Game Changers Silicon Valley

The depth and breadth of the Agtech movement are transforming many agriculture sectors. The dairy industry is a well-established industry that has received some productivity enhancements over the years. such as automated milking machines. Otherwise, the products and methods have remained the same over the decades and centuries. The dairy sector is now going through a transformation in Ireland. Private industry and the government are making a move to apply 21st-century innovation and productivity enhancements to transform the entire dairy supply chain along with the products that are being produced. Join me with Maeve Crowley, Vice President of IDA Ireland and Mark Keane, Chair of the Computer Science department at University College, Dublin and a Director at the Vista Milk Research Institute as they discuss the innovation taking place in the production of milk.

The startup ecosystem continues to create new products and services that contribute to our productivity and quality of life. The participating parties including research and intellectual property from universities, programs for entrepreneurs, technologists and an established set of service providers from startup accelerators to a range of outsourcing services for everything a startup company needs to grow efficiently. A key driver to allow these components to produce results is the startup investor class and within that class, the provider of seed capital. The first outside capital contribution is incredibly important giving the startup validation and working capital to continue their mission. Today, we see a range of seed capital providers from the angel investor community and specific seed funds from the venture capital community. Finding the Right Seed Investor As an entrepreneur, if you have a lineage coming from several years at a brand name IPO, or you are part of the founder team with a track record of successful exits, then you have the basis to shop your company's financing needs to venture capital funds and angel investor groups. If you are first time entrepreneurs with no track record in the startup world, then you are likely to find the most receptive investor audience within the angel investor community. The angel investor community is not a single type of investor. There are unique aspects and preference to each angel investor and angel investor group. The podcast is about the mind and heart of the angel investor as Jonathan Wu, Vice President of the Sand Hill Angels, sits down to give us his perspective on seed funding, how entrepreneurs gain traction with angel investors, and avoidable mistakes entrepreneurs make. Jonathan also provides insight into the type of mentorship an angel investor can make including his own experiences in helping startup companies to accelerate their growth.

On Monday of last week, Capital One announced a data breach affecting an estimated 106 million Credit card customers and applicants. This is one of the largest Data breaches experienced by a large bank. One noteworthy point is that this cyber theft was conducted against data stored in the cloud-hosted by Amazon Web Services. In the past, most cyber intrusions have been conducted against a corporate data center. Capital One is just one of the many companies that have migrated to cloud services technology to improve performance, deliver software enhancements, and reduce costs by closing down dedicated data centers. But, the heightened complexity and interdependency of applications deployed in the cloud has also introduced some new exposures and vulnerabilities. While attending the RSA conference in San Francisco this year, I had an opportunity to meet with John Dickson of the Denim Group. John explained how the migration to the cloud-based infrastructure is a completely new concept verses, how apps were developed five years ago. He also discusses the approach used to create cloud applications known as continuous integration, continuous deployment, or CICD. The sheer complexity of the many moving parts in this technology can lead to simple missteps in security, leading to a data breach.

This conversation is with Jamie Rhodes, founder of the Central Texas Angel Network, an active angel investor group, based in Austin, TX. The startup story begins with an accelerator hosted by Texas State University and supported by a group of local mentors and advisors. One of the companies gaining traction in the accelerator was SioTeX. The company 's Intellectual property which had been funded and developed by Texas State University was a new method to convert rice hulls, which are a waste product, through a proprietary process to create a high-grade organic compound called Silica. After the initial round of startup funding, the company began to work on commercializing the production of Silica for Paints and Coatings manufacturers. Silica is used in the production of paint. As the sales and marketing process engaged with the paint manufacturers in the U.S., there was "little or no response". Eventually, the company learned from these prospective customers, that their product did not meet the specifications required by the paint manufacturers. At this point, two years after the initial funding, the company faced a clear dilemma. They were low on cash and had not found traction in the primary market as defined by the original team. And just one more issue, the CEO had decided to leave the company and pursue some other interest. The dilemma for the investors was: Is it time to walk away or put more money into the company on the hope that a viable market fit would be found. In other words, the investors had to decide if it was time to hold 'em and invest more money or time to fold 'em, and walk away and let the company fold from insolvency. Join me with our guest, Jamie Rhodes, who was an early mentor to the company, invested in the company and was on the Board of Directors. The other board members and the shareholders convinced Jamie that he was the best person to take over the role of the CEO and hopefully turn the company around.

According to a United Nations study by the year 2050, the world's population will reach 9.1 billion which is 34 percent higher than today. In order to feed this larger, more urban, and richer population, food production must increase by 70 percent. So the question is given the limits of available farmland and water resources, how are we going to meet this increase in food demand? Agtech Sector Perspective from Roger Royse, Founder Royse Law Firm: Agtech is not just a movement it's a revolution. We've had an industrial revolution we had an information revolution learn an agricultural revolution right now and as agriculture becomes a tech-enabled business and we're seeing that come up in a lot of different areas robotics artificial intelligent controlled environment soil health as we were talking about earlier. So the thing that's been driving all that. Are a couple of things in my world here in Silicon Valley. It's really been the fact that the venture community woke up to this like I say about six or seven or maybe eight years ago and started investing heavily in this. On Vertical Farming, Sonia Lo, CEO of Crop One Holdings Vertical farming is as the name implies a stacked shelving system generally within an enclosed space with artificial lighting but probably the simpler way to think about vertical farming is that it is the transfer of electrons to calories or the storage of electrons to calories because energy is the single largest input and what that really implies is that for the first time ever really agriculture can be segregated from climate and geography. And so anywhere you can generate an electron you can grow food. This type of vertical farming, that's very dense, that can be liberated from climate and geography is something that's a relatively recent phenomenon in the last six to seven years. And that's been enabled by the advent of cheap LCD lighting and cheap sensors. The unit economics of indoor growing of food has really been enabled by the cost decline and those two input technologies.

We hear a great deal of discussion about protecting access to our digital assets, bank accounts, travel services, retail sites and even government agencies like the IRS and State Tax Authorities. The recommendations focus on creating a secure name and password, two-factor authentication and possibly a biometric verification such as a fingerprint or voice print. During the RSA conference in San Francisco, I came across another source of digital identity theft, easily overlooked and there is was, staring me in the face one morning when I checked my name on a "financial aggregation" web site. These are sites that collect information about each of us and then sell that information to anyone, anyone who will attest with an online click that they will only use the information in an authorized procedure, such as qualifying for benefits, or employment verification. As part of the podcast series on cybersecurity issues, I met with a company that specialized in providing identity verification to financial companies in their online registrations. The conversation with Dean Nicholls from Jumio provided insights into the methods used to create false digital identities and the technology to detect and deny the creation of these digital identities.

What are your options if you have a real business but there is a lack of engagement from venture capital? In 2015, Congress implemented Title IV of the Jobs Act, which was intended to provide a process for startup companies to sell stock to the general public while remaining a private company. Why haven't you hear about this process, knows as a Reg A+? The provisions of Reg A+ allow a company to raise up to 50 million, but there are compliance regulations, audits, SEC-mandated disclosures. But the opportunity to sell stock to the public and create an investor base for funding future growth expands the opportunities for the startup community to develop new sources for funding. My guest on this topic is William Santana Li, the Founder, and CEO of Knightscope, a company that provides autonomous robots for security services. When Bill was not able to secure venture capital funding, he decided to use the Reg A+ process for a mini-IPO. In this podcast, Bill will lay out the process, the motivations, the surprises and the due diligence he encountered.

Many of the best entrepreneurs have leveraged their corporate experience, contacts, and resources to create new products and deploy a business strategy that was verified while they were corporate managers. Despite having that extensive background in product development and innovation, the life of the founders in any startup is a never-ending roller coaster ride that can easily derail valid ideas, strategies and market needs. The Knightscope story is personal, compelling and demonstrates just how challenging the process of developing a viable and sustainable business can be.

As I scanned the list of my unread emails, one stood out, coming from [email protected]. The message indicated there was a problem with a credit card transaction, a link was provided to learn more about this problem. I clicked on the link and was taken to an official-looking Citibank web page with a form to login to my account. Fortunately, I did catch myself before completing the login, realizing that this was a classic phishing attack to trick me into providing my login credentials on a fake web page. According to a 2019 Report by PhishLabs, approximately 65% of all phishing attacks were part of a credential theft scheme. The article claims Nation-state actors use phishing attacks to gain strategic access to target environments, such as the armed forces, all areas of the federal government, the power grid, corporate research and virtually all areas of intellectual property. Join me and Colin Bastablé as we discuss the various types of cyber attacks and how Lucy Security helps organizations defend against these attacks.

Studio software and computer vision have empowered the adoption of virtual characters and virtual movie sets. The next logical question was: why are we limited to actual human voices in the dialogue? The emergence of AI is powering a new approach to analyzing voices, identifying and tagging speaking patterns by age, sex, education, cultural heritage, and accent to fix audio tracks in movies. This podcast discusses the Company's technology to create a synthesized voice that is designed to fit the character in a movie, animation or audio dialogue. The challenge in a movie is casting actors who have both the image and voice to convincingly fit into the story's setting, whether it is in space, on another planet in the future, at a historical time such as the civil war, or even a prehistoric time. Well, this is not just any simulated audio, this is the ability to create a voice that reflects a specific age, sex, education, profession all within a specific cultural background, complete with a regional accent.

The world population stands at approximately 7.5 billion people at this time. The United Nations in 2009 and the International Organization for Migration in 2015 both estimated that around 3 million people are moving to cities every week. Today, approximately 54% of people worldwide now live in cities, up from 30% in 1950. Sources estimate this will grow to 2/3 of the world population in the next 15-30 years. Those people want high-quality services and unfortunately, many of our cities are facing challenges maintaining or improving their infrastructure. We see a breakdown in transportation infrastructure and affordable housing in many high growth metropolitan areas in the U.S. Secondly, everybody wants a clean environment, clean, abundant and low-cost energy. The Smart city movement represents a strategy to meet the needs of people for a high quality of life. Technology will play a central role in how cities deliver high-quality services, support easy access to business and commercial areas, promote government communications, and provide for community engagement.

The Aha! Moment and Developing a High-Quality Mentor Relationship This podcast explores the process where a woman entrepreneur had that insightful epiphany that lead her to create a startup company and pursue a resulting vision of providing a solution to an issue. Beyond this discussion of the Aha! moment, you will hear how this entrepreneur also found a mentor that provided her with the advice and feedback on her business development and the importance of that relationship based on timely business guidance, trust and belief in the entrepreneur.

The startup ecosystem has been widely adopted throughout the US and in most industrialized countries in a similar form. St engaging investors to fund the development of new technologies, create jobs and businesses for the 21st century. As a startup company grows, one investor's end game is another investor's entry point. This conversation will look into one of the more obscure aspects in Silicon Valley; the process for startup companies to secure late stage growth funding and prepare for a merger or acquisition or what is commonly referred to as a liquidity event.

Artificial intelligence has projected some fantastic benefits and yet we hear ominous rumblings in the background warnings about a brave new world, it's a world where computers outpace and outperform humans in repetitive past analysis and perhaps even in creative work. Information technology (IT) certifications are a gateway to many professional jobs worldwide, and developing a reliable and cost-effective method to test skills has faced challenges on several fronts. This conversation discusses the use of AI in testing and certification, starting with the detection of both cheating and copying of test content for subsequent sale to test takers. The use of AI in skill certification testing may be just the starting point in a broader engagement of integrating AI into the certification process and subject competency process. XAI Explainabe Artificial Intelligence is intended to provide insights to why a specific conclusion was reached, or AI embedded with emotional features to humanize the experience and the results.

In just about every business, Cash remains King in terms of operations, but Growth is the key to valuation. So, while Cash is King, Growth determines value and growth in value promotes product leadership, attracts our most talented resources and is a high priority among investors. This pursuit of growth outside of North America can be an expensive and risky endeavor. Companies will typically experience a number of reality checks on their Growth initiative, facing challenges with new partners, distributors, competitors and regulators. The most basic growth strategies for technology and consumer brands are to export to affluent countries or countries with a rising middle class. China, by its sheer size and its growing middle class, has been an irresistible market. This podcast will review the role played by intermediary companies who provide early stage assistance to north America and Europe companies to establish a presence in the China.

This story is about a woman who is addressing the water contamination problem exemplified in Flint Michigan's 2014 lead poisoning crisis. Meena Sankaram, the founder of Ketos speaks about her water analysis technology as well as her story about the search for investors and her "all in"bet including her life savings. Manthi Nguyen, an angel investor and advisor to the company provides an investor's perspective and the importance the entrepreneur in persevering through the many startup challenges.

It's the leading cause of hospitalizations for people over 65 years old. Over 6 million people are living with heart failure, and each year, over 500,000 new cases are diagnosed. Heart failure accounts for nearly 1 million hospitalizations annually, more than all forms of cancer combined.

There is an ongoing narrative in the media about entrepreneurs coming to Silicon Valley, building a startup company, finding investors and riding off, rich and happy into the sunset. But it does not always work that way. Building a startup company is one of the most challenging endeavors anyone can undertake, the commitment must be total, complete with an "all-in" game plan; being obsessive is normal. My guests are Michelle Messina and Jonathan Baer, who have written a book titled "Decoding Silicon Valley, The Insider's Guide", a book dedicated to dispelling the media representation of Silicon Valley and helping entrepreneurs reduce the "learning curve" in building a startup.

Quantum computing is one of those concepts that is difficult to explain, especially in the sense that the underlying technology its most basic component, the qubit, seems outside our everyday experience. During the discussion with Matt, I recognized that a person does not need to fully grasp the properties of a qubit in order to become aware of the potential quantum computing can deliver. Airline company Airbus SE is using quantum computing to address the challenges of flying an airplane, namely air flight dynamics, fuel consumption, and routing. A Wall Street Journal recently published an article by Sara Castellanos about how Quantum Computing is taking off in Aerospace. Airbus SE is working with QC Ware, a Palo Alto-based company that develops the application software the runs on a quantum processor. Matt Johnson, CEO, and co-founder of QC Ware recognized that the potential of a quantum processor would need applications and algorithms for users to develop solutions to complex problems across many sectors. Contact information is: www.qcware.com https://GameChangers.TV/shows/

Our conversation today is about how a small team of researches was developing a compound to treat cataracts, The team noticed that one of the areas where the compound might be useful was in oral hygiene and the removal of plague. Our conversation will focus on how this unintended discovery evolved, was identified, tested and then ultimately launched as a product.

There are impressive results coming from solar power systems installed in third world countries and emerging economies. In these areas, Electric generating stations based only on solar power are being used to establish the foundation of economic and infrastructure development. Join me with my guests, Jim Chu, founder of Untapped (Untapped-inc.org), and Barrett Raftery, Executive Director of the GivePower Foundation (GivePower.org) in the conversation about how their organizations are deploying solar power generating stations as the starting point for creating jobs and self-sufficiency.

Concerned about air quality inside an office or work environment? You could be getting lethargic due to the effects of carbon dioxide by re-breathing the exhaled carbon dioxide in your office. This podcast addresses the build up and effects of Carbon Dioxide, ( CO2) and how Artveola has developed a technology that uses specialized algae and Microfluidics to consume CO2 and produce oxygen. Air quality inside a closed office is emerging as a productivity concern. My guests are Alina Adams, CEO, and co-founder of Artveoli and Rick Rasmussen, an angel investor and an advisor to the company.