The Tesoro AI Podcast

Virtually every company is becoming a tech company, or tech-enabled at the very least.  The challenge is that the global talent shortage for software developers is slowing the rate at which we can innovate.  This challenge is even more pronounced when we consider cutting edge technology such as artificial intelligence.  For more than 20 years, OutSystems mission has been to allow every organization to innovate through software.  In the past 3 years, they have brought on key AI talent to create products that allow customers to more easily adopt AI-driven solutions.   In this podcast I sit with Antonio Alegria (Head of AI) and Mike Hughes (Senior Director of Product Marketing) to topics such as what it takes to go from zero to deploying AI solutions, where to start with data strategy, leveraging prebuilt tools, and much much more.   If your company is looking to scale it’s AI initiatives, head over to Tesoro AI (www.tesoroai.com) – experts in AI strategy, staff augmentation, and AI product development.

After three hours of waiting to talk to customer support, you finally reach a real human who you hope will be able to solve your problems.  Unfortunately, that human doesn’t seem to care about your issues any more than the automated support system that had you waiting.  Is it because the support agent doesn’t care – potentially – but it’s nothing personal.  Consistently listening to customer issues is a tough job.  Knowing what to say and when is a support agent’s secret weapon to maintaining high customer satisfaction.  AI has arrived as a coach to enable this super power.   In this episode, I sit with Etie Hertz, who is the CEO of Loris.ai.  We discuss several topics including his passion for startups, building and exiting a fintech payments company, how AI solves tough customer conversations, the importance of maintaining a strong brand, and much much more.   If your company is looking to scale it’s AI initiatives, head over to Tesoro AI (www.tesoroai.com) – experts in AI strategy, staff augmentation, and AI product development.

The cloud was a gift to AI, enabling the compute power necessary for company to leverage powerful ML algorithms.  As edge technologies such as smart phones, drones, and autonomous driving begin to incorporate greater cognitive capabilities, processing speeds and decision making need to be more efficient at the device level.  To solve this problem, Deeplite has emerged with a solution that optimizes neural networks.   In this episode, I sit with Nick Romano, Co-Founder and CEO of Deeplite.  We discuss the challenges of deploying AI in the field, data collection advice for startups, getting an MVP off the ground, retaining senior level talent, and the greatest challenges to AI adoption.   If your company is looking to scale it’s AI initiatives, head over to Tesoro AI (www.tesoroai.com) – experts in AI strategy, staff augmentation, and AI product development. 

The gig economy has created jobs we never would have imagined.  This offered those in “boring, low skill” jobs an opportunity to earn a living while enjoying a better quality of life.  Fortunately, AI is stepping in to fill the empty seats these workers once occupied.  Manufacturing is a great example of this activity.  Production lines once required humans to review products for defects – a quite mundane task.  Today, the power of AI and machine vision enable a software driven approach.  Neurala is a startup integrating AI-based software into cameras to support vision inspection.   In this episode, I sit with Max Versace, Co-Founder and CEO of Neurala.  We discuss his move from Italy to the US to work on projects supported by DARPA and NASA, shortage of demand for jobs in manufacturing, how machines can catch product issues undetectable to humans, and much much more.   If your company is looking to scale it’s AI initiatives, head over to Tesoro AI (www.tesoroai.com) – experts in AI strategy, staff augmentation, and AI product development. 

he real goal of Conversational AI is not to make users believe they are speaking with a human.  The real goal is to enable robots to solve issues faster and more effectively, using conversation.  Chatbot technology was among the first AI use cases that received early hype.  Many early attempts to build failed due to an inability to truly solve issues or due to poor user experience.  As the hype has died down, companies are matching the demand and usefulness of Conversational AI with a more educated approach to deploying robots that can communicate.  Behind this push for innovation sits Rasa, a high growth startup providing tools for companies and developers to build and deploy Conversational AI   In this episode, I sit with Alex Weidauer, Co-Founder and CEO of Rasa.  We discuss topics such as the many pivots his company made to arrive at an AI solution, how Rasa enable developers to build better assistants, how people prefer to communicate with robots, the best approach to training robots on conversation data, and much much more.   If your company is looking to scale it’s AI initiatives, head over to Tesoro AI (www.tesoroai.com) – experts in AI strategy, staff augmentation, and AI product development.

The rate at which technology is advancing is incredible.  From all of the use cases we’ve explored in this podcast alone, we’ve seen some mind-boggling uses of AI.  As innovators, we’re always trying to push the boundaries of what’s possible – in this case via AI – but we also need resources to support rapid innovation when we get ahead of our skis.  DevOps is a field that is enabling more safe and efficient deployment of software.  Similarly, MLOps is exploding on the seen to enable ML teams to get models into production faster and more securely.   In this episode, I sit with Diego Oppenheimer, Co-Founder and CEO of Algorithmia.  We discuss topics such as Diego’s experience building legendary products at Microsoft, optimizing the deployment of ML models, who is actually leveraging AI at scale, leveraging a freemium strategy to build champions, the importance of customer feedback, and much much more.   If your company is looking to scale it’s AI initiatives, head over to Tesoro AI (www.tesoroai.com) – experts in AI strategy, staff augmentation, and AI product development.     Timestamps: 2:15  Moving finance as a career starter to business intelligence Microsoft 3:00  How a career in business intelligence tooling led to expertise in predictive analytics and ML 6:13  Developing a passion for using data to provide insights to clients that had gone unnoticed 8:44  The origin of Algorithmia | “No tools existed to optimize deployment of ML models” 10:53  What matters to DevOps?  What is MLOps and why is it important? 12:42  Where Algorithmia sits within the ML Pipeline 14:00  How IT orgs and Data Scientists/ML engineers interact with the platform 15:23  KPIs and ROI metrics used when communicating value to clients (see algorithmia.com/resources) 18:45  Who is actually putting AI/ML into production? 20:25  Figuring out who the initial customer would be and what pains they’d experience 23:56  Creating a freemium model to entice data scientists | Building champions in an organization 26:15  Determining the first key hires as a startup 27:35  Establishing a process for getting early customer feedback 31:00 Favorite tech tool: Microsoft Excel 32:22  Why Diego has been inspired by Tableau and their approach to the data space 34:00 team.algorithmia.com – Try the product for free

The tech world is fired up due to the emergence of 5G and the potential for game changing technology that it is enabling.  From autonomous driving vehicles to AI applications running on edge devices, 5G is set to open the door to exponentially more powerful tech.  The challenge is that traditional systems are not best fit to move messages/signals from point A to point B with the proper efficiency and accuracy to manifest the full power of 5G.  AI has emerged has a solution to this issue, specifically addressing wireless signal processing challenges.   In this episode, I sit with Jim Shea, Co-Founder and CEO of DeepSig.  We discuss his preference for starting a business from scratch vs. acquiring an existing company, leveraging AI to solve issues in wireless signals, preparing to raise funds for a startup, creating data strategy when starting from zero, the promise of 5G and its future uses, and much much more.   If your company is looking to scale it’s AI initiatives, head over to Tesoro AI (www.tesoroai.com) – experts in AI strategy, staff augmentation, and AI product development.

How customers experience a company’s product or service is always top of mind for executives.  However, wise executives know that employee experience should be equally valued.  As businesses become increasingly driven by technology, the quantity of help desk tickets are growing exponentially.  Quickly solving these issues results for employees has a direct impact on employee downtime and satisfaction.  Automation and artificial intelligence have emerged as a key solution to reducing mean time to response (MTTR) for help desk resolution.   In this episode, I sit with Pat Calhoun, who is Founder and CEO of Espressive.  We discuss how he raised money on an idea alone, how automation is revolutionizing help desk resolution, building product for greater user adoption, developing and NLP stack, data labeling, finding your first customers, and much much more.   If your company is looking to scale it’s AI initiatives, head over to Tesoro AI (www.tesoroai.com) – experts in AI strategy, staff augmentation, and AI product development.

Sales coaching is big business.  The challenge is that it’s generally a 1:1 activity, whether done in-house or leveraging consultants.  With AI’s ability to gain a contextual understanding of conversation, combined with powerful recommendation engines, sales professionals can now be coached at scale, real-time, and with a strong dose of personalization via AI.   In this episode, I sit with Marc Bernstein, Co-Founder and CEO of Balto.  We discuss Balto’s breakout success as an AI startup, why sales teams don’t follow scripts, providing in-context talking points in real-time, moving from idea to MVP as a non-technical founder, starting with bad UI/UX, and much much more.   If your company is looking to scale it’s AI initiatives, head over to Tesoro AI (www.tesoroai.com) – experts in AI strategy, staff augmentation, and AI product development.

Whether we are talking investing or sports, pattern recognition reigns supreme as the key characteristic enabling top performing professionals to rise above the competition.  For the industrial manufacturing industry, pattern recognition in IoT data (as well as video and image data) have opened an opportunity to drive operational efficiencies and greater profit margins.  Artificial intelligence has emerged as thee solution to innovate in manufacturing.  Falkonry is a bootstrapped startup that is attempting to revolutions manufacturing operations.   In this episode, I sit with the Founder and CEO of Falkonry, Nikunj Mehta.  We discuss the genesis of Falkonry, opportunities to drive operational efficiencies in manufacturing, data acquisition, why real-time prediction is critical to proving ROI, early hiring, and much much more.   If your company is looking to scale it’s AI initiatives, head over to Tesoro AI (www.tesoroai.com) – experts in AI strategy, staff augmentation, and AI product development.