Author: Tullio Siragusa

Tom Powers is the Founder and CEO of Abodeca, a great alternative search site for Vacation Rentals. Some other great site affiliated with Abodeca are FindRentals and Vacaryx. You can also find a lot of great alternative search on FindIt. The main take away is that with a little knowledge and effort you can directly connect with companies and save on the expensive situation that has evolved in standard search.

Deepak Anchala is the Founder and CEO of Slintel, a deep prospecting platform to boost conversion rates. Deepak affirms that sales and marketing teams today are inundated with company and contact lists and that many teams launch campaigns based on their target criteria and end up getting extremely low conversion rates (Industry average is < 2% on cold mails; <.5% on cold calls). This spray and pray approach has frustrated the buyer community (most buyers are drowned in seller spam), and also has led to the sales teams eroding their target clientele over time.

He thinks that the most important question sales and marketing teams need to be asking themselves is:

Who is most likely to buy my product or service, today?

That is all they need to launch the perfect campaign. Slintel seeks out to solve this problem.

The art and science of product design and strategy based on lessons learned during a 25-year career.

Paul Shustak is a serial entrepreneur with 20+ years’ experience in product design, development and marketing. He is currently founder and CEO of Karen.care, a SaaS platform that helps families care for their aging parents.

Ben Block, Founder & CEO of GozAround Inc., is a serial entrepreneur and lawyer with a passion for making a difference to those around him. Inspired by the power of technology to build real world relationships, and driven by his love of business, Ben is on a mission to change the way people, business and non-profits connect and do good.

In August 2014, GozAround launched from its base in Edmonton, Canada, with one big act of goodness. GozAround brought together big-hearted businesses from around the city to throw a wedding for a terminally ill mother of five. Complete with a limo, video, photographers, cake, flowers and all – it didn’t cost the couple a cent and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. This life changing event was designed to prove the concept behind GozAround…that people and business badly want to make a difference…they just need a better way to find, measure and share their contributions.

Puneet Mehta is Founder / CEO of msg.ai, a VC-backed Artificial Intelligence company. msg.ai helps companies like WestJet, Target, Nestle and others automate high-quality resolutions to  customer support issues across email, Web / mobile chat and messaging. msg.ai helps companies adopt AI into their workforce, working in tandem with human agents to provide superior support that meets customers increasingly high standards for quick, personal and accurate support.

Puneet is a former Wall Street algorithmic trading technology executive where he built predictive algorithmic platforms to power large-scale trading systems.  These situation-aware automated trading platforms were amongst the first AI virtual assistants in any industry, providing traders with the most relevant insights, trends and analytics from an enormous amount of unstructured real-time data.

Advertising Age named Puneet to the Creativity 50 list. Business Insider magazine named Puneet to “The Silicon Alley 100: New York’s Coolest Tech People” and “35 Up-And-Coming Entrepreneurs You Need To Meet.” He was also featured in The Wall Street Journal’s startup documentary series.

Throughout her whole life, Julia Hawkins has been the person in the room that pulls people together to get things done. Even as a child, she was organizing everyone to achieve a goal.

She majored in Public Policy at Duke University, where she chaired the Major Attractions and Joe College Day committees, bringing talented musicians and speakers to campus. All her life, she has felt equally a creative type as a quantitative person.

Julia received a Master’s in Business Administration from Cornell Tech, where she co-founded her startup, Cabinet, with three fellow classmates. Julia lives in New York City where Cabinet is headquartered.

Podcast

Byron Reese is the CEO and publisher of GigaOm and the host of two GigaOm podcasts: VoicesinAI and the GigaOm AI Minute. He is the author of the acclaimed books, “The Fourth Age; Smart Robots, Conscious Computers and the Future of Humanity” and “Infinite Progress: How Technology and the Internet Will End Ignorance, Disease, Hunger, Poverty, and War.”

You may not know Susan Bennett, but you definitely know her voice! Susan is a voice actor and singer whose voice has appeared on hundreds of radio and TV commercials for such clients as McDonald’s, Macy’s, Goodyear, Papa John’s, Fisher Price, and more. She is the voice of Delta Airlines gates worldwide, as well as hundreds of GPS and phone systems, but you probably know her best as the original voice of Apple’s famous app, Siri.

Robert C. Martin, AKA Uncle Bob, CleanCoder.com‘s Founder and President of Object Mentor Inc.

Robert Martin is a leader in the industry of software development. He served three years as the editor-in-chief of the C++ Report, having also served as the first chairman of the Agile Alliance.