The Remarkable SaaS Podcast

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to transform our society from being very transactional into very empathetic. My guest is Rana Gujral, CEO Behavioral Signals Rana Gujral is an entrepreneur, speaker, and investor. He founded TiZE, a cloud software for specialty chemicals in 2014. He was recruited to be a part of the core turnaround team for Cricut Inc. where he built a first of its kind product for the DIY community and helped turn bankruptcy to profitability within a span of 2 years. Rana also held leadership positions at Logitech S.A. and Kronos Inc., where he was responsible for the development of best-in-class products generating billions in revenue and contributed towards several award-winning engineering innovations. He has been awarded the ‘Entrepreneur of the Month’ by CIO Magazine and the ‘US China Pioneer’ Award by IEIE. He has been listed among 8 A.I. Entrepreneurs to Watch in 2019 by INC Magazine and Top 10 Entrepreneurs to follow in 2017 by Huffington Post.  Today he is the CEO of Behavioral Signals, an enterprise software company that delivers a robust and fast evolving emotion AI engine that introduces emotional intelligence into speech recognition technology. And this triggered me, and hence I invited him to my podcast. We explore the challenge with today’s voice technology and what has kept it from reaching its true potential. We discuss a variety of use cases that will create transformative experiences and impact when some of the limitations are taken away. Not only for us individuals, but also the level of business and society at large.  Here are some of his quotes: Behavioral Signals was really driven from this sort of really intrinsic desire to improve voice communications and take it to the next level, whether it's communication happening between two humans or whether it's communication happening between a machine or a human. This is the best utopian experience that matches our human interests. And that's led to the whole voice first design movement. The whole promise was that we are going to take this to the next level, which means we're going to talk to our devices and devices are going to communicate back to us, as humans do. We could use those experiences to replace some of those elements in our livelihoods, and use those as companions. But that hasn't happened. That is why we are actually very rude to voice assistance in general, because we feel that they're beneath us, not because it's a machine, we know it's a machine, of course, it's not a human. But we also feel that, hey, it doesn't have the basic capability to understand how I feel. So, our mission is to really take that interaction to the next level. During this interview, you will learn four things: That solving critical problems is often not about following the right process, but connecting people that are on the same wavelength Why the secret behind growing momentum behind the adaption of your application is in making it human and empathetic How you can exponential grow the impact your solution can create for your customers by capturing intent, rather than the transaction How imagination and your ability to connect the dots into a vision are essential skills to create a remarkable software business See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on technology and process that brings people together to deliver transformative impact. My guest is Greg Silverman, CEO of Concentric Market Since 2010, he has been the CEO of Concentric, a enterprise decision support platform that improves your strategic planning process and your forecasting capabilities. Previously, he was Global Managing Director, Analytics and Valuation, for Interbrand, where he designed the current version of their Brand Valuation methodology and led their global consulting practice. He has also worked in manufacturing, franchising, and retail.  Greg received his BBA in Marketing and Retail from the University of Georgia and his MBA in Management from the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University. He is author of the book, Turning Complexity into Strategic Advantage and published the Interbrand Top 100 Brands Report. Being an avid reader of the Interbrand brand report, this triggered me – and hence I invited Greg to my Podcast. We explore how brands deliver revenue and value, and how a lot of intangible and hard to observe components influence how they remain relevant in a market. We dig into the key role people play in all of this, and what role technology should play to beyond just automation. Here are some of his quotes: On what makes them remarkable: Being a human in this day and age is hard. We have to just see people for their strengths and the fact that none of us are complete enough. And it's been the mission of the company actually to augment people's intelligence to help them be better people, enrich them. Regarding the impact they have: There's still domain expertise. And that matters. You need inspiration. You need creativity. You need to understand the zeitgeist, and having quantifiable tools that help you understand the forward impact of that, has really been our mission.  About their offering, Greg says: ‘Can I forecast the future better than 50%?’ For our forecasts on a weekly basis, the standard we're held to is 95% accuracy. And that doesn't matter if that's weeks in advance, months in advance, and sometimes years in advance -- that has to be the standard because the only way you'll believe a predictive or prescriptive analytics is if it forecasts properly. During this interview, you will learn four things: That you know your software platform is ready to scale when people come to you saying ‘It’s time to fire us because the software is doing everything’ Why when your software is making accurate predictions, you are only halfway in terms of the value you can deliver to your customers That: integrity is not not stealing from your neighbour. It's having a vision and sticking to it when the world doesn't want you to. That everyone in your company at some point will have to face the fear of failure, but more importantly, face the fear of success. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to take our ability to effectively communicate to the next level. My guest is Scott Sandland, Co-founder and CEO of Cyrano AI Scott is among the most well-known hypnotherapists on earth and an accomplished innovator and entrepreneur. He has been actively involved in the development and customization of multiple software platforms focused on continued education and professional networking for over a decade. Scott has 20 years of experience helping clients by using strategic questions and pattern recognition to understand and influence subconscious decision-making processes. Cyrano is built on the idea that these soft skills are inherently teachable, and that doing so will improve human:computer interaction at scale. Applying that knowledge and experience into a neural network to help more people is his driving passion. This inspired me, and hence I invited Scott to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in way we use technology to communicate – and how that is inhibiting us to get global problems (such as teen suicide) under control or effectively transmit our ideas. We also dig into the art of preparing the market to adopt transformative technology and what the secrets to create a software business people keep talking about. Here are some of his quotes: One of the main driving points in the thesis of our company is, most AI tech is about generating correct responses, not a meaningful communication.  A long-standing tenet of mine is the second most valuable thing in the known universe is effective communication. The first is oceans made out of water. We spent a lot of time looking for that. But the second most valuable thing is effectively communicating our ideas.  The most human thing there is talking well, and the fact that for maybe the second time in human history, our defining technology, since the printing press, this era is defined by the ability to transmit ideas better than ever before. During this interview, you will learn four things: Too often we focus the software we build on improving rather than prevention. What if we do the opposite? How to overcome the hurdle of getting people to adopt solutions that deliver results that by far exceed their wildest expectations How to build brand trust and create desire in a market where you are unknown and have no credibility How creating an emotional, visceral vision for the future will help you overcome the difficult periods you’ll to face on your company’s journey. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on what it takes to create innovation that drives positive change. My guest is Neil Sahota, IBM Master Inventor, United Nations (UN) AI subject matter expert, and Professor at UC Irvine. With 20+ years of business experience, Neil works to inspire clients and business partners to foster innovation and develop next generation products/solutions powered by AI. Neil's work experience spans multiple industries including legal services, healthcare, life sciences, retail, travel and transportation, energy and utilities, automotive, telecommunications, media/communication, and government.  Moreover, he is one of the few people selected for IBM's Corporate Service Corps leadership program that pairs leaders with NGOs to perform community-driven economic development projects.  In addition, Neil partners with entrepreneurs to define their products, establish their target markets, and structure their companies. He is a member of several investor groups like the Tech Coast Angels and assists startups with investor funding. Neil also serves as a judge in various startup competitions and mentor in several incubator/accelerator programs and is the author of ‘Owning the AI Revolution.’ I invited Neil to my podcast because of his drive to create meaningful change and social impact through innovation. We explore the myths around making money and creating social good. We dig into the need to change behaviour and remove resistance as a critical component of the innovation process in order to drive the impact and adoption we hope for. And we discuss the fine line around being successful and taking enough risk. Here are some of his quotes: “If you're not trying to disrupt yourself or your organization, someone else will. And I think there's just a lot of opportunities out there. But we're used to thinking about improvement, how do we make something faster, cheaper, less errors, rather than be more transformative and say: ‘How can I actually do this differently?’ We live in a dynamic world, things are always changing, new capabilities are always coming out. How can I do something like different? That's what really drives me.” During this interview, you will learn four things: Why companies that drive positive social impact perform fundamentally better than the ones that don’t Why solving a big problem with your software is only one aspect to success and momentum. It’s ability to change behaviour, buy-in and mindset is the other critical part. How we can deliver more success in driving change is by helping people ask a better first question. That you don’t always want to be a 100% successful. If you’re 100% successful, you’re actually not taking enough risk See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power show what people really think and feel so we can create experiences that matter. My guest is Paul Zak, CEO of Immersion. Paul is a scientist, entrepreneur and author of several books. His newest book is "Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High Performance Companies." Paul’s two decades of research have taken him from the Pentagon to Fortune 50 boardrooms to the rain forest of Papua New Guinea. All this in a quest to understand the neuroscience of human connection, human happiness, and effective teamwork. His academic lab and companies he has started develop and deploy neuroscience technologies to solve real problems faced by real people. Paul is the founding Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and Professor of Economics, Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University. He has degrees in mathematics and economics from San Diego State University, a Ph.D. in economics from University of Pennsylvania, and post-doctoral training in neuroimaging from Harvard. In 2017 he founded Immersion which is on a mission to build a platform that would democratize neuroscience and make everyone of us look like a hero. That inspired me, and hence I invited Paul to my podcast. We explore why so many resources and efforts are wasted because of the challenges we face in understanding what people really think and feel. We discuss what can be when we use technology to augment people in understanding these experiences and how that helps to create better products, better services and high-performing organizations. Here are some of his quotes: 80% of movies out of Hollywood lose money. Last year, Netflix spent almost $10 billion, creating content that did not hit strong enough to warrant a second season. So how do we not know at this stage of humanity if a movie is going to be great or not, or if a series on Netflix will be great or not.  That's a lot of effort put into content that isn't creating real value for humans.  It's a lot of wasted energy and focus. What we've done is we created technology, a small wearable, like an apple watch or Samsung (although we can take signal from all those things), and understand what your brain really loves and what frustrates you, and do that with really high frequency. You can see exactly what brains are doing in real time. So, you can pivot, you can audit what you've done in the past, and you can create higher impact experiences. During this interview, you will learn three things: How to create better products and experiences if we stop asking, and instead using technology to get unbiased feedback from people. What exponential impacts we can create when we not only know what people really care about, but actually be equipped to adjust instantly to give them experiences they really care about  Why more data is not always better to create results that impact.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on the heroics and entrepreneurship we have witnessed in the past three months of the pandemic. My guest is Vinnie Mirchandani. Vinnie has become a regular guest on my podcast. In fact, it was only 7 months ago where we discussed ‘a decade in review’. He’s the founder of Deal Architect - a Technology strategy and negotiation firm listed as a leading "boutique" by the Black Book of Outsourcing. Earlier in his career he had various technology consulting roles at PwC in the US, Europe and Asia, and worked as an industry analyst at Gartner.  He wrote various books about the evolution and future of enterprise software, amongst which Silicon Collar, The New Polymath, The New Technology Elite and SAP Nation 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. Other than that he’s an inspiring blogger and always curious about innovation. In fact, he’s recently conducted close to 50 interviews with entrepreneurs and change-makers from around the world about how they stepped up to make a difference in the global pandemic. I had the honor to be featured in one these interviews as well where I shared various examples from different industries and countries. And that’s exactly that triggered me to invite him again to my podcast. We explore some of the most inspiring examples Vinnie uncovered and what we can learn from this in terms of leadership, innovation, entrepreneurship, and our ability to drive meaningful change. Here are some of his quotes: As the pandemic was starting to hit the US, we had heard about some of the innovations in Asia and Europe. We were starting to hear about US healthcare heroics, in the media, but I was also starting to hear of a lot of business heroics. Either scaling up or scaling down or innovating quickly or pivoting quickly, has required heroics. I was so glad to talk to these executives because the media is not giving them much attention. The media is so focused on the negative stories that unfortunately, these business executives are not getting enough attention. I wanted to get their word out on all the things that they're doing which deserve to be saluted. During this interview, you will learn three things: How to pivot 180 degree overnight and turn a 90% drop in revenue back into growth again. That the art of creating momentum is about two things: relevancy and creating a sense of urgency. Let’s not forget this after the pandemic – it’s what marketing should be all about. The key is to not just try and keep selling what you had in the bag in January. The world has turned upside down since.  That opportunities for innovation are plentiful, and every executive everywhere needs help We just need to establish an eye for it and be willing to work with them.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to enable us to achieve results and grow in ways we’d not be able to achieve on our own. My guest is Gina Bianchini, CEO of Mighthy Networks. Gina Bianchini is an American entrepreneur and investor. Before Mighty Networks, she was CEO of Ning, which she co-founded with Marc Andreessen. Under her leadership, Ning grew to 100 million people in 300,000 active social networks across subcultures, professional networks, entertainment, politics, and education. In addition to Mighty Networks, Gina serves as a board director of TEGNA a $3 billion broadcast and digital media company, and served as a board director of Scripps Networks, an $12 billion public company which owns HGTV, The Food Network, and The Travel Channel that merged with Discovery Communications in 2018. Gina has been featured on the cover of Fortune and Fast Company and in Wired, Vanity Fair, Bloomberg, and The New York Times. She has appeared on Charlie Rose, CNBC, and CNN. She grew up in Cupertino, California, graduated with honors from Stanford University, started her career in the nascent High Technology Group at Goldman, Sachs & Co., and received her M.B.A from Stanford Business School. Her mission at Mighty Networks is to usher in a new era of creative business built on community. And that inspired me, and hence I invited her to my podcast. We explore the challenge in the market where the world seems to be more targeting audiences, rather than creating communities. We dig deeper into the opportunity for any business to enable your customers to reach much bigger goals and stretch in ways that just are not possible operating on their own. Here are some of her quotes: When we see people who are successful in bringing people together and creating just an important experience in their lives, mastering something interesting, mastering something important together, it's incredibly gratifying. What makes what we do so much fun is that it really is who we are as people to want to come together and software and digital technologies have such power to connect. But you know, so far they've been used in many cases to create even more isolation. The best way to navigate uncertainty and rapidly changing environments is through being a member of a community, but again, not an audience, a community. That we're all sharing and contributing our stories, our experiences, and our ideas. And when we can do that, we get to make the rules together. During this interview, you will learn three things: That people don’t really need more stuff – but absolutely need more connection, and more opportunities to learn and get better.  How, by creating an online community you not only help your customers, but it also enables you to be much more tuned in with them to get feedback, learn,… and ideas How building communities as a software business enables you to be more ambitious  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to transform how we manage and deliver projects. My guest is Gregory Stoos, CEO of Planless. Gregory has over 15 years of experience in entrepreneurship and managing positions. Besides founding Planless, he also co-founded Apperativ, a new generation software development company. Prior to that he’s been responsible for building top-level and disruptive products in the technology world or the marketing and advertising space. The red-thread throughout his career has been ‘projects’. No matter if he worked for a creative agency or a technology company, managing and planning projects was front and center. And that sparked the big idea behind his latest company Planless, which he founded September 2017. Planless is on a mission to help project teams focus on working the plan, instead of planning the work.  And this inspired me, and hence invited Gregory to my podcast. We explore the productivity issue so many project teams suffer from around the world and that results in not being able to deliver work on time, or not at the expected quality. We discuss what’s broken, and why rethinking how we manage projects is the only way to break free from this problem.  Here are some of his quotes: The big idea is that project management tools are all more or less the same. And there is one big issue in actual solutions is that planning work, allocating resources and managing people's workloads is still done manually in all these tools and is very time consuming and very inefficient. I'd like to say that planning is humanly impossible. Basically, it is teams executing the work that self-organize themselves, and lose a lot of time doing it. And most of the time, we see that they are not capable of delivering work on time or not with the quality that was expected. In this particular industry, everybody thinks really a lot about return on investment, right? That's the main focus about hiring marketing agencies. You want to invest a dollar and get three, four or five out. The thing is, what about the ROI of people? What if you could just increase your productivity by 30, 40, or 50%? During this interview, you will learn four things: How we can deliver more transformative change by stepping away from the problem, see the big picture and then rethink the foundational concepts Why agile is both a blessing and a curse That too often it’s not the technology that’s the issue to create value and momentum, it’s mindset and behaviour of people.  Why we should aim to get attention from the market before they can get the product. It validates whether you are on to something big and with that everyone benefits. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation around voice automation that has the power to connect with your customers in seconds. My guest is Ricardo Garcia-Amaya, Co-founder and CEO of VOIQ. Ricardo is a YCombinator alumnus and was recently recognized as a Silicon Valley Top Diverse Tech 40 Under 40. He has an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business, and an undergraduate degree in Politics from NYU. Ricardo is an Aspen Institute Innovator Fellow as well as an NYU Stern Berkley Center for Innovation fellow. In 2017 he founded VOIQ. VOIQ empowers companies to use human-like AI VoiceBots for highly personalized conversations with their customers and prospects over the phone. This triggered me, and hence I invited Ricardo to my podcast. We explore the power of actually speaking with people, but how cost and scale challenges hold us back from maximizing its use. We then dive into how to overcome this challenge, what use-cases are ideally suited and what needs to be done differently to execute in a remarkable way.  Here are some of his quotes: I helped a friend run for mayor Providence, Rhode Island, the capital of the state of Rhode Island. And I helped them set up the technology specifically for his campaign in terms of virtual call centres. So how to get people out to vote, how to on the fundraising side as well, in that, looking at that technology at that time, I realized that nothing has changed in 10 years. So I said, you know, this is really this technology needs a big shift. The origination part of the idea was just how difficult it is. Triggered by the fact that in a political campaign you need volunteers, you need to source volunteers to make calls on behalf of the candidate. Why is it so human capital intensive to carry out these simple calls? So, how can we create these small conversations and gather answer specific questions through the phone? That's what sparked the process of creating VOIQ. During this interview, you will learn three things: How you can transform a service that’s not been changed in decades by combining ideas from different industries. How can you keep increasing scale and quality by creating an automated loop of listening, learning and optimizing. How to stay relevant in a world where the half-time of your product is months not years. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give us memorable experiences without having to give up our privacy. My guest is Ofer Tziperman, CEO Anagog He has 20 years’ experience as an entrepreneur and leader of High Tech private and public companies. He served as the CEO of OTI, a leading developer of  NFC-based payment solutions and as the CEO of Parx, a provider of on-street parking payment solutions. In 2000 Ofer co-founded LocatioNet Systems, a pioneer in the Location-Based Services market. In 2001 the World Economic Forum awarded him in Davos as ‘Technology Pioneer’. Ofer has an LLB Law degree from Tel-Aviv University. Today Ofer leverages his technology and management experience to drive Anagog’s long term success. Anagog is the developer of JedAI - a patented edge-AI technology that solves the conflicting dilemma of deeply understanding your customers behaviour, create moments of surprise and delight, all without harming their privacy. This inspired me, and hence I invited Ofer to my podcast. We explore the ever growing need for better experiences and the problems this creates around our privacy: everything we do is tracked and stored somewhere without being in control of it. We discuss the technology answers to this so that we can have the best of all worlds: Better experiences, more surprise and delight, without sharing anything. We also dig into how remarkable products often are the result of many pivots – and what leaders need to do different in order to succeed. Here are some of his quotes: ‘Everybody trying to understand us, based on our online or digital life. And while 80% of the time we're actually spending in the real world. And we have full life in the real world. But it looks like the new technology is only trying to focus on what we are doing online. It looks like everybody in the attempt of trying to understand us in a more personal way. They forgot that we have private Life. We all feel a little bit uncomfortable with the question: “what exactly does Google know about me, or Apple, or Facebook? And at some point, some of us actually gave up. We are actually trying to roll it back and to say, “guys, there is an option that only our phone will know everything about you, and it will never leave your phone.” So, in a way, we try to change everything upside down.’ During this interview, you will learn four things: That a major opportunity to truly understand your ideal customer is found in understanding what they do ‘off-line’ Why transformation starts when we ask ourselves propelling questions that combine both a bold aspiration with a significant constraint How we can make our solutions memorable by focusing less on fixing gaps, and more on creating peaks i.e. moments of surprise and delight. That opportunity starts when you manage to do something which is very difficult i.e. when others are not able to do that. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices