Tech Talks Daily

Neil C. Hughes

Episodes

Mentioned books

undefined
Jun 19, 2021 • 31min

1628: The Future of Work - Data, Decentralization, and Automation.

Dr Mark van Rijmenam is the founder of Datafloq and Mavin. Datafloq is the one-stop source for emerging tech, offering C-level Executives information, insights, knowledge, and opportunities to drive innovation with data. The international keynote speaker is also the author of 3 best-selling management books. I wanted to learn more about his mission to educate people and organizations about how the future of work will revolve around data, decentralization, and automation. In doing so, they could gain a deep understanding of emerging technologies, including big data, blockchain, and artificial intelligence, and how they will change the future of work. We live in exponential times and simply having a digital strategy focused on continuous innovation is no longer enough to thrive in a constantly changing world. Van Rijmenam discusses how big data, blockchain, and AI will change collaboration and enable a networked society. The organization of tomorrow will look fundamentally different than today's organization. Those enterprises aware of the upcoming changes can best prepare and achieve competitive advantage in a data-driven society. Consequently, the future of work will require management and employees to take a different approach to create and deliver a product or service. The future of work will be defined by three concepts: data, decentralization, and automation that will radically change leadership, culture, privacy, and security. Van Rijmenam shares valuable insights around the future of work and how to build a competitive business.
undefined
Jun 18, 2021 • 27min

1627: Venky B, Co-Founder, Plivo Shares His Startup Story

Plivo provides easy and affordable APIs for businesses to develop powerful voice and messaging applications. Applications built over Plivo seamlessly integrate across web and telephony, including Mobile, PSTN, VoIP, and Gtalk. But where did it all begin? Venky B shares the story behind Plivo and how they serve thousands of innovative businesses in more than 190 countries, such as IBM, GoDaddy, PagerDuty, Deckers Brand, etc., through SMS and Voice APIs. I learn more about how the company's founders all met over GitHub, and the team signed its first paying customers before they had a commercial offering. Venky recommends launching early, iterate with few anchor customers to build a product marketing fit, and charge as early as you can. For startup founders, Venky B offers the following advice. Debt Funding: This was a no-brainer for Plivo, and other companies should consider this route as there is no dilution and helps with short-term investments. Entrepreneurship: Venky has guided the company to hold out from taking money and being trapped. This route is less taken, and Venky shares the benefits that he has seen thus far from this strategy. Recruiting: In the early days of your company, find passionate early employees who thrive in an unstructured environment. Additionally, hire generalists early and then form more specialized teams as you scale. Growth: The first step is finding a product-market fit with repeatability, focusing on making a few customers happy, and keeping an eye on churn. Global Expansion: Whenever financially feasible, build a local go-to-market team and engage customer teams to create passionate customers.
undefined
Jun 17, 2021 • 26min

1626: AnkerWork Product Line to Support Hybrid Working

Anker Innovations, a global leader in mobile charging and consumer electronics, recently announced two products under the AnkerWork product line, including the PowerConf C300, Smart AI-enabled HD webcam, and the PowerConf S500 Portable Conference Speaker. For many, working from home has been a dream come true, but it also brings its unique challenges; distracting pets, family, poor lighting, and power and cable management issues, to name a few. AnkerWork products have been designed to help address many of these issues, while providing portable solutions and can be easily used in the home, the office, and on the road. Adam Weissman joins me on Tech Talks Daily to discuss Anker's decision to enter the B2B tech space at this moment in time, along with his vision of how the future of work will center on flexibility and mobility. We also talk about where the hybrid work model is heading, how future AnkerWork product offerings will be equipped to address the future of work, and what AI technology can play a stronger role in the new age of work.
undefined
Jun 16, 2021 • 31min

1625: Sagacity - Why Data Decides Whether M&As Succeed or Fail

O2 and Virgin have almost 40 million customers between them, so it will be a huge challenge to bring their records into one platform. Of course M&As have become increasingly common in the telco industry in recent years, and tongues continue to wag about potential activity involving both BT and Nokia over the next few months. Data solutions provider Sagacity work with leading telcos, so I invited Harry Dougall, CFO and founding partner at on the podcast to discuss the typical challenges companies face when merging. We explore some of the mammoth data tasks that could make or break M&As, such as joining all the data together in a unified format. A merger of this scale often takes years, especially if customer information is spread across siloed departments. We talk about the importance of checking for accuracy and records that need to be merged (if somebody was a customer of both organizations). We also discuss how making decisions about which packages are appropriate for which type of customer, where they could be cross-selling services, and identify the most valuable customers to focus on retaining them.
undefined
Jun 15, 2021 • 35min

1624: The Tech Manifesto and Transformation Journey at Liberty Mutual

Several years ago, Liberty Mutual developed a "Technology Manifesto," a six-page document that explained where they were going and what needed to change as part of their transformation journey. It laid out the tools needed to compete in the marketplace and a picture around the types of technology skills employees needed for roles in the future. Eric Drobisewski is the Senior Architect of Fortune 100, Liberty Mutual Insurance. Eric has more than 20 years of enterprise IT experience spanning many technology verticals, including Telecom, Network, and Cloud services. As a Senior Architect, he's responsible for more than 40,000 systems across the globe in a highly virtualized environment with a goal of modernizing a significant portion of those workloads for public cloud platforms. Over the past several years, Eric's focus has been on Liberty Mutual's enterprise cloud strategy, strategic enablement, DevSecOps and Infrastructure as Code practices, and driving containerization as the company's core compute fabric. With the mass shift to remote work, we talk about the technologies that enabled Liberty Mutual's 50,000 global employees to succeed and various areas of technology the company is continuing to expand to this year. I also learn how they are aiming to fully pivot to the cloud and reduce their three owned data centers to a single one, with aspirations to get to zero in the future.
undefined
Jun 14, 2021 • 24min

1623: How Indico Competes With Microsoft, AWS, Google, and IBM

Slater Victoroff is the Founder and CTO of Indico. An enterprise AI solution for unstructured content that emphasizes document understanding. Slater has been building machine learning solutions for startups, governments, and Fortune 100 companies for the past seven years and is a frequent speaker at AI conferences. Indico's framework requires 1000x less data than traditional machine learning techniques, and they regularly beat the likes of AWS, Google, Microsoft, and IBM in head-to-head bake-offs. Indico recently announced a $22 million Series B raise. Slater has been building AI, machine learning and deep learning solutions for the enterprise for the better part of the past decade, having worked with everyone from the federal government to two-person startups to the Fortune 100. He has also educated hundreds of business users on successfully implementing deep learning through a simple framework that helps executives rapidly accelerate the adoption of the technology in their businesses. We talk about The future of AI / Machine Learning, the effect of AI on automation processes, and making STEM more inclusive.
undefined
Jun 13, 2021 • 29min

1622: The Importance of Creating Space for Minorities Within the Tech Industry

Calvin Brown is a tech founder with experience managing global teams and multi-million dollar software deliverables. His software architecture background, coding capabilities, and keen understanding of the entire process help inform his mindful but competitive approach. Calvin is fueled by his passion for understanding the nuances of the technical challenges businesses face across all industries. He considers himself a 'forever student,' eager to build on his hands-on technical foundation by architecting, building, and teaching others how to master the art of making complex technical issues solvable. Calvin has developed applications for some of the world's largest brands. What makes him unique is his dedication to educating entrepreneurs and other tech professionals on how to create the software that we all know and love. The tech group that he created for black coders, Black Men Code, has now grown to over 1,000 professionals. His many publications have aided him in his mission to spread knowledge, educate entrepreneurs and empower them to solve their own technical issues. Calvin shares how he helps businesses solve problems and run better by providing software-based solutions with an emphasis on innovation, creativity, and common-sense solutions. We discuss the importance of creating space for minorities within the tech industry, and Calvin shares his journey from a lower-middle-class Mississippi home to global tech success. We also talk about how to bring your application dream into reality and explore the future of tech.
undefined
Jun 12, 2021 • 22min

1621: Workplace Technology, Smart Buildings and Innovation

Dinesh Malkani is Founder and CEO of Smarten Spaces. His company provides an AI-based technology platform/solutions to transition back to the workplace safely and securely. Smarten Spaces is working with Fortune 500 companies across 50+ cities globally. In today's episode, we talk about hybrid working, back-to-work technology, and the future of the workplace. About Smarten Spaces People spend a significant time inside buildings, and they thrive when these spaces are convenient and intuitive. At Smarten Spaces, their vision is to transform all spaces where people spend time, and they do so by designing technology that keeps human behavior and experience in mind. The company dreams of enabling future-ready spaces that help users optimize for the most value. Our tech solutions allow users to make informed financial decisions based on how their spaces are being utilized while also enhancing the experience of those that interact with the spaces. Better business, better experience. They believe that technology should be seamless. That's why their configurable solutions are designed for your convenience when planning for and interacting with the spaces of the future. With offerings across workplace management, space management, and tenant engagement, they are currently smartening 90 million square feet globally (and counting).
undefined
Jun 11, 2021 • 19min

1620: Don't Let Your Next Technology Project Turn Into a Tragedy

Rich Rudzinski always had an entrepreneurial spirit and found different ways to express that while growing up. He has been infatuated with computers since he first locked eyes on the sweet 486 Windows machine his uncle got his family in the early 90s. He broke, fixed, and gamed on that computer until he saved enough to build his own machine from scratch. The top of his class in high school, Rich followed his passion for computers while studying at UCSD where he graduated early with an innovative art/technology major (ICAM), with a focus on building interactive experiences with new technologies. Rich started his current venture, Tragic Media, in 2009 after working as a technology consultant for a variety of digital agencies. He saw a common theme of project overages, disappointed clients, and outsourcing went awry; and sought to build a company to solve that problem. Initially, a white-label solution for other agencies, Tragic Media now helps businesses of all sizes avoid technology tragedies. Over the years, the logo and frameworks have evolved, but Tragic still focuses on providing sound technical leadership for non-technical organizations. From the web to apps to the cloud and beyond! They partner with their clients to help them build a technology foundation built to scale. Rich is also in the process of building out a SaaS product for software team reporting and working to grow a sub-brand focused on helping organizations with IoT integrations and system implementations. I chat with Rich about entrepreneurship, pivoting a business, building processes with technology. We also discuss what emerging technologies excite him.
undefined
Jun 10, 2021 • 22min

1619: The Tech Offering An Impartial View of World News

Here in the UK, the Daily Mail and Guardian Newspapers will give you to completely different sides of a news story. In the US, CNN and Fox News will often do the same thing. But how did we get here? And is there an appetite to return to factual rather than opinion-based reporting? Tim Huelskamp from 1440 Media joins me in a conversation about the monetization of polarization and how the click-bait structured media world is creating an outrage machine that relies on misleading headlines and sensationalism to sustain itself. I also learn how 1440 media is tackling this problem and the role of technology in helping people find an alternative to their echo chamber and find explore fact base news that challenges rather than strengthens your worldview. About 1440 Media Instead of cleverly crafted messaging and media narratives, 1440 provides an impartial view of what's happening in the world so our readers can form their own conclusions. Scouring hundreds of sources each day, 1440 delivers news with breadth plus depth, thoughtfully curated by experts, in a single morning briefing. We believe news is not about proving one side is right – it should inspire objective conversation that helps you navigate the world around you. While it may sound lofty, our goal is to empower readers so they can lead better, well-informed, more productive lives.

The AI-powered Podcast Player

Save insights by tapping your headphones, chat with episodes, discover the best highlights - and more!
App store bannerPlay store banner
 Get the app