The Remarkable SaaS Podcast

This podcast interview focuses on the responsibility for all of us to ensure the AI’s we invest in are ethical and deliver explainable, transparent output. My guest is Vikram Modgil, founder of TheGoodAI.org Throughout his career Vikram has helped his clients succeed in achieving their goals by truly leveraging the power of data that they already own using Machine Learning. To do so, he’s built an ecosystem company - Pi Square – that consists of employees, associates & partners located in US, Europe & India. Prior to founding Pi Square, Vikram was part of multiple successful startups and wore many hats including business portfolio management, consulting and delivery of AI services.  Recently he founded “TheGoodAI.org” in Seattle, which brings together groups of professionals & leaders from business, non-profit, education, legal, and technology backgrounds with the mission to empower every human to contribute by spreading awareness, facilitating engagement and inspiring actions towards ethical aspects of AI. And this triggered me, hence I invited Vikram to my podcast. We explore the reasons why ethical AI is so important to sustain a world we like to live and work in. We also discuss the various aspects of ethical AI and what we can do as individuals, groups or organizations to ensure we get what we want and hope for. Here are some of his quotes: “There are some unnecessary, or unconscious biases that come into our businesses. They creep in. And if you're not conscious, if you're not alert, they can impact lives. That is something that should not happen. So, with that thought, knowledge and understanding, I wanted to contribute back and I started looking for forums where I could get involved. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything, which was exactly what I wanted this to become. Normally, everybody is hesitant on starting something like this on their own, because it takes a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of people. I wanted to challenge that thinking and start something which is focused on helping one person at a time. And even if two people showed up, that would be a success. The three big things that we want to empower people to do are: create awareness, engagement and actions around the ethics and biases of AI and trustworthiness of AI. Being in Seattle is a is a very huge advantage for us. If we could influence Seattle, we can influence the whole world” During this interview, you will learn three things: That in order to encourage innovative ideas from within your organization on areas where AI could deliver impact, simply stick to 4 basic rules: It has to deliv ver a shift in value, be feasible, scalable and responsible. Why the quality of your ideas for innovation will increase significantly once you ensure diversity in the room to look at the problem through different lenses That it’s every software vendors responsibility to raise some very tough questions whether their AI technology is ethical, explainable and transparent – It all starts by doing the right thing – and that can be very profitable. 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 focused on democratizing access to AI across industries that haven’t got the connections and salary budgets of the Tech Giants. My guest is Naomi Goldapple, Head of product for transportation and logistics at Element AI. Naomi’s career combines technology and business consultancy and entrepreneurship. Her specialties are Business & growth strategies, product commercialization and marketing plans. She has an International MBA, specializing in developing markets in Latin America, from the Schulich School of Business as well as a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University. She was the Director e-business for Royal LePage Commercial, one of Canada’s largest commercial real estate companies.  She started up and ran Maman, bébé et café inc., which won various awards, and worked at ModelCom, using her expertise to help technology entrepreneurs with strategy and financing.  She was the VP Business Development at Nexalogy, responsible for commercializing the suite of products, forging channel partnerships and growing the sales. Nexalogy developed a next generation software for mining, cleaning and analyzing unstructured data with powerful data sculpting capabilities.  And this experience has led to her current venture as Program Director with Element AI, an innovative model that works with and creates companies that are leveraging artifical intelligence. The goal is to spin out hundreds on AI-first companies in Canada over the next 5 years. This triggered me, hence I invited Naomi to my podcast. We explore how the momentum around AI is picking up fast, but how various industries experience significant challenges to get access to AI talent, and in line with that, solutions. We discuss how Element AI is solving this issue, and how this helps chronically understaffed industries and attack large global problems such as safety and climate change. Here are some of her quotes: “The big idea behind the company, if I had to sum it up in one word, is really to democratize the access to AI. One of the issues that is happening right now is many people are getting excited about AI, however, there really isn't enough talent out there. They're usually courted away very quickly by the tech giants. The manufacturing industry, insurance, other industries that are not one of the tech giants, they really don't have access to this talent. So, our role was really to concentrate in some of those verticals, build products specifically for them and kind of allow them to leverage these technologies to really improve their businesses.” During this interview, you will learn three things: That significant value can be delivered to the quality of human work by using AI to eliminate Dull, Dangerous and Dirty work Why it is key to first learn about the impact AI can deliver, rather than to regulate it upfront How the sum of the parts will be far greater when every organization takes an active approach to share its data with its peers 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 [xxxx], and my guest is Sachin Duggal, CEO of Engineer.ai. Sachin Dev Duggal is an innovator, serial entrepreneur, and an advocate of enterprise software that touches lives and benefits the world at large.  His profile is an unusual mix of experiences & serendipity. Sachin started his public foray very early in life. At the age of 12 he went on stage in front of 1200 people and the world media to demand something be done about the state of the environment. He worked for the United Nations and helped write the declaration of youth rights before he completed his first degree from Imperial College. At the age of 15 he co-founded nivio with a view to disrupt the old compute model. Four years later, nivio was selected as a technology pioneer at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where at the same time he made history in being the youngest attendees. Sachin’s an avid and recent believer of Vipassana and that life is a zero-sum game – so its essential to spend our time giving; this is one of the main reasons he and his partner put aside stock in all major businesses to their foundation that’s on their 100x50 mission i.e. educate 100m kids in 50 years. He’s been awarded MIT TR 35 Indian Innovator of the Year, the PriceWaterhouseCoopers Leader of Tomorrow, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist, the BBC Young Asian achiever of the Year and UNEP Global 500 Youth Award.  His aim is to build technology that simplifies the lives of every day users and increases the penetration of information technology to those who do not have it today. And that’s what Engineer.ai is all about. Engineer.ai is on a mission to democratize software development. Their promise ‘Together we bring your idea to life. Twice as fast. 1/3 the cost. Enterprise grade.’ That intrigued me, and hence I invited Sachin to my podcast. We explore the state of the market in which technology is often not delivering on its promise. Beyond that we address why the traditional approach to starting and delivering software projects is broken, and how a new, fresh approach, could transform things for the better, not only for large enterprises but also the small business owner. Here are some of his quotes: “One of the things that I'm driven by every day is the ability for technology to transform people's lives. We're in a world today where a lot of folks feel somewhat disenfranchised by the technology promise, something that was meant to help them grow, help them make more money, help them have more time at home. And instead, it's done, in many cases, the opposite. We think that there's a really strong opportunity to transform how software is built. We're moving from a world where software means working with a cottage industry, where everything is slow, requires traditional know-how, is inefficient, and super risky. And so, there's often a tradeoff that we see in our customers between the fear of being irrelevant, then they come up with an idea, and then it's basically the fear of failure. Until they cross the line of fear, they're not really building or moving ahead. And really, that's the problem we're solving” During this interview, you will learn three things: How traditionally unserved markets can be unlocked by eliminating conventions and traditional barriers, and beyond that, think exponential  That segmenting the market by need, rather than size or segment, opens up new ways to create differentiation That to create momentum you have to exceed expectations, not meet expectations. So instead of delivering on-time on-budget, start delivering ahead of time, and ahead of budget. 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 seemingly ‘ignored’ areas of data, and my guest is Danny Goh. Danny is a serial entrepreneur and an early stage investor. He is the General Partner of G&H Ventures fund, which invests in early-stage start-ups primarily in Southeast Asia. G&H Ventures has invested in more than 20 portfolios in deep tech and is building its third fund to help start-ups into the growth stage. He has also co-founded Innovatube Frontier Labs (IFL), which later merged with Nexus. Innovatube is a technology group that operates an R&D lab in software and AI developments and acts as an incubator to foster the local start-up community in Southeast Asia. It has a team of researchers and engineers to develop cutting-edge deep technology to help start-ups and enterprises bolster their operational capabilities. Danny currently serves as an Entrepreneurship Expert at the Said Business School, University of Oxford and is also an appointed Fellow at the Center for Policy and Competitiveness at the École des Ponts Business School. He is an advisor and judge to several technology start-ups and accelerators including Microsoft Accelerator, Startupbootcamp IoT, and LBS Launchpad. Danny serves as a visiting lecturer at various universities in Europe and he is a speaker at various conferences including TEDx and World Economic Forum. Last but not least he’s the Founder and CEO of Nexus FrontierTech, an AI research firm that easily integrates AI into organisations’ processes by using natural language processing to transform idle information into structured data, enabling them to run better, leaner, and faster. And that promise intrigued me, hence I invited Danny to my podcast. We explore the enormous value opportunity that millions of organizations leave untouched around unstructured data simply because the ‘can’t manage it’. We also explore Danny’s vision on how the world is changing from an app-centric world into a skill-centric world and how that will influence the way we can create solutions going forward.  Here are some of his quotes: One key area that has been helping clients the most, which is to actually help clients to manage their data in a better way. And the biggest problem is, they don't know how to manage those data. And when I say those data, they are like, maybe PDF, graphics, and so on. Those data are not really useful. And what we did, we created the engines, the machine learning engines, to read those documents, and then extract it out. And then human can use all their analytical skills and statistical models to create something out of it. The advantage that we give to them, is they’re one step ahead of their competitors. That to the client is unimaginable before The efficiencies and the accuracies that we bring to them allows them to imagine a lot more. It allows them to create more business opportunities. When they have a new tool that suddenly upgrades their level to the next level, then suddenly they know they can go beyond their limits. During this interview, you will learn three things: That incredible innovation opportunity is often right in front of us, we are just too busy or too ignorant to see it How ‘skills’ will be the answer to making AI and Machine Learning more accessible and change the way we’re creating solutions  Why, in order to be successful, you have to stay persistent and remove the temptations to drift away from your vision 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 a product innovation that has the power to radically change the way recruitment is done. My guest is Tulika Tripathi, Founder and CEO of Snaphunt. Tulika has been in the recruitment space for almost two decades and has worked across many countries. She’s worked as a Managing Director for Michael Page in Singapore where she was responsible for South East Asia. Later on, she took on the responsibility for Michael Page’s entry strategy into India as well as setting up and growing its Indian operations. In 2013 she took on the MD role at Hudson, where she led their recruitment business across Asia. And in February 2017 she founded Snaphunt. It was the big idea behind Snaphunt that triggered me, hence I invited Tulika to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the recruitment industry and how that is slowing down complete sectors. We then discuss how, by taking a radically different approach to the problem, hiring cost can be reduced by up to 99% and hiring speed increased by at least 30%  Here are some of her quotes: The best way to describe Snaphunt is this: Snaphunt is a specialist recruitment agency, with no human recruiter. What I realized over the course of my career is that recruitment hadn't changed much in the last 20 years. I just realized over time that there was a way to leverage technology to do the same thing in a much more effective way. I saw this trend, and I felt rather than trying to reshape an existing business model to meet this, there was a phenomenal opportunity to create a new category of recruiting solutions from scratch. I didn't want to be the person who said, I also had this idea a few years ago, but I didn't do it. So I've done it, because it needs to be made. So I'm disintermediated the whole thing. During this interview, you will learn three things: That by taking a platform approach you can deliver unexpected shifts in value for your customers. How elegance and simplicity always wins – and that this requires you to cut everything away that seems ‘cool’. Why you should be open to agree on the outcomes you want, rather than being fixed to how you think you are going to get there.   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 power of entity resolution, and how this powerful technology has the ability to give any organization a competitive advantage. My guest is Jeff Jonas, Founder and CEO of Senzing. Jeff Jonas is an acclaimed data scientist. He is at the forefront of solving some of the world’s most complex business and big data problems for governments and organizations in a variety of industries.  A former IBM fellow, Jeff is the leading creator of entity resolution systems. National Geographic recognized him as the Wizard of Big Data, and today numerous organizations rely on his systems to extract useful intelligence from tsunamis of data. He has tackled many high-profile challenges, including identifying potential terrorists, detecting fraudulent behavior in casinos, connecting loved ones after a natural disaster, and modernizing voter registration systems.   Jeff is a three-time entrepreneur and sold his last company to IBM in 2005.  Jonas is a highly sought-after speaker. He regularly meets with government leaders, industry executives and think tanks around the globe about innovation, national security and privacy. In 2016, Jonas founded Senzing, based on a one-of-a-kind IBM spinout of the G2 technology. His team and patent portfolio – and was founded on the vision to revolutionize and democratize entity resolution.  The story behind Senzing inspired me, hence I invited Jeff to my podcast. In the podcast, we explore the power behind entity resolution as the fuel to create the most advanced fraud detection, scoring, recommendation or intelligence systems. We also address the need to democratize this type of technology, so that it can be of benefit to anyone anywhere. And last but not least, we address what’s required to create solutions that people want to tell others about.  Here are some of Jeff’s notable quotes: “I became particularly focused, well really obsessed, with this thing called entity resolution, which is technology that figures out when two people are the same. It's a hard problem for folks, and when you can solve that well, you can solve all kinds of problems and create all kinds of competitive advantage. But if you look at these solutions, they primarily require experts to make them operate. They're pretty darn expensive, the good stuff’s at least a million. So, the big idea is to democratize that. Not just to help the big elite organizations understand who-is-who in their data, but what about the small nonprofit who just got duplicates in their Christmas mailing list? What about them? That's the big idea. If you can take 10 x out of the complexity of getting it going, then why not take 10 x out of the price? So, when you change simplicity that much, and you change cost that much, it opens the door to being able to democratize something.” During this interview, we hope you’ll learn these three things: Why you should sometimes bite the bullet to make the hard parts work in order to create real shifts in value That with today’s technology there’s a multitude of opportunities to democratize capabilities that up to now were only available to the elite  What the ingredients are to create the solutions that turn customers into evangelists 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 in the enterprise business software that has the power to turn average companies into disrupters in their category. My guest is Frederic Laluyaux, President and CEO of Aera Technology. He’s got more than 20 years of experience as a leader in the Enterprise Performance Management sector. Fred has built his career focusing on providing solutions that help organizations worldwide achieve financial and business excellence. Fred started his career in the area of CPM, otherwise known as Corporate Performance Management, leading ALG‘s global operations until it was acquired by Business Objects.  When Business Object was acquired by SAP he acted as the SVP and GM for SAP Applications for EPM, GRC, and Finance Line of Business.  He then became the President and CEO of Anaplan which he led for over 3 years. That’s where he joined Aera Technology. I got intrigued by the promise of Aera Technology – being the company building the cognitive technology enabling the Self-Driving Enterprise – hence I invited Fred to my podcast. We explore how a variety of industries around the world are being disrupted, and why many traditional business software solutions are not up to par anymore. We discuss why many businesses need a different breed of solutions to rethink everything they do in order to thrive, not just survive in their market. Here are some of his quotes: I remember writing this paper one night, I worked all night on what is the next big wave post transaction automation.  So basically, the massive wave of globalization fueled by the relational database and the ERP layer. The next big idea is how do we tackle the big pyramid that sits on top of those ERP systems. The question that I was asking myself is: Why do companies grow so deep, so fat, when they grow big? How are our decisions being made? So I’ve been thinking about this for a long, long time, and really being convinced that the next topic would be delayerisation, organization getting flatter, more nuclear, as opposed to these big, rigid pyramids. For that you need to enable decisions to be closer to the point of impact. For that you need to enable people to measure in real time the impact of the decisions that they have to take. There is a whole logical flow. During this interview, you will learn three things: Why the way to survive as a business software vendor is to aim your product strategy at solutions that allow your customers to do things differently, rather than do the things that have not changed for decades a bit better. How solutions that are connected outside-and-in, always on, thinking, learning and autonomous in their behavior will create the winners of tomorrow To become remarkable as a software business you have to surround yourself with people that are not attached to the traditional way of doing 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 help marketers become best in class in marketing, and my guest is Parry Malm, Co-founder and CEO of Phrasee Phrasee uses AI to power email subject lines, Facebook and Instagram ads, and push notifications that outperform copy written by humans. Some of their global clients include Virgin, Domino’s, and The Times. Phrasee won 2017’s Most Innovative AI Company by CB Insights, and was one of the first AI companies in the world to implement an AI ethics policy. Parry is a well-known digital marketing dude and an unconventional thinker. He has worked with countless brands and media outlets to help them optimise their online results, and is one of the world’s leading experts on email marketing. He started his career coding middleware for CRM software, then sent out millions of emails for global brands, before running the strategy department for an ESP. He holds a BBA in Marketing & Statistics. It was indeed the unconventional approach Phrasee is putting across that triggered me, hence I invited Parry to my podcast. We explore how he and his team have created a new category, something that ‘experts’ in the market perceived to be impossible. We talk about how Phrasee’s solution is creating a win-win for digital marketers and the business they represent, and what was required to achieve the level of impact they are creating.  Here are some of his quotes: To synthesize our big idea into one statement is, we believe that marketers can use technology to produce better copy than they had done previously. So what we have now is a very advanced deep learning system that can predict the efficacy of language before it's sent out. So, would you mind those two technologies, what you got is the most luminous copywriter on the planet who can create more copy then 1000 monkeys on 1000 typewriters, with the best predictor of effective copy in the world? What that means is our customers get a small amount of very effective copy every time they log into our platform. So, what we're actually doing is, we're alleviating the least favorite task, which humans are not well suited to, just because we get sort of desensitized or we just sort of get bored of doing the same thing over and over. So, we take away that burden, and we let humans focus on the copy that humans are good at. During this interview, you will learn three things: How, with the right mindset and persistence, you can do what’s never been done before and succeed Why it can be a blessing to finish second in a pitching contest – and as such have to hustle to win real customers and build a product which has wide appeal Why creating Human/Machine combo’s ultimately delivers more value than the sum of its components 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 in the Utility industry, and my guest is Abhay Gupta, CEO of Bidgely. Abhay founded Bidgely, with the mission of leveraging data to transform the utility industry. Today, Bidgely is very well positioned with the technology and knowhow to not only help the utility industry go to market quicker, but also how to optimize their customer engagements. As the CEO of Bidgely, Abhay has led the company from concept to market leadership. Prior to Bidgely, Abhay worked at a combination of energy and technology companies including Grid Net, Echelon and Sun Microsystems. He holds a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, a Master of Science from University of Southern California and M.B.A. from Santa Clara University. It was the big idea behind Bidgely and the fact some of their customers decided to mention it in their television campaigns that led me to invite Abhay to my podcast. We explore the challenges the utility industry is facing on three levels: Their infrastructure, their operation and their customers. We dive deep into the opportunity that’s ahead of us, and why this can only be solved with the support of the latest technologies.  Here are some of his quotes: I ended up in product management and building smart meters for the energy industry somehow in my career.  And we were building smart meters, we realized all this data that is produced by smart meters has so much potential. It's just not being used for its potential.  So, we identified this opportunity to disrupt the decision-making process and the whole opportunity energy industry because if you look at the retail, internet, medical, any of the industry the data is used for so much and so much personalization.  So much of value creation. The energy industry is lagging behind massively. The utility industry has not changed for decades.  The primary business for most of the utilities in the world has been about how to keep the lights on, how to build power plants, how to keep the distribution and transmission of the energy correctly happening. This is the opportunity for the utility and energy industry to completely change and morph themselves into something, what I call at par with the Google and Amazon of the world. During this interview, you will learn three things: How a byproduct of your core innovation could end up giving your customer the ultimate point of differentiation How to make strategic decisions in situations where there are multiple solid routes to solving a problem How focusing on customer experience can result in radical cuts in internal operational cost at the same time. 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 in the marketing arena, and my guest is Paul Roetzer, Founder of the Marketing AI Institute.  Paul Roetzer is also the founder and CEO of PR 20/20. He is the author of The Marketing Performance Blueprint and The Marketing Agency Blueprint, and creator of the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference (MAICON). Paul is an international keynote speaker on the topics marketing talent, technology, strategy and artificial intelligence. He’s a graduate of Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, and he has consulted for hundreds of organizations, from startups to Fortune 500 companies. I’ve been following Pauls work for a while and got triggered by his efforts to educate marketing professionals on what to anticipate now that AI is entering the marketing space. This is why I invited him to my podcast. We explore how the marketing space is changing due to the capabilities of AI, where the changes are most profound today. Based on that insight we discuss a range of approaches for Marketers to prepare themselves. Here are some of his quotes: I believe the industry is just going to transform like, nothing we've ever seen before. If you think about what email and mobile and the internet itself did, I truly believe AI is going to dwarf that. It's just going to transform everything in the next decade, and that includes career paths, and what we're teaching at university. The great irony of marketing automation is that it's manual. So if you're using a marketing automation platform, CRM platform, you as the humans set all the rules of what it does. When AI really gets into the picture and is infused in everything we do, it starts doing that. It starts learning and it never forgets. If you think about the ability we have now to manipulate behavior, to play with emotions, to use fear to trigger actions.And we're doing that with very basic level technology. Now, when that technology is 10 times more powerful or 100 times more powerful, there's very real concerns that you use those tools to do evil instead of good, and it might not be intentional. It could spiral out of control. During this interview, you will learn three things: Why we have to be more pro-active in understanding the impact of AI on our jobs and the impact we can make on the business That every marketeer can benefit from AI today, and it’s our responsibility to explore those opportunities That as an industry we have to drive the conversation to steer the effect AI could or should have on jobs, education and the humanization of our brands See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices