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Jonathan Evens is a product lead at Google DeepMind, where he has spent more than a decade applying machine learning and AI across industries — from the smart grid at AutoGrid, to detecting roads and buildings from satellite imagery at Planet, to recommender systems, Google Search's AI Overviews and AI Mode, and now live avatars. He is also an advisor to the Evens Foundation, where he is building a "digital citizenry": a democracy sandbox that uses synthetic citizens to pre-test how the public might react to a policy before it is written.Jonathan returns to The Product Experience, where hosts Lily Smith and Randy Silver pick up the conversation they started at MTPcon London, to dig further into what actually separates an AI product manager from a product manager who simply uses AI tools, why product principles have to come before evaluations, and how synthetic users can help — and mislead — at very different scales of product.We discuss:1. Why "AI product manager" has become a near-meaningless label, and the two distinct roles hiding underneath it: the modelling product manager working on core model capabilities, and the AI feature product manager building AI-powered products2. Why using an LLM as a thinking partner or a coding assistant does not make someone an AI product manager — it makes them a product manager using AI tools, full stop3. How Google Search's North Star metrics have stayed constant even as the proxy metrics beneath them — side-by-side win rates, user ratings, RLHF signals — have had to be rebuilt from scratch4. Why product principles, not evaluations, are the real starting point for any AI feature, and how Google Search resolved the problem of trustworthy sources disagreeing on basic facts5. How Google Search builds trust into its AI Overviews through sourcing, citation placement and UX cues such as highlighting, so users can judge at a glance what to verify6. Where synthetic users genuinely help — cold-start problems, privacy-sensitive research, automated regression testing — and where they fall short7. Building the Evens Foundation's "digital citizenry", and the core technical problem behind it: AI-generated personas that are less diverse and more extreme than real people8. How team size and structure differ between a fully resourced lab like Google DeepMind and a resource-constrained non-profit team, and why Jonathan resists a single answer for the "right" team size9. How the product manager's job is shifting as engineers absorb more of the evaluation work themselves through prompting and iteration10. Jonathan's advice for product managers building AI features, and his case for following the Makers Manifesto Key takeaways"AI product manager" covers two distinct jobs. The modelling product manager defines and measures a model's core capabilities — factuality, reasoning, long context — and that role is concentrated almost entirely inside frontier labs. The AI feature product manager builds a product or feature on top of an existing model, and needs domain expertise and user empathy far more than technical depth. Conflating the two is why the title has become so diluted.Using an LLM to think faster or write code faster does not make someone an AI product manager. It makes them a product manager using AI as part of their toolkit — the same as any other knowledge worker. The distinction matters because it clarifies what skills are actually being tested.Product principles have to come before evaluations, not after. Before Jonathan starts building an eval set for a new product, he first asks what the product is meant to feel like and what values it should encode. Google Search's response to sources disagreeing on a monument's construction date, or to large language models hallucinating at scale, came from principles about trustworthiness established before any metric was built.Trust in an AI feature is built through sourcing and interface design as much as through the model itself. Google Search's AI Overviews are constrained to draw only from ranked, trustworthy documents rather than the model's own memory, and users are given UX signals — citation placement, highlighting — that let them judge at a glance how much to verify.Synthetic users add genuine value in cold-start scenarios, privacy-sensitive research and automated regression testing. Where they fall short is diversity: AI-generated personas tend to be less varied and more extreme than real people, which is the central technical problem behind the Evens Foundation's digital citizenry project.There is no fixed answer to the right team size. Jonathan sees a gradient, from a senior developer working entirely alone, up to the Evens Foundation's single product manager with AI-assisted development skills, up to a fully staffed Google team — with the deciding factor being how unsolved the underlying problem is, not company size.As engineers absorb more evaluation work themselves through prompting and iteration, roles are blending. What still sits with product management is the judgement calls that follow from product principles — deciding, for example, which technical trade-offs actually matter to the use case, rather than which are easiest to measure.Features links- Evens Foundation — https://evensfoundation.eu- Makers Manifesto — https://makersmanifesto.org- Google DeepMind — https://deepmind.google- AutoGrid — smart grid AI company where Jonathan began applying machine learning to industry- Planet — satellite imagery company where Jonathan worked on automated road and building detectionWe're refreshing The Product Experience and want your input. Take our two-minute survey and help shape where the show goes next! Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.
Interview recorded - 14th of September, 2026On this episode of the WTFinance podcast I had the pleasure of welcoming back Shaun Rein. Shaun is the Founder and Managing Director of the China Market Research Group (CMR), the world's leading strategic market intelligence firm focused on China.0:00 - Introduction1:43 - Overview of markets and the economy4:13 - Chinese property9:06 - Manufacturing12:10 - Chinese subsidies14:08 - Surplus problem18:29 - Geopolitical shifts22:03 - Reconciliation possible?26:53 - Underrated countries?29:47 - Chinese Growth Sustainable?31:23 - Safety nets?35:48 - Asset overview40:21 - One message to takeaway?Shaun Rein is the Founder and Managing Director of the China Market Research Group (CMR), the world's leading strategic market intelligence firm focused on China. He works with Boards, billionaires, Heads of States, CEOs and senior executives of Fortune 500 & leading Chinese companies, private equity firms, SMEs and long/ hedge funds to develop their China growth, political and investment strategies. Rein authored the international best-sellers "The War for China's Wallet: Profiting from the New World Order," "The End of Cheap China" & "The End of Copycat China." Publishers Weekly named "Cheap" a "Top 10 business book for 2012." The Financial Times called "Copycat" "Intriguing" and said of Wallet: “Mr. Rein's insider tales of what it takes to work in contemporary China are insightful...a toolbox for those who want to work with Chinese companies make it a worthwhile read.”Rein is regularly featured in the Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times. He frequently appears on CNN, BBC, MarketPlace, CNBC, Bloomberg, PBS and MSNBC. Rein formerly taught executive education classes for London Business School and was a weekly columnist for CNBC and Forbes. He also wrote a column for Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Rein is one of the most sought out keynote speakers focused on innovation, consumer trends and the economy in China.Shaun Rein - Website - http://www.cmrconsulting.com.cn/xsyX - https://x.com/shaunreinYouTube - @shaunrein4708 WTFinance -Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/wtfinancee/Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/67rpmjG92PNBW0doLyPvfniTunes - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wtfinance/id1554934665?uo=4X - https://twitter.com/AnthonyFatseas
Welcome to the CanadianSME Small Business Podcast, hosted by Kripa Anand. Today, we explore AI adoption, workforce readiness, and technology governance shaping Canada's SME landscape.Joining us is Dr. Wendy Cukier, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Ted Rogers School of Management, sharing insights on productivity, innovation, and responsible technology adoption.Key HighlightsAI Adoption Gap: Why Canada leads in research but lags in SME implementation.SME Technology Definitions: Understanding inconsistent adoption measurements and hidden automation use.Productivity Growth: How technology adoption can improve Canada's business competitiveness.Workforce Transition: Balancing automation, productivity, and employee development.AI Governance: Building practical data integrity and technology guardrails.Special Thanks to Our Partners:UPS: https://solutions.ups.com/ca-beunstoppable.html?WT.mc_id=BUSMEWAADP Canada: https://www.adp.ca/en.aspxFor more expert insights, visit https://canadiansme.ca/ and subscribe to the CanadianSME Small Business Magazine. Stay innovative, stay informed, and thrive in the digital age!To learn more about how we are supporting the ecosystem, please visit the CanadianSME Small Business Foundation at https://smbfoundation.ca/.Disclaimer: The information shared in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered as direct financial or business advice. Always consult with a qualified professional for advice specific to your situation.
Today we speak with Jussi Lystimäki, the CEO of refurbished smartphone specialist Swappie, about how the business achieved its first full year of profitability, reaching €2.5 million in 2025 as well as his links with Ireland through the acquisition of Done Deal. We also examine why Irish consumers are Europe's biggest smartphone hoarders, with 69% keeping unused devices at home, and what that means for the growing circular tech economy.Visit www.thinkbusiness.ie for more news and supports for start-ups and SMEs in Ireland. If you want to start and grow a business, ThinkBusiness.
Welcome to the CanadianSME Small Business Podcast, hosted by Kripa Anand. Today, we explore regional investment, trade optimization, and scaling enterprises through data-driven strategies.Joining us is Brad Parry, President and CEO of Calgary Economic Development (CED) and Chief Executive Officer of the Opportunity Calgary Investment Fund (OCIF), recognized for building Western Canada's economic ecosystem.Key HighlightsInvestment Misconceptions: Trade Accelerator programs support local business beyond attraction alone.De-Risking Growth: OCIF aligns public and private capital to lower expansion risk.Innovation Activation: Calgary's Innovation Strategy helps SMEs launch products faster.Global Trade Pivot: Firms adjust export strategies to mitigate US market uncertainty.Export Readiness: Advanced frameworks push businesses beyond basic international readiness.Special Thanks to Our Partners:UPS: https://solutions.ups.com/ca-beunstoppable.html?WT.mc_id=BUSMEWAADP Canada: https://www.adp.ca/en.aspxFor more expert insights, visit https://canadiansme.ca/ and subscribe to the CanadianSME Small Business Magazine. Stay innovative, stay informed, and thrive in the digital age!To learn more about how we are supporting the ecosystem, please visit the CanadianSME Small Business Foundation at https://smbfoundation.ca/.Disclaimer: The information shared in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered as direct financial or business advice. Always consult with a qualified professional for advice specific to your situation.
In this episode, Lee Hickin, Executive Director, National AI Centre breaks down what responsible AI actually means for small to medium enterprises in Australia—and why vague advice is one of the biggest reasons SMEs hesitate to adopt. Through the work of the National AI Centre, the talk reframes "responsible" as something practical and achievable, not a heavyweight compliance exercise. You'll hear a simple approach to adoption built around the AI Six: clear accountability, basic risk and impact thinking, transparency at the right level, ongoing testing, and maintaining human control. The episode's core message is cultural: confidence comes from leadership setting clear expectations, investing in capability, and treating AI as "you + AI", not "you vs AI." Lee Hickin, Executive Director, National AI Centre For more great insights head to www.PublicSectorNetwork.co
Lee Eagling, A&A and Compliance Technical Consultant at Mercia Group, gives his initial reaction to the government's long awaited consultation on modernising corporate reporting. Seventy pages, sixty questions, and just about everything on the table.In this episode:Bringing company law and financial reporting requirements under one roofReshaping the frameworks: UK endorsed IFRS, FRS 102, UK GAAP for SMEs and FRS 105Diluting true and fair for SMEs, and what that could mean for the quality of financial statementsMedium entities moving closer to the small company regime, with knock on audit implicationsReplacing distributable profits with a solvency test for declaring dividendsRedefining headcount on a full time equivalent basisThe consultation closes on 30 November. You do not need to answer every question, so pick the ones that matter most to you. Mercia will be submitting a response and would welcome your views.Join us this autumn:Accounting: what's new for autumn 2026Accounting and audit: what you need to know in autumn 2026For more information on this topic and more, please visit www.mercia-group.com for further details.
LinkedIn remains one of the most important social media platforms for industrial marketers trying to reach engineers and technical buyers. But succeeding on LinkedIn looks different than it did a few years ago. Company pages still matter, but individual thought leaders can often gain more traction and amplify your message. We discuss what strategies marketers should prioritize on LinkedIn today. What Should Industrial Marketers Prioritize on LinkedIn?Industrial marketers should build a LinkedIn strategy that combines company-page content with individual thought leadership.Company pages remain important for maintaining an active brand presence, sharing company news, promoting educational resources, and supporting campaigns. However, individual experts often have an advantage when it comes to reach and engagement because LinkedIn users want to hear directly from real people with real expertise.An effective LinkedIn strategy should also involve executives, salespeople, subject matter experts, engineers, and other employees who can share credible perspectives with their own networks.Why Is Thought Leadership Important on LinkedIn?Thought leadership helps companies extend their reach beyond what their corporate LinkedIn page can achieve alone.Industrial companies may spend significant time developing useful content only to see a company-page post receive a few hundred impressions. Individual profiles can generate much stronger reach because audiences are more interested in hearing directly from knowledgeable people over brands. Engineers and other subject matter experts can bring a level of credibility and experience to a post that is difficult for a corporate account to replicate.Instead of asking only, “What should our company post this week?”, marketers should also ask:Which experts inside our company could be sharing content?Which executives already have an active LinkedIn presence?Which engineers or technical SMEs have perspectives our audience would value?Start with the people who are easiest to activate, then expand your program over time. Executives, founders, and salespeople are often the easiest place to begin because they may already be comfortable posting or building their personal networks.However, some of the most valuable voices can also be the hardest to activate: engineers and technical subject matter experts. Technical audiences want to hear from people who understand their problems firsthand. An engineer explaining how they approached a design challenge may be more compelling than the same information presented as a traditional brand post.A strong thought leadership program can therefore include a mix of:Founders and executivesSales leadersProduct leadersEngineersTechnical subject matter expertsWhat Should LinkedIn Thought Leaders Post About?Thought leadership content should connect to your broader marketing strategy while reflecting the expertise of the individual posting it.Start with your existing campaigns, product launches, company messaging, customer challenges, and educational content. Then adjust the angle based on the person sharing it. For example, several employees could support the same product launch without posting the same message.A founder might discuss why the company invested in solving a particular problem.A sales leader might discuss what customers are asking about.An engineer might explain the technical challenge the team was trying to solve or how a particular approach could be applied.This approach allows industrial marketers to get more mileage out of existing campaigns without simply copying corporate posts onto employees' profiles.Do Personal Posts Belong on LinkedIn?Yes. Personal content can help LinkedIn thought leaders increase reach, build familiarity, and make their professional content more effective. Photos from events, travel, team activities, career and personal milestones, and other personal experiences can give audiences a reason to stop scrolling. Those posts may also generate stronger engagement than traditional business content, which can increase the overall visibility of an individual's profile.Personal posts should still use good judgment. Highly controversial topics or posts far outside what someone is comfortable associating with their employer may create risk. But authenticity itself is not something industrial marketers should be afraid of.Are LinkedIn Thought Leadership Ads Worth Testing?Thought leadership ads can be an effective way to expand the reach of strong individual posts while being significantly less expensive than other LinkedIn Ad types.Instead of building an advertisement from a traditional branded graphic or video, LinkedIn thought leadership ads allow companies to promote posts from individual profiles. This works particularly well when the original content is already educational and credible.At TREW, we have experimented with promoting thought leadership posts from experts. In our experience discussed, these posts have produced strong engagement and relatively efficient results compared with some traditional LinkedIn ad formats.For industrial marketers already investing in LinkedIn advertising, thought leadership ads are worth testing when you have a particularly strong organic post.Do Company Pages Still Matter on LinkedIn?Yes. Industrial brands should still maintain an active LinkedIn company page. Some content formats are particularly useful for generating engagement, while others may be better at generating reach and impressions.Document posts, sometimes called PDF sliders or carousel-style posts, can be particularly effective for engagement because users click or swipe through multiple pages. Multi-image posts can have a similar advantage because users interact with the post as they browse the images.Higher interaction can signal to LinkedIn that users find the content useful.On the reach side, industrial marketers may see stronger results from:Team photosEvent photosPosts tagging relevant employees or partnersVideosContent employees are likely to share with their own networksA strong company-page content calendar should include a mixture of formats rather than optimizing every post around a single metric.How Can Industrial Marketers Improve LinkedIn Immediately?If your company has not developed an employee thought leadership program, start by identifying one person who is most likely to participate. Once you identify that person, audit their LinkedIn profile. Check:Profile photoBanner imageHeadlineFeatured sectionExperienceAreas of expertiseRelevant keywordsFrequently Asked Questions About LinkedIn for Industrial MarketersShould industrial companies still post on their LinkedIn company pages?Yes. Company pages remain important for maintaining an active brand presence and distributing company content. However, brands should combine company-page activity with individual thought leadership to expand their potential reach.Who makes the best LinkedIn thought leader at an industrial company?Executives and salespeople may be easiest to activate, but engineers and technical subject matter experts can be particularly valuable because they can speak directly to the technical challenges audiences care about.How often should a new LinkedIn thought leader post?For someone new to thought leadership, one post every other week can be a realistic starting point. As the person becomes more comfortable and the content process improves, marketers can work toward a more frequent cadence.Do LinkedIn hashtags still work?Hashtags may provide some value, but they should not be the centerpiece of a LinkedIn strategy. Event hashtags remain particularly useful for joining conversations around conferences and trade shows.What LinkedIn post formats work well for industrial companies?Document posts, multi-image posts, team and event photography, and videos can all play different roles. Document and multi-image posts can encourage engagement, while people-focused photos and videos may help expand reach.What is the easiest way to start a LinkedIn thought leadership program?Choose one willing employee, optimize their LinkedIn profile, identify topics connected to your existing marketing strategy, and begin with a manageable posting schedule.During the episode, we also previewed TREW Marketing's What's Working Now webinar on September 24, which will cover actions industrial marketers can take today, over the next few weeks, and as they begin planning for 2027.We also shared an update on the 2027 Industrial Marketing Summit, taking place February 23 through 25 in Austin, Texas, including new sessions shaped by attendee feedback and covering topics ranging from marketing leadership and reporting to e-commerce and sales training.ResourcesConnect with Kasey on LinkedInConnect with Wendy on LinkedInRegister for the What's Working Now WebinarRegister for the Industrial Marketing SummitD
In this episode, we sit down and talk with Dr. Tom Tobin about how to scale UDL efforts within your university. Tom will walk us through step-by-step with how to set up your UDL initiative to be successful with supporting efforts, overcoming challenges, establishing reward systems, and more. We also chat about case studies of UDL champions within universities and the effectiveness of the FAST framework.
Every leader eventually discovers the gap between being obeyed and being trusted. In Japan's corporate culture — as much as in Sydney, Singapore or Silicon Valley — a title on a business card buys compliance, but it doesn't buy commitment. As of 2025, with talent mobility rising across Japan's white-collar workforce and post-pandemic hybrid teams making face time scarcer, the question of how leaders earn genuine trust has become a boardroom priority from Tokyo to Osaka. Research from organisations like Dale Carnegie consistently shows that earned trust, not positional authority, is what unlocks discretionary effort, creativity and retention. Why doesn't positional authority earn real trust from a team? Positional authority buys obedience, not commitment — only earned trust unlocks discretionary effort. "Automatic trust" comes from a leader's title, seniority or hierarchy, and in Japan's traditionally hierarchical corporate structures, it can look like real influence because staff comply readily. But compliance is not commitment. Executives at firms like Toyota and Rakuten increasingly recognise that genuine, "earned trust" is built through consistent, authentic interactions where leaders "talk the talk" and "walk the walk" over time. Without it, delegation becomes risky: leaders doubt their team will reliably handle tasks, which chokes time management and stalls team growth. When earned trust is present, by contrast, team members offer initiative and creativity no policy can mandate. Do now: Audit whether your team's compliance is habit-driven or trust-driven — the difference shows up the moment you're not watching. How do leaders in Japan build earned trust through everyday communication? Earned trust is built through consistent, authentic interactions, not grand gestures. It compounds slowly, through explaining the purpose behind tasks, listening to concerns, and following through on commitments. This differs from the transactional, order-issuing style still common in some traditional Japanese SMEs, and contrasts with the coaching-led management style favoured by many multinationals and Western-influenced startups operating in Japan. Comparative research across markets — Japan versus the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific — consistently finds that leaders who explain the "why" behind delegated work see higher engagement than those who simply issue instructions. Mutual understanding, not authority, is the currency that compounds into loyalty. Do now: Replace one instruction this week with an explanation — tell your team the "why," not just the "what." What communication mistakes destroy leader-team trust fastest? Losing your temper, dismissing ideas outright, and breaking promises erode trust faster than almost anything else a leader can do. These lapses are magnified in Japan's business culture, where public criticism or visible frustration can cause lasting loss of face for both parties. Insufficient communication — leaders defaulting to issuing orders instead of explaining, listening or seeking input — compounds the damage over time. Across sectors, from consumer-facing retail to B2B manufacturing, the pattern repeats: teams led by low-trust managers show measurably lower initiative and higher turnover. Japan's 2023 labour reforms, which pushed harder on workplace wellbeing and reduced overtime culture, have only sharpened employee expectations around respectful, transparent leadership. Do now: Before reacting to a mistake or a pushback, pause — a leader's next ten seconds either build or break trust. Why is delegation the missing link between trust and time management? Leaders who don't delegate effectively trap themselves in a vicious cycle of mistrust and time poverty. Without delegation, leaders have less time for the one-on-one interactions that build trust in the first place — so trust stays low, and delegation stays risky, and the loop repeats. This is a particularly acute challenge for time-poor executives across Japan's multinationals and fast-scaling startups alike, where headcount pressure leaves little slack for mentoring. Breaking the loop requires leaders to prioritise one-on-one time deliberately, rather than waiting for a quiet week that never arrives. Firms that treat delegation as a growth tool, not a workload dump, consistently report stronger succession pipelines. Do now: Block a recurring weekly slot for one-on-ones — treat it as non-negotiable as a client meeting. How should leaders invest one-on-one time to build lasting trust? Understanding a team member's motivations, interests, fears and goals is what turns delegation into development.These personal insights let leaders align delegated tasks with each person's career path, giving the work a sense of purpose rather than obligation. For successful delegation, leaders should involve team members in planning and monitoring progress, not just handing over a task and disappearing. This approach requires dedicated time that's easily deprioritised amid competing obligations — a common failure point for conglomerates managing large teams versus the more agile, relationship-dense structures typical of SMEs. Committing to these conversations consistently pays off in stronger trust and accountability. Do now: Ask one team member this week what career outcome they actually want from the next twelve months. What does an ongoing trust-building system look like for busy executives? Building trust is a continuous discipline, not a once-a-year initiative. It requires leaders to change mindset, habits and time allocation rather than repeating the same annual review cycle and hoping relationships hold. Earned trust elevates team cohesion, individual motivation and collective success — and consistent attention to trust-building efforts creates a lasting foundation that survives leadership transitions, restructures and market pressure. Leaders who treat trust as infrastructure, not sentiment, are better positioned for the retention challenges facing Japan's workforce as competition for skilled talent intensifies. Do now: Schedule a quarterly review of your own trust-building habits, not just your team's KPIs. Conclusion Trust in leadership isn't inherited with a title — it's built through the accumulation of small, consistent actions: explaining rather than ordering, listening rather than dismissing, and delegating with a team member's growth in mind. The leaders who get this right in Japan's evolving business environment, and everywhere else, aren't necessarily the most senior in the room. They're the ones who've made trust-building an ongoing habit rather than a one-off exercise. FAQs Trust built through hierarchy and trust earned through behaviour are fundamentally different, and only one drives discretionary effort. Positional or "automatic" trust secures compliance because of a leader's rank; earned trust secures commitment because of a leader's consistent, demonstrated integrity. Delegation and trust reinforce each other in a loop — low trust limits delegation, and limited delegation leaves no time to build trust. Breaking the cycle usually requires a leader to delegate deliberately before they feel fully ready, then use the freed-up time for one-on-one relationship building. Yes — trust-building norms vary by market, but the underlying behaviours (explaining, listening, following through) are consistent everywhere. In hierarchical business cultures like Japan's, visible respect and face-saving communication matter more; in flatter Western structures, transparency and direct feedback tend to carry more weight. Quick Actions For Leaders • Distinguish, this week, between team compliance and team commitment on your own projects. • Replace one directive with an explanation of purpose before Friday. • Lock in a recurring one-on-one slot with each direct report. • Ask each team member what career outcome they want from the next year. • Review your own trust-building habits quarterly, not just team KPIs. Author Bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー). Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews, which are widely followed by executives seeking success strategies in Japan.
Kirsten Mann is a board director, product leader and, with this episode, a three-time guest on the podcast. Last time she was here, she was building Vizory, an AI tool that helps company directors get through board packs. This time she's back to explain why she isn't building it any more. Talking to Randy Silver, she walks through exiting Vizory, the friction tests she ran before writing a line of code, and why she now believes distribution, not the build, is where most AI products actually die.We're refreshing The Product Experience and want your input. Take our two-minute survey and help shape where the show goes next! Key takeawaysBefore writing a line of code, Mann tested for force rather than sentiment: she asked directors for two confidential board packs and an audio recording of themselves reviewing one, and only started building once 10 people agreed to do it. Coffee-shop enthusiasm is cheap; handing over a company's most sensitive document is not.Vizory's most-loved feature in demos, cross-pack search, was barely used once shipped. Directors said they wanted it and reacted strongly when they saw it, but in practice they went straight to an automated triage view instead — a clean case of stated preference diverging from revealed preference.Board software runs on quarterly, not weekly, cycles, and trust compounds slower than value does. Mann modelled two review cycles before directors would rely on the tool; in practice it took three, meaning some customers on quarterly boards needed close to a year before the value became obvious, a timeline no 30-day trial can accommodate.Pricing got caught in a double anchoring trap. Directors first benchmarked Vizory against the $20-a-month ChatGPT and Claude price point, so Mann positioned against the cost of a governance failure instead, then created a second anchor by pricing early pilots at $150 a seat against a $300 target, which made the later increase read as a 100% price rise.Cutting friction is the wrong instinct early on. Mann deliberately added friction, asking for sensitive documents and charging as early as possible, to separate real demand from polite interest, arguing that most founders run tests designed to confirm they're right rather than to find a reason to stop.Mann's main lesson for other founders is that distribution is now the product problem. AI has collapsed the cost of building software but done nothing to the cost of reaching people who trust you, which is why she pushed to add distribution, adoption and willingness to pay as a third discipline in the Makers' Manifesto, alongside building the right thing and building it right.Multi-model products carry a new operational risk. One of Vizory's AI "judges" silently stopped being selected because the underlying model had been deprecated overnight without warning, a reminder that model drift means the QA and evals work never really stops, however fast the initial build was.We're refreshing The Product Experience and want your input. Take our two-minute survey and help shape where the show goes next! Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.
In this episode, Hilmarie sits down with Sergei Kukharev to explore how technology can reduce stress instead of creating it. Drawing on more than 15 years of experience in fintech and payments, Sergei explains why the future of AI isn't about replacing people, but helping business owners make better decisions with greater confidence.The conversation explores the shift that transformed his career, moving from building payment infrastructure to understanding the people behind every transaction. After spending time with small business owners, Sergei realized that merchants don't care about complex technology. They care about saving time, reducing operational stress, and running their businesses more effectively. That insight reshaped how he approaches product development, leading him to prioritize simplicity, empathy, and practical outcomes over flashy features.A defining moment in the episode is Sergei's Green Pill realization that successful products are built by solving human problems, not technical ones. He shares valuable lessons from products that failed, why emotional friction often prevents adoption more than technical limitations, and how involving engineers directly with customers creates better solutions. He also discusses AI's growing role as a trusted assistant that helps small businesses gain clarity without replacing human judgment.At its core, this episode is about empathy, thoughtful innovation, and building technology that genuinely improves people's lives. Sergei's journey is a reminder that the best products aren't the ones with the most features, but the ones that quietly remove complexity so people can focus on what matters most.About The GuestSergei Kukharev is the Chief Product Officer at Fortis, where he leads the development of AI-powered payment and commerce solutions that help small and medium-sized businesses simplify operations and make smarter decisions. With over 15 years of experience in fintech, digital payments, and product leadership, he has built solutions focused on improving merchant experiences across the GCC.Throughout his career, Sergei has championed a human-centered approach to product development, believing that the most successful technology is measured not by its complexity but by the confidence and clarity it gives its users. By combining data, artificial intelligence, and customer empathy, he continues to create practical solutions that help businesses reduce operational stress, improve efficiency, and grow with confidenceQuotes4:17 - Designing for stress reduction means designing for clarity, simplicity, and confidence in daily operations.10:24 - Spend more time absorbing real user behavior and less time building based on someone's assumptions. 12:42 - The most interesting future is not AI creating some noise, but helping small business owners and business owners actually feel more in control.13:26 - AI cannot replace judgment, for example. Yeah, its the human thing, and only we can judge the decisions, what AI, for example, suggesting to us.22:22 - We decided to stay focused on the merchants we could serve better. And I think it was an important to us an important reminder that long-term trust matters more than chasing scale too early.24:25 - Empathy is vital to actually thrive and be successful.Useful LinksWebsite:https://www.wefortis.comInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/fortis.uae/Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/ser-kukharev/The Matrix Green Pill Podcast: https://thematrixgreenpill.com/Please review us: https://g.page/r/CS8IW35GvlraEAI/review
Hello and welcome back to the latest ThinkBusiness Podcast, powered by Bank of Ireland. Today we speak with Maaike Terwindt, AI Specialist for Europe at Google, about how Gemini, Gems and AI agents are reshaping the way SMEs work. From boosting productivity and automating routine tasks to unlocking new growth opportunities, she explains how businesses can put practical AI to work today.Visit www.thinkbusiness.ie for more news and supports for start-ups and SMEs in Ireland. If you want to start and grow a business, ThinkBusiness.
The following article of the Logistics industry is: “Logistics Capabilities as Operational Enablers for SMEs” by Francisco Ricaurte, President, UPS Latin America. (AA2593)
The charter for the Defence, Security, and Resilience Bank (DSRB) has been signed and founding members – notably including both Canada and Luxenberg – are piling on the pressure to start making funding available to member states, industrial primes, and commercial SMEs. According for Brigadier General (retired) Robbie Boyd, this is the best and most significant piece of innovation to have happened to deterrence in the least 45 years. The DSRB has become as political as it is economic and offers solution for like-minded democracies to make significant investments in hard power capabilities (like weapons and ammunition) that other financial institutions (like the European Investment Bank) will not allow. There aren't many places you hear a conversation about global financing of deterrence and defence in an accessible way. Robbie Boyd makes this deeply technical and fiduciary discussion digestible even to sailors.
Hello and welcome back to the latest ThinkBusiness Podcast, powered by Bank of Ireland. Today we're exploring one of the biggest challenges facing Irish family businesses: succession planning. Joining us is Deborah Kelly, Partner and Head of Corporate at Addleshaw Goddard Ireland, who shares practical advice on preparing for leadership transition, avoiding common pitfalls, and building a business that thrives for generations.Visit www.thinkbusiness.ie for more news and supports for start-ups and SMEs in Ireland. If you want to start and grow a business, ThinkBusiness.
Is your business embracing AI wisely - and are your financial habits building wealth or holding you back? This episode explores two practical areas every leader of a small or medium-sized business should master. First, Vice President and General Manager of Oracle NetSuite ANZ, Scott Wiltshire, explains how small businesses can safely adopt artificial intelligence to improve productivity without creating unnecessary risk. Then, Australia's finance guru Noel Whittaker shares the most common financial mistakes business owners make - from neglecting investing and super to confusing good debt with bad - and the simple habits that can build lasting wealth. If you’re considering launching a podcast to grow your authority and client base, reach out to our team to learn how we can support you. Business Essentials is produced by soundcartel.com.auSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Adrian is joined by Lee Bryan, founder and CEO of Arcus Compliance, to examine a common assumption among companies manufacturing products in China: if the supplier says a product is compliant, provides a CE certificate, or says they have made similar products before, can you rely on that? The discussion covers increasingly automated regulatory enforcement, why compliance needs to be considered during product development rather than after launch, how AI can help companies understand regulatory requirements, why supplier certificates should be independently verified, how compliance can become a competitive advantage, and what happens when a V2 product introduces component or design changes. Lee's core advice is simple: trust, but verify. Arcus currently identifies Lee Bryan as its founder and CEO. Show Sections 00:00:13 - Introduction: Can you prove your product is compliant? and guest, Lee Bryan of Arcus Compliance 00:04:58 - Why product compliance enforcement is increasing 00:08:47 - The real risks of getting compliance wrong 00:10:01 - Why checking compliance after launch is too late 00:16:11 - When should compliance enter the product development process? 00:17:36 - Compliance challenges for SMEs versus large companies 00:21:52 - Building compliance into product development 00:22:58 - Can AI help you understand regulations? 00:26:18 - Can you trust your Chinese supplier on compliance? 00:28:05 - Why certificates and test reports must be verified 00:29:35 - Turning compliance into a competitive advantage 00:33:56 - Does a V2 product need to be tested again? 00:37:19 - What should be checked before tooling and mass production? 00:41:14 - The key takeaway: compliance responsibility sits with you 00:41:49 - Lee's book, The Compliance Edge Related content Why YOU Need a Product Safety Program 11 Common Electronic Product Certification And Compliance Requirements Reliability vs. Compliance: Both Matter Equally for Your New Product Launch Importing into the EU: Product Compliance is More than Test Reports How To Verify that a Component's FCC or CE Certificate is Legitimate? Visit Lee's site: Arcus Compliance and connect with him Read Lee's recent book for free: The Compliance Edge (PDF download) Get in touch with Sofeast Connect with us on LinkedIn Contact us via Sofeast's contact page Subscribe to our YouTube channel Prefer Facebook? Check us out on FB
Were you invited to join a panel or host a workshop about AI and imposter syndrome is stopping you? Here's what to do.
April Dunford is the positioning expert behind Obviously Awesome and a former repeat vice-president of marketing across seven venture-backed startups, most of which were acquired. Over the past decade she has advised roughly 300 B2B technology companies, all with sales teams, on how to position themselves against the competition. In this episode she joins hosts Lily Smith and Randy Silver to explain why so many companies are repositioning at once, how a strong point of view on the future underpins good positioning, and why the story a company tells about itself is a decision for product and sales, not just marketing.Key takeawaysPositioning is a company-wide decision, not a marketing exercise. Dunford's own experience repositioning a spreadsheet tool as an embeddable database shows how it reshapes pricing, sales motion and even the product roadmap, not just the words on a website.Major shifts such as the move to AI force widespread repositioning because customers no longer have a stable set of alternatives to judge value or price against, and both AI-native companies and traditional SaaS businesses are wrestling with where they now sit.Intercom's rebuild of its support product around Fin shows how staying anchored to the customer's underlying job, resolving a ticket, can guide a genuine AI-first redesign rather than a bolt-on feature.Companies need a clear, credible point of view on the future of their market, or customers facing genuine uncertainty will simply freeze and delay buying decisions.A compelling vision of the future has to flow from a company's real differentiated value, not be reverse-engineered to flatter its current position.Selling too far into a hyped future risks stalling deals, so the message needs a maturity model that shows customers a credible, low-risk path from where they are today to where the market is heading.Positioning should be revisited on a disciplined schedule rather than settled by whoever argues loudest in the room, and Dunford recommends a structured check every six months on competitors, differentiators and value themes.Customer advisory boards, quarterly executive account calls and a company's own sales team are the most reliable early-warning systems for shifts in budget, buying process and competitive threats, long before they show up as lost deals.Chapters(00:00) Introduction to April Dunford (01:53) The story behind Obviously Awesome (05:33) Positioning as a cross-functional decision (07:23) Why everyone is repositioning right now (09:32) Intercom, Fin and the AI-native rebuild (11:53) Building a point of view of the future (16:52) Is the vision genuine or self-serving (18:00) How to develop your point of view (22:13) Stack Overflow, Salesforce and staying silent (23:45) Hyping the future without stalling sales (27:01) When positioning needs to change (28:42) Running a regular positioning check-in (30:29) Customer advisory boards and voice of customer (34:47) Predicting change after covid and AI (37:20) Wrap-upOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.
A business can have customers, ambition and real potential to grow, and still struggle to secure funding. Often, the missing piece is investment readiness. Masisizane Fund, an initiative of Old Mutual, has launched a new programme to help growth-stage SMEs build the systems, financial discipline and governance that investors expect. To take us through the Masisizane Investment Readiness Programme, we’re joined by Thabang Hleza Head of Investments: Old Mutual Masisizane Fund Masisizane Fund. Presenter John Maytham is an actor and author-turned-talk radio veteran and seasoned journalist. His show serves a round-up of local and international news coupled with the latest in business, sport, traffic and weather. The host’s eclectic interests mean the program often surprises the audience with intriguing book reviews and inspiring interviews profiling artists. A daily highlight is Rapid Fire, just after 5:30pm. CapeTalk fans call in, to stump the presenter with their general knowledge questions. Another firm favourite is the humorous Thursday crossing with award-winning journalist Rebecca Davis, called “Plan B”. Thank you for listening to a podcast from Afternoon Drive with John Maytham Listen live on Primedia+ weekdays from 15:00 and 18:00 (SA Time) to Afternoon Drive with John Maytham broadcast on CapeTalk https://buff.ly/NnFM3Nk For more from the show go to https://buff.ly/BSFy4Cn or find all the catch-up podcasts here https://buff.ly/n8nWt4x Subscribe to the CapeTalk Daily and Weekly Newsletters https://buff.ly/sbvVZD5 Follow us on social media: CapeTalk on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@capetalk CapeTalk on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ CapeTalk on X: https://x.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CapeTalk567 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode of Under the Hood, journalist Carlos Tse is joined by CPA Australia policy adviser Gavan Ord to unpack the growing pressures facing Australian businesses, from increasing compliance costs and regulatory complexity to a lack of policy co-ordination and support for productivity. Ord explores how the cumulative impact of policy changes is making it harder for businesses to grow, why Australia's approach to regulation and digital investment differs from jurisdictions such as Singapore and Hong Kong, and how accountants can help clients navigate an increasingly complex business environment. Tune in to hear more about: Why the cumulative effect of policy changes matters more than any single regulation. Fragmented policymaking and how it can lead to unintended consequences. How Australia's approach to business policy compares to other APAC countries. What younger business owners bring to the table. Accounting's transition from compliance into higher-value advisory services.
In Episode 22 of Season 7 of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Chris Pearce, Chief Data and AI Officer at Ageas, where they discuss why so few organisations manage to get AI out of proof-of-concept and into live production. Chris makes the case that this is a structural and operating model problem rather than a technical one, and that the businesses which crack it are the ones that understand their own commercial engine intimately enough to know exactly which decision they are trying to change.Drawing on a 250-person function spanning data engineering, data science, AI engineering, infrastructure and governance, Chris walks through real deployments into Ageas's contact centres, how the value of those deployments is measured and attributed to the P&L, and why the risk conversation with a board is far more winnable than most data leaders assume.They also discuss:Why rolling out Copilot licences bears no resemblance to putting LLMs into front-end production systems touching customers in real time.What the full cross-functional cast actually looks like, from SRE and infrastructure to UX, middleware developers, AI engineers, business SMEs, risk, legal and compliance.Why AI delivery is fundamentally a structural problem, with the necessary skill sets scattered across different leaders, agendas and backlogs.How building AI capability in isolated pockets of the ecosystem guarantees you never leave POC land.Why the first question on any piece of data science work should be how you intend to measure it, and why nothing starts until that's answered.How Ageas used LLM summarisation at the chatbot-to-agent handover to remove friction for customers already losing patience.Why after-call work was worth attacking, and what shaving minutes off every call does to backlogs, concurrency and demand.How A/B testing capability across 50 agents against another 50, de-biased for tenure and experience, produces evidence a board can't argue with.What it takes to build a genuine culture of experimentation in an environment as dynamic as a contact centre.Why "my job is to help people" is where most value conversations begin, and how to move past it.How to trace the decision chain that follows once the phone goes down, and why that's where the financial link is found.Why brilliant technical analytics is squandered without the work of presenting it visually and narratively.What has to be true for a change in decision-making to be logged, monitored and made someone's accountability.Why any organisation asking for an AI strategy should be asked about its business strategy first.How to uncover a business strategy that isn't written on a wall or neatly captured in a PDF anywhere.Why starting with low-hanging fruit builds the patterns, the track record and the appetite for bigger bets later.What the doom loop of perpetual proof-of-concept does to credibility, investment and the perception of ROI.Why perfect temples of data platforms get built over four or five years and then fail to land.How the risk conversation changes when you demonstrate the operational, technical and information security controls that already exist.Why hallucination rates deserve to be compared with how often humans under pressure get things slightly wrong.What is missing from every AI maturity framework Chris has encountered, and why counting models in production is activity rather than maturity.Why software development skills are becoming essential for data scientists, and how AI engineering mirrors the data science unicorn boom of fifteen years ago.Why the technical barrier to entry has never been lower, and why adaptability is now the trait Chris values most.Why every practitioner needs a degree of commercial nous, and what happens to retention when people can't see the impact of their work.Thanks to our sponsor, Data & AI Literacy Academy.Data & AI Literacy Academy is leading the way in transforming enterprise workforces with data literacy across the organisation, through a combination of change management and education. In today's data-centric world, being data literate is no longer a luxury, it's a necessity.If you want successful data product adoption, and to keep driving innovation within your business, you need to start with data & AI literacy first.At Data & AI Literacy Academy, they don't just teach data skills. They empower individuals and teams to think critically, analyse effectively, and make decisions confidently based on data. They're bridging the gap between business and data teams, so they can all work towards aligned outcomes.From those taking their first steps in data & AI literacy to seasoned experts looking to fine-tune their skills, our data experts provide tailored classes for every stage. But it's not just learning tracks that they offer. They embed a deep data culture shift through a transformative change management programme.They take a people-first approach, working closely with your executive team to win the hearts and minds. We know this will drive the company-wide impact that data teams want to achieve.Get in touch and find out how you can unlock the full potential of data in your organisation. Learn more at www.dl-academy.com/driven
While many individual investors and emigrants are postponing major financial decisions amid ongoing geopolitical uncertainty and upcoming elections, Sebastian Steyn, Head of Dealing at Sable International, says businesses do not have the same luxury. Steyn told BizNews that South Africa's growing Business Process Outsourcing sector and multinational SMEs continue to receive revenue in foreign currencies while managing local operating costs, leaving them directly exposed to currency fluctuations. He cites the case of a client who saved millions of rands through proactive currency risk management using forward contracts and structured hedging solutions. Although several geopolitical and political risks remain on the horizon, including conflict in the Middle East and upcoming elections, Steyn believes preparation and planning remain far more important than trying to time the market. As he puts it, “It is not about being right all the time. It is about being prepared for all eventualities.” – Linda van Tilburg.
Jeremy Au and Shiyan Koh take apart Singapore's new SG Child Support Package: almost $70,000 per Singaporean child paid out over 17 years, more childcare leave, and preschool fees heading towards $150 a month. Jeremy on why the number only means anything relative to income. Shiyan on why the preschool change matters most. Whether the extra leave actually gets taken, or quietly costs you at work. And the change nobody articulated: every Singapore Citizen child now qualifies regardless of their parents' marital status. Plus nuclear, transhipment, and their wishlist for the next budget. Watch, listen or read the full insight at https://www.bravesea.com/blog/singapore-child-financial-support BRAVE is Southeast Asia's leading tech podcast, hosted by Jeremy Au. Honest conversations with the region's top founders, investors, and operators on building startups in Southeast Asia. New episodes every week. Subscribe so you never miss one. Listen & Subscribe YouTube (English), YouTube (Bahasa Indonesia), Spotify (English), Spotify (Bahasa Indonesia), Spotify (Chinese), Spotify (Vietnamese), Apple Podcasts Follow BRAVE LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp Follow Jeremy Au LinkedIn, X / Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Threads, Twitch Resources Get transcripts, startup resources & community discussions at www.bravesea.com #Singapore #NDR2026 #SoutheastAsia #NationalDayRally #SGChildSupportPackage #BabyBonus #ChildcareLeave #FamilyPolicy #SingaporeStartups #VentureCapital #FundingWinter #AngelInvesting #NuclearEnergy #Logistics #SupplyChain #TechPodcast #SEAstartups #Malaysia #Indonesia #Vietnam #Philippines #HustleFund #Entrepreneurship 00:00 Introduction 01:33 The $70,000 package, explained 03:26 Why preschool is the biggest piece 06:26 Cash today, or shares that compound to 18 09:03 Sweeping unused payouts into a nest egg 12:15 A voucher society, or a shareholder society 13:38 The pushback: SMEs and the colleagues covering 16:49 Reservist, and the cost of stepping away 21:38 Who qualifies: citizen children, foreign parents 25:34 What about single parents? 29:45 Nuclear: island mergers and a China pact 32:41 Vietnam, transhipment, Dockware and Portcast 36:20 Wishlist for the next budget 39:24 Fifty $50M companies beat one unicorn 43:10 Outro
In today's episode, Ron Weissenburg explains the constitutional path to an early South African national election before 2029. Nurture Brands discusses their ambitious goal to build a R10 billion business through strategic consolidation. Christo Wiese unpacks how property title deeds could unlock dignity and economic wealth for millions, while David White highlights the hidden benefits of B-BBEE procurement for SMEs. Finally, we cover Wall Street's latest inflation jitters.
"Running a business is really complicated," says David White, founder and CEO of DRG, BusinessFit SA and The Africa Marketing Initiative, and the resulting "entrepreneurial time poverty" is what quietly kills small businesses long before bad ideas do. In conversation with Irakli Rekhviashvili, White explains how BusinessFit's open source self-assessment platform works as a "mentor multiplier" for South Africa's estimated 12 million entrepreneurs and SMEs, since "there are not enough mentors around the world, or in particular South Africa," and why structure changes the odds: "if an entrepreneur is able to better understand what is required for them to build a sustainable business, there is almost no reason why those businesses shouldn't be successful." White also revisits DRG's own JSE listing within two years of founding, and the dot-com crash that followed. "I would never do it again, to be honest," he admits. "It took away that magical essence of why we started the business in the first place." What replaced the chase for money, he says, is something else entirely: "spending time with entrepreneurs who believe the world can be a better place... is a reward in itself." On the B-BBEE Act's push for larger companies to direct 3% of after-tax profit and 30% of supply chain spend to SMEs, a combination he's called a "success formula," White is broadly supportive but draws a hard line on how it's funded: "I'm not a great fan of the grants... when we're giving money and there's no expectation for it to be returned, I think the mindset changes of the entrepreneur."
In this episode, Megan Kohler discusses the complexities of neurodiversity, debunks common misconceptions, and introduces a research-grounded model to support neurodiverse learners in education. We explore practical strategies, the role of AI, and how to foster inclusive learning environments. Connect with Megan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mkohler26/ Megan's website: https://www.megankohler.org
Julia Barham leads a CX acquisition team at Progressive Insurance and is the author of The Product Management Playbook, published by Rosenfeld Media in July 2026. She wrote it to close what she sees as a coaching gap in the profession: a decade of product transformations has produced far more people with the title than people who have been taught end-to-end craft. In this episode she makes the case for treating ambiguity as a condition of the job rather than a problem to be solved, and walks through the things that quietly break when a product starts to scale.Key takeawaysFrameworks come and go, but the questions endure. Julia structured her book around why something matters, who it is for, what needs building and when, because no methodology eliminates ambiguity, it only reduces it.Organisational ambiguity is the least discussed of the four ambiguities PMs face, and the one that separates individual contributors from leaders. Waiting for the perfect operating model, funding model or team shape is a way of not moving.If you have to be in every room to answer every question, you are scaling chaos. Durable artefacts, bug severity rubrics and self-service dashboards let the team make calls without you.Synthesis is where shared context gets built, and offloading it to an AI tool quietly removes the thing that made it valuable. Do it together, monthly, with the customer, platform and business data in the same room.Chasing growth before product market fit turns your economics upside down. Products commonly take two years to find fit, sometimes five, and retention is the strongest signal that you have it.Julia spent nine months fixing latency on an inherited platform because of shortcuts taken at launch. The cost was measured in millions of lost revenue, not just engineering time.Attaching a monetary value to technical debt is what turns a product manager from a stick in the mud into a steward of the business. Treat your product like a P&L whether you own one or not.A product at scale needs a portfolio, not a backlog: optimisation, strategic bets, capability work, and honest capacity set aside for run-the-business support.AI belongs in the toolkit, not in the chair. If you cannot call BS on the output, you do not know enough to be doing the job.Chapters(00:00) Don't scale chaos(01:01) Introducing Julia Barham(03:01) The coaching gap that prompted the book(03:57) Why the book is built around questions, not frameworks(06:06) Has product management ever been deterministic?(07:47) The four ambiguities every product manager faces(10:00) Does organisational ambiguity change with company size?(12:57) The 21 plays and how to use them(15:35) Getting your reps in across the product lifecycle(17:07) What breaks when products and teams scale(17:59) Mistake one: needing to be in every room(20:30) Building shared context across distributed teams(23:51) The ways of working exercise(24:19) Mistake two: chasing growth before product market fit(25:56) How to measure product market fit(27:16) Mistake three: scaling expensive problems(29:42) Putting a price on technical debt(31:54) When taking on debt is the right call(34:22) Naming the mode your product is in(35:09) Mistake four: running your product as a portfolio(37:39) The one problem Julia would make disappear(39:25) What AI changes, and what it does not(42:26) Wrap-upReferencedThe Product Management Playbook, Julia Barham, Rosenfeld Media: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/product-management-playbook/Use discount code MTP20 for 20% off at Rosenfeld MediaSample chapter: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/sample-chapter-the-product-management-playbook/Dan Olsen and the product market fit pyramid: https://dan-olsen.comTesting Business Ideas, David BlandProgressive Insurance: https://www.progressive.comPioneers, settlers and town planners, Simon Wardley: https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/03/on-pioneers-settlers-town-planners-and.htmlOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.
Bidzi is a tech-enabled M&A advisory firm for SMEs in the UAE. It combines technology, transaction experience and legal expertise to help business owners, buyers and investors navigate business sales and acquisitions from strategy and valuation through due diligence, negotiation and completion. Its advisory-led, technology-supported model brings greater structure, transparency and execution discipline to UAE SME transactions.About the Founders: Bidzi was founded by Akshay Dosaj and Asif Rashid, bringing together complementary experience across M&A, law, business ownership and enterprise technology.Akshay is a UK-qualified corporate lawyer who began his career at Norton Rose Fulbright in London before moving to the UAE in 2009. He subsequently became an entrepreneur, building, acquiring and exiting businesses in the UAE. This included co-founding and scaling a hospitality group to six brands, 19 locations and more than 300 employees before completing its sale in 2022.Asif is a computer scientist and technology executive who spent a decade in senior roles at Microsoft. He brings extensive experience in enterprise technology, cloud infrastructure, sales and the development of technology-led business solutions.Together, the founders combine legal and transaction expertise, first-hand experience of building and selling businesses, and enterprise-level technology capabilities. They created Bidzi to bring greater structure, transparency and execution discipline to SME M&A in the UAE.Website: https://bidzi.io/Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bidz...Follow us on Social or use #StartupHustleME to connect: / startuphustleme / startuphust. . / startuphustleme www.linkedin.com/company/startup-hustle-middle-east/ Email us on startup.hustle.me@gmail.com Visit our AI Automation business: https://optomize.aiGet in touch with Yellow here: https://welcometoyellow.com/
This episode was produced by Founders Hive, a community of successful startup founders, industry experts, and investors promoting entrepreneurship in Switzerland and helping early-stage business concepts get ready for seed-stage investment. Founders Hive is a partner of the Entrepreneurship Training programme, empowered by Innosuisse, the Swiss innovation agency supporting SMEs, startups, research institutions and other Swiss organizations in their research and development activities. Click here to find out more about Founders Hive, empowered by Innosuisse.Episode description:Habiba Alami is the founder and CEO of HappyPot, a Swiss startup making group money collection easier. Milan Kuzmanovic is the founder and Chief AI Officer of Nextesy, an AI-native business administration platform built to reduce repetitive back-office work. In this Opposing Views episode, they discuss a question many founders face early on: should you build for global expansion from day one, or focus on becoming strong in one market first?For Milan, the ambition was global from the beginning. The problem Nextesy tackles exists far beyond Switzerland, but the company still chose to prove itself at home first. Habiba sees it differently: the problem HappyPot solves may be global, but trust, payment habits and user behaviour change from market to market. That makes Switzerland less of a limitation and more of a demanding testing ground.The conversation gets into the real trade-offs behind international expansion. Move too late, and the market may move without you. Move too early, and you risk spreading the company before the product is strong enough. Habiba and Milan also share what they are working on next, and what founders should ask themselves before deciding whether it is time to expand.Don't forget to give us a follow on Instagram, Linkedin, TikTok, and Youtube so you can always stay up to date with our latest initiatives. That way, there's no excuse for missing out on live shows, weekly giveaways or founders' dinners.Timestamps:01:18 – Global vs Local Growth02:51 – Building With Global Ambition11:05 – Why the Solution Has to Be Local24:31 – The Risk of Expanding Too Late
Thabang Hleza – Head of investments: Masisizane Fund, Old Mutual SAfm Market Update - Podcasts and live stream
Website traffic is falling across the board, and it's tempting to read that as a marketing problem. It usually isn't. AI summaries now answer the generic top of funnel questions people used to click into your site to answer, so the casual browsers never arrive. The visitors who do show up are the ones already deciding whether you're a fit. That changes what a manufacturing website is for. A list of machines, materials, and certifications was fine when buyers were willing to dig. Now they want a specific answer to a specific question, and if your site makes them hunt for it, they'll go back to Google or ChatGPT and get an answer from a source you don't control. We talk with John Greeley of Navu about what shops should actually do about it, and a lot of it isn't what you'd expect. Old content that used to sit harmlessly on your site is now working against you, because LLMs read your whole site at once and stop citing you when they find pages that disagree with each other. Less content with more depth beats the old habit of publishing a page for every possible search term. The other half of this is labor. The questions landing in your info inbox are usually answered somewhere on your site already, and they're pulling SMEs and owners off the work that actually moves the business. John walks through a real buyer journey where the ninth question was a technical spec buried on page 193 of a PDF, and the tenth was how to talk to sales. Nobody on that team spent a minute on it until the lead was qualified. Brooke also joins us in the host seat for the first time and gives the Gen Z read on all of it, which mostly comes down to letting people find what they need before anyone tries to sell them something. What's Covered in this Episode (0:00) Brooke steps into the host seat, and John introduces Navu (6:38) Take your shop to the next level with DN Solutions (7:50) What a single line of JavaScript can tell you about visitor behavior (10:35) About 37% of users who eventually convert used the chat along the way (11:42) Why traffic is down but conversions aren't (13:26) How LLMs read your entire site at once and punish conflicting answers (16:17) Less content, more depth, and a ruthless pruning habit (17:35) Your site's unanswered questions as a canary in the coal mine (20:14) What buyers actually asked Mike when Hill rebuilt its site (22:15) Why the old pop up chatbots earned their bad reputation (24:42) More than 60% of buyers now start their research in a chat interface (26:16) Turning AI buzzwords into outcomes at the IMTS Industrial AI Conference (27:04) Labor savings is how most customers justify the spend internally (28:50) The landing page listings and a conversation about instant gratification (32:12) Quote response time as the number one factor in winning or losing work (35:13) The real user journey and the questions that you see (38:30) Brooke on why her generation would rather research than call (42:27) Salespeople querying the site mid call instead of chasing down an SME (44:31) Kennametal's Next Level Shop at IMTS 2026 (45:34) Get started and build a custom demo at navu.co/makingchips Resources Mentioned DN Solutions IMTS Industrial AI Conference, Wednesday September 16, South Building Check out the Kennametal booth at IMTS 2026, the Next Level Shop, booth 431800 in the West Building, level 3 Connect with John Greeley Email John Greeley: john@navu.co Navu Connect with MakingChips MakingChips.com On Facebook On LinkedIn On Instagram On Twitter On YouTube
China said it hopes that all economies will reach forward-looking and practical consensus, promote mutual learning of policies and the translation of outcomes, and jointly enhance the innovation capacity, digitalization level and sustainable development capabilities of SMEs in the Asia-Pacific region.
Where does innovation in Southeast Asia actually start? Not in a lab. In this compilation from the BRAVE archive: a lock that took eleven hours to install, a Peter Thiel put-down at Harvard, and customers using a real estate website to sell food. Anthony Chow built Igloo's first smart lock from parts bought in China, watched the first shipments fail, then invented an offline PIN lock (Google Authenticator, but for doors) because vacation rentals have no Wi-Fi. That invention won the Airbnb partnership and now runs more than half of Australia's tennis courts, fully unmanned. Kelvin Teo heard Peter Thiel tell a Harvard room that Asia doesn't need innovation, just execution ("annoying, but factually accurate") and turned it into the method behind Funding Societies, which underwrites SMEs by asking for more documents than the banks, because its real competitor is the money lender charging 48% a year. Dennis Velasco burned $150K on a broken real estate market before his users showed him the pivot, launched Prosperna three months before the 2020 lockdown, and argues that none of it counts until small businesses trust you to stay. Watch the full episodes: E676 Anthony Chow, Co-Founder & CEO of Igloo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU1-wIvarVk E678 Kelvin Teo, Co-Founder & Group CEO of Funding Societies | Modalku https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob9Wq9DMpko E692 Dennis Velasco, Founder & CEO of Prosperna https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVw0B8m3eN4 Watch, listen or read the full insight at https://www.bravesea.com/blog/innovation-playbook BRAVE is Southeast Asia's leading tech podcast, hosted by Jeremy Au. Honest conversations with the region's top founders, investors, and operators on building startups in Southeast Asia. New episodes every week. Subscribe so you never miss one. Listen & Subscribe YouTube (English), YouTube (Bahasa Indonesia), Spotify (English), Spotify (Bahasa Indonesia), Spotify (Chinese), Spotify (Vietnamese), Apple Podcasts Follow BRAVE LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp Follow Jeremy Au LinkedIn, X / Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Threads, Twitch Resources Get transcripts, startup resources & community discussions at www.bravesea.com #Innovation #SoutheastAsia #Startups #Singapore #Philippines #Indonesia #Malaysia #Vietnam #TechPodcast #Fintech #Proptech #Ecommerce #SmartLock #SME #MSME #VentureCapital #Founders #SEAstartups #Entrepreneurship 00:00 Intro 00:25 Anthony Chow: the lock that took 11 hours to install 06:20 Kelvin Teo: "Asia doesn't need innovation" becomes a playbook 11:01 Dennis Velasco: the customers showed us the pivot 15:23 Kelvin Teo: more documents than the banks 20:50 Dennis Velasco: the trust factor gap 23:37 Anthony Chow: half of Australia's tennis courts, unmanned 27:03 Outro
Антон Руссо — предприниматель и бизнес-спикер с более чем 15-летним опытом, основатель компании «Айпикс» и сервиса «AI-Штаб спикера». Пройдя путь от B2B-продаж до создания и продажи собственного бизнеса, сегодня он внедряет CRM, автоматизирует процессы и разрабатывает ИИ-инструменты для малого и среднего бизнеса. Преподаёт, выступает на деловых площадках, а в свободное от автоматизации время поёт на муниципальных мероприятиях.Anton Russo is an entrepreneur and business speaker with over 15 years of experience, founder of Aipix and the AI Speaker Headquarters service. After progressing from B2B sales to building and selling his own company, he now helps SMEs implement CRM systems, automate operations, and apply AI tools to practical business tasks. He also teaches, speaks at business events, and, beyond the technology world, performs as a singer at municipal concerts.Стать участником подкаста: https://form.jotform.com/Podcast10K/become-a-podcast-guestТемы выпуска:0:00 - «Вы» как броня: дистанция длиной в одну букву 9:21 - Любая новая среда враждебна, пока не станет моей 13:17 - Слезть с кактуса: жизнь без ситуаций, в которых нет выбора 20:50 - Семья и клиенты: круг общения, из которого исчезли все остальные 27:27 - Гость пришёл говорить о компетенциях, но разговор зашёл слишком глубоко 32:47 - Закройте дверь снаружи, и статус начнёт спадать с человека 43:10 - Бизнес-книга разрешила кинуть ботинком, реальность приготовила печь 49:06 - На острове без хищников каждый тушканчик считает себя хищником 58:48 - Интегратор, бизнес-спикер и певец на городских праздниках 1:03:10 - Внимание толпы как источник энергии 1:05:20 - Я уже всё про себя понял и больше в себе не копаюсь 1:23:38 - Харизма заставляет слушать даже полную чушь 1:40:17 - Директор без подготовки против спикера вселенского масштаба 1:54:43 - У дураков не бывает синдрома самозванца 2:07:39 - Давление как способ увидеть настоящий контур человека
Joining the podcast this week is Yannick Willemin. Yannick is the founder of Catalysium, a deep-tech consultancy supporting startups, SMEs, and investors across the composites and advanced materials ecosystem. He brings nearly two decades of experience spanning materials engineering, manufacturing, business development, corporate strategy, startups, and investment. His work touches nearly every part of the […] The post Catalyzing the Future of Composites: From Innovation to Investment- Interview with Yannick Willemin first appeared on Composites Weekly.
Tiama Hanson-Drury is CPTO at Opus 2, the legal technology company behind the systems that run some of the world's largest and most high-stakes litigation. She started her career in sales, moved into product in 2010 and has spent the last 16 years split roughly evenly between individual contributor and leadership roles. Her verdict on AI in product organisations is neither evangelism nor scepticism: the tooling has removed software as a bottleneck, but the markers of quality that mattered before AI have not changed, and teams that forget them end up shipping slop and burning out. In this episode, we discuss:Why a sales background is better preparation for product than an engineering one, and how to lead engineers without pretending to be an expertHow the promise of doing more with AI is producing overload and burnout, and what leaders owe their teams in responseWhy high AI adoption scores mean nothing if pull request sizes are ballooning and someone else has to review the outputThe three things Tiama looks for in her teams now: outcome focus over craft, curiosity, and a culture of sharing failure as readily as successWhy the right move is not to hand three of your seven steps to AI, but to start again from the outcome you wantHow Opus 2 went from shipping every six to 12 weeks to shipping daily, and why that made documentation and planning more important, not lessThe case for betting on humans in the loop when your customers explicitly prefer itWhy Opus 2 is still hiring juniors, and how to build commercial judgment when the groundwork can be skippedThe one situation where Tiama tells people to let AI write the first draft rather than the secondChapters(01:31) From sales to product(03:24) Why the move is less obvious than it sounds(04:34) Leading engineering without an engineering background(06:28) How outsider questions sharpen engineering teams(07:36) What AI has changed for a CPTO(08:16) Overload, burnout and the pressure to token max(10:32) Adoption scores versus quality signals(11:39) What AI adoption actually looks like inside law firms(12:42) Outcomes over output(14:07) How Opus 2 built its AI strategy(16:07) Removing friction from an AI rollout(16:53) Partnering with AI instead of splitting up the steps(18:08) A message from Mike Belsito(19:40) Three things AI asks of a team(21:47) More agency, and why planning matters more(23:51) Scaling a team on conflicting evidence(26:09) Betting on humans in the loop(27:36) Why Opus 2 keeps hiring juniors(29:44) Building judgment when the work moves faster(32:36) Sharing your own AI operating system(33:22) AI slop, CVs and the hiring algorithm(36:17) Top tips for a product career in the age of AI(38:36) Wrap-upReferencedOpus 2: https://www.opus2.comOpus 2 announces addition of Tiama Hanson-Drury as chief product and technology officer: https://www.opus2.com/news/opus-2-announces-cpto-tiama-hanson-drury/Minna Technologies, where Tiama was previously chief product officer: https://minnatechnologies.comDX, the developer intelligence platform used to track squad performance: https://getdx.comDORA metrics: https://dora.devVote for Mike Belsito's South by Southwest 2027 session: https://tinyurl.com/belsitosxswWhere to find Tiama Hanson-DruryLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiamahansondruryOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.
Everyone in fraud and risk is building AI agents. Almost nobody is asking the harder question: if every team has access to the same models, what's left that's actually yours? In this episode of Fraudboxer, Jordan sits down with Richard Meng, founder and CEO of Roe AI (YC-backed, San Mateo), and Tal, an 18-year risk leader who has built and scaled programs across fintech, payments, lending, issuing, marketplaces, and merchant environments. Together they make the case that AI itself is becoming a commodity — and that the real competitive advantage is structured risk knowledge: the fraud typologies, investigation frameworks, and institutional expertise that live in your team's heads, in Jira tickets, and in Slack threads where no agent can reach them. The conversation covers why single signals like velocity, device mismatch, and risky IP no longer mean what they used to; why fraud teams stay permanently reactive; what happens to entry-level analyst roles as AI absorbs L1 work — and what new roles replace them; whether rules and machine learning models are dying or just getting a makeover; and why the sub-300ms reality of real-time fraud decisioning means an LLM is never going to be the thing that blocks a transaction. They also get into the idea of an open, industry-wide fraud typology map — a shared taxonomy of attack patterns and recommended investigations that any team's AI agents could consume. Not a data consortium, not PII sharing, and not the kind of closed, invite-only working group that leaves newer practitioners out in the cold. Whether that can actually get built is the open question of the episode. If you work in fraud, risk, compliance, AML, trust and safety, or payments — or you manage a team that does — this one reframes what "using AI" actually means. As Jordan puts it: most people say they use AI, but they're reading AI, not using it. The fraudsters figured out the difference a while ago. WHAT'S COVERED Why AI models are becoming a commodity, and contextual intelligence is the real moat Fraud typologies - ATO, ACH fraud, friendly fraud, push payment fraud, triangulation schemes, return abuse, promo abuse - and why each needs its own investigation path The medicine analogy - why the diagnostic framework beats raw intelligence Velocity, device mismatch, and risky IP - signals that no longer mean fraud on their own What happens to L1 analyst roles, and the new jobs that get created instead Are rules dead? A story from inside Uber's rules engine and the Grafana dashboard that showed fraudsters reverse-engineering rules in real time Why sub-300ms decisioning means rules and ML models aren't going anywhere Rule performance monitoring - the thing almost nobody actually does How Roe AI is building a shared financial crime knowledge base, and whether it should be an open standard Where fraudsters are already outpacing defenders on AI adoption LINKS Roe AI: https://www.roe-ai.com Roe AI careers (they're hiring, including SMEs): https://www.roe-ai.com/careers Richard Meng on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/berkeleymeng/ Tal Yeshanov on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/talyeshanov/ WhoBilled.me: https://whobilled.me This episode is brought to you by WhoBilled.me. Ever seen a charge on your statement like "POS CHECK CARD PURCHASE DEBIT * SUPERCELL" and had no idea what it was? Merchants get about 25 characters to identify themselves, your bank wraps its own labels around that, and a location field gets stapled on the end. The result reads like a ransom note — so people dispute their own kids' in-game purchases and shrug off the charges that were actually fraud. Paste the descriptor into https://WhoBilled.me and find out who really billed you, how to reach them, and what the charge was probably for.
In Episode 111 of the Cybersecurity Readiness Podcast Series, Dr. Dave Chatterjee is joined by Bruno Lecoq, CEO of BEMO, to examine the gap between executive intention and operational security reality in small and medium-sized organizations, and what it costs when resource trade-offs, unclear ownership, and optimism bias quietly undermine programs that look sound on paper.Drawing on his nearly sixteen years at BEMO and twenty years at Microsoft before that, working with companies of 10 to 1,000 users across multiple verticals, Bruno argues that the recurring failure point is rarely the tools; it is the absence of clear ownership, aligned resources, and sustained discipline. The conversation moves through why IT alone cannot own security, how the function's reporting line shapes whether it is treated as a cost center or a strategic capability, and a detailed walk-through of a SOC 2 "fire drill" scenario that Dr. Chatterjee analyzes through his Commitment–Preparedness–Discipline (CPD) Framework.The discussion also covers how BEMO uses AI-driven log review and unannounced tabletop exercises to keep clients honest about their true readiness, why Bruno turns away prospects who treat compliance as a paperwork exercise rather than a genuine security commitment, and why he believes cybersecurity and compliance, approached the right way, are a competitive advantage rather than a cost of doing business.To access and download the entire podcast summary with discussion highlights - https://www.dchatte.com/episode-111-closing-the-gap-between-leadership-intention-and-operational-security-reality-a-cpd-lens-on-smb-cybersecurity-governance/Connect with Host Dr. Dave ChatterjeeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dchatte/ Website: https://dchatte.com/Books PublishedThe DeepFake ConspiracyCybersecurity Readiness: A Holistic and High-Performance ApproachArticles & Cases PublishedChatterjee, D. (2026). The Cryptographic Reckoning: Why Quantum Readiness Begins with Agility, Not Algorithms, The INFORMS Analytics Magazine, June 26, 2026Chatterjee, D. (2026). The New Digital Fragility: How AI-Enhanced Cyber Threats Are Reshaping Operational Resilience, The INFORMS Analytics Magazine, March 4, 2026Chatterjee, D. (2026). Root: Automating the Remediation Gap, Ivey Publishing, Jan 7, 2026.Ramasastry, C. and Chatterjee, D. (2025). Trusona: Recruiting For The Hacker Mindset, Ivey Publishing, Oct 3, 2025.Chatterjee, D. and Leslie, A. (2024). “Ignorance is not bliss: A human-centered whole-of-enterprise approach to cybersecurity preparedness,” Business Horizons, Accepted on Oct 29, 2024.Isik, O., Chatterjee, D., and Lourenco, D.A. (2024). “Getting Cybersecurity Right,” California Management Review — Insights, Accepted for Publication, July 8, 2024. Chatterjee, D. (2023). “Mission critical – How American Cancer Society successfully and securely migrated to the cloud amid the pandemic,” I by IMD, March 13, 2023.Chatterjee, D. (2022). “Preventing security breaches must start at the top,” I by IMD, September 28, 2022, Institute for Management Development, Lausanne, SwitzerlandChatterjee, D. (2022). “Making Cybersecurity Readiness Mainstream,” Executive Blog Post, NETSPI, March 1, 2022Benz, M. and Chatterjee, D. (2020). “Calculated Risk? A Cybersecurity Evaluation Tool for SMEs,” Business Horizons, available online from May 4, 2020Chatterjee, D. (2019). “Should Executives Go To Jail Over Cyber Attacks,” Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Vol 29, Issue 1, pp. 1-3.Abraham, C., Chatterjee, D., and Sims, R. (2019). “Muddling through cybersecurity: Insights from the U.S. healthcare industry,” Business Horizons, July 2019.
International Accounting Standards Board: Developments in IFRS Standards
Technical staff member Helen Lloyd and director Michelle Sansom discuss the IASB's proposed targeted amendment to the third edition of the IFRS for SMEs Accounting Standard, including why it is being proposed before the Standard's effective date and how stakeholders can share feedback.
LỜI THẬT #5 LẤY TÀI LÀM CHÍNH - CÀ PHÊ KHỞI NGHIỆP CÙNG TÙNG BT X CFO THÚY TẠTuyển người tài khó, nhưng có khi vấn đề không nằm ở “thị trường thiếu người”.Một doanh nghiệp muốn đi xa không chỉ cần tiền, hệ thống hay công nghệ. Cuối cùng vẫn phải quay về câu chuyện con người: tuyển ai, đặt họ vào đâu, giúp họ phát triển thế nào và người chủ phải thay đổi ra sao để giữ được người giỏi.Trong tập Podcast này, Tùng BT cùng chị Thúy Tạ bắt đầu từ một case rất cụ thể: vì sao ngày càng khó tuyển một người kế toán/tài chính phù hợp cho SMEs (doanh nghiệp nhỏ và vừa?Từ đó bóc ra những câu chuyện lớn hơn: • Người tài thực sự cần gì ở một môi trường khởi nghiệp? • Vì sao có kinh nghiệm chưa chắc đã là lợi thế trong thời đại AI? • Người làm kế toán hôm nay cần thay đổi năng lực như thế nào? • Và quan trọng nhất: người chủ cần học gì để trở thành một người quản lý tốt hơn?“Lấy tài làm chính”: lấy tài chính làm nền, lấy tài năng làm lực, và lấy chính năng lực của con người để chứng minh giá trị mình tạo ra.
You can feel the moment when a career finally makes sense: you read a course list, something clicks, and you realize there's a name for the work you've wanted to do all along. That's the energy behind Jackie's conversation with Naomi Allen, who recently completed her master's in instructional design at Grand Canyon University after starting down a very different path in clinical mental health counseling.We dig into what pulled her toward instructional design and learning and development, especially the mix of psychology, brain-based learning, and the practical craft of building training that changes performance. Naomi shares how she's used microlearning to break complex content into manageable pieces, and how scenario-based learning and role play can turn “nice to know” information into skills people can actually use at work. We also talk about why scenarios have to be truly job-relevant, or they won't stick, particularly with adult learners who need immediate value and clear transfer to the workplace.Then we get real about process. ADDIE is essential, but projects rarely move in clean stages once stakeholders, SMEs, approvals, and shifting timelines show up. Naomi explains how backward design often drives real-world development, and why mixing models like ADDIE and SAM can be a practical choice, not a theoretical one. If you're considering an instructional design master's program, you'll also hear concrete advice on doing your research, building a routine, staying grounded in your why, and graduating with a portfolio you're proud of.Subscribe for more instructional design career stories, share this episode with a colleague, and leave a review so more designers and educators can find the show.Send Jackie a TextJoin PodMatch!Use the link to join PodMatch, a place for hosts and guests to connect.Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the show
Blaine Billingsley is a Member of Technical Design Staff at OpenAI whose path into the field ran through music composition, spare-change website work at college, and a decade across Gmail, Airbnb, YouTube and Slack. At OpenAI he was hired to work on Presence, then redirected to solve a more immediate problem: making ChatGPT genuinely useful as a daily tool for designers. Working with a single engineer, he built the ChatGPT product design plugin — a bridge between the raw power of Codex and the day-to-day workflow of product teams. In this conversation with Randy Silver, he talks about what design actually means when your interface is a text box, why volume beats perfection in an age of infinite iteration, and why the fundamentals of good product thinking are more durable than the tools used to apply them.Key takeaways— The designer's job at an AI company has shifted from pixels to outputs. Deciding what "good" looks like, building the criteria to evaluate it, and heuristically assessing results is now a core part of the role — one that didn't exist in the same form at Gmail or Slack.— LLMs don't replace structured creativity techniques; they scale them. The crazy eights exercise squeezes eight ideas from a room of people in eight minutes. A well-directed ChatGPT session can return 80 in the same window, alone, while you're at lunch.— Volume beats perfection. The best way to make a pot isn't to try to make the best pot — it's to make a thousand pots. That logic now applies directly to prototyping: generate at scale, stay unattached, and find the nugget in the noise.— Evals are closer to synthetic user research than quality assurance. The hardest part isn't building the rubric — it's correctly anticipating what people will actually try to do. Show it to one more person and your assumptions will immediately break.— The second 80% problem hasn't gone away. Getting to a working prototype is dramatically faster; getting that prototype to production is still gruelling — and becomes harder still when platform direction shifts mid-sprint.— Small teams with AI assistance need to protect the rituals that keep them aligned. When two people can each produce a week's worth of work in an afternoon, parallel drift becomes the real collaboration risk.— Role boundaries are dissolving, but specialisations still matter. The question is less "what is your title" and more "what does the band need right now, and can you play that part?"— Experience brings judgment; freshness brings juice. The best work often comes from junior designers unconstrained by years of accumulated assumptions — and both things need to be in the room.Chapters (00:00) Introduction(01:14) Blaine's background: from music composition to product design (02:32) What design means at OpenAI (04:21) The ChatGPT product design plugin (06:12) Deciding what to build: the early exploration (10:05) Structured creativity and LLM-powered ideation (13:37) Volume over perfection: the thousand pots approach (16:13) Designing as a two-person team (20:29) What is the job now? (23:33) Evals as synthetic user research (27:08) Testing at scale when you can't know your users (30:15) How they actually did the research (33:01) The second 80%: from prototype to production (35:06) Staying aligned without roadmaps (38:19) Demo: the product design plugin (44:52) When a prototype isn't ready to ship (48:26) Design sprints, reimagined (49:27) Advice for joining an AI-first product team (52:17) The jazz analogy: experience, freshness and your role in the band Featured LinksChatGPT for Work: https://openai.com/chatgpt Codex: https://openai.com/codex Figma: https://figma.com FigJam: https://www.figma.com/figjam Linear: https://linear.appOur HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.
SMEs are central to the UAE economy, yet access to credit remains one of their biggest challenges.In this episode of Couchonomics with Arjun, Hassan Reda, Co-Founder & CPO of CredibleX, and Anand Nagaraj, Co-Founder & CEO of CredibleX, unpack why SME lending has remained difficult for banks and fintechs, and what needs to change to close the financing gap.They explain how embedded lending can solve the distribution problem, why working-capital finance requires a different approach to traditional business loans, and how better underwriting, alternative capital and AI could reshape SME financing in the UAE.
Our survey results are in! 587 instructional designers shared with me their thoughts, feelings, use cases, and perceptions of AI. Here's the full breakdown and actual look into how instructional designers are interacting with AI.
Gaurav Keerthi, CEO of StrongKeep, a Singapore-based cybersecurity startup that provides SMEs with AI-driven security and compliance platforms, returns to Kopi Time to discuss the topic of the moment. In this wide ranging conversation, we begin by talking about why secure AI is a fundamentally different proposition compared to traditional software. Gaurav walks us through the essence of an AI-driven large language model, the unintended consequences that can arise even without hallucination or bad actor involvement, and the layers of risks involved. We comb through recent headlines to underscore the quick changing environment around cyber safety and security. We then take stock of the resources needed to deal with this constantly evolving risk, and how that leaves particularly small businesses vulnerable. Gaurav calls for cybersecurity in the AI era to be considered a public good that informs all business and regulatory decision-making. He is also keen to see a fundamental reshaping of cyber infrastructure, with built-in, publicly funded and monitored guardrails and reporting. The silver lining? The well-intentioned efforts toward innovation and safety can keep pace with the pernicious aspects. There is hope.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Dr Cat Hicks is a psychological scientist and the founder of Catharsis, a human-centred research consultancy that works with engineering organisations. After self-funding her first open-access study into developer motivation, she was recruited to lead the Developer Success Lab at Pluralsight — a three-year programme that generated large-scale empirical research across hundreds of companies and more than 11,000 developers. Her book, The Psychology of Software Teams, published in July 2026, brings that evidence to bear on the question her industry keeps asking: why do smart people in smart organisations so often struggle to work well together? We talk about the hidden costs of treating developers as interchangeable units, what large-scale cycle time data reveals about individual performance, and how product managers can build the conditions for teams to actually thrive.Key takeawaysThe "brains and jars" model — treating developers as interchangeable, isolated computing units — does not just feel demeaning; it actively undermines the collaborative, social work that makes software teams effective, and is linked to burnout, self-censorship, and a breakdown of trust.Cycle time data from 216 companies and over 11,000 developers shows that individual performance fluctuates dramatically week to week — it is not a stable personal trait — which means slow periods are usually an environmental problem, not a personal one.Over-production pressure (the constant pull towards short-term delivery) has measurable cascading effects: developers stop mentoring, stop surfacing problems to managers, and stop investing in long-term code quality. It can be measured and, with committed leadership, changed within weeks.AI is producing genuine identity threats, not just productivity disruption. Teams that lower the "threat temperature" — framing change as a shared technical challenge and affirming that new skills can always be learnt — unlock significantly more adaptive and curious behaviour.Metacognitive scaffolding — building structured strategies for thinking about your own thinking, not just raw output — is more trainable than cognitive capacity and is almost entirely absent from how agentic coding environments are currently designed.Superordinate goals (shared outcomes that transcend individual preferences) allow diverse teams, including those who prefer deep solo work, to collaborate productively without demanding that everyone care about the product in the same way.Chapters(00:00) Opening (01:06) Cat's background and the book (04:40) Defining a software team (07:02) Building the Developer Success Lab (10:26) The brains and jars model (13:14) What the model costs teams (17:54) Why communicating value is so hard (19:04) What change looks like in practice (23:01) Code review anxiety and cycle time research (27:55) AI's effect on developer identity (31:57) Agentic coding and cognitive fatigue (35:46) Threat, play, and psychological safety (38:19) Working across disciplines (43:04) What product managers can do (48:00) Wrap-upReferencedThe Psychology of Software Teams by Dr Cat HicksThe Programmer's Brain by Felienne HermansThe Psychology of Computer Programming by Gerald WeinbergDeveloper Success Lab (Pluralsight)DORA projectCatharsis — Dr Cat Hicks's consultancyFight for the Human — Dr Cat Hicks's newsletterDr Cat HicksLearning Opportunities Claude skill — by Dr Cat HicksDeliberate practice and chess improvement study (44,000 Chess.com players)Our HostsLily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She's currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She's worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury's. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group's Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He's the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager's Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon's music stores in the US & UK.
AI, Sovereign Compute, and the Future of Family Business in the UK | Steve Rigby on Jobs of the Future In 2026, Steve Rigby joins Jimmy's Jobs of the Future to discuss why AI adoption in large companies will be slower than hype suggests because it requires difficult process transformation plus governance and security, while SMEs can move faster with low barriers to entry. He argues the UK is behind on preparing society and government for disruption, citing data that 39% of MPs have never used AI and calling for a multi-department “war footing,” including urgent AI data-center expansion and sovereign compute backed by government offtake. Rigby explains his role as chair of Family Business UK, the impact of new 20% tax charges on intergenerational transfers, and why the UK incentivizes selling businesses over long-term ownership. He outlines the Rigby Group's scale, family succession planning, his philanthropy and education programs, and his efforts to influence policy via media, LinkedIn, and a new podcast. 00:00 AI Shift Like the 90s 00:43 Why Big Firms Move Slow 01:46 Reskilling and Job Risk 04:14 MPs Not Using AI 06:50 Data Centers and Compute 08:49 AI Sovereignty Plan 10:31 Chairing Family Business UK 11:22 Tax Changes Hit Succession 12:51 Rigby Group Overview 15:14 London Family Office Hub 16:40 Non Doms and Tax Carrots 19:39 UK Incentives and Mittelstand 22:40 First Jobs and Joining Family Firm 25:28 Building Tech Retail in the 90s 27:42 Family Business Life and Succession 29:40 Preparing the Next Generation 32:21 Kids Careers Outside the Firm 33:29 What Intelligence Really Means 34:08 Learning Styles Matter 34:42 Tech Powered Classrooms 36:24 Cradle to Career Impact 38:23 Inspiring Futures Model 40:12 Plural Career Time Split 41:44 Influencing Policy and Media 44:40 Family Business UK Growth 46:39 Podcast for Hard Issues 48:59 Sleep Data and Health Tech 52:22 Competitive Sports Journey 57:12 Giving Values and Dividends 57:58 Future of Family Firms 01:00:40 Mittelstand and UK Incentives 01:02:28 Podcast Pick and Wrap Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Don’t miss this massive SMB partner shift! Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this pivotal episode, we sit down with Jose Gomez Cueto, Microsoft’s SMB leader for the Americas, to uncover the monumental shifts happening within the partner ecosystem and the $20 billion cloud opportunity currently on the table. The discussion dives deep into Microsoft’s commitment to the CSP channel, the explosion of AI agents, and why shifting from traditional headcount growth to outcome-based results is critical for survival. From navigating the complexities of the marketplace to the urgency of becoming “Customer Zero” with AI tools, this conversation provides the roadmap every MSP needs to thrive in the new era of technology. https://youtu.be/QE-1w7GeyPM Key Takeaways Microsoft operates a $20 billion cloud revenue business in the Americas alone, with 80% driven by the channel. The Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program is now Microsoft’s primary hero motion for the fourth region. The currency of SMB growth is shifting away from headcount and moving directly toward AI-driven outcomes. MSPs must transition from traditional IT outsourcing to strategic business process consulting to survive. Failing to proactively adopt and secure AI tools creates massive liability and shadow AI risks for organizations. IT providers are urged to become “Customer Zero” by deploying and testing Copilot and autonomous agents internally before selling them. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags CSP, Agent 365, SMB cloud revenue, outcome-based selling, Copilot for business, Defender for business, shadow AI risks, AI agent deployment, Purview data security, Marketplace API integration, autonomous agents, Customer Zero, Microsoft Americas segment Transcript Jose Gomez Cueto AUDIO PODCAST [00:00:00] Jose Gomez Cueto: And, and you know, if I might say something that is confidential, avid Vince, uh, to be quite honest, please, please, uh, by definition, a marketplace is eliminating intermediaries. [00:00:11] Vince Menzione: You can feel it happening. [00:00:13] Vince Menzione: The ecosystem is shifting beneath us. The way Hyperscalers are partnering, how AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:23] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host. And each week I sit down with leaders at the intersection of technology, partnerships and outcomes. The voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. [00:00:45] Vince Menzione: It is the strategy because being in the room changes everything. Let’s start. [00:00:55] Vince Menzione: I am absolutely thrilled for our, our next guest. Um, some of you heard me talk about this maybe earlier or in various pockets of conversation. Um, I believe both the SMB market is an, is an incredible opportunity. We’ve called it the Acre of Diamonds at Ultimate Partner at previous events. And then the MSP community, which I want to thank so many of you to for coming, coming on board now. [00:01:25] Vince Menzione: ’cause we’ve had some MSPs that have come to all our events. And doubled, tripled, quadruple the sizes of their business. From what they’ve learned in these rooms. And so we invited our next guest to come. Oh, Jose, come on up. Jose Gomez Cuerto is the leader of Microsoft’s SMB business for the Americas. Come on. [00:01:43] Vince Menzione: Come on over. Come on over. Sit down with me. And I was so thrilled to get this gentleman to come join us. His team is doing incredible work. I got to meet some of his team actually earlier this year. And we know each other for many years ago. [00:01:56] Jose Gomez Cueto: We do. [00:01:56] Vince Menzione: When I was at Microsoft, right? Yeah. So, so great to see you again. [00:01:59] Jose Gomez Cueto: It’s a pleasure to be here. Uh, thanks for the invitation. I’m thrilled to be here. And thank you all for making time, uh, or traveling here. Uh, this is the best time. To be in the industry. [00:02:10] Vince Menzione: It’s an incredible time. [00:02:11] Jose Gomez Cueto: Yeah, [00:02:11] Vince Menzione: it’s an incredible time. So sit down. Yeah, sit down. Let’s, yeah. So let’s talk about you and your organization. [00:02:17] Vince Menzione: Um, let’s talk, well, I, I, I wanna bring this up because it was like, the noise I heard in the room when I was, I went to Interven earlier this year. Yeah. Is, does Microsoft Care about this market? And, um, I was at Microsoft many years, we worked together when I was a, a gm. And, uh, it was run differently back in the day. [00:02:37] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And there’s been a lot of changes to what we call the SME and C business now. Mm-hmm. Uh, and the SMB business, which you run. So let’s talk a little bit about your organization, where you sit in the organization, and then I want to kind of dive in a little bit about what’s changed. ’cause a lot has changed for the better. [00:02:54] Jose Gomez Cueto: Yeah, it’s a great question and I think that that’s what a lot of people think about, uh, SMB and, and who’s SMB and, and who’s at Microsoft and who do I talk to. So, [00:03:02] Vince Menzione: yes. [00:03:02] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, even though I know a lot of, uh, friendly faces in the room, I think it’s a great, uh, starting point. Vince, so. Basically, uh, I am responsible for what we call the small and medium business, uh, segment. [00:03:15] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, we can also call it small and medium enterprises. Uh, I would say that it is not a monolith. Uh, we do have, uh, subsegmentation, I think that our friend Jay was talking about up to 20 subsegmentation. Uh, we think about it for simplifi simplification purposes on three. Uh, so we have, uh, the smaller organizations, the medium-sized organizations. [00:03:36] Jose Gomez Cueto: And then what we call top point manage, which is basically large enterprise that we simply don’t have an account management team, uh, assigned to. And we are the happy recipients of many of those, uh, every year. Uh, so I would say that, uh, a best definition would be also anything that is unmanaged and is primarily driven through the channel. [00:03:54] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, we run in the Americas approximately more than $20 billion of revenue, uh, on cloud. Uh, that’s [00:04:01] Vince Menzione: crazy. [00:04:01] Jose Gomez Cueto: So, and 80% of that is done. Through companies that are here, [00:04:05] Vince Menzione: $20 billion of business. [00:04:07] Jose Gomez Cueto: Yeah. So, um, the, the Americas region that I’m, uh, representing and under my responsibility includes basically three sales units, the United States, Canada, and Latin America. [00:04:18] Jose Gomez Cueto: Yes. Latin America is more fragmented because we have multi-country and multi, uh, subsidiary, uh, structure. Just to recap a little bit of what you asked me rewinding on what has happened in the last two or three years. Yeah. We brought basically, uh, probably something that you might remember from you were there. [00:04:36] Jose Gomez Cueto: I, yes. Uh, which is bringing the segment, uh, with the channel together. So, uh, I think that, um, uh. Earlier in the morning, uh, Steven was, uh, talking about it, what we call S-M-U-N-C, which is, uh, this segment with the channel. And the main reason is to drive, uh, that synergy, uh, and making, uh, a very bold statement that many of you might remember in the last two years, uh, Judson and Ralph, uh, heter or, or new, uh, president for this, uh, fourth region. [00:05:05] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, ’cause we call it fourth region. Yeah. ’cause the other one is our enterprises. [00:05:08] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So Asia, Americas Exactly. And, and EMEA. Then you’re the fourth region. [00:05:13] Jose Gomez Cueto: We’re the fourth region. So, so, um, making CSP, uh, our hero motion, and that is fantastic news. I, I started, uh, part of my journey, uh, in, in the channel, uh, way earlier in distribution in the year 2000. [00:05:30] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:05:30] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, and fast forward, I would say 2011, we were launching the first commercial SaaS offering, which was Office 365. Um, I had the privilege to be, uh, leading the launch globally for that. Uh, but then we, the first thing we did was build a channel, and that was called syndication. And basically the precursor of that, uh, became CSP, basically putting, uh, the partner or customer in the middle, the partner around it for the, not only the, the opportunity, but also the responsibility to serve the customer. [00:06:04] Jose Gomez Cueto: 360 from, uh, presales all the way to, uh, uh. Upsell cross sell, and in between deployment, uh, things, uh, around, um, servicing, bundling offers, uh, troubleshooting and support, et cetera. So, uh, back to your question was, this is a very important thing because we’re basically, uh, making our channel the scale and, and the vision that we have is, is that we are gonna be continuing to scale through the channel. [00:06:33] Jose Gomez Cueto: So, um, one last thing I say, uh, in terms of the organization that I think is important for everyone to understand, and I’m gonna go a little bit into more org structure, is that we, we have these three sales units that are geographic. But, uh, what we’ve done this year is to have, uh, more depth on the solution area. [00:06:50] Jose Gomez Cueto: So you might remember that, uh, we’ve simplified them, uh, same as we used to have 8, 13, 13 areas. Now we have only three Oh yeah, same, same, uh, in the solution area. So we have, uh, the AI business solutions. Uh, cloud and AI platforms. And then, uh, security and my team basically mirrors that structure. And we have, uh, team members, uh, primarily, um, our partner, solutions specialists that are, their job is to work with companies like you. [00:07:17] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, some few we do, uh, direct in others. What we do is work with, uh, our top distributors, and I think we have, uh, in the room many of those. I think Google is gonna follow up, uh, for PAX eight, and that’s, uh, how we’re going to market now. [00:07:31] Vince Menzione: So just a little bit of context too for me. ’cause I, I, I had heard this at another event. [00:07:36] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And I just wanted to share this. Um, when I was at Microsoft, we, we did not put the right emphasis and energy and resources in the s and b market when I was there, or, or it was fragmented. Every group did it differently. You remember those days too, right? Well, with public sector, we didn’t necessarily have a team focused, and every business did it a little bit differently. [00:08:00] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. And I think one of the contexts you, you mentioned Ralph and being in Ralph’s organization. Yeah. Pulling that all together and creating the fourth region created a lot of focus that didn’t exist. And consistency in terms of execution. I think that’s what you’re talking about here. Right? And then also the fact that like, we didn’t, I don’t think we had a sep, an SMB leader back in, back in the day. [00:08:22] Vince Menzione: Like we didn’t have somebody that we can go to to think about the MSP community the way we do today. Mm-hmm. Right. We were just, they were just almost like unmanaged entities out there. Yeah. Was that, would you, would you agree with that? [00:08:32] Jose Gomez Cueto: Yeah, I, we went through several iterations that, uh, you might argue, uh, were painful or not. [00:08:38] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, ultimately what we’re committed is to simplify the partner experience. And make that the same for the customers. But what we have is now one center of gravity, uh, a global SMB organization. We have three area leaders. And uh, and that helps us, uh, to be quite honest and in confidence. And you and I talked about it, Jose, this is a forum for, uh. [00:08:58] Jose Gomez Cueto: Speaking the truth. Uh, we, we, we have to fight the gravitational force of the managed space. The company has a big enterprise footprint, so, uh, many of us have become, uh, the chief agitators, uh, to fight the good fight, uh, for SMB. Uh, try to under unpack, uh, in every single conversation with senior Execut. [00:09:17] Jose Gomez Cueto: What is an MSP? And no, it’s not data consulting or one of the large, uh, global design. Uh, and then we explain what they do and then what is a two tier channel, how do distributors work? And, uh, and what about this and what about that? So I think that that has been, uh, a great, uh, progress and a lot of that can be reflected, uh, into how we’re, hopefully everyone in the room is seeing it in how we’re going to market. [00:09:40] Jose Gomez Cueto: I’ll give you two examples. [00:09:41] Guest: Yes. [00:09:42] Jose Gomez Cueto: Um, for, for quite some time. We, we have very limited, uh. Product truth. That’s what the lingo that we use internally, uh, related to offer that were targeted to SMB. And I would say that, uh, business premium, uh, for M 365, uh, was the fact to offer. But now we’ve been able to in, uh, increase, uh, the not so not only commitment, uh, but also the investment that we’re doing as a company into launching offers. [00:10:08] Jose Gomez Cueto: So we have a co compiler for business that is. At a lower price point that has, uh, the same capabilities at the enterprise, uh, that we’re, uh, doing that we also have some security, uh, offers, uh, that are now unattached to business premium, which is our hero motion for sub 300 space. So you start to see, uh, an important trend and it’s great to have jobson at a CEO, uh, of the commercial business capacity because, uh, we’re making things happen. [00:10:34] Jose Gomez Cueto: So what I would say is that I love coming here to these forums. A lot of my team members are here. We’re here to learn. We’re the learner. All we, we, we don’t know much. We need to learn more. Uh, and, and just keeping us honest in terms of bringing that, uh, ethos of, of the customer that most of you are serving and, and, and things that we can improve to get better to deliver value. [00:10:58] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And the speed at which you’re moving has been pretty fast. It’s been very nimble. Like I, I, I’ve been watching this progression. It’s really like you, you’re really leaning in. I was actually hoping because I could ask you a bunch of questions. Yeah. But we have such a great audience and for the first time we really have opened it up to a lot of MSPs in the room. [00:11:18] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And I know you, you wanna get some interaction with some of these folks as well. I thought maybe we would open if you’re okay with this. Yeah, absolutely. I’d rather than I go off script a little bit. I’d rather open it up to some of the MSPs in the room. We’re sitting here eager to learn how and, and what Microsoft is going to do to help. [00:11:35] Vince Menzione: Because I think the opportunity, I personally think the opportunity is huge right [00:11:38] Jose Gomez Cueto: now. Yeah. Let’s do that and well, we get, uh, warmed up. I would say that. [00:11:43] Vince Menzione: So we need some mics. Yeah. [00:11:43] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, something that I’m, that I’m seeing, uh, Vince, and, and, and a question that many of you might have is why now? And, and why this an, an exciting, an exciting time. [00:11:54] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:11:54] Jose Gomez Cueto: Um, and I would say that, uh. Right now we’re seeing, obviously Jay talked about it and, and the big transformation, but it’s a once in a generation or one in a lifetime. Yeah. Uh, shift of the entire platform. Uh, and, and a lot of the scenarios are even maybe scary, but what we see is huge opportunity. And from an SMB perspective, uh, the biggest thing that excites me is moving from, um, something that was. [00:12:23] Jose Gomez Cueto: More related to size, and now we’re moving to outcomes. So, so think about the future of SMBs, uh, with agents and things being measured on outcomes. And, and what this leads to is, uh, Jay talked about it as well, and sorry Jay, it’s such a good job that I keep quoting you. Um, we do that a lot. Uh. You got it. [00:12:49] Jose Gomez Cueto: So you talked about, uh, I noticed that Bill Gates when he said, you know, uh, uh, a pc, uh, in every desk and what we see is every human empowered with agents. Yeah. Especially in work. And what does that mean, that the currency changes being, because what you’re gonna be able to, to envision. Not in the, in the, in the near future, but now is an agentic explosion where then, uh, the currency is outcomes? [00:13:14] Jose Gomez Cueto: Yes. So if you think of an SMB growing, it’s not growing on, on, on full-time employees or headcount. It’s growing on the ability to do more through agents. So, so I think that’s an important thing and, and that’s something that we’re working very closely with our all, all our channel and the offerings that we’re launching to market as well. [00:13:32] Vince Menzione: I also think about the MSPs as being perfectly positioned because what you described, the new, the new model, the future customer and the outcomes is gonna require hands on the steering wheel at all times. [00:13:44] Jose Gomez Cueto: Yes. Yeah. So on that one, and still waiting for some, uh. Someone that is not shy to ask questions, but we’ll, we’ll keep going in the meantime. [00:13:52] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, I, I think that, uh, we are learning, all the [00:13:55] Vince Menzione: MSPs are lined up over here. I’m marching them all. [00:13:57] Jose Gomez Cueto: We, and, and I almost know by name all everyone in the first two rows. Yes. Uh, so, so, uh, I might pick on them. Uh, they’re too shy, but, but we’re learning together. Uh, Vince, uh, the important thing is, is the transformation, uh, and the opportunity, but also the risk of, uh, not acting. [00:14:17] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, what we were seeing, uh, for the first, uh, year or two was kicking tires, people testing, uh, ai. And now what we’ve seen is basically, uh, a full adoption. Uh, of the agentic technology, not even adoption of the tools, but embracing the technology. So I, I want to give you, uh, two specific, uh, examples or data points we have, uh, just in the Americas, more than almost 9 million, uh, people using copilot chat. [00:14:49] Vince Menzione: Wow, that’s amazing. [00:14:50] Jose Gomez Cueto: So imagine, uh, the, the potential that is there for people that are actively using the tool. Yeah. Uh, to en enable new scenarios of doing things. Uh, another example, and I think I have, uh, someone in my team here, is Amber in the room. Amber Kinney? No, she left. Okay. So Amber runs, uh, cloud and ai, uh, uh, or Azure platform. [00:15:12] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, her team has deployed, uh, more than, uh, 11 agents internally for our partner solution specialist, uh, from. Simple agents that will, uh, tell is if a specific deal is eligible for a pre-sales or post-sales program. And comparing all the complexity of our programs, oh my [00:15:29] Vince Menzione: goodness. [00:15:30] Jose Gomez Cueto: All the way to, to, to managing a pipe more effectively of opportunities. [00:15:34] Jose Gomez Cueto: So what we’re seeing is real. This is not something that people are just kicking the tires. It’s like this is the opportunity. So back to, to the point of m ms. P uh, is, is about learning together on how to transition. To, uh, a model that is gonna be based on outcomes. And, and we were discussing, uh, I was with some of our distributors, uh, many of them in the last two months in, in a specific partner advisory, uh, councils and, and some people were just sharing their experiences. [00:16:04] Jose Gomez Cueto: Oh, I decided to charge X amount for an agent. And how do you come up with that number? I don’t know. We’re just testing. Okay. And what about their current revenue? Uh, and, but what about the tokens? What if, uh, the agents start to consume and they’re gonna do the metering? So, so I think that we’re learning together in this space. [00:16:22] Jose Gomez Cueto: Um, but what it is important is just to think about the important, the, the, the critical role that the MSPs are gonna have in leading. And the biggest challenge that we’re seeing and, and we see it over and over and over is, uh, the part about scaling. [00:16:38] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:16:39] Jose Gomez Cueto: The skilling is not, uh, about learning how to use the copilot tool or to do, uh, some, uh, you know, tuning and that, because thankfully our, at least our, our technology as a platform, uh, pretty much carries the same, uh, security, uh, and compliance configurations that you have in your Microsoft 365 tenant. [00:17:00] Jose Gomez Cueto: But it is more the, the, the skilling about understanding how to do. Customer outcome conversation. What is your AI strategy? What [00:17:08] Vince Menzione: that’s scaling? Yes. [00:17:09] Jose Gomez Cueto: What really matters? Not [00:17:10] Vince Menzione: the technical skill. It’s, it’s really the approach that they’re taking. [00:17:14] Jose Gomez Cueto: Yeah. [00:17:14] Vince Menzione: With the organization. I, it seems that MSPs for many years were down in the weeds. [00:17:20] Jose Gomez Cueto: Yeah. [00:17:20] Vince Menzione: They were turning the, the wrench, so to speak, in the organization, and yet now it seems like this. Kevin Piker, your old boss used to use this term. The, the CIO. The CEO is the new CIO. In other words, you need to be selling upstream. You need, you need to be having the conversations in the organization that are strategic [00:17:40] Jose Gomez Cueto: Yeah. [00:17:40] Vince Menzione: To that organization. [00:17:41] Jose Gomez Cueto: So, two, two twofold on, on that, uh, point, which is very important. One is, uh, not our, a lot of our MSPs are equipped right now. [00:17:49] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:17:49] Jose Gomez Cueto: To have a, a conversation about business strategy. Because traditionally has been more outsource it. [00:17:56] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:17:56] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, we started with, you know, managing the networks, then adding services, support tickets, et cetera. [00:18:03] Jose Gomez Cueto: So being able to have that conversation is important. Uh, we, we see through a lot of our tooling that, uh, the shadow AI is everywhere. And what I always tell in any MSP conversation that I have is risk security. You’re on the hook if something happens. That’s right. So if you’re not acting. Uh, then it is a liability. [00:18:22] Vince Menzione: You’re letting things take off in your own organization. Yeah. People are using [00:18:25] Jose Gomez Cueto: philanthropic on their own. The company can go, uh, bankrupt or get sued or get, uh, if they’re in a regulated industry, they can be taken out, et cetera. So, so that’s an important point, uh, related to, to that transformation. Uh, and, and the other part of the skilling that you mentioned that is super important is being in the weeds. [00:18:45] Jose Gomez Cueto: That is where the innovation is happening. Yeah. The later research that we have is being in the front line because it’s all about, uh, reinventing those processes. So I think that it’s a, it’s a good combination that if we have the MSPs, um, and we’re working, uh, not only internally but with our distributors to develop the right skilling around those other type of, uh, consulting skills. [00:19:07] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, data skills, uh, business process, uh, redesign and flows. Uh, that is where, where we see the big opportunity. [00:19:14] Vince Menzione: So it’s balancing out the technical skills with the business process skills, the consulting skills. Yeah, exactly. I think we have a question over here. Yeah. [00:19:22] Guest: Good afternoon, Vince. Good. Sorry. Thanks for the great content. [00:19:26] Guest: The question is around small medium businesses and the cost around cybersecurity. So. Basically, as new tools are coming up that are AI based, such as co-pilot for security, defender for AI, are also consumption based, is there a risk that SMEs will be left out under that cybersecurity poverty line? [00:19:52] Jose Gomez Cueto: I don’t think, uh, it is, uh, a risk to being left out, uh, in the country that the, the SMBs, I would say are more help is needed. And, and the way we think about it from a perspective of, of ai and specifically I’m want to talk about agents, uh, it was mentioned by Steven in, uh, in the morning, and I’m gonna talk a little bit high level and then I’m gonna try to bring it down to, to more tangible is this concept of intelligent and trust. [00:20:19] Jose Gomez Cueto: So on the intelligence, what, what we’re, what we’re trying to say here is that your AI is not just generic stuff that you just prompt and you get like anything that is on the web, but there’s contextual. Data, and, and that’s what we do, uh, with what you might be familiar with, which is the iq. Uh, so we have, um, iq, uh, also in Foundry and on our different data products. [00:20:40] Jose Gomez Cueto: So basically bringing the context of your work, of your contacts, of the people you interact, uh, of the meetings of, of the emails, of the SharePoint files, but also important connectors that are in line of business applications that you can bring to copilot. And then. That intelligence, uh, is relevant and that that basically increases innovation. [00:21:01] Jose Gomez Cueto: And the part about trust, uh, uh, not exactly in cybersecurity, but, but related is basically, uh, agent 365. Uh, can I see, show of hands, who’s aware of Agent 365? Maybe like [00:21:14] Vince Menzione: in the front two rows, [00:21:15] Jose Gomez Cueto: 20%? Yeah. So, um, that is basically, uh, an, an amazing opportunity for our MSP channel because it gives you opportunity to. [00:21:25] Jose Gomez Cueto: Basically observe, uh, govern and apply security to the, the agent activity that is happening. So we think in the context of ai, I think that that’s a, a, a super important, uh, aspect to mitigate any risk of, of what can happen if there’s not, uh, the right, uh, posture. Uh, and then, uh, on, on, on the other part of security, I would say that something, I mentioned something about offers. [00:21:51] Jose Gomez Cueto: We brought the capabilities of the enterprise, uh, SKUs and solutions into these add-ons to N 365. So I would say that with, uh, defender for business, uh, plan two, and sorry to go into the SKU language, uh, it, it is important to, to understand that you have those advanced capabilities. And then another one that we’re pushing, uh, hard and, and is had great receptionist, um, uh, purview, uh, and purview. [00:22:15] Jose Gomez Cueto: What allows you is just to really do everything related to data. Data security policies of what data should be prompted by the model, what information to stay or, or, or not stay. Uh, and I think that’s, that’s also a good opportunity that we’re seeing to bring those, uh, advanced capabilities into the SMBs. [00:22:33] Jose Gomez Cueto: The challenge that we have is how do we get them faster, uh, to everyone, especially when there’s, uh, you know, competing, uh, so solutions around it. [00:22:44] Vince Menzione: We have one more question, and I think we’re probably gonna have to break after that. I know we’re over time already and you’ve got a busy rest of your day. I got, well, we got one back there and we’ve got a mic up here, so, so we have two questions. [00:22:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah. We’ll do Tim first and then we’ll get the [00:22:59] Vince Menzione: mic up. I’ll go for the first 30 minutes and we’ll go from there. Yes. Long time listener. Great to see you again. Jose. Um, business premium, we did E seven. We talked about getting a voice from the MSP space. To build out a business premium, like additional offering. [00:23:13] Vince Menzione: Is there any context to that you have any vision in your crystal ball for October? [00:23:17] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, I cannot say or, or deny. Uh, but yeah, I think that what, what you I love it in, in all seriousness team. Uh, thanks for the question. Uh, I think that what you should expect is, uh, I call it product truth, uh, more, uh, SMB built purpose built for solutions. [00:23:35] Jose Gomez Cueto: So an equivalent of, of any seven as well. Yeah. [00:23:40] Vince Menzione: You still have, we have another question in the back? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. [00:23:43] Guest: Yeah. Uh, Jeremy here with Integral, um, there’s this kind of idea going around that while CSP has been very successful for many of us as MSPs and, and since the beginning, it’s been a great program that was focused on s and b and it’s come up now. [00:23:57] Guest: There’s this kind of shift saying, and CSPs and you think about being marketplace companies where CSP is, the plumbing and marketplace is, is the lead. If that is true, or maybe you comment on that, that idea. How does marketplace strategy playing into kind of, I guess I’m plugging serials piece now from behind, but how does marketplace strategy then play into the s and b market if CSPs are focused on that marketplace mechanism? [00:24:21] Guest: Where CSPs now are and the, and the modern work and all the things that we’ve been doing really well for a long time become, maybe plumbing is too far down the stack, but really marketplace being a focus, is that a strategy piece that we should be thinking about for CS p strategy overall? [00:24:36] Jose Gomez Cueto: Yeah, it’s a great question and I’ll try to keep it brief. [00:24:39] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, I think you need my v The vision that we have is we’re doing both. Uh, we’re empowering, uh, and customers to find what they need. Uh, in the marketplace. Uh, zero talked about also the opportunity for resellers to get enrolled and start to add services and other things. There’s also, another part of the is, is multifacet, uh, to work with ISVs to make it easier and recruit them to bring the right offers. [00:25:03] Jose Gomez Cueto: For SMBI would say that the feedback that we need is to make sure that the right SA ISVs are the ones that serving SMV are represented. Then from another front, I would accept that yes, we have some, uh, plumbing work to do because right now, uh, some part of the billing is not really that nimble for a two tier model if you’re working through a distributor. [00:25:23] Jose Gomez Cueto: So we made some great progress. Uh, we, we, uh, have, uh, announced something and Ignite, if you missed it, I think we might talk about it, uh, soon. Uh, but we have that, that connection via APIs with, uh, the four largest, uh, global distributors. So we’re making progress towards something that will be seamless. Uh, but I think that the biggest opportunity that we have is, is to crack the code, uh, for marketplace. [00:25:46] Jose Gomez Cueto: And, and, you know, if I might say something that is confidential, avid Vince, uh, to be quite honest, please, uh, by definition a marketplace is eliminating intermediaries. So that’s the dilemma. How do you bring the channel in between to help you expand, [00:26:02] Vince Menzione: right? [00:26:03] Jose Gomez Cueto: That that is really the, the, the, the, the holy grail, if I may use those words. [00:26:07] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, but that’s something that, that we’re working towards. And I think, uh, we have a great opportunity ahead and, and you should expect, uh, more announcements as we head into the summer events on how we’re gonna make that more seamless. [00:26:19] Vince Menzione: And REO really lit up the channel Yeah. In, in a big way. ’cause that a hundred percent, that was a blocker before. [00:26:24] Jose Gomez Cueto: Yeah. [00:26:24] Vince Menzione: Yeah. But CSP is also an incredible opportunity if it, you know, I know, I know there’s other sessions and conversations around it. And it does feel, and I’ve heard this before, like I wanna buy from my MSP because they’re the ones I trust. [00:26:37] Jose Gomez Cueto: Yes. [00:26:37] Vince Menzione: But yet I go, I have to go around the system in order to transact my Microsoft licenses. [00:26:43] Vince Menzione: Right. Yeah. And that’s, [00:26:45] Jose Gomez Cueto: I think the scenario getting the gentleman was mentioning is related to marketplace. But yeah. Vince, uh, uh, I just wanted to perhaps close, uh, please. Because I think we’re outta time, right? Yeah, we [00:26:54] Vince Menzione: are. [00:26:54] Jose Gomez Cueto: Yeah. Uh, just in terms of what to expect, uh, we are continuing to be, uh, partner centric. [00:27:01] Jose Gomez Cueto: You should expect as we go into the next fiscal year, uh, more refinement into the customer subsegmentation, we have this concept of above 300 and below 300, uh, working even closer with our distributors to help us scale and amplify the efforts that we do around recruitment, scaling, go to market, uh, co-sell, et cetera. [00:27:22] Jose Gomez Cueto: Uh, and then, uh, obviously expect, uh, we, we, a call to action that I have for everyone is become customer zero. Vince, I’m gonna put you on the spot here. How many agents did you use today? [00:27:37] Vince Menzione: None. [00:27:37] Jose Gomez Cueto: Okay. [00:27:38] Vince Menzione: I, I’ve been in the room leading the room today, [00:27:41] Jose Gomez Cueto: even with more reason. [00:27:42] Vince Menzione: No, I, in, I need to do [00:27:43] Jose Gomez Cueto: more. Put your autonomous agents. [00:27:44] Vince Menzione: I do. [00:27:45] Jose Gomez Cueto: I’m not kidding you and I didn’t, I need to be [00:27:47] Vince Menzione: more of [00:27:47] Jose Gomez Cueto: a frontier for myself. The answer I get usually is like one hand raiser, by the way. Uh, but, but, uh, jokes aside, uh, I think. Becoming customer zero is critical. We cannot be deploying and selling what we’re not using. Uh, we have, uh, great tooling for low-code scenarios, uh, in, in, in, now, I don’t wanna say like in a few months now we have no one, uh, people that have zero knowledge and coding already developing and deploying agents into a secure environment. [00:28:19] Jose Gomez Cueto: It is happening. [00:28:20] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:28:20] Jose Gomez Cueto: So, uh, then, uh. Copilot. It is not a competitor charge, GVP or cloud. It is a platform we have both included. [00:28:29] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:28:29] Jose Gomez Cueto: Do we have multimodal, we have iq. That is everything, uh, closed in terms of, uh, your intelligence. It is secure by default. Uh, and then allowing you to, to do, um, agents and then agents 365 to manage it. [00:28:41] Jose Gomez Cueto: So basically those three stages, customer zero. Uh, copilot agents and Agents 365 as your tool to, to manage them [00:28:50] Vince Menzione: and don’t go rogue and start doing your own things with anthropic and setting up your own instances because you’re gonna compromise your, your instance in your environment. [00:28:59] Jose Gomez Cueto: Well, actually, uh, if you do it in the copilot interface [00:29:02] Vince Menzione: Oh, well, I’m saying do it. [00:29:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I’m, I’m at RO going off, off, off, uh, [00:29:06] Jose Gomez Cueto: off. Yeah. Yeah, [00:29:07] Vince Menzione: yeah. Great. Well, thank you, sir. Appreciate you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. If today’s conversation resonated, share it with a partner leader in your network. Subscribe where you listen, and head over to the Ultimate partner.com for show notes related content and the resources for this episode. [00:29:29] Vince Menzione: And if you haven’t already, now’s the time to register for the Ultimate Partner Live event in Reston, Virginia, October 26th through October 28th. Until next time. Keep showing up in the rooms that matter because being in the room changes everything.
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