Category: Podcasts

Adrian Marquez is the founder of a company called Agaru. The episode focuses on helping talent rise in the context of gratitude, technology, and hospitality for social impact. Adrian shares his story of being involved in the hospitality industry for 20 years and his realization that many talented individuals in the industry lack access to education and opportunities. This realization led him to found Agaru, a platform where customers can vote for staff members and provide them with ratings. These ratings serve as a record of their skills and can open doors to new opportunities and career growth. The platform aims to address the challenge of assessing soft skills in the hospitality industry and help individuals showcase their talents. The conversation also explores the impact of soft skills on hospitality management, the potential to challenge the focus on monetary gain, and the role of gratitude in human interactions. The episode ends with an invitation for viewers to visit Agaru’s website and vote for individuals who have provided them with a positive experience.

Bill Santana Lee discusses the rise of friendly robots and explains that Night Scope aims to address the problem of crime and its negative economic impact by providing robotic solutions for public safety and security. Lee emphasizes the lack of federal jurisdiction and innovation in law enforcement agencies and private security firms. He highlights the limitations of human officers and guards in terms of their numbers and capabilities. Lee describes Night Scope’s autonomous robots, which can operate 24/7, observe their surroundings, read license plates, and collect evidence. He explains how the presence of these robots can deter criminal behavior and provide valuable data for prosecution. Lee expresses the need for advancements in technology, such as improved communication capabilities, to enhance the effectiveness of these robots. He asserts that traditional policing and security methods are costly and ineffective, and Night Scope’s robots offer a scalable and real solution to the problem. Lee mentions the positive response they have received from communities and the potential for further expansion.

Debarghya Das, the founding engineer of Gleam, discusses building AI for enterprise. He shares his background, passion for technology, and his transition from working at Google to joining Gleam. Gleam aims to solve the problem of information retrieval in the workplace by providing a search engine for all consumer apps used in an enterprise setting. The goal is to create a smart search box that allows users to find documents and information quickly and efficiently. Das also discusses the challenges and potential of AI in various business applications, such as customer support and conversational AI. He emphasizes the importance of understanding AI as a tool and leveraging human knowledge and understanding alongside it. Gleam focuses on providing answers grounded in real information and sources, promoting trust and enabling users to perform real work tasks effectively.

Dr. Irv Lustig, the optimization principal at Princeton Consultants, discusses the essential role of optimization in the AI revolution. He highlights the need for comprehensive thinking in applying optimization, from understanding the problem to deploying the solution and changing decision-making processes. Princeton Consultants focuses on management consulting and information technology, applying optimization to help customers make better decisions. The convergence of optimization and AI is driven by the availability of data, which enables improved decision-making. Optimization can automate processes and solve business problems efficiently. Skills required for optimization include a background in operations research, data science, and business analytics. Dr. Lustig emphasizes the importance of communication and considering downstream effects when implementing optimization solutions. He suggests pursuing degrees or programs in operations research, business analytics, or data science and attending conferences to learn more about optimization and its applications.

Rakesh Yadav, the founder of Adaptive shared his background as an immigrant and his experience at Google, where he worked on several projects, including building an end-to-end machine learning platform for Google Ads. Rakesh discussed how AI and machine learning can benefit eCommerce retailers by personalizing user experiences, improving search and recommendations, and driving revenue. He explained that Adaptive offers intelligent products to help companies build their own customized eCommerce platforms. Rakesh also emphasized the importance of adaptability in the rapidly changing market and shared his advice for startup founders, such as focusing on people, having a process, and seeking continuous learning. The interview concluded with a discussion on the value of mentorship and mental safety in professional settings.

James Hamet, the founder and CEO of Vistum Labs, discusses the use of artificial intelligence in improving dementia diagnostics and care. He explains his background and passion for building technologies for doctors and helping patients. James previously founded a neurotech business called Nurable, which developed mind-reading technology to assist people in wheelchairs. Now with Vistum Labs, James focuses on addressing the clinical problem of diagnosing dementia. He highlights the difficulty in quantifying and evaluating dementia and the need for more accurate diagnoses to ensure effective treatment. James emphasizes the prevalence of dementia, particularly Alzheimer’s disease, and the unequal impact it has on women. He discusses the capabilities of Vistum Labs’ technology, which uses AI to interpret brain damage and provide results comparable to PET scans and other diagnostic tests. He mentions the importance of early diagnosis and the potential for preventing neurodegenerative disorders. James shares his vision of expanding the technology’s application to other forms of dementia and brain damage. He emphasizes the significance of building genuine friendships and fostering a sincere approach in business. The conversation also touches on personal experiences, cultural differences, and the joy of trying new foods.

Dennis Weiss, is the founder and CEO of IPQS. Dennis shares his background and the founding of IPQS, which stemmed from his experience with fraud in the advertising industry. They discuss how IPQS uses machine learning and AI to mitigate online fraud risks for businesses. IPQS analyzes various data points such as IP addresses, device fingerprinting, and email validation to detect and prevent fraud. They offer a comprehensive solution compared to competitors who focus on specific data points. The goal is to catch fraud before it happens and provide a frictionless experience for legitimate users. IPQS serves businesses across different industries, including finance, gambling, ride-sharing, and food delivery. They prioritize data accuracy to minimize false positives. The conversation highlights the importance of having the right data and constantly testing and learning to improve fraud prevention strategies.

Rui Aguiar, CTO of Expedock, discussed with us the application of AI in the global supply chain. Aguiar explained how AI can automate manual processes in supply chain operations, such as cataloging receipts and container pictures, to make the supply chain run more efficiently. He also shared how AI can be used in document extraction, which is the information protocol of how goods move around, to help businesses reduce their operational costs. Aguiar attributed the recent shock to the global supply chain to the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused a demand spike for goods and materials and led to more companies entering the space to help improve the broken infrastructure system.

Rui Aguiar is the Cofounder and CTO of Expedock, a company that is using AI to increase efficiency and scalability in the global supply chain. Prior to that, he worked in the Stanford ML Group, and several companies including Rockset, Facebook and Airbnb.

Lori Stout is the Chief Marketing Officer for Bigleaf Networks. Bigleaf provides internet connectivity without complexity, making it easy for IT pros and their organizations to conduct business on the internet with confidence. Bigleaf’s unique network optimization solution adapts traffic to circuit conditions in real-time to preserve application performance and optimize user productivity despite circuit outages. The Bigleaf solution integrates seamlessly with established firewalls, ISPs, and applications, takes only minutes to install, and works automatically to provide immediate value.

Prior to joining Bigleaf, Lori led Marketing for Punchh, the leading digital loyalty platform for restaurants and retailers. As a result of rapid growth and accelerated brand equity, Punchh was acquired in 2021 for $500M by PAR Technology, where Lori went on to lead marketing for the PAR portfolio of solutions. She has spent most of her career in the unified communications and customer experience industries, leading and scaling marketing strategy for tech innovators like Talkdesk, Vonage, and Genesys.

Pierce Healy is the CEO and Co-Founder of Zelta AI, a GPT-4 powered software solution which gives SaaS product teams actionable customer insights derived from sales call transcripts, support chats and survey data.

Pierce was formerly a customer strategy consultant with McKinsey & Deloitte.

Mahesh Baxi is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Provus. As one of the original innovators of Services CPQ, he is responsible for furthering the company’s leading position in the Services Economy. He is a proven leader with over 25 years of management experience scaling the IT, product, and services operations for global software companies.

Prior to Provus, Mahesh served in executive and senior leadership positions at Clinc, Inc., My Ally, and Apttus. He is a domain expert in CPQ, CLM, pricing, quote-to-cash, and HR tech and has spoken at various conferences on the topics of leadership, customer success, and team building.

Mahesh holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Dharmsinh Desai Institute of Technology and is the author of two books.

Amit led the AWS Global DevOps and DevSecOps partnerships, is a former VP at Cloudyn and a second time founder in the DevOps domain.

His familiarity with DevOps challenges from a practitioner, vendor and AWS prospective offered him a window into the unique challenge between Developers and DevOps exchange that led him to co-found Kubiya. As the industry’s first DevOps virtual assistant, Kubiya was early to involve LLMs and Conversational AI into the DevOps tool chain as a Slack native chatbot that helps developers self-serve DevOps functions with minimal human intervention – think ChatGPT for DevOps.

Peter Reynolds is a Co-CEO at memoQ and a localization industry veteran previously working for Berlitz, Bowne Global Solutions, Lionbridge and Idiom Technologies Inc. Peter was part of the team which originally developed XLIFF and was the first secretary of the XLIFF Technical Committee at OASIS.

Peter was project editor of ISO 17100 and was convener of the ISO working group which deal with translation from 2017 to 2020.

Dianela Gamboa is a Senior UX Designer at Encora. Having worked in Marketing for many years prior, she is able to strike the perfect balance in User Experience and understanding business financial goals while always putting the user in the center.

Fermín Chávez is a User Experience Researcher at Encora and has been working in the field for five years. Coming from a technological background, he found a new balance in research by mediating with the more human side of things. He is very interested in the playful, leisurely uses of technology and how we can reframe our world through play.

Luis Talamantes is a UI/UX Designer with over three years of experience in the industry. His goal is to build accessible products that everyone can enjoy. With the Metaverse arriving, he is aiming to create accessible spaces inside the virtual world.

Montana Butsch is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, read Education Research at Oxford University, is an Executive Scholar at Northwestern University, and, most recently, an Executive MBA Graduate from Brown University. Upon concluding work at Oxford University, he focused on pursuing social ventures in Chicago, which led to the founding of the Chicago Training Center ‘CTC’ in 2006.

Montana is an avid rower who focuses on helping teens and advocating for social change. For his work with teens, Montana has been featured in the NYTimes and CBS News. He has also given a TedX on the power of youth sports.