The Remarkable SaaS Podcast

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 the 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 they "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 beforeThe 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 itHow ‘skills’ will be the answer to making AI and Machine Learning more accessible and change the way we’re creating solutionsWhy, in order to be successful, you have to stay persistent and remove the temptations to drift away from your vision

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 that 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 disintermediating 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.

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 valueThat with today’s technology there’s a multitude of opportunities to democratize capabilities that up to now were only available to the eliteWhat the ingredients are to create the solutions that turn customers into evangelists

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 tomorrowTo become remarkable as a software business you have to surround yourself with people that are not attached to the traditional way of doing

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 PhraseePhrasee 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 that 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 succeedWhy 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 appealWhy creating Human/Machine combo’s ultimately delivers more value than the sum of its components

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 know-how to not only help the utility industry go to market quicker, but also 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 an 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 differentiationHow to make strategic decisions in situations where there are multiple solid routes to solving a problemHow focusing on customer experience can result in radical cuts in internal operational cost at the same time

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 of 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 Paul's 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 proactive in understanding the impact of AI on our jobs and the impact we can make on the businessThat every marketeer can benefit from AI today, and it’s our responsibility to explore those opportunitiesThat 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

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation in the ERP space, and my guest is Vinnie MirchandaniVinnie is the founder of Deal Architect - a Technology strategy and negotiation firm listed as a leading "boutique" by the Black Book of Outsourcing. Vinnie also founded IQ4hire, a project marketplace and Jetstream Group, a sourcing advisory firm.Earlier in his career, he had various technology consulting roles at PwC (now IBM) 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 are Silicon Collar, The New Polymath and The New Technology Elite. His latest book is SAP Nation 3.0 (See Amazon), and this triggered me to invite Vinnie again to my podcast.We explore the changes in the ERP landscape over the last 5 years, in particular amongst the big 3 – SAP, Oracle, and Workday. We explore why, after 20 years of ERP in the cloud, today there’s still not enough traction.Here are some of his quotes:“In the last five years, two things have changed. One is that SAP has been a product launch machine. I mean, they have launched more products than any other I would say technology vendor.The other thing I saw pleasantly with SAP was how much more open they were this time.One of the disappointing things about cloud has been, you know, it's 20 years old now. NetSuite was born in 98, Salesforce was born in 99. But if you do a breakdown by global world region, by industry, by business process, only about 20% is filled.So, the vendor community hasn’t delivered enough. And on the other hand, the buyer community has been very slow to adopt it.I raised an alarm. I go, this is scary, guys. After 20 years, both the buyers and the vendors are just not moving. Something's not right.”During this interview, you will learn four things:Why it’s key for ERP vendors to not just modernize the technology. Modernize the business processes.That a big opportunity is left virtually untouched and that is: leveraging the biggest benefit of the cloud: Data, and utilizing that to introduce real value shiftsWhy it’s key to wake up and realize it’s urgent after 20 years to start moving ‘Bystanders’, i.e., ERP legacy customers.Why systems integrators should start to apply machine learning and automation to their own business. Stop just selling bodies, and leverage the learnings and data from millions of CRM and ERP projects to make these projects faster, cheaper and a lot less risky

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to deliver upon the promise of self-healing systems. My guest is Mohit Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of Opas AIMohit has spent the last decade working on wide variety of interesting problems in Infrastructure, Big Data, and ML. He has run and managed infrastructure at massive scale and felt the pain of operating them firsthand. This pain, combined with his experience in Big Data and ML, led to the incubation of Opas AI. Before founding Opas AI, Mohit held multiple roles at BloomReach, Groupon, Google, and Amazon. He has a Bachelor's in CS from IIT Kharagpur and a Master's from UCDavis.The vision behind Opas AI me to invite Mohit to my podcast: to create a single solution that can find, diagnose, and fix even the most complex performance and availability problems in your applications and infrastructure. We explore the fact that today’s applications and infrastructure have evolved far faster than the technology used to measure and manage them. We dive into the challenges that this provides to IT teams as they drown under the weight of too many tools, too many dashboards and too many meaningless alerts, and most importantly, how technology such as AI and Machine Learning can help remove these challenges and risks for good.Here are some of his quotes:“We are in this journey of building self-healing systems.It doesn't matter what kind of IT systems you're running.The cost of failure has been growing higher and higher.There was one thing in early 2000 if Amazon site was down for 15 minutes probably wouldn't turn up on New York Times homepage.However, a few minutes outage on your site [today] can become a massive PR issue. And the cost is not only the lost revenue. That's definitely something that you see right away but the bigger cost is in the negative PR. And God save you if you are providing service to other SAAS providers.We can win customers. We can buy contracts. But buying credibility, winning credibility is a long-term process. You may be doing very well for the last five years; a two-hour outage will basically wipe out that credibility.”By listening to this interview, you will learn three things:What are the key ingredients that are required to build self-healing systemsWhat the art of listening to customers really means – the key is not to hear what they are saying, but to understand what they are meaningThat you should be problem-focused, not solution-focused, to become truly successful

This podcast interview focuses on the power of curiosity in innovation and my guest is Dr. Diane Hamilton, author of Cracking the Curiosity CodeShe has a contagious passion for improving interpersonal communication.In addition to being a nationally syndicated radio host, award-winning speaker, author, and educator, Dr. Hamilton is a thought leader in the fields of leadership, sales, marketing, management, engagement, personality, curiosity, and motivation.To help improve relationships in the workplace — and performance as a result — Dr. Hamilton draws on her decades of work experience in software, computers, corporate training, pharmaceuticals, real estate, mortgage lending, social media, education, and publishing.She’s a sought-after expert in emotional intelligence, and her research has been published widely in peer-reviewed journals. She is the creator of the Curiosity Code Index® and the author of four books sold worldwide: Cracking the Curiosity Code, The Online Student’s User Manual, How to Reinvent Your Career, and It’s Not You, It’s Your Personality. Her book regarding personalities was required reading at an Arizona-based university, where she was also nominated for an honorary doctorate in addition to her traditionally obtained Ph.D. in Business Management.The release of her latest book, ‘Cracking the Curiosity Code’, triggered me to invite Diane to my podcast. We explore why curiosity is such a key trait to develop in relation to innovation and dealing with top business issues. We do a deep dive on the four factors that impact curiosity, and what to do to start growing the curiosity level inside your organization.Here are some of her quotes:“I first started writing the book because I was very interested in what kept people from being curious.I really found four factors impacted curiosity, which were Fear, Assumption, Technology and Environment.My hope was to help individuals and organizations to develop what I think is such a key trait.It's the spark that leads to motivation and to drive and for you to get anywhere with communication, critical thinking, leadership, creativity, teamwork, engagement, you name all the top issues that leadership struggles with.Once you're able to get all those factors in line, and then once you're innovative, you're productiv,e and you know everybody's engaged, it kind of solves all the problems and so that's what I thought was so fascinating.What I was trying to do was just kind of figure out what's the spark behind it all that's that we could fix and, and that's what I kept coming back to was improving curiosity.”During this interview, you will learn three things:That what made you successful in the past, isn’t likely going to help you survive in the future – And growing your curiosity index is the key to your successWhy you have to watch out to avoid aimless curiosity in your organization, and what to do about itThat, a critical way to grow a culture of curiosity starts when top management shows they way – they need to walk the talk.Get related ideas from a few blogsWhy your product roadmap fails to deliver remarkable valueHow to stay relevant in your category?Are you in the comfort zone, or where the magic happens?