Tech Talks Daily

Michel Tricot is the CEO and Co-Founder of Airbyte, an open-source data integration platform. 4,000+ companies have synced data using Airbyte, and $31 million has been raised through Accel, YCombinator, and others to fund the project. Michel has been working in data engineering for the past 15 years. As head of integrations and engineering director at Liveramp (NYSE: RAMP), he grew the team responsible for building and scaling the data ingestion and data distribution connectors, syncing 100s TB every day. In 2020, he co-founded Airbyte, the new open-source data integration platform, with the vision to commoditize data integration pipelines across all industries and organizations. We talk about Business Intelligence, Data Infrastructure, Security and Integration and what makes Airbyte different from Fivetran or StitchData.

Pindrop (the global technology leader in identity, security, and trust for voice interactions used by 8 of the 10 largest U.S. banks) recently announced that it hired former AWS and Symantec I.T. leader Collin Davis as its new CTO. Pindrop continues to gain momentum in the voice biometrics industry, with the launch of IVR, expansion into streaming IoT, and most recently, the acquisition of Next Caller. To keep pace with this rapid growth, the company attracted a global tech leader like Collin, and I felt compelled to fight out more. Collin Davis joins me on the Tech Talks Daily podcast to share his story, having founded and launched Alexa for Business and led the engineering and Q.A. teams that built the suite of Norton Security Products while at Symantec. He also shares why he moved to Pindrop from global, well-respected tech leaders like AWS. Finally, he shares his insights into the intersection of voice and security, and where voice capabilities are headed based on his time at AWS and Symantec. Finally, we discuss Collin's future vision for Pindrop's expansion into new markets to remain the leader in voice authentication technology. We discuss why he made the move to Pindrop from global, well-respected tech leaders like AWS and offers Insider Insights into the intersection of voice and security, and where voice capabilities are headed based on his time as an I.T. leader at AWS and Symantec. Colin also shares his future vision for Pindrop's expansion into new markets in order to remain the leader in voice authentication technology

Quadient is the driving force behind meaningful customer experiences. By focusing on four key solution areas: Customer Experience Management, Business Process Automation, Mail-Related Solutions, and Parcel Locker Solutions, Quadient is on a mission to simplify the connection between people, and what matters. The company claims that businesses face a customer exodus if they don't shift to CaaS (Communications as a Service). This comes as IDC predicts that a quarter of all connectivity budgets will run through CaaS within two years. Scott Draeger from Quadient discusses the immense pressures businesses currently face, with customers demanding an almost instant reply across an increasingly expanding range of channels. In contrast, different business departments struggle to keep pace as interaction with customers is slowed by constantly needing to call on the assistance of their IT team. We also talk about how these problems risk damaging customer experience, leaving people to conclude that the business is too slow to respond/makes them repeat themselves. Gartner reports that more than four-fifths of companies compete based on customer experience poses a real risk of leaving for a competitor.

Regardless of where you live and what you do, 2020 was a challenging year for everyone around the world. It decimated the event and trade show industry. As veterans of live event production, in order to survive and thrive, Echelon knew it had to pivot from physical experiences to virtual ones. The change was always coming. Fate just demanded it happen sooner. Endeavoring to convert this challenge into an opportunity, SURREAL was conceived and created by Chicago-based Echelon Design, an event marketing and production company with offices in Chicago, Atlanta, Las Vegas and Portland. The result is this best-of-breed virtual Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) AND a mission is to provide unparalleled live experiences across any industry—especially when cost, carbon footprint or other factors make on-premise events impractical or impossible. Built with Unreal Engine, SURREAL is a browser-based, pixel-streamed, 3D virtual events platform where audiences experience fully customizable and unparalleled experiences. It provides clients with a different level of storytelling, game design, and multi-player participant immersion—one that reimagines and redefines the human condition and our relationship with physical distance. I invited Adam Voss onto the podcast to learn more about how Surreal Events bridges the possible and impossible, and the physical and digital worlds, to bring any event to life, in any virtual environment imaginable.

Today's episode explores remote teams, the humanization of onboarding, and company culture in remote startups with Katerina Sukhenko, founder & CBDO at Postoplan. In just 14 months, Katerina led the company to reach $1M revenue and expanded its customer network to 112,000 clients. Postoplan is a marketing platform that calls itself better than Buffer or Hootsuite. It's a fully remote company, and its' employees are working from 18 countries and help marketers & entrepreneurs across the world to build more efficient social media strategies. Katerina shares her story, and the startup's mission is to help small businesses to work in social networks. We discuss how it's the only platform that allows users to create and post content free of charge and without any time limits and why she is passionate about marketing automatization.

With very little tear-down and build time between shows, the entire production of extensive tours often requires several weeks of practice to become a well-oiled machine before they go full-time on the road. That is *the* problem Elevation Studios has targeted to eliminate completely with a dedicated state-of-the-art 26-acre complex, located just outside one of the best music cities in the country -- Nashville, TN. The company recently announced that they are completely shovel-ready and breaking ground this summer on the multi-purpose creative campus, which will be delivering large-scale facilities and support services for creators of live entertainment, touring productions, broadcast, and new media content. This project, and its massive $100M investment in the roaring return of live music, is the feel-good story music fans have been hoping for. The show will go on, and Elevation Studios will help the show go off without a hitch in a gorgeous private facility twenty minutes from Music Row. Eric Elwell, the CEO of Elevation Studios, shares the story behind the company and reveals more about the technology that brings concerts and world tours to life.

Gurus Direct is a platform that connects businesses directly with on-demand experts offering services in niche areas of IT that have the biggest skill shortage and highest demand. These experts streamline workflows, making organizations more profitable, flexible, and responsive. They provide technology that increases employee satisfaction, engagement, and productivity by removing mundane tasks. In addition, they can be non-invasive, remote, and rapidly implemented into your digital transformation teams as you need to scale up or down. Steve Brooks, Mandy Downham, and Peter Walker join me on the Tech Talks Daily podcast to share the story behind the company and the problems their mission is to maximize access to automation talent. In addition, I learn how they are leveraging technology to connect businesses with on-demand Automation experts offering services in RPA, IDP, and Process Mining. Businesses can hire only the talent they need, when needed, and stay lean and flexible as you grow on your digital transformation journey. We discuss how they can narrow automation experts by the vendor, department, process, location, language, etc. In doing so, they can find the right blend of skills such as expertise across multiple toolsets, relevant industry knowledge, the right language skills, and prior qualifications. I also learn more about the benefits for consultants who can build their online presence to attract new business while developing skills, make new connections to grow their income. But also work flexibly at a time and in a manner that suits them.

We look at our phones an average of 58 times a day. This means that this summer 2.1 billion people who suffer from the deterioration of one's ability to focus on nearby objects, will end up switching between reading glasses and shades every 12 minutes. Yariv Hadad, CEO, and Co-Founder of DeepOptics, the inventor and pioneer of a novel adaptive lens technology, joins me on Tech Talks Daily in a conversation about optical technology. Yariv puts his formidable professional experience to use as he has led for the past 20 years different high-tech R&D groups and ventures to great successes. He was the Founder & General Manager of Trevo Technologies, served as the Director of imaging, and R&D Dblur where he met the other current co-founders of DeepOptics. Yariv graduated with a B.A. in Computer Science from the Technion, Israel, and an MBA from Tel-Aviv University. Lately, DeepOptics has launched their 32°N sunglasses, the first and only adaptive focus sunglasses, on Kickstarter, reaching their goal in a couple of hours. Their timing is impeccable, as many of the other major players are still behind on the technology. Yariv also discusses topics like the influence of smart technology on daily gadgets and the future of optical technology.

Jesus Ramirez is a mission-driven leader, an innovator, and a humble, life-long learner. In his career, he has helped build and lead several technology-driven products, teams, and companies in the education, healthcare, and labor industries. He is VP of Strategy & Innovation at Tallwave, where he helps companies create exceptional customer experiences. Recently, Tallwave surveyed 1000+ individuals aged 24-65+ about their perceptions, behaviors, and customer experiences before and during the pandemic. The data revealed that consumers want a choice for how they can interact with a brand, making retail hybrid experiences more critical than ever. The report highlights the most influential components of customer experience, satisfaction, and loyalty and how organizations can transform experiences for a digital-first, hybrid, and hyper-personalized world. In addition, we discuss how the digital shifts we have experienced over the past year have affected consumer behaviors and tech adoption and how brands can enhance their hybrid customer experiences.

Shameer Sachdev is the founder of Growth Gorilla -- a growth marketing agency focused on helping fintech, proptech and financial services firms go apesh!t and smash through their growth marketing goals. Originally launching his career in financial services, as an equity broker, Shameer has worked for big brands like Alexander David and Barclays Wealth. Shameer then moved on to focus more on client acquisition and eventually became Marketing Director at a well-known online trading platform provider. While working with marketing agencies as a client, Shameer couldn't help but notice their flaws. Most marketing agencies simply didn't understand how things worked inside financial service companies. Equipped with a background in financial services and technology, Shameer struck out on his own -- advising courageous fintech, proptech and financial services firms on how to accelerate their growth.

HELO creates moving experiences that connect brands with their consumers by bringing together the best in creative strategy, storytelling, production, and event design. They've worked with top brands to include Amazon Studios, Hulu, Comcast, Budlight, and Santander. In just​ our three years, they have won 13 Cannes Lions including Gold Lions in Promo & Activation, Production, Entertainment, and Cyber, an AICP Gold for Production, and were named MOST NEXT in the AICP NEXT Awards, recognizing the most innovative, forward-thinking work in the industry. With their willingness to tackle even the trickiest productions, AdAge named us a Production Company Standout. They have built a reputation by pulling off the 'not-been-done-before'​ things, and we wouldn't want it any other way For example, they recreated the 1862 World's Fair for the launch of one of Amazon Studio's most ambitious original films - AERONAUTS. Brendan Kiernan joins me on the podcast to talk about the challenges and future of storytelling. We also discuss how technology and media consumption is continuously changing and how organizations can keep up.

At the end of every episode, I always ask the listeners to share their stories and offer an open invitation to join me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast. After receiving an email from Grant Morgan, I invited him on Tech Talks Daily to discuss tech's role in achieving must-have sustainable sanitization. For years, the biosafety landscape has been dominated by lumbering, archaic giants, but their time at the top of the food chain may be about to end. While companies like Clorox and Ecolab continue to focus on harmful, inefficient chemical disinfectants, R-Zero envisions a new era of hi-tech public safety strategies. Grant shares his plans to use IoT-enabled hardware, smart sensors, software, and machine learning to crack open a $200B+ market. Antibiotic soaps and sanitizers are driving a deadly new wave of antibiotic-resistant infections. Harsh chemical disinfectants can create hazardous environments for staff and employees, and their overuse is already harming wildlife around the world. Let's face it — the status quo is not sustainable. Grant discusses the urgent need for environmentally-friendly disinfection, and talk about the advances in technology that are finally making it possible.

The average enterprise has two to three API management vendors and plans to adopt more soon. However, 40% of organizations have three or more API management vendors, and most don't intend to consolidate to a single vendor throughout the enterprise. Thus, complexity is growing, but it can be an opportunity. API Ecosystem complexity, if unmanaged, is slowing down enterprises. Don't try to simplify your complexity. Master it and control it, it happens for good reasons, but you will not go fast if you leave it alone. The task then is to keep, even boost, the agility that autonomous business units create with their own particular applications and API ecosystems amid the tech sprawl that they also perpetuate. Teams need creativity and flexibility, so it's essential to have a centralized governance system while at the same time offering developer teams autonomy so they can work in the languages and platforms that make sense to them. Jana Frejova shares how at Axway, they recognize that companies want the freedom to use different API vendors for different solutions. Still, they also need the freedom to manage all of those APIs as they see fit – and to be able to freely access all of their data without it being locked into silos.

iProov is a small British biometric authentication company that is currently working with the NHS to provide secure login for the NHS Digital app. They are also working with the Home Office for the EU Settlement Scheme and with a range of other high-profile international customers who deploy their technology, including the US Department for Homeland Security, the Singapore government, the Australian government, and the Eurostar. However, most recently, the company has very much been at the centre of a lot of nationwide debate around the introduction of Covid status certificates and the interoperability of vaccine passports internationally. This is due to the fact that in January this year, iProov announced plans to develop technology for vaccine certificates, having received a grant from Innovate UK to fund the pilot project. Andrew Bud CBE is the Founder and CEO of face biometrics firm iProov. He is also the Chair of the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF), the global trade association of the mobile content and applications industry. I invited him on the podcast o talk about the role that biometrics will play in a post-Covid world in wide a range of industries. We also discuss how Covid status certificates will be integrated into public life and the developing conversation around their use.

Advanced Human Imaging has developed and patented a proprietary dimensioning technology that enables its users to check, track, and assess their dimensions using only a smartphone privately and accurately. Building off success in apparel and fitness, AHI is now redefining how the smartphone is used for insurance assessments, remote medical consultation, and timely interventions of chronic disease and oncology. The technology is a smartphone-based biometric software. They are a B2B company partnering with digital health (diagnostic and remote monitoring), fitness and apparel companies across the globe. They have recently announced a spat of partnerships to integrate their biometric software into their partner's platforms. The company has also partnered with Triage Technologies to develop Derma AI, an advanced system to identify dermatological conditions capable of accurately classifying skin conditions from an image captured on a standard smartphone camera and processed by deep neural networks. Using the largest proprietary database of its kind in the world, the AI analytics engine can classify 588 common or rare skin conditions in 133 categories – including all categories of skin cancers. Vlado Bosonac shares the story behind Advanced Human Imaging and his grand vision for the company.

With more companies adapting to a hybrid work model, business leaders are looking for the best ways to create an engaging and productive environment for employees in the office and at home. Sam Liang built his company and product, Otter.ai, to develop solutions for this very challenge. Otter.ai is a tech tool that takes live meeting conversations and turns them into highly accurate, collaborative meeting notes, all in real-time. It has transcribed 100 million+ meetings and 3 billion+ minutes and works with Dropbox, IBM, UCLA and more. Sam joins me on the Tech Talks Daily podcast and shares why he believes it is essential to adopt speech and natural language processing AI technologies. We discuss how it can develop an understanding of ever-changing physical and contextual environments and human-to-human interactions. Sam also discusses the best solutions that leaders should take into account when adapting their businesses to the new hybrid work model.

When thinking about Goodyear, you probably think of tyers. But if you take a peek behind the curtain, you will find the recent launch of SightLine. It's a suite of intelligent tire solutions that use AI and sensors to help fleet managers and drivers predict breakdowns, minimize downtime and monitor tire pressure and wear for safer and more cost-efficient mobility – think of it as a Fitbit for tires. Erin Spring, Senior Director of New Ventures, at Goodyear joins me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast to talk about the recent launch of SightLine and the importance of sustainability and tires. We also discuss the future of mobility and how SightLine is helping enable seamless, safe, and reliable mobility for all vehicles starting with cargo vans serving the field service, construction, and last-mile delivery industries.

After several years of serving on YL Ventures' Venture Advisory Board among 100 global CISOs and cybersecurity executives from Fortune 100 and high-growth companies, Ryan Gurney is now looking to take a more active role in fostering the success of early-stage startups as a full-time CISO-in-Residence. He brings the experience of holding leading security roles in both startups and global enterprises to provide Israeli cybersecurity entrepreneurs with unparalleled guidance on achieving product-market fit and customer success. Ryan is also the Former Chief Security Officer (CSO) at Looker, a business intelligence software and big data analytics platform acquired by Google for $2.6B, now part of the Google Cloud Platform. Prior to the acquisition, Gurney served as Looker's CSO, leading security and compliance and helping Google and Looker integrate and centralize key security processes post-acquisition. Previously, he also led all security functions at Zendesk in his role as VP of Information Security, where he played a key role in the company's successful IPO. Additionally, he held security leadership roles at Engine Yard, eBay and PwC. Ryan shares his story and career in tech. We talk about supply chain management and explore where customer and company data is going, who administers it, how it's protected, and what it costs. We also discuss IP protection, API security, and much more.

Creator+ is a new film studio and streaming platform for digital-first storytellers. The company was co-founded in 2021 by Benjamin Grubbs and Jonathan Shambroom, and is backed by PETRA Group and Freestyle Capital, along with prominent creators, technology founders, and entertainment industry executives. Built from the ground up with the community and better economics in mind, the studio team (based in Culver City) has more than 100 films under their belt. It also includes prominent industry execs: Adam Wescott (Head of Content Studio), Ben O'Keefe (Head of Diversity and Impact), Nick Phillips (Head of Production), McKenna Marshall (Director of Development). Unlike ad-supported or subscription-based models, the whole idea is to allow more creative control through an end-to-end platform that provides everything passionate storytellers need to take IP to feature-length films - from financing and production to marketing and distribution. Benjamin Grubbs joins me on the Tech Talks Daily podcast to share his ambitious vision to build an entire ecosystem for creative talent where they have more ownership of their audience.

Tomorrow's business applications will be built differently than they are today. The rise of AI-enhanced business logic and data as a product will enable business analysts and users to create new models and roll out business/domain products. Anup Nair, SVP and CTO of Mphasis Digital, joins me on the Tech Talks Daily podcast in a conversation about building a business platform through data modernization. We discuss low-code/no-code solutions and how ecosystems will have hundreds, if not thousands, of self-learning and ever-growing models. Every business is currently navigating uncharted digital waters. We explore building new ecosystems and what the apps of tomorrow will look like. About Mphasis Mphasis applies next-generation technology to help enterprises transform businesses globally. Customer centricity is foundational to Mphasis and is reflected in the Mphasis' Front2Back™ Transformation approach. Front2Back™ uses the exponential power of cloud and cognitive to provide hyper-personalized (C=X2C2TM=1) digital experience to clients and their end customers. In addition, Mphasis' Service Transformation approach helps 'shrink the core' through the application of digital technologies across legacy environments within an enterprise, enabling businesses to stay ahead in a changing world. Mphasis' core reference architectures and tools, speed and innovation with domain expertise and specialization are key to building strong relationships with marquee clients.

Anthony Mayer the VP of Engineering, GetSafe, moved from Silicon Valley to the very rural part of Germany, famous for its vineyards rather than tech and startup hubs. But his mission is to drive disruption in the insurance industry was just getting started. Here in 2021, he leads a team of 20 engineers from more than ten different nations who are all challenged to rethink the role of insurance in a digital-first world. Through the GetSafe app, they bring insurance to the smartphones of over 200,000 users. The technological platform creates speed and flexibility in one of the slowest and most inflexible businesses in the world. I learn more about Anthony's journey and how InsureTech enables users to cancel insurance policies daily, change details or report claims via an app. We also discuss how the technological platform is their foundation to expand quickly, analyze countless data points and adjust the entire insurance experience for their users. With $53 US million in funding, Getsafe is one of Europe's top 10 funded insurance startups, operating in Germany and the UK.

An analysis of Freedom of Information responses obtained by data leader, Qlik found 80% of UK police constabularies used data analytics to support their response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The development of data analytics use cases accelerated as forces across the UK relied on data to help them respond to the changing crime landscape during periods of lockdown. Those constabularies that introduced dedicated analytics dashboards and applications to manage their pandemic response built them to support crime forecasting (63%) and geo-map crime (58%). Many police forces also used data to monitor and track the impact of Covid-19 within their constabulary. For example, over three-quarters of respondents who created new analytics dashboards monitored cases amongst employees (83%) and identified which employees were isolating (79%). However, it also revealed critical areas of opportunity where constabularies can expand their use of analytics to support even better outcomes in policing real-time decision-making, data-sharing, Upskilling police forces in data predictive analytics and forecasting. I invited Adam Mayer from Qlik and Will White from the Avon and Somerset Police to learn more about how they are working together to leverage data analytics technology and explore the new world of data-driven policing. I learn how data was integral for managing changing crime demand at Avon and Somerset during the pandemic. We discuss how Qlik dashboards helped to monitor breach reports and fixed penalty notices issued, as well as locations of enforcement activity. We also talk about how Avon and Somerset quickly understood and adapted to the new and emerging risks of policing the pandemic. Behind the scenes, Qlik dashboards enabled teams to achieve data democratization, empowering the workforce to make informed decisions based on the same information. As a result, all staff made consistent decisions that kept the community safe and staff protected.

I don't have to tell you all that scams and robocalls are a hot topic and threat to consumers. Unfortunately, as scammers get more sophisticated, so does the technology used to prevent them. With call centers now open again globally and robocall volume returning to pre-pandemic levels, I wanted to learn more about what T-Mobile is doing in the fight to keep consumers protected. It's been just over one year since T-Mobile launched Scam Shield, a suite of advanced scam-fighting tools, and the company just shared news about successfully using Rich Call Data and continuing to lead the charge toward more advancements when it comes to protecting consumers. T-Mobile's Grant Castle, Vice President, Engineering Services & Quality Assurance, explains the recent STIR/SHAKEN deadline and its impact on everyday consumers in a language that everyone can understand. In addition, we discuss what T-Mobile and other wireless providers are doing to help fight scammers today. Grant also shares his insights on current consumer perceptions. We also talk about how Number Verification provided by STIR/SHAKEN, coupled with free Caller ID provided by T-Mobile Scam Shield, ensures that the calls they receive are authenticated as coming from the phone number displayed in Caller ID and have not been spoofed. This makes Caller ID even stronger in the fight against scams and robocalls, and with Scam Shield, all T-Mobile, Metro by T-Mobile, and Sprint brand individuals, families, and small businesses get free Caller ID.

Harshit Jain MD is the Founder and Global CEO of Doceree, the first global network of physician-only platforms for programmatic marketing. With Doceree, he aims to address the acute problem of the rising cost of healthcare by bringing in efficiency and effectiveness in marketing to physicians by pharma brands on digital platforms with methodical use of data and creativity. As a healthcare innovator, he drives health transformation across the globe, delivering life-changing, creative and sustainable ideas. Recognized as Elite 2020 Disrupter Award by premier global PM360 Magazine for his venture, Harshit has addressed some of the biggest health challenges – Immunization, Vitamin D deficiency, Diabetes by creatively and innovatively using data. In his over 13 years of professional journey, he weaved together his domain expertise of medicine and his marketing acumen to come up with out-of-the-box ideas and campaigns in the healthcare space. An accomplished speaker Harshit played a key role in making India win the first ever Black Pencil – the highest honor at D&AD Awards through the Immunity Charm campaign, a brainchild of his. Today, I learn more about the idea behind the start-up and physician-only platforms for programmatic marketing. We also discuss how physician marketing and the role of technology in this space.

Coupa Software (NASDAQ:COUP) is the cloud platform for business spend management (BSM). Coupa has a reputation for empowering companies around the world with the visibility and control they need to spend smarter and safer. But I wanted to learn more about how Coupa is helping businesses to use technology to make more ethical spending decisions. Donna Wilczek, Coupa's SVP of Product Strategy and Innovation discusses the launch of eight new features that put Environment, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) right at the forefront of crucial business investment and spending decisions – hopefully inspiring businesses to operate much more sustainably and with a far greater sense of social purpose in future. Despite the tremendous pressure on businesses to implement and execute ESG initiatives, most struggle to get started, make programs actionable, and measure them. Coupa's technology is focused on helping businesses better manage their spending and achieve social impact goals, turning what is often rhetoric and intention into measurable actions. Companies such as IKEA, AXA, Procter and Gamble, and Nike are all using Coupa's software to improve and measure their ESG initiatives. More than $2.6 trillion worth of business spending has passed through Coupa's platform, which shows the scale of how much money could be redirected to diverse and sustainable suppliers. We discuss why technology is so important for companies looking to spend more ethically and the difference that spending more with ethical and diverse suppliers can make. I learn how Coupa's software works - and how companies use it to improve their sustainability and diversity efforts.

Today's guest is David Vorick, the Co-Founder and Lead Developer of Sia, a decentralized cloud storage network that ultimately allows its users to have more control over their data. With the launch of Skynet, Nebulous's focus shifted from building the leading decentralized data storage platform to enabling a user-controlled, truly decentralized internet. As they embrace the rich legacy and the solid foundation of Sia and assimilate their new mission, I learn more about how their brand is evolving. We discuss the future of data ownership, the perils of everything being owned by corporations. We explore how blockchain and other decentralized technologies can give back control over our own lives. We discuss how this extends not only into users but also into creators and publishers as well. I learn more about their mission to build a future where people are no longer vulnerable to the arbitrary de-platforming decisions of megacorps and random advertisers.

Paul Miller is the Chief Technology Officer at Wind River, a global leader in delivering software for intelligent connected systems. With nearly three decades of telecommunications and advanced technology leadership at both large companies and successful startups, he is currently focused on Wind River's edge virtualization and AI solutions, including Wind River's market-leading 5G cloud offering based on StarlingX. Prior to joining Wind River, he was the Chief Technology Officer of GENBAND. He has led the architecture and development of various switching, IMS, IP media, call control, and web applications solutions employed by multiple tier-one operators worldwide. His last eight years have been focused on OpenStack, SDN, and NFV automation technology, including operation of a multi-site, multi-cloud infrastructure, multiple Tier one CSP VNF deployments, and a significant NFV patent history. Paul's contributions throughout his career have enabled many communications service providers worldwide to create new revenue streams while dramatically reducing operating costs. In today's episode, we explore 5G applications and use cases beyond telecom and how they can enable new revenue streams for operators. We also discuss disruption around cloud-native networks and what businesses should be thinking about when building intelligent systems in the era of 5G and AI.

Ericom Software recently announced the release of ZTEdge, an all-in-one zero trust cloud security platform designed specifically for midsize enterprises, a market underserved yet highly vulnerable to cyberattacks. Ericom's CSO, Chase Cunningham joins me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast to discusses the market, positioning, and why this product is an industry-first for midsize enterprises. Large enterprises have accelerated their adoption of zero-trust security in response to the increased levels of cyberattacks experienced during the pandemic. Equally vulnerable, midsized enterprises and small businesses have the same need for zero-trust security protection. Still, existing solutions are too complex, too expensive, and too resource-intensive for many of them to adopt. ZTEdge provides a solution that is right-sized for the needs of this market. It offers a comprehensive solution that reduces cyber risk, cuts complexity, and improves performance, all at price points dramatically lower than competitive offerings. We explore the following key areas: Identifying Users and Authenticating Devices: connects the right people and devices to the right apps and resources by using password-based or passwordless authorization and multi-factor authentication. Secure Web and Internet Access: protect users as they interact with the web and email by leveraging URL filtering, anti-virus scanning, anti-phishing protection, remote browser isolation (RBI), and more. Secure Remote Private Application Access: provides a simple way to connect remote workers with private cloud or on-premises applications, using Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) capabilities. SaaS Application Access Control: offers dedicated ZTEdge tenant IP addresses allowing organizations to enforce IP-based access policies to secure apps like Office 365 or Salesforce, thereby eliminating credential theft risks. Network Protection and Monitoring: segments and monitors networks using machine learning-powered micro-segmentation and granular network traffic analysis – stopping threats from spreading. User-Branch-Internet Connectivity: integrated SD-WAN capabilities allow an organization to securely connect users and offices and securely route branch traffic directly to the ZTEdge cloud and internet, eliminating the need to backhaul branch traffic over costly MPLS circuits.

Erik Fogg is the co-Founder, and Chief Operating Officer at ProdPerfect joins me on the Tech Talks Daily podcast to share his startup stories and discuss how AI in testing is changing software development. Software development, especially testing, is terrible at using data. It relies too heavily on "human smarts." We can do better. Our own mindsets can explore the art of the possible, what's been done before, and what we have to accept, hold us back from being able to improve the business processes we're responsible for (and ourselves) Corporations are, unfortunately, the best systems we have right now to help humans flourish (the education system is too calcified and slow to adapt). However, by crafting deliberate cultures around learning and growth, we can turn corporations into little utopias where our people thrive. Machine Learning is coming for parts of all of our jobs. We should embrace it and accelerate its adoption to help humans spend their time doing what they're great at and what they love. Erik shares how ProdPerfect has been successful because they were first-time founders and very stubborn. He shares how they broke a lot of rules that they didn't even know they were breaking. Erik also expands on why he believes founders need to have nerves of steel to hold the line and do the right thing. About Erik Fogg Erik Fogg is the co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at ProdPerfect, fixing E2E software testing with Machine Learning and good operational design. In addition, ProdPerfect automatically builds and maintains E2E test automation by analyzing user journeys on web applications. Erik graduated from MIT with a bachelors and master's of science in Mechanical Engineering, and prior to ProdPerfect fixed and led operations in factories, mines, refineries, and hardware startups.

In a market expected to grow to $17 billion by 2023, Everlaw is an AI-powered e-discovery platform that helps teams uncover the needle-in-a-haystack pieces of information that can make or break a case. As the digital universe expands rapidly, litigators and internal investigators are tasked with mining through mountains of data and documents, most of which end up being irrelevant. Everlaw can process up to 500K documents per hour and is 5x faster than the nearest cloud competitor, with its largest case reaching 68M documents. Both data stored and the number of cases on the platform has more than doubled YoY. AJ Shankar, CEO, and Founder of legal tech company Everlaw joins me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast. AJ offers an overview state of technology in the legal industry in the US and the complexities of investigations and discovery in the digital age, where unimaginable amounts of data are created each day. I learn how Everlaw is helping law firms, corporate legal departments, government agencies, and journalists to transform the way they handle the troves of data to uncover the truth in their investigations and cases. AJ also shares what the future holds for the legal industry for cloud-based e-discovery solutions.

Omnitracs helps drive the transportation and distribution industries through innovative software and SaaS fleet management solutions. Companies of all sizes trust them to improve visibility into real-time action for back-office and dispatch teams. Their tech creates a more efficient driver experience through intuitive workflow and compliance tools that enable streamlined communications. I wanted to explore how tech is helping leadership teams make improved business decisions through actionable insights into fleet data. Ashim Bose, Chief Data and AI Officer at Omnitracs joins me in a conversation about transportation intelligence and the growing need for accelerated delivery services in a post-pandemic world. We also discuss insights gained from the Omnitracs Delivering on Demand: Consumer 2021 Insights Survey. Consumer preferences and needs have shifted during the pandemic, putting more pressure on fleets to deliver on these promises. With consumers becoming more dependent on delivery services during lockdowns, stay-in-place orders, and times when leaving home was simply not safe, trucking (and the drivers behind the wheel) became their lifeline. We discuss how the survey found patterns in the growing usage of—and dedication to—deliveries as a primary mode of receiving goods (vs. in-store experiences) and, subsequently, consumers' wants moving forward.

Danish game developer Bright Star Studios was founded in 2018 by games-industry veterans. Their goal is to reinvent the usual pay-to-win mechanics and loot boxes common to free-to-play games and instead develop a player-driven economy that allows gamers to earn rewards through in-game activities, including creating unique, tradable NFT items. Through the blockchain, gamers from across the world can build their own world and create tangible income from the game. The company also recently announced that videogame veteran Randy Breen has joined the Ember Sword development team as an advisor. With over 18 years of industry experience at Electronic Arts and LucasArts, Breen will help the Bright Star Studios team deliver on its vision of creating an immersive MMORPG with a true play-to-earn economy. Breen has an illustrious career in the games industry. His career began at Electronic Arts, where he grew from Assistant Producer to Executive Producer and Creative Director before becoming the head VP of Development at LucasArts. During his time there, he guided many beloved Star Wars games to PC and console, including Star Wars Battlefront, MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies, and BAFTA award-winning RPG Knights of the Old Republic. Bright Star Studios will harness this wealth of experience and expertise to help bring Ember Sword to life. Bright Star Studios recently announced that it secured over $2 million in funding from multiple investors to help deliver on its vision for Ember Sword. Last week also saw the successful completion of the game's first land sale that sold out in just six hours, with all of the regular plots being purchased in under an hour. The sale of 12,000 in-game plots of virtual Solarwood land generated a total of over $1.5M. Bright Star Studios intends to use these funds to further the title's development, enabling the team to create a high-quality and immersive player-first gaming experience supported by an innovative play-to-earn economy powered by the blockchain.

Today's guest is Callum Adamson. Despite growing up in the shadow of a rockstar father Big country musician Stuart Adamson), Callum was actually raised in a household with little money. After dropping out of an Aeronautical Engineering degree, he worked unpaid at a friend's startup and slept on his floor. During this period, Callum considered the broken tech talent model. Businesses big and small now need to change at such speed that they cannot find the skilled workers to do this quickly enough without paying extortionate fixed costs for large consultancies. To address this issue, Callum founded Distributed using profits from Bitcoin investing. From a London HQ, Distributed uses its AI-enabled platform to project manage a global community of on-demand, highly skilled software developers. This connects skilled tech workers with customers such as Capita and the Ministry of Justice. They can tap into the community and use as much or as little resource as they like at any one time – for simple or complex projects – offering the time and cost flexibility of freelancers with the capacity and quality assurance of consultancies. As a result of these trends and efforts, Distributed just completed a Series A funding round and continues to grow rapidly, expand its freelance community and deliver projects for more businesses. We discuss why the tech skills gap is an illusion and how the world is full of undervalued and poorly organized resources. We also talk about why freelancing will become the preferred profession. With the advent of remote workforces and increased flexibility, people will realize they can work for multiple clients and get paid more than traditional employment. I learn how Distributed aims to provide its community with perks and career development you wouldn't usually get as a freelancer.

Shane Neman, the founder of Neman Ventures, joins me in a conversation about PropTech. We also discuss how COVID has pushed more investment into property technology. Shane also shares what emerging technologies he's excited about. Shane Neman has always been a problem solver and a consummate optimist, which are traits that have been significant advantages in his life as a serial entrepreneur. His experience and expertise in business span many industries, from technology and telecommunications to real estate and hospitality. After earning a computer science degree from NYU, he started three tech startups (two of them – EZ Texting and JoonBug – were acquired) with hundreds of employees and tens of thousands of customers. He's a prolific backer of startups including Impossible Foods, Convoy, Prose, and Universal Standard, Apostrophe, MeetMindful, MapAnything, VinePair, Smylen, Hyperice,, Teamflow HQ, ResiDesk, Symmetry Systems and more. He's also a real estate investor and developer with more than two dozen large-scale properties across the US ranging from commercial shopping and industrial centers to residential buildings.

Rackspace Technology CTO, Jeff DeVerter joins me on the Tech Talks Daily Podcast to discuss the changing face of digital transformation. In previous years - digital transformation was relegated to a corner or department of an organization. This is largely fueled by a few key factors: · The changing/expanding IT buyers within an organization. · The rising digital fluency of businesses. · The adoption of RPA and low-code / no-code solutions. · The transformation to cloud-native development techniques within organizations. These four trends are driving a dramatic amount of transformation within organizations which are resulting in greater agility, productivity, revenue, and profits for those who are willing to embrace change. Now for those who aren't, they are actively being left behind. Each of these results is occurring in every industry - in every geography today.

While there will be an estimated 40 billion connected devices by 2025, a big limitation to fulfilling this technology's potential is that 90% of the world's surface doesn't have access to cellular service or WiFi. While existing satellite data services like Iridium and Starlink are rapidly growing, these services are prohibitively expensive for IoT device users and manufacturers who don't require high-speed, high-cost connectivity. A new Silicon Valley satellite technology startup, Swarm, is addressing these issues by developing a low bandwidth, low-cost service that commercially launched in February. The service is ideal for a wide range of IoT use cases in industries ranging from agriculture to logistics to maritime to transportation. Founded in 2016, Swarm is committed to making data and communications accessible to anywhere on the planet for just $5/month. Swarm's combination of uniquely small satellites (think the size of a grilled cheese sandwich) and user hardware deliver low bandwidth (think 90's modem speed) data services at the industry's lowest cost (1/10th the cost of traditional data services) and highest value to customers. Ben Lomgmeir, co-founder and CTO of Swarm, joins me on Tech Talks Daily to share the potential impact the company's data services could have on the IoT market.

YouGov and Auth0 recently published their new global research, 'The Login Experience Customers Want', revealed that most organizations fail to meet consumer expectations around login technology. Steven Rees-Pullman, SVP International at Auth0 joins me on Tech Talks Daily to share more insights from the research. Auth0 and YouGov's study consisted of two surveys, questioning more than 8,000 consumers and 1,200 IT and marketing decision-makers who work for businesses that offer an app/online service to customers (excluding sole-traders) across six global markets: the UK, France, Germany, Australia, Singapore, and Japan. The study found that consumers around the world want greater choice in login technologies, and actively seek them out. However, many businesses are still falling short on consumer expectations and risk frustrating their users, losing sales, increasing churn and opening themselves up to credential stuffing attacks as a result. As an example, the statistics show that consumers are more likely to sign up to an app/online service if they can use MFA (47%), biometric logins (48%) and passwordless (30%) login technologies. Yet only 27% of UK businesses currently offer MFA, biometric logins (14%) and passwordless (13%). The research goes on to explore a widening gap in expectations – with consumers wanting to use digital services but prepared to take their business elsewhere if the login process is clunky or frustrating. Steven discusses the report's findings in more detail and shares what it means for the identity management landscape and how the desire for ease and security is driving consumers to seek out modern identity solutions for a better UX.

Technology and language are eerily similar, and if you learned how to code then you've also learned a language. When Megan Miller was living in Madrid, her host mom would always tell her to aprovechar la experiencia: to take advantage of her time there. Now, she wants to help people take advantage of the tech tools available to learn and incorporate Spanish into their daily lives, without needing to invest thousands on expensive immersion trips abroad. Megan shares her story and tech background and how it led her back to her "roots" of Spanish. I learn more about how it has allowed a series of shifts in perspective; whether it's a right-brain, left-brain thing, or just plain worldly experience. One of the most inspiring aspects of this conversation is how she didn't fit into the typical IT stereotype and didn't fit in with the huge educational conglomerates: so she created her own bubble. Megan now offers professional and certified IT and business translation services from Spanish to American English. Using her CSM and PMP certifications, she manages the scope, timeline, and translation using agile methodologies to make sure the words, tone, and intent translate to a professional technology-based audience

Ash Finnegan, digital transformation officer at Conga, joins me on the Tech Talks Daily to share insights from the company's latest study regarding the current state of digital transformation across EMEA. Drawing upon over 20 years of experience in the digital space, Ash argues that companies need to rethink how they transformation their teams, processes, and technology to ensure they maximize revenue yield, align teams and truly connect the customer experience Often initiatives are rushed or short-sighted, and COVID-19 has only accelerated this issue. According to Conga's latest research, only 36 percent of all projects relating to the transformation of commercial operations are considered somewhat successful, with 95 percent of leaders citing that their organization needs to improve its revenue operations. On the podcast, Ash discusses how companies should approach transformation initiatives as they begin their post-COVID recovery plans. Drawing upon Conga's recent study, we explore: Conga's Digital Maturity Model: how Ash approaches a customer's transformation programme, establishing clear objectives. The state of DX: why COVID-19 has proven commercial transformation is critical, but not necessarily easy to implement. Future of work: streamlining workflows and enabling further collaboration will be the key drivers to the post-COVID economy and hybrid workforce

Erich Joachimsthaler, founder and CEO of Vivaldi, as well as a renowned strategy consultant and author of The Interaction Field, joins me on Tech Talks Daily. His consulting firm has helped companies such as American Express, Samsung, and Coca-Cola transform their customer and marketing strategies to enhance their business models. The firm frequently achieves $1.2BN in revenue growth in 6 months for one client. In his book discusses his take on the future of business, culture, and tech. In the pages, he addresses hard-hitting questions such as: how do you create a culture of innovation? How did Sony miss what Apple captured? Today, Erich shares his insights on why today's companies fall into three categories and why. We talk about what it takes to become an "interaction field" company and why it's imperative and discuss the future of business in a pandemic era and what big tech companies should look to drive innovation. Erich also shares how John Deere, Alibaba, Amazon, and other tech companies are getting it right… or wrong. Finally, we explore the fundamental change in mindset that all business leaders need to embrace for success

Peter Jackson, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Exasol, believes that data teams have room for all sorts of people, from the technical masterminds to the data storytellers. In today's episode, Peter shares how the best data scientist he ever had in one of his teams had a philosophy degree from Warwick University; he was creative, curious, and could turn insights into compelling arguments. We discuss how if we concentrate too much on STEM, then we'll have people who understand the numbers and stats. But, still, they won't necessarily have the skills to articulate the meaning of that data and turn them into actionable insights for the business. Bringing information to life and allowing everyone to see the business value hidden inside company data is critical. We talk about why business leaders should recruit people with an arts background so teams can create narratives from data to aid storytelling. Combining a mixture of people and their different skills and abilities will make the translation of data more powerful.

Hydra Energy is the world's first Hydrogen-as-a-Service (HaaSTM) provider for commercial fleets looking to reduce costs and emissions today with limited risk and no up-front investment. The company's innovative approach sources green hydrogen from leading chemical partners and provides clean fuel to fleets at below-diesel prices, enabling a rapid and economic transition to cleaner trucking. In exchange for long-term, discounted fuel contracts, Hydra quickly converts semi-truck fleets to a proprietary hydrogen injection system helping operators optimize truck performance, fuel efficiency, and emissions reduction regardless of payload and weather. With Hydra Energy's retrofit technology, hydrogen tanks and gas handling components are installed behind the truck cab. This is where the hydrogen is stored. Each truck has 30kg of hydrogen on it. A hydrogen injection manifold is installed in line with the air intake, blends hydrogen and air before entering the engine block. This is how hydrogen is injected. A dedicated, secondary controller is installed behind the truck dashboard, which controls hydrogen flow. When the driver presses the pedal, it signals the master OEM computer, which the secondary Hydra controller intercepts. It then injects the required hydrogen needed to produce 40% of the required power demand directly into the air intake, eliminating the need to modify the engine block. By using existing semi-trucks, and Hydra's Hydrogen-as-a-Service infrastructure, you can have hydrogen today. There's no need to wait for entirely new vehicles and fueling infrastructure to be designed and built at some point in the future. With as high as 40% diesel displacement, Hydra trucks can run up to 1,000 km/a day burning 24 kilos of hydrogen, even with the heaviest payloads and in the heart of winter. There's no need to worry about range either, as Hydra trucks can seamlessly switch to just running on diesel if the hydrogen runs out. Hydrogen technology for large internal combustion engines enables seamless switchover without losing fuel efficiency, range, power, torque, and payload capacity. I invited Jessica Verhagen to share the story behind the company and how they plan to propel low-carbon hydrogen trucking solutions.

Ben Waber is the president and co-founder of Humanyze, a workplace analytics company based out of Boston. Born out of the MIT Media Lab, the company's goal is to help business leaders improve organizational effectiveness. The company analyzes workplace interactions (over 20 billion interactions, to be exact) to see company-wide trends around how work gets done in order to inform and improve management decisions that positively impact financial performance and the employee experience. Specifically, one of the core focuses of their analysis is the impact of working from home on the workplace, HR, and digital transformation initiatives and how those affect organizational health. Ben discusses the impact of remote work on organizations across the globe, best practices, and thoughts to consider when returning to work, and the power of data to inform business decisions. About Humanyze Founded in 2011, Humanyze is a world leader in understanding team dynamics and work patterns. With over 10 years of research into organization network analysis and behavioral science, led by leaders in the world of social physics and graduates of the MIT Media Lab, they help companies understand how work gets done. Humanyze counts with a global presence spanning the US, Europe, and Asia, and are on a mission to improve the future of work.

Helena Murphy is the Founder and Managing Director of Raising Partners, the investment firm that guides startups through each step of their fundraising process. Helena started a sustainable clothing e-commerce business straight out of St Andrews University in her native Scotland. She was unprepared for how rocky and opaque the fundraising process would be, and experienced first hand the pitfalls of seeking investment. Helena was left with £100,000 of personal debt after being forced to fold her business, a process that left her feeling defeated and caused her to lose her hair due to stress-related alopecia. As a result of this traumatic experience, Helena then worked as an in-house consultant for several years in order to help other businesses raise capital and avoid the mistakes she made. In that time, she developed an extensive network of connections, from investors, to accountants, entrepreneurs to lawyers, and became an expert in early-stage investment. Raising Partners is the company she wished had existed when she was going through her own investment process. Helena and her team are determined to level the investment playing field, demystify the fundraising process, and help deserving businesses flourish. Founded in 2017, Raising Partners has helped over 110 companies - including the likes of Thread, Celtic Renewables, ARQ, Equipsme, Poppy's Picnic, Penfold, and Ilumoni - raise over £30 million, through pre-seed to Series B rounds. After an initial consultation, Raising Partners assesses the individual funding requirements of a startup, before creating a comprehensive, tailored investment strategy and proposal. Raising Partners also provides end-to-end crowdfunding support, introducing new investors to the campaign, creating critical crowdfunding-specific assets, such as campaign videos, investor decks, testimonials, and pitch pages, and assisting with investor communications.

Cultural marketing agency Culture Group and storytelling platform Wattpad have collaborated to produce a whitepaper positioning Gen Zs as "the Creation Generation" because of their love for creating stories and sharing them with the world. Gen Zs grew up with the Internet, which has democratized creation in a way never seen before by allowing everyone to express their thoughts. It is clear that Gen Zs care more about issues and are more willing to express themselves. Michael Patent, Founder and President of Culture Group, discusses Gen Zs' defining characteristics and how advertisers can tap into Gen Z's uniqueness to produce more compelling narratives. We also talk about how Gen Zs' defining traits change over time, and how this will lead to different behavior, hobbies, likes and dislikes, etc. About Culture Group Culture Group is a brand advisory and integrated marketing agency delivering transformative cultural ideas across Asia. They are cultural provocateurs, makers, and thinkers who collaborate with brands to disrupt the norm, shaping consumer moments into brand movements. The company builds unique partnerships between brands and entertainment properties, articulating its vision and executing a strategic approach across all consumer touchpoints. Our client list includes some of the most recognized and well-respected brands in Asia.

Maurice Mortell, Managing Director of Ireland, Equinix – the world's digital infrastructure company joins me on Tech Talks Daily. With over 20 years of experience in the data centre sector, Maurice has been a key figure in the rise of the data center industry in Ireland. Maurice also holds the 2012 ICT Excellence' Person of the Year' honour, awarded based on his invaluable contribution to the ICT sector in Ireland. Equinix is a global data center and interconnection platform with 229 data centers across 29 countries. The company's objectives are to help enterprise customers mitigate operational risk, significantly reduce exposure to cybercrime, and ultimately safeguard data. Global trends around digital transformation and regulatory compliance have propelled Equinix's growth trajectory, as more and more top-tier enterprises and providers routinely harness Equinix's trusted global platform to bring together and interconnect the foundational infrastructure that fuels their success. The company recently commissioned an independent study of 127 senior IT decision-makers in Ireland, illustrating the prevailing sentiments pertaining to the security challenges linked to remote working for businesses nationwide. The survey found that two-thirds of IT decision-makers in Ireland feel more susceptible to data breaches due to the IT strain associated with pandemic-driven remote working. In today's episode, Maurice shares his story and reveals insights around the significant macro trends driving today's transformation challenges.

Libby Adams, Co-Founder and Chief Advocacy Officer at US publicly listed data analytics firm Alteryx joins me on the Tech Talks Daily podcast. Alteryx is a publicly listed $8bn technology giant that generated over $400m in revenue in 2019 and achieved revenue growth of 25% in Q3 2020. Over 7,000 global customers use the company's data analytics software, more than 38% of the Global 2,000, and they have use cases in 90+ countries. In the UK specifically, Alteryx's platform is used by the likes of Sainsbury's, Gymshark, Anthony Nolan, and ITV to help improve the digital skills of their respective workforces and create an entirely new generation of data scientists in the process. For example, Gymshark, one of the UK's fastest-growing sportswear brands, turned to Alteryx's software to help it survive and easily pivot during the pandemic. In May, the company hosted its annual Inspire conference. During the three-day event, Libby hosted a panel on Women in Data Science (WiDS), which is part of the annual WiDS Worldwide conference organised by Stanford University and broadcast to an estimated 150+ locations worldwide. In today's episode, we discuss why up-skilling will be the biggest challenge for organizations in the next 12 months. We also talk about the importance of human diversity for inclusivity in data science and artificial intelligence. Libby shares what needs to happen in primary education to build awareness of data science skills at an early stage amongst young women.

Jeff Wald, best-selling author of two books, including The End of Jobs: The Rise of On-Demand Workers and Agile Corporations. Jeff is also the Founder of WorkMarket (purchased by ADP in 2018 for $135 million), and several other technology companies, including Spinback, a social sharing platform (eventually purchased by Salesforce.com), an angel investor and startup advisor, and serves on numerous public and private Boards of Directors. Based on hundreds of formal interviews with CEOs, HR executives, and political leaders, The End of Jobs: The Rise of On-Demand Workers and Agile Corporations guides readers through the history of work to understand how companies and workers reacted to the last three industrial revolutions. Jeff asks what lessons we can learn from these revolutions and the current state of the labor market and in order for workers, companies, and societies to prepare for the Rise of the Robots. Included in the book is the $10 million Future of Work Prize. Jeff challenged twenty leading thinkers of the future of work on their vision for the workforce in 2040. Jeff shares his story and lessons he learned building four companies, investing in and advising hundreds of others. We discuss why new technologies like autonomous vehicles seldom lead to the job losses people expect.

YL Ventures funds and supports brilliant Israeli tech entrepreneurs from seed to lead. With headquarters in Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv, YL Ventures manages $260 million and specializes in cybersecurity. It accelerates the evolution of portfolio companies via strategic advice and U.S.-based operational execution, leveraging a powerful network of CISOs and global industry leaders. Andy Ellis was recently named operating partner at YL Ventures, has been inducted into IDG's CSO Hall of Fame. The former CSO at Akamai Technologies will now be supporting YL Ventures' portfolio companies post-investment with product development, go-to-market strategies, and customer engagements. In today's episode, Andy shares his story and insights from his career. We discuss why VC firms and investing in Israeli cybersecurity startups and why more CISOs are taking advisor/investor roles. I also learn what brings him to Israeli cybersecurity companies.

Jim Archetto of Gaumard Scientific joins me in a conversation about medical training simulations and how they are leveraging HoloLens 2 headsets. Gaumard Scientific specialize in creating simulators for medical training that are in use at major teaching hospitals, nursing schools, medical military trainings and emergency medical services. The company recently launched Obstetric MR™, a mixed reality labor and delivery simulation experience that synchronizes holograms with the physical world. Obstetric MR™ is comprised of a HoloLens 2 headset preloaded with software designed to help learners observe the dynamic physiology underlying childbirth. In addition, it brings, for the first time, digital learning content into the physical simulation exercise, allowing participants to link knowledge and skill through an entirely new hands-on tactile training experience.