Politely Pushy with Eric Chemi

Today we have a fascinating discussion with Alex Zekoff, the CEO of Thoughtful. It’s interesting because bots have often gotten a bad or questionable rep. But here’s the thing: bots can be your friends in automation and helping humans organize and streamline their tasks, tackling that process and more at scale. Alex founded Thoughtful to employ intelligent bots that supercharge operations for organizations by automating end-to-end processes using existing corporate systems. He explains how these bots are beneficial and helps with a combination of logic, code and processing power. Alex and his team developed this technology to mimic the workflow of a hundred thousand a year, fully burdened like healthcare workers, which takes approximately three months to replicate. Thoughtful has seen up to 10 times capacity increases in some cases. And instead of having to spend 80% of one’s day going through a workflow, one can spend 20% of their day managing the bot to handle that workflow and improve the process, which humans find to be way more valuable than actually operating the system. So let’s change our view on bots! You can start by listening to Alex in this episode.

Today we welcome Katie Banks to the podcast. Based out of Dublin, Katie is Nitro's vice president of global people and workplace. Nitro helps accelerate businesses globally through digital documents resulting in powerful productivity for all. Katie discusses how important it is for companies to look out for their employees and handle the most challenging human resource situations – like layoffs – most fairly and kindly, complying with local legal requirements. Not everyone can do what Katie does. Our host even explains why he's not in human resources. Tune in to find out why Katie is, and hear her thoughts and approaches to recent challenges like mass layoffs at companies adversely affected by a changing economy. Her approach to managing and interacting with fellow "nitronauts" applies to HR across organizations and industries. 

Today we welcome Shamir Karkal, Chief Strategy Officer of Sila, to the podcast. Sila means “strength” in Russian, and Shamir wants you to know that having a secure payments platform (using robust APIs) is vital in a world where software is delivered over the Internet. How does Sila ensure that this payment platform is entirely secure? How does it prevent fraud and identity theft? And how are users verified to ensure zero trust and that all proprietary financial data is protected? Shamir discusses this and more in today’s fascinating episode. 

As they say in the U.K., today’s episode of Politely Pushy would best be accompanied by a “cuppa.” That is because Jon Geater sits down with our host and speaks to us in the most elegant Queen’s English (the royal majesty’s accent, that is – no reference to that borough in New York). Jon discusses how complexities related to the supply chain can compromise trust and how his company developed technology to track physical and digital assets, ensuring traceability and helping organizations rest assured about their current products by having as much information on them as possible. This information can also help to avoid future breaches. Jon discusses how his company’s technology is an asset to today’s new “zero trust is a must” corporate culture, exactly what “traceability” entails, how blockchain technology fits into the mix and why “public attestation” is vital to trust in cybersecurity.  

Shekar Ayyar is a CEO committed to delivering the best network architecture for clients, the “plumbing” underneath their 5G architecture. Words like “inflation” and “recession” don’t scare him; he considers himself an eternal optimist committed to meeting the needs of companies that have to keep up with 5G networks. He founded Arrcus to enhance business efficiency through superior network connectivity. The company is committed to providing the best-in-class software with the most flexible consumption model at the lowest total cost of ownership. Hear from Shekar as he discusses how Arrcus is helping companies as they move into the multi-cloud networking space. He also explains how technology keeps advancing, so individuals have to skill themselves accordingly, and the benefits of Arrcus’s partnership with VMware, which allows for an end-to-end connection of what’s happening between data centers and the carrier. Using a pricing methodology so smaller companies can benefit from better network infrastructure as their larger counterparts do, Shekar is determined to meet the needs of all types of companies. 

Today we are joined by Stacy Quackenbush and Paige Dansinger, two women building “worlds” in the metaverse, providing people with the opportunity to learn and engage through virtual reality spaces. The metaverse hasn’t exactly gotten the greatest rep since Facebook changed its name. But Stacy and Paige explain how there is a lot of misinformation that abounds about this fascinating technological arena. They discuss how they’ve successfully created hundreds of worlds in the metaverse as partners in Dynamite Labs. Paige has even worked with children to build worlds for a museum that they then presented to the World Health Organization. Comprised of photo-realism and three-dimensional assets (which can include NFTs), these worlds give the user the opportunity for social engagement and education. Stacy and Paige explain what building those worlds entail, the difference between Web3 and Metaverse, and how the worlds they’ve built have led to immersive and interactive experiences. 

When an organization buys a product from a vendor, its journey does not end with the purchase. Instead, it has just begun. That’s because several steps must take place as the company onboards the product and it becomes a part of the business. Today, we are joined by Sri Ganesan, co-founder and CEO of Rocketlane, a purpose-built project delivery and collaboration software for client facing teams (i.e., implementation/onboarding teams, consulting firms, agencies). Sri and his team at Rocketlane want to ensure that the process from purchasing to fully deploying a new product cannot be categorized as “death by a thousand spreadsheets.” After witnessing customer onboarding challenges at his previous company Freshworks, he is determined to help run customer-facing projects better. In today’s episode, he discusses the importance of creating a first-of-its-kind shared workspace that unifies project task management, customer communication, and document collaboration and how technology that helps to understand customer sentiment improves customer relationship management, helping everyone stay on top of their tasks. Sri explains how he developed a platform that delivers insights to help with onboarding and assist teams with improving their processes, providing value faster for clients. He also discusses how conversational AI is an asset to the customer onboarding experience and how he sees a purpose-built system for customer onboarding as vital to organizations in the coming years. Tune in to hear his thoughts on why.  

Today’s guest is Ahmed Reza, who has quite an exciting story! Ahmed started his journey to becoming a successful entrepreneur as a child actor in Bangladesh. From there, he would become a Milken scholar at Cornell University while homeless, an engineer at NASA, and eventually a successful small business entrepreneur multiple times. Ahmed founded Yobi, where he now serves as CEO; it is a company that merges all the ways customers can communicate with small businesses into a straightforward app for excellent customer relationship management (CRM). He is also the intelligent man’s Forrest Gump who formed a close relationship with the man behind his scholarship, Michael Milken as a student and with Mark Zuckerberg’s dad Dr. Edward Zuckerberg while working at a dental start-up and dressed in a sumo suit at a convention. Yes, you read that correctly. Tune in to find out more about Ahmed’s intriguing and unconventional journey. Hear why he is so passionate about the 38 million small businesses in the U.S., why he is excited about transforming the customer experience for small businesses, and how AI has played a tremendous role in streamlining communications and making everything more seamless. We can guarantee that Ahmed is a guy you will want to know personally by the end of this episode.

Today’s guest had our host circling back, wondering how he could have begun the episode more fascinatingly. That is because Mario Juarez specializes in compellingly communicating messages as the founder and CEO of StoryCo. Companies seek Mario’s counsel on how to share their stories – their communications –  most effectively and transformatively. He discusses how strategic storytelling ultimately influences transactions (and whether anyone can be trained to lead an effective TED talk), the factors that make a powerful storyline and how much more engaged people are when they hear a story about how someone successfully overcame a challenge or adversity. Mario began his career as a journalist in Alaska and then worked at Microsoft for nearly 30 years. Some of his own fascinating stories include the time he and his friends set a picnic table on fire and how he created an underground newsletter as a boy scout. 

Today's guest is Rick Hammell, founder and CEO of Atlas. He has visited 117 countries, lived in Barcelona, and manages the most extensive direct employer of record (EOR) company with entities in over 160 countries. Rick discusses the idea behind Atlas, a tech platform supported by experts, delivering flexibility for companies to expand across borders, onboard talent, manage compliance and pay their global workforce without needing a local entity. Rick explains how his EOR competes in the marketplace, who their most significant competitor is, and the impact of an EOR in a remote work world for employees and employers. He also shares how companies can avoid the pitfalls of doing business globally and comply, following their countries' rules and regulations, so employees fully receive the benefits afforded to them.