 - Kaizen and inclusion30:03 - How can executives better affect change?33:19 - Black Venture Institute 34:50 - Bias in tech hiring36:31 - Checking unconscious bias39:52 - Should companies impose standards to increase representation?42:28 - Conversations on diversity on Clubhouse49:07 - Book recommendations

Sree Chadalavada is currently a product executive at Cisco. Before that, he was a managing partner at Gartner where he helped companies lead digital transformations. Prior to Gartner, Sree worked in various leadership roles in telecom, technology consulting and start-up related companies. I’m really excited to talk to Sree, lets get into it. Timestamps:3:48 - Software eats the world7:43 - Are we in a bubble today?10:31 - Are we in the early or late innings of software?15:31 - Shift in software education19:15 - What is digital strategy?20:00 - How do non-tech companies think about digital strategy?21:45 - What is digital transformation?23:49  - Walking a company through digital transformation28:31 - Navigating the human side of digital transformation31:15 - How do you create a learning organization?33:18 - How do you get buy-in from non-technical leaders?35:41 - Communicating plans with public markets42:24 - Earnings manipulation and transformation narratives45:44 - Innovating at Cisco50:09 - Sree’s favorite software 52:17 - Vasanth and Faraz state their favorite software 

Dr. Naveed Sherwani is a serial entrepreneur and technical leader in the world of semiconductors. As a professor at Western Michigan University, he wrote several books and hundreds of articles about chip design and manufacturing. He was the founder of Open Silicon, PeerNova, and was the CEO of SiFive. Currently he’s the Chairman of the Silicon Federation, which aims to democratize chip design.Dr. Sherwani’s Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/naveed-sherwani-2a789/Timestamps:2:11 - An explanation of the semiconductor shortage5:37 - Roadmap of chip design to final product9:25 - Semiconductors are a human right11:41 - Semiconductors are the new oil17:10 - How do we get semiconductors into the poorest countries?20:08 - Silicon Federation (https://www.linkedin.com/company/siliconfederation/about/)21:59 - How do you incentivize corporations to open source semiconductor technology?24:49 - Will a new era of hardware lead to a Cambrian explosion in startups?27:12 - The next two decades of chip development30:25 - Getting young people excited about hardware38:27 - Is China ahead of the US in artificial intelligence?43:11 - To what extent is ML a hardware problem?45:13 - Building a global education infrastructure 50:00 - How do you democratize education opportunities for the world?53:19 - In your opinion, what is the best piece of software ever built?

Dr. Aart Bik is a Staff Software Engineer at Google where he works on MLIR, a compiler architecture project that uses extensible compiler infrastructure alongside LLVM to build better compilers for Machine Learning.Timestamps:1:10 - An explanation of MLIR and LLVM compilers2:30 - Compilers are more than just translating high level code to assembly6:00 - Progressive Lowering in LLVM and MLIR7:40 - MLIR is largely agnostic of hardware9:00 - TPUs9:40 - AlphaZero, the ML and TPU powered chess engine, explained13:00 - The ML behind language translation16:30 - Will the future advancements in ML come hardware or from software?20:39 - Performance improvements with MLIR22:43 - Using fuzz testing to build better software including compilers31:00 - Code up a hobbyist project based on LLVM if you want to learn more about compilers32:28 - In your opinion, what is the best piece of software ever built?

Faraz and Vasanth break down the technical and financial aspects of the Coinbase IPO.Faraz Abidi: @fzfromcupertinoVasanth Thiruvadi: @NextVasanth

Hema Chamraj is a director at Intel. She's an Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions expert focused on working with the top leaders in Health and LifeSciences to enable AI adoption in an ethical manner. Akara (Virus-Killing Robot) - https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/customer-spotlight/stories/akara-customer-story.htmlSankara Eye Foundation - https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/ai-solution-helps-reduce-diabetic-vision-loss.html#gs.ymsp2hSamsung Medison Nervetrack - https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/samsung-medison-improve-anesthesia-delivery.html#gs.ymsrhn

Vasanth Thiruvadi describes in detail why Amazon, and other tech companies, pay so little in taxes. Vasanth has degrees in finance and accounting and until most recently worked as an accountant for start-ups, venture capital firms and other entities located around the United States. Amazon's statement: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/job-creation-and-investment/amazons-economic-impact-in-the-u-sVasanth's newsletter: https://nextbite.substack.com/Vasanth's twitter: @NextVasanth 

Vasanth Thiruvadi describes in detail why Amazon, and other tech companies, pay so little in taxes. Vasanth has degrees in finance and accounting and until most recently worked as an accountant for start-ups, venture capital firms and other entities located around the United States. Vasanth's newsletter: https://nextbite.substack.com/Vasanth's twitter: @NextVasanth 

Himan Abdollahpouri is currently a postdoc at Northwestern University. Most recently, he received his PhD in the area of machine learning and recommender systems from the University of Colorado, Boulder. His particular area of focus is the multiple stakeholder recommendation paradigms. 

Faraz Abidi built a bot, alongside Bryan Wang and Jon Wu, to make money on the NFT market by using High Frequency Trading techniques.

Courtney Greer is a Program Manager at Microsoft on the Commercial Software Engineering team. She is a certified Scrum Master and a Certified Product Owner.

Ardavan Farahvash is a PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying theoretical and computational chemistry. His research involves the fields of statistical mechanics and machine learning applied to chemistry. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ardavan-farahvash-512a85bb/

Zaheer Mohiuddin is the co-founder of Levels.fyi, a startup determined to empower professionals to make better career decisions. Zaheer speaks about compensation transparency, negotiating job offers, and his journey building a side hustle into a full-fledged, profitable business. Levels.fyi: https://www.levels.fyi/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zmohiuddin/

Akshay Agrawal is a PhD candidate at Stanford studying convex optimization. Before that, he was a software engineer at Google, working on the world’s most famous machine learning framework, TensorFlow. He also interned at a self-driving car company called Aurora. Personal Website: https://www.akshayagrawal.com/CVXPY: https://www.cvxpy.orgTensorFlow: tensorflow.orgTwitter: https://twitter.com/akshaykagrawal

Shane Rosse is a senior software engineer at Emjay where he works on building the technological infrastructure for the cannabis startup. He also runs a consulting business where he helps clients build anything and everything software-related. Before Emjay, Shane helped build products at Griddy and TicketMaster. Shane graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in computer engineering. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanerosse/

Bryan Wang is a software engineer working on exciting projects. Most recently, he was the first Machine Learning engineer at Bill.com which he joined after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in mathematics. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-wang-564447169/

Harsheen Khandpur is a product manager at Global Data Consortium(GDC), a fintech startup located in North Carolina, where she’s helped build key product features. Before that she worked as a software engineer at the same startup after graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Madison with a degree in computer engineering. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harsheen-khandpur-621674107/