The Remarkable SaaS Podcast

My guest on the podcast this week is Mark Esposito, Professor of Business and Economics at Harvard University & Co-Founder at Nexus Frontier Tech Mark Esposito is a professor of Business and Economics, teaching at Harvard University's Division of Continuing Education, and serving as an Institutes Council co-leader at the Microeconomics of Competitiveness program at Harvard Business School. He also holds professorships at Hult International Business School and IE Business School in Paris In 2016, he was appointed as Research Fellow at the Circular Economy Research Initiative at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. Esposito was appointed a fellow of the Mohammed bin Rashid School of Government in Dubai in 2017 and as a global expert for the World Economic Forum. Mark was shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award in 2017 because of his work around the DRIVE framework which he co-created together with Terence Tse which I interviewed in one of my earlier podcasts. I personally met Mark at the Future of Business forum in Paris where we both spoke, and have I read their book myself in the meantime. The framework it provides inspired me, hence I invited Mark to my podcast. During our interview, we explore the DRIVE framework and in particular how it helps organizations of all sizes to reveal the critical insights to shape their future proactively and find new unexploited markets. Here are some of his quotes: “DRIVE is a framework of what we call the future trajectories, things that we think will happen for a fact that will have an impact on major socio‑economic systems. Rather than thinking about the future as being this futuristic scenario far away from us, we try to determine what the future will look like, which gave the title to the book, by understanding the present. ..it's merely to understand how to position themselves in the next few years. For me, more than a competitive advantage is a position in advantage. They are proactively creating the future they want to have. …as much as you benchmark most disruption doesn't happen from your own industry. It happens from outside of your own field of vision DRIVE is a way to engage you with multiple factors. Some of them might be what we call no market factors, factors that are not currently in your business model.” During this interview, you will learn three things: What questions to raise in order to constantly and optimally position my company for advantage? Why it’s key to develop a strategic insight capability in-house rather than rely on external consultants And why you’ll create more value by making your products compatible and combinable. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest on the podcast is Dmitri Matskevich, Co-founder and CEO at DBrain, a San Francisco based AI startup. Dmitri is a serial entrepreneur, and a data geek. He found human-generated data is more important than algorithms for AI solutions, and here’s where he found a large gap in the market. This led him to co-found Dbrain, the first community owned platform on blockchain for training Artificial Intelligence. It connects the exploding AI demand on human-labelled data with the abundant global supply of online workers. In doing so it provides potentially +2B unbanked people an opportunity to raise their standard of living and become a part of global financial system due to a blockchain cross-border reach.   This inspired me, hence I invited Dmitri to be a guest on my podcast. We explore his vision of making humans great again, what the key ingredients are to do so, how this can be accelerated, and how this can help distribute wealth from high-income countries to countries with low-income. Here are some of his quotes:   “In order to understand how create artificial intelligence, you need to understand how brain works and vice versa.   If we want to make artificial intelligence more scalable to democratize AI for broader use for a lot of business, we want to solve this problem of custom data for every use case. Basically, the goal of this project is to de-brain from the distributed brain. …we came to an idea that we need to create this platform for humans to be engaged in training AI. It's not about some high‑paid data scientist mostly. It could be almost anybody with some skills which you have just from evolution …everybody thought that AI can make life miserable and eliminate a lot of jobs. What I see right now that it can assist in a lot of jobs. At the same way, it can create a lot of jobs. However, without humans, without human knowledge, it's nothing”   By listening to this interview, you will learn three things: 1)   How to identify disruptive ideas by connecting the dots between challenges of seemingly not obviously connect stakeholders 2)   Why developing a crowd-mindset is not only critical to create scale and speed, but also to creating complete new markets. 3)   how to overcome some large-scale obstacles in an elegant and smart way. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest on the podcast is week is Skyler Place, Chief Behavioral Science Officer at Cogito Corporation in Boston. He is a computational social scientist with an entrepreneurial mindset. At Cogito he leads the company's efforts to combine behavioral science and artificial intelligence to create more emotionally intelligent humans. As you can imagine, this inspired me, and hence I invited Skyler to my podcast. We explore how technology such as AI can increase the quality of conversations people can have with each other, and how this is driving remarkable impact for organizations, their employees and their customers. Here are some of Skyler’s quotes: “The big idea behind Cogito is that we can use modern artificial intelligence to create tools that can help improve humanity. To help improve how people communicate with one another. We can help people be their best selves. We've built a platform that can listen to conversations and help individuals understand how they can speak differently in order to have better conversations. In order to retain and grow their customer base, the quality of the conversation between the employees of the organization, the call center agents, and the customers calling in has become a critical way to build a lifetime value or to build a lifelong customer. There's so much value for this approach to improve all different aspects of the human experience. We continue to focus on opportunities that allow us to have the most positive impact on society.” By listening to this interview, you will learn three things: 1)   Why focusing on ‘moments of truth’ is what ultimately defines success or failure – and therefore can become your core differentiator. 2)   What’s required to develop software solutions that will actually be voted the most favorite product by its users 3)   How exploring ‘non-customers’ can create complete new unexplored markets for you See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest on the podcast this week is Ryan Falkenberg, Co-founder, and Co-CEO of CLEVVA, a South African Augmented AI company that leverages digital intelligence to empower, not simply replace people. Ryan has always been fascinated by what makes people tick, and what makes them perform optimally. He’s been frustrated at the slow pace of change when it comes to education and learning. To address that he created a learning consultancy, Hi-Performance Learning, that aimed to push the boundaries of organizational learning through e-learning, gamification and expert systems. To then remove the constraints by tech. bandwidth he founded CUDA Technologies. Yet no matter how they optimized formal learning, a core problem remained. People still had to memorize and repeat complex decision formula in a world that was accelerating. It was time for a complete rethink. This was the starting point for CLEVVA The big idea behind CLEVVA inspired me, hence I invited Ryan to my podcast. During our interview, we explore how we can use technology to boost the differentiation factor of people. How we can relieve them from the stress of making mistakes and the consequences that often has – and instead take the weight of their shoulders to let them truly focus what they love doing and where they add the most value. Here are some of Ryan’s quotes:   "Human beings are currently trapped in the role of robots” "How do we humanize our workforces? How do we make them powerful as opposed to making them robotic?" Our challenge ‑‑ and I think it's a global issue ‑‑ is that, in schools, we essentially teach young people a couple of mental skill sets. The whole journey of teaching people to replicate, teaching people to memorize and teaching people to comply was something that was very powerful in the industrial era. Currently, human beings are not differentiators. They're a scale problem The volume of human resources that are underutilized is enormous. I realized I can get you doing stuff which would normally take me two or three years. You can get it in a matter of weeks. That becomes very exciting for companies, but it also becomes exciting for the individuals because they really start differentiating themselves.   By listening to this interview, you will learn three things: 1) That to deliver remarkable impact with your solution you have to understand the granular truth of where you solution hits the ground, and then work backwards to remove all barriers 2) What the key ingredients are to maximize the impact technologies such as AI can make in unlocking Human potential 3) Why it is key to blend your solution with the operating systems your users are working with all day long. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest on the podcast this week is AJ Abdallat, founder and CEO of Beyond Limits He’s is on a mission to make life better for all of us by changing the landscape of artificial intelligence so that it can achieve its unfulfilled potential. He’s a serial entrepreneur with more than 19 years of experience of bringing high-tech start-up’s to fruition, specializing in artificial intelligence, reasoning systems, and smart sensors.   He founded Beyond Limits in 2014 to drive new innovation and IP by commercializing AI programs from the NASA Deep Space program to solve challenging problems for companies on Earth. The company's technology is an evolutionary leap beyond conventional AI to a human-like ability to perceive, understand, correlate, learn, teach, reason, and solve problems faster than conventional AI solutions. In other words, their solutions can magnify human talent, enabling people to apply their attention, experience, and their passions to solving problems that truly matter.   This inspired me, in particular to understand how their products could help to solve the challenge of capturing and scaling unique skills and expertise, in a world where the working population is shrinking rapidly. Hence, I invited AJ to my podcast. Here are some of his quotes: “What we're trying to do with Beyond Limits, we feel that those same conditions and problems that exist in space, we can apply those to some of those complex problems here on earth, in energy healthcare. We're captioning that human knowledge in AI in what we call cognitive agents. We're actually are taking the knowledge of a highly skilled individual and scaling that across the organization where We're allowing less skilled individual to be able to utilize that. …in the space business, you really have very experienced and seasoned scientists. A lot of them they love their job. Quite of them are close to retirement. You really want to capture that knowledge and experience, and you can transfer that to the younger generation. This is where we believe there is a significant collaboration between man and machine to do that.”   By listening to this podcast, you will you will learn three things: 1)   That a key element to crack for AI to be truly valuable in dynamic situations is to deal with situations where the data does not exist, is missing, or corrupt. 2)   Why we need to focus more on solving the growing human intelligence scarcity challenge that many organizations face (which goes beyond just freeing existing capacity from non-value adding repetitive tasks) 3)   Why every company will fare well by making a conscious decision to focus on those complex, harsh, zero tolerance problems where it can make a unique impact. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest on the podcast this week is Tomas Ratia Garcia Oliveros, Co-founder, and CEO of Frase, a Boston based AI startup with a big mission: to help you research faster. Tomas did his master at Harvard and became very interested in publishing and research. As an outcome of the Harvard Innovation Lab, he founded Folio, a digital publishing platform for open-access academic journals which he ran for 2 years. After that, he founded Dat Ventures, a Soft-landing accelerator program for international startups aiming to break into the US. His passion for research and technology drove him to establish another startup around the big idea to transform the way people write and research. This was the start of Frase. The story behind Frase intrigued me, as this is could fundamentally change the way marketers from all around the world approach their digital content strategy. Hence, I invited him to my podcast. During our interview, we explore the big idea behind Frase, but more importantly what is required to deliver remarkable impact and arrive at a product that has the potential to transform an industry. Here are some of his quotes: "...me and my partner were wondering, how will AI change the way people write and research?  an AI agent that can understand the writer and try to build on the knowledge of the continues understanding of someone writing and use that knowledge to do research and help the writer augment their research capacity. That whole process of having to sort through results, click on all the results, then go through all the steps and go back to the word processor. That's what I consider to be one of the most inefficient processes on the Internet. the main problems we try to solve, which is cutting down the research process so that people can focus on the creative and start the excite of writing. Some of these people don't even use Google anymore. The idea of having a research for writing in one place seems to be very valuable for the type of user who is actually making a living out of producing unique content which is a big market." By listening to this interview you will learn three things: 1)   In order to deliver products with remarkable impact, what do you prioritize? 2)   What are some of the biggest challenges to anticipate, 3)   and why engaging with the market prior to launching is key to success. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest on the podcast this week is Adam Martel, CEO of Gravyty During his career, Adam founded three companies and had a diverse and eclectic background in advertising, public relations, journalism and collegiate athletic coaching. His passion, however, is with fundraising. Being a seasoned major gifts fundraiser himself, he has gained a deep and personal understanding of the challenges that all nonprofit organizations face while trying to raise money to support their causes. Solving these challenges is his mission – hence he founded Gravyty, a Boston-based artificial intelligence company developing products to revolutionize frontline fundraising at nonprofit organizations. During our interview, we explore how to unlock potential beyond the value conventional business software provides us, what drives the opportunity, and what mindset is required to uncover and create completely new markets. Here are some quotes from Adam: “…we found that because we were using the CRM as the primary tool for fundraising, it was limiting the number of donors that I could get to. The thesis was that if you could have your technology learn you instead of you learning your technology, we could change the way that frontline fundraisers and sales folks interact with their tools. The tools could actually help them and be a multiplier for their efforts in building relationships. That's really where we started. We've come a long way since then but the thesis is still the same. Blackbaud, Salesforce, Ellucian and Community Brands, they're all selling databases. They're all selling the cup that holds the water, but nobody's doing anything with the water itself. We think that our work in artificial intelligence is going to define the next 5 to 10 years of what happens in fundraising in non‑profit organizations This isn't about Gravyty, it's about our customers. It's about the wonderful work that our customers are doing. If we can accelerate cancer research, if we can help eradicate HIV, if we can change the world and help these organizations change the world, it's our job to do that. They don't need to fit into us, we need to accelerate them”. By listening to this interview, you will learn three things: 1) That for AI to reach its full potential it requires to change behaviors, not just provide insights 2) That looking for abundance can provide the key to introduce transformative change 3) Why UI-less experiences are the enabler for people to become far more powerful See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest on the podcast this week is Susanne Baars, Founder of the Global Human Genome Foundation and CEO of Social Genomics   Susanne is known as the Dutch DNA Queen. She’s a woman on a mission which is to create Universal Access to Genomic Knowledge for every human on our planet. Susanne is an exponential tech innovator and genetic expert. In the past ten years, she became to realize that no single person owns their DNA – the material that makes us who we are. The same material that empowers us to solve the world’s most deadliest diseases. Because of this she founded the Global Human Genome Foundation, a moonshot initiative to provide the world population the key to their DNA and enable them to share data with scientists around the world.   During this interview we focus on the big idea behind Susanne’s mission and explore what’s required to deliver exponential value – The mindset, what to look for, what questions to answer, how to start, the key choices you need to make, and what people or partners to gather around you… Here are some of Susanne’s quotes: “For me, it's a global mission to make genomic knowledge available for every person on earth. every year millions of people are dying because of a lack of access to available data. I think that's just not right, and we should do something with this. It's to dare to think big. It's knowing what you know, the unique knowledge that can make a change in the world, and to be able to think differently. Not linear or locally, but try to think, "How would I like to see the future?" It's usually the biggest world problems that end up with the best business models. Follow your dream, follow your heart, and the best thing will happen to you.”   By listening to this interview, you will learn three things: 1)   That innovation is not always about creating technology yourself, but more about leveraging available technology in creative ways to deliver remarkable impact 2)   How a bold vision can work as a lever to accelerate execution 3)   And why focusing on problems is not always the best way to uncover untapped potential See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest on the podcast this week is Ivo Totev, Chief Marketing Officer of Cloud ERP at SAP  He is a seasoned marketing veteran with more than 25 years of experience in the IT industry. In his current role at SAP, he’s responsible for defining marketing strategy and vision for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Business ByDesign, and SAP Business One. Prior to his role at SAP, Ivo was the CMO of Unit4 Group and served as CMO and Head of Cloud Business at Software AG.   During our interview we explore the changing nature and role of business software in today’s society and what needs to be done to ensure we maximize the impact we can gain from it. Here are some of Ivo’s quotes:    “Business software is the foundation of changing over business models that we see around the worlds." "This is the backbone of driving our whole economy worldwide." " With the rise of Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, deep machine learning, now we're getting into a phase where business software actually understands what I am up to, and can proactively help me." "This is so revolutionary. This changes so much that, I'm sure in 10 years, we'll be looking back and saying, "Well, you know, the Internet was a great foundation and cloud was also a great foundational element in their first generations, but none of those technologies or movements really changed the way we see business software as much as this latest revolution,"  "As responsible people living in our society, we need to make sure that we create technologies and solutions, and drive a discussion into society in a way that, in the end, people looking back at this year will say, "It was disruptive, it changed the life of many people. It changed the lifes of many, many more people to the positive."    By listening to this interview, you will learn three things:  1) How, by leveraging various technology components, you can change the nature of decades old-application concepts - even ERP.  2) Why we should strive to make business applications completely ‘hands-free’   3) And why every entrepreneur should put serious time aside to rethink its business model  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest on the podcast this week is Alex Zhavoronkov, CEO of Insilico Medicine On a day to day basis, Alex is the CEO of Insilico Medicine (www.insilico.com), which is focused exclusively on developing and applying deep learning methods to drug discovery. It’s probably the largest next-gen AI and bioinformatics company in the world focusing exclusively on aging and age-related diseases. Alex is also the director of the Biogerontology Research Foundation and the founder of the International Aging Research Portfolio. He heads the laboratory of regenerative medicine at the Center for Pediatric Hematology-Oncology and Immunology and is the adjunct professor at the Buck Institute for Research in Aging in Novato, California and the international adjunct professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. As an anti-aging expert, he is convinced that even people past their 70s, who are in good health, should set their longevity expectations to live past 150. It is a realistic goal considering the current longevity records and progress in technology. Stretching longevity expectations may help delay or reverse the psychological aging. This inspired me to invite Alex to my podcast, to explore how technology can be used to accelerate progress in this field, how it can augment researchers around the world to create breakthroughs that will ultimately increase longevity for all of us. We discuss the big idea behind his company to extend healthy productive longevity, first by understanding the size of the challenge, from there exploring how technology can help to address the challenge, and if applied the right way, the magnitude of the impact it could create. Here are some quotes:   “Aging is one of the major challenges that humanity is facing today. The population has tripled over the past 70 years, and the population also got older.” “We need to identify new ways to keep people in their optimal healthy state for as long as possible, just to ensure that the economy remains intact.”  “There is lots and lots of data available for aging research, but AI takes it to the next level. It basically accelerates everything. Think about this as a carriage versus Formula 1.” “If you are pursuing aging research and you find a way to extend the life of everybody on the planet by one year, you generate seven billion, well, seven‑and‑a‑half billion, quality-adjusted life years. That is really the scale we're talking about." By listening to this podcast you will learn the following: 1) Why the best innovations start with the end goal in mind 2) How, by clearly defining your Business Model upfront, you can avoid delays and unpleasant surprises 3) Why data privacy is becoming a critical aspect of innovation success. 4) And why it’s key to surround yourself with like-minded people who share the same passion, and are not just in for the money. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices