Tech Talks Daily

Recent research by the Bank of Ireland reveals that many people have become accidental savers during the Covid-19 crisis. Understandably, half of those surveyed want to build up a rainy day fund for the future. Moreover, within today's climate of low interest rates and high living costs, many are considering investing as a way to make their money go further. Offering a new investment alternative for the Irish market, BUX, Europe's fastest-growing neobroker, officially launched its zero-commission investing app, BUX Zero, in Ireland this week, making it the first exclusively mobile platform to offer investing in the country. The arrival of BUX Zero in Ireland promises to make investing easier and more affordable through commission-free investing. In addition, BUX aims to remedy the findings that only 23% of people claim to have sufficient knowledge of markets and investment options. It is a platform that provides intuitive tools to start investing and educational content that helps users to invest responsibly. Yorick Naeff, CEO of BUX, joins me on the podcast to share the story behind the company. I also learn how BUX's flagship platform, BUX Zero, is making commission-free investing more accessible and allows users to invest in the companies they believe in.

Captiv8 CEO and co-founder Krishna Subramanian joins me on Tech Talks Daily to share his tech journey. Krishna is an expert in mobile advertising. Before creating Captiv8 in 2015, he was a co-founder at BlueLithium, an online advertising network that Yahoo acquired for $300 million after becoming the fifth largest ad network in the US and the second-largest in the UK. He then went on to co-found Mobclix, a mobile ad exchange network, which went on to be acquired by Velti, where Krishna then became the CMO. Captiv8 started as a social listening tool and has grown to become a leading Influencer Marketing company that offers a fully self-service, AI-powered platform and a managed service marketplace. We also discuss their partnership with LiveRamp to turn brands' first-party data into scalable influencer campaigns.

Emily Snell, President of Allstate Identity Protection, joins me on Tech Talks Daily. Allstate Identity Protection, formerly known as InfoArmor, has been a leader in the employee benefits space for over 13 years and provides advanced identity and privacy protection to more than 30% of the Fortune 500. Emily shared her insights into how identity theft impacts businesses. We discuss how personal data is most commonly stolen from employees and what costs employers incur from these breaches. We also discuss why and how companies should better protect employees and themselves against identity theft.

Alois Reitbauer, VP, Chief Technical Strategist, and Head of Innovation Lab at Dynatrace, returns to Tech Talks Daily to discuss how forging stronger links between business and academia will drive the next wave of digital innovation. Alois has 20 years of software experience, starting as a developer before moving into tech strategy. Passionate about all things tech, he is also a co-chair for the App Delivery Special Interest Group for the CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation). In his role as Head of Innovation Lab at Dynatrace, Alois is responsible for Dynatrace Research, which has a team made up of academic researchers from the University of Linz, Austria, and passionate software experts from Dynatrace, to spearhead research into future technologies that can solve the challenges facing the most advanced use cases for modern data systems. He shares why he believes this approach exemplifies the broader need for the IT industry to champion closer collaboration between business and academia, covering: Accelerating innovation – 89% of CIOs say digital transformation has accelerated, and 58% believe it will continue to speed up. However, organisations are struggling to keep up with this fast-paced innovation. Partnering with academia can help bring new knowledge, fresh thinking, and novel ways of working into a business to help accelerate the charge towards new digital frontiers. However, these partnerships are often viewed as a CSR initiative rather than being a core part of the R&D process, which limits their potential. Forging stronger links – Alois believes academic partnerships can drive more meaningful impact if they sit firmly within the business. This helps provide more direction and enables academic partners to dedicate research efforts to solving current or pressing business challenges, which can't be done in a classroom. Organisations should create joint innovation teams, including university researchers, developers, and other business stakeholders, with practical knowledge of the company's systems, processes, and vision. Think fast, build fast, learn fast – With access to real-world business experience and first-hand knowledge of the challenges organisations are trying to solve, academics can create solutions that truly change the world instead of developing a theory that takes years to be tested. This can help foster a 'think fast, build fast, fail fast' mentality that accelerates the pace of digital innovation and drives the next wave of transformation.

Josh Feast, MIT alumnus and CEO and co-founder of AI company, Cogito joins me on the Tech Talks Daily podcast to share his story and how the human-AI relationship will define the future of work. We explore how we can extend ourselves with AI, teach AI to understand us better and create human-AI interactions that work in the moment. I learn more about how Cogito provides aware human technology to help professionals elevate their performance. Cogito's contact center AI instantly analyzes hundreds of conversational behaviors to provide live in-call guidance combined with a real-time measure of customer experience. The technology is augmenting the emotional intelligence of thousands of agents in the world's most successful enterprises – improving sales results, delivering world-class service and enhancing the quality of care. Backed by Goldman Sachs, Romulus Capital, and Salesforce Ventures. We also discuss how they produce innovative technology that drives customer success and helps people live more productive lives.

Today I have an inspirational tech startup story to share with a New York mom turned technology entrepreneur by turning her parenting into a passion! What makes her story stand out is she caught the eyes of leading investors like Sequoia Surge, Unilever Ventures, and Qualgro, who recently announced a $9 million investment into her company. Today's guest is Tamanna Dhamija. She founded Baby Destination after she had her first child a few years ago. The online parenting community she built grew into a community resource for 2 million parents. Tamanna and her co-founders saw that online communities were built and managed by passionate people, but they could not monetize these passions into a source of income. This insight led them to create Convosight, which built the technology tools to help community managers on Facebook, Reddit, and Discord to earn from their passion and drive the creation of the passion economy. In the last year, Convosight's community members grew exponentially from 34 million to 300 million. In the last 12 months, Convosight has also made nearly $1 million in payouts to community managers. Tamanna shares her inspirational story and the role that tech plays in bringing online communities together.

The customer journey is blurring the line between digital and physical experiences. Therefore, retailers should look to create consistent, convenient, and inspirational customer experiences in their brick-and-mortar stores while providing the physical touch, engagement, and interaction with products. By investing in AR, VR, AI, and gesture technology, businesses can focus on improving omnichannel shopping experience to optimise engagement opportunities with customers both online and in-store, while also allowing the retailer to get to know the customer better and provide customised offerings such as personalised samples, loyalty points or discounts. I invited Valtech MD Chris Daplyn onto the podcast to share his insights into the technology guiding the future high street. Chris has over 20 years of experience in the digital agency landscape. He is a proven leader with a passion for bringing together diverse talent to connect brands and audiences in relevant and contemporary ways. Before joining Valtech, Chris has led the significant growth of several businesses as managing director of Wunderman, and most recently, as CEO of Mirum in Europe.

Steve Jiang, CEO, and co-founder of Hiretual, a leader in AI-powered recruitment software, joins me on Tech Talks Daily. Steven's background is far from ordinary. From growing up in a small rural town in China to becoming a pioneer leader in his industry, he always possessed a steadfast dedication to differentiate himself from his peers - leading him to build an innovative company in his own vision. As companies around the country experience the crisis to find candidates for their job openings (9.3 million job openings, to be exact), now more than ever is the time to find the right tools to help fill the gap. I learn more about how Hiretual's software can help transform the recruiting process for companies across the board – it has even become a key resource for those in the recruiting and sourcing industry by helping businesses cut their sourcing time by as much as 80%. Steven shares why AI is helping the post-pandemic hiring market, his experience in the technology and recruiting industry, and the story behind the creation of Hiretual.

Retailers such as Walmart entered the financial services space when it launched a payment app that allows Mexican customers to receive remittances from the US. With global professionals wanting to send home payments back home to their families, I wanted to explore how the remittance market is heating up. With Remity filing to go public and BayaniPay's partnership with BDO Bank and Seafood City there seems to be a growing number of trends that I wanted to talk about. Los Angeles-based BayaniPay recently launched a new borderless digital banking service in partnership with BDO Unibank, the largest bank in the Philippines, and Seafood City, a large US-based Filipino supermarket chain. Through the service and partnership, the companies offer millions of Asian Americans a low-cost, frictionless way to send money to their families back in their homelands, pay bills and conduct online transactions. BayaniPay takes its name from ""Bayani,"" the Filipino word for "hero"—a term often used to describe global professionals in their home countries. Born out of a partnership between inclusion tech venture studio Talino Ventures and leading Asian American multimedia publisher The Asian Journal, BayaniPay received funding from Wavemaker Partners, a cross-border venture capital firm investing in early-stage startups in the United States and Southeast Asia. Winston Damarillo is the co-founder and CEO of BayaniPay. He joins me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast to share BayaniPay's mission to use technology to break down the borders in banking and level the playing field for all global citizens.

The lack of confidentiality and privacy on blockchains is obvious. It hampers blockchain technology's disruptive potential as a WEB 3.0 platform supporting value transfer, especially in an increasingly interconnected and data-reliant world. Dr. Kurt Nielsen, PhD, President of Partisia Blockchain, believes that industry players need to take urgent action to safeguard privacy considerations. Kurt and the team at Partisia Blockchain are pioneering Multi-party computation technology (MPC), a type of distributed cryptography. While blockchain boasts increased security over personal data, MPC ensures that data remains confidential. Dr. Kurt Nielsen joins me on the Tech Talks Daily podcast to discuss how the combination of MPC and blockchain will pave a trustworthy road for advanced solutions and greater peace of mind for internet users. We also talk about how Partisia Blockchain represents the first successful complete integration of blockchain technology with MPC, allowing for companies to interact with targeted individuals without compromising the users' confidential data. Finally, we chat about Partisia's recent fundraising round which saw $20m of investment, and their plans to use this funding to build an internet privacy infrastructure for the greater good.