The Tech Blog Writer Podcast - Inspired Tech Startup Stories & Interviews With Tech Leaders, Entrepreneurs And Innovators

Slater Victoroff is the Founder and CTO of Indico. An enterprise AI solution for unstructured content that emphasizes document understanding. Slater has been building machine learning solutions for startups, governments, and Fortune 100 companies for the past seven years and is a frequent speaker at AI conferences. Indico's framework requires 1000x less data than traditional machine learning techniques, and they regularly beat the likes of AWS, Google, Microsoft, and IBM in head-to-head bake-offs. Indico recently announced a $22 million Series B raise. Slater has been building AI, machine learning and deep learning solutions for the enterprise for the better part of the past decade, having worked with everyone from the federal government to two-person startups to the Fortune 100. He has also educated hundreds of business users on successfully implementing deep learning through a simple framework that helps executives rapidly accelerate the adoption of the technology in their businesses. We talk about The futu

Calvin Brown is a tech founder with experience managing global teams and multi-million dollar software deliverables. His software architecture background, coding capabilities, and keen understanding of the entire process help inform his mindful but competitive approach. Calvin is fueled by his passion for understanding the nuances of the technical challenges businesses face across all industries. He considers himself a 'forever student,' eager to build on his hands-on technical foundation by architecting, building, and teaching others how to master the art of making complex technical issues solvable. Calvin has developed applications for some of the world's largest brands. What makes him unique is his dedication to educating entrepreneurs and other tech professionals on how to create the software that we all know and love. The tech group that he created for black coders, Black Men Code, has now grown to over 1,000 professionals. His many publications have aided him in his mission to spread knowledge, educate

Dinesh Malkani is Founder and CEO of Smarten Spaces. His company provides an AI-based technology platform/solutions to transition back to the workplace safely and securely. Smarten Spaces is working with Fortune 500 companies across 50+ cities globally. In today's episode, we talk about hybrid working, back-to-work technology, and the future of the workplace. About Smarten Spaces People spend a significant time inside buildings, and they thrive when these spaces are convenient and intuitive. At Smarten Spaces, their vision is to transform all spaces where people spend time, and they do so by designing technology that keeps human behavior and experience in mind. The company dreams of enabling future-ready spaces that help users optimize for the most value. Our tech solutions allow users to make informed financial decisions based on how their spaces are being utilized while also enhancing the experience of those that interact with the spaces. Better business, better experience. They believe that technology shou

Rich Rudzinski always had an entrepreneurial spirit and found different ways to express that while growing up. He has been infatuated with computers since he first locked eyes on the sweet 486 Windows machine his uncle got his family in the early 90s. He broke, fixed, and gamed on that computer until he saved enough to build his own machine from scratch. The top of his class in high school, Rich followed his passion for computers while studying at UCSD where he graduated early with an innovative art/technology major (ICAM), with a focus on building interactive experiences with new technologies. Rich started his current venture, Tragic Media, in 2009 after working as a technology consultant for a variety of digital agencies. He saw a common theme of project overages, disappointed clients, and outsourcing went awry; and sought to build a company to solve that problem. Initially, a white-label solution for other agencies, Tragic Media now helps businesses of all sizes avoid technology tragedies. Over the years,

Here in the UK, the Daily Mail and Guardian Newspapers will give you to completely different sides of a news story. In the US, CNN and Fox News will often do the same thing. But how did we get here? And is there an appetite to return to factual rather than opinion-based reporting? Tim Huelskamp from 1440 Media joins me in a conversation about the monetization of polarization and how the click-bait structured media world is creating an outrage machine that relies on misleading headlines and sensationalism to sustain itself. I also learn how 1440 media is tackling this problem and the role of technology in helping people find an alternative to their echo chamber and find explore fact base news that challenges rather than strengthens your worldview. About 1440 Media Instead of cleverly crafted messaging and media narratives, 1440 provides an impartial view of what's happening in the world so our readers can form their own conclusions. Scouring hundreds of sources each day, 1440 delivers news with breadth plus de

Nick Ford, the chief technology evangelist at Mendix, discusses some of the recent trends that have contributed to the rise of low-code adoption around the world. He also shares some of the most compelling findings from a recent survey commissioned by Mendix about low-code adoption in the manufacturing sector. I also learn more about the recent launch of Mendix 9 and how it can help businesses develop apps up to 10x faster. About Mendix Mendix, a Siemens business and the global leader in enterprise low-code, is fundamentally reinventing the way applications are built in the digital enterprise. With the Mendix platform, enterprises can "Make with More" by broadening an enterprise's development capability to conquer the software development bottleneck; "Make it Smart," by making apps with rich native experiences that are intelligent, proactive, and contextual; and "Make at Scale," to modernize core systems and build large app portfolios to keep pace with business growth. The Mendix platform is built to promote

This year, global attention has continued to focus on privacy and data ownership questions within the digital sphere. On a mission to solve these issues and change how data is managed and transferred, Ontology has established itself as the platform of choice for developers, enterprises, and end-users alike. Having launched its Mainnet in June 2018, Ontology has gone from strength to strength over the last three years, forging tangible partnerships across various industries. I invited Gloria Wu, Chief of Global Ecosystem Partnerships at Ontology Blockchain on to the podcast to discuss their recent partnerships, including: Daimler — In a move set to transform the experience of drivers all over the world, Ontology recently partnered with the Daimler Mobility AG Blockchain Factory, which was set up to bring the benefits of blockchain innovations and applications to the automotive finance and mobility industry. Microworkers — To further their mutual aim of empowering microworkers across the globe, Ontology is col

Mimecast recently released their annual State of Email Security report, which reveals enterprises faced unprecedented cybersecurity risk, including increasing attack volume, the pandemic-driven digital transformation of work, and generally deficient cyber preparedness and training. The Mimecast report revealed that 61% of organizations were infected with ransomware in 2020. It also found that 79% suffered disruption or financial loss due to cyber preparedness shortcomings. Jeremy Ventura, Senior Security Engineer at Mimecast, discusses the report's findings and the current threat landscape along with the problems organizations face today. We also discuss what organizations can do to combat threats like ransomware. Jeremy also talks about the importance of email and web security and security awareness training, which the report highlights a lack of. About Mimecast Mimecast (NASDAQ: MIME) was born in 2003. Each day, they take on cyber disruption for tens of thousands of customers around the globe and never giv

For a long time, tech existed in the background. Now, Customers want to do business with innovative companies, making marketing new cutting-edge technology (whether it's for mobile orders, contactless payment or online banking) more important than ever before in order to deepen customer loyalty and get continued buy-in. Dominick Profico, CTO, Mobiquity discusses how technology adoption and the need for contactless tools has led companies to bring their digital offerings to the forefront. We also talk about why this advertising is necessary to see a positive ROI on digital transformation projects and how this tactic can keep brands on the cutting edge of innovation moving forward. Mobiquity is a global digital consulting firm that helps the world's leading brands understand, apply, and engage with technology in meaningful ways. We guide companies through the process of designing and building digital products and services that serve a purpose.

Robin Purohit returns to the podcast to talk about the Peritus Assistant. He reveals how it uses AI to source and rank over 25 million answers, tips, and published content on Stack Overflow, related community, and product vendor forums from previous conversations and reported GitHub issues. I learn how It provides DevOps professionals and application developers with recommendations to help them answer support questions on community and vendor sites. Peritus.ai is a patented cloud-based recommendation engine that provides technical advice when it's needed most. The company's current focus is transforming community forums from best effort to a best-in-class support experience by empowering community users to find and answer questions faster. The Peritus roadmap includes use cases for DevOps self-service and IT Support. The Peritus Assistant, which is available as a free Chrome extension on the Google Chrome Store, is pre-trained with machine learning to empower developers, DevOps engineers, and SREs to answer c

Rohit Maheshwari, Head of Strategy and Product at Subex, joins me in a conversation about Augmented Analytics and the future of data analytics in enterprises. Augmented Analytics is one of the latest data and analytics trends that is gaining considerable traction. Many organizations have realized the importance of Big Data and its role in decision-making across the business. However, this sheer volume of data available to organizations is making effective interpretation a real challenge. According to Forrester Research, less than 0.5% of all data is ever analyzed and used. In contrast, a mere 12% of enterprise data is used to make decisions. According to IDC Forecast, this will only make it worse with the growth in IoT-connected devices, which is expected to generate 79.4 Zeta Bytes (ZB) of data across 41.6 billion devices. We talk about how leveraging augmented analytics will greatly accelerate transformation projects in enterprises and the typical roadblocks to AI adoption for decision analytics. We also di

The "search engine wars" are heating up. But Google, Yahoo, and Bing are not the only players in the game. One of the fastest-growing search engines in the U.S. is Ecosia (Ecosia.org). Ecosia is an ethical tech and not-for-profit search engine that aims to tackle the climate crisis by planting and protecting trees around the world. As a certified B-Corp, Ecosia joins the ranks of companies like Patagonia, Ben & Jerrys, and Allbirds, who have met the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance. This "eco-friendly" alternative to other search engines can track the number of trees they are planting with their searches, which helps reduce CO2 and the impact of climate change. The company is founded on green principles and has built solar farms that produce enough renewable energy to power its searches twice over. The excess actively removes dirty energy from the grid. Ecosia is also currently the largest financier of native tree restoration in the world. Ecosia is now the fifth-largest

Avi Freedman is the co-founder and CEO of Kentik, a network observability company. He has decades of experience as a technologist, networking executive and is also a professional poker player. Before Kentik, he was at Akamai for over a decade, as VP Network Infrastructure and then Chief Network Scientist. Prior to that, Avi started Philadelphia's first ISP (netaxs) in 1992, later running the network at AboveNet and serving as CTO for ServerCentral. Avi discusses lessons learned throughout his career, including how his poker skills have helped him in the tech industry.

Jingming Li is the former vice president and CTO of Alipay, where he spent seven years helping to build the company which lifted millions of people out of poverty in China. He is now setting his sights on doing the same thing for creators through a new company and service, TrovaPage, Which has already been used by thousands of entrepreneurs to build, market, and bill for services, ranging from yoga instruction to guitar lessons, to small restaurants, to non-profits. While the market for e-commerce solutions for selling products is competitive and mature, it has failed to develop a comprehensive solution for creators that want to easily build, market, and monetize their own business. Current solutions such as Yelp or Fiverr are either too expensive, lack the necessary functionality, or are overly complex for creators to use, and trying to get a handle on all of the CRM, social media, invoicing and bill payment solutions needed to run a business is beyond most small businesses and creators. Jingming discusses w

Mike Lynch shares his startup story, the idea behind Darktrace, and how we still need to get better at turning ideas in university seminar rooms into saleable products. As an investor and technologist, Mike also shares what sort of ideas and pitches he would like most want to see and how AI will change the legal industry. Dr. Mike Lynch OBE FREng FRS is a celebrated technologist, entrepreneur, and investor. Having founded and lead some of the UK's most successful tech companies, including Autonomy, Blinkx, and Cambridge Neurodynamics, Mike then created Invoke Capital in 2012 to create and support world-leading fundamental tech businesses such as Darktrace and Luminance. Referred to as the UK's answer to Bill Gates, Mike read Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, where he also gained a Ph.D. and held a research fellowship in adaptive pattern recognition. He was awarded an OBE for Services to Enterprise in 2006, is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was elect

Dr. Shaka Bahadu, Harvard College, Cornell Medical and Stanford grad, who is the is the COO and co-founder of Cipher Skin. Cipher Skin: Cipher Skin is a data company founded in 2017, built on technology that translates the physical world into actionable insights. Cipher Skin's patented technology, Cipher Mesh, is a network of sensors that can be printed on any textile and wrapped around anything—a person, a pipe, a bridge. This technology captures gapless data and translates it through proprietary software to provide instantaneous, visualized data and diagnostics. Because of Cipher Skin's versatility, there are nearly unlimited applications, from physical therapy and training to continuous monitoring in pipeline management. The brainchild of combat veterans, Cipher Skin has also countless military applications. At its core, however, Cipher Skin melds next-gen hardware and software to help make sense of our complex world. Having recently scored Series A funding last month, Cipher Skin has found great success w

Varun Talwar, CEO of Tetrate joins me on today's episode in a discussion about advancements in the service mesh sector and the pros and cons of the next generation of cloud networking. I learn how Tetrate is an enterprise-ready service mesh company that is on a mission to connect the world's services and create the next generation of cloud networking. The company's roster includes clients such as, FICO and the DoD. As an industry leader and veteran, Varun has nearly two decades of global experience across the technology sector. Not only is he the co-founder of Tetrate, but he is also the co-creator of the gRPC and Istio projects -- he served as the PM on those projects during his tenure at Google. Varun is passionate about creating a safer and more responsible path to modernization for enterprises.

ART AI is the world's largest gallery of AI-generated art. Our gallery displays thousands of original designs authentically created by artificial intelligence. We embarked on this fascinating expedition to explore how artificial intelligence can generate art that people can emotionally connect with. Since the beginning of time, art has served as a tool for emotional expression. It was used to evoke feelings, inspire ideas, and offer new creative perspectives on the world around us. Following the rise in technological development, new age mediums started to form as extensions of the human mind, opening the gateway to new waves of arts that were never possible before. As passionate believers in both art and technology, the team was greatly intrigued by the idea of developing artificial intelligence that would be able to affect people emotionally while inspiring creativity and innovative thinking. Ben Kovalis, co-founder and CMO at ART AI, joins me on the podcast to discuss how they use artificial intelligence t

Gabriel Engel is the CEO and co-founder of Rocket.Chat, the leading open-source team communication platform that allows users to chat securely on the web, desktop, or mobile and offers the choice of both Self-Managed and SaaS options. Rocket.Chat is used by companies and individuals from a variety of sectors ranging from education and technology to financial, non-profit, governmental and public services. Rocket.Chat Marketplace launched in September 2018, enabling users to build, browse and download apps on Rocket.Chat's newest app ecosystem, allowing for easy customization of the platform with a range of plugins, themes and integrations with other key software. Gabriel founded Rocket.Chat in 2015 and is passionate about collaboration tools, open-source and new tech. Prior to Rocket.Chat, Gabriel co-founded Konecty, and worked as Product Manager for Business Innovation and Mobile Applications at Vodafone Global Enterprise. Gabriel's long-term vision for Rocket.Chat is to replace email with a real-time federat

Twenty years ago, fleet managers provided drivers with paper maps and driver scorecards and wished them well on their delivery. Today, fleet managers and drivers have taken on an entirely new role: technology professional. With advanced telematics tracking solutions and the development of AI and machine learning in recent years, those in the fleet world have become innovators and adapters in their own right, using new technology to optimize routes, IoT for preventative maintenance, and AI video monitoring technology to capture a driver's every move to keep them as safe as possible. IntelliShift, a connected vehicle, and asset management solution, has been around for two decades of this transformation through their parent company, VTS, and has seen first-hand how driver behavior monitoring solutions like their AI Video has led to fewer accidents and lives saved. John Cunningham, founder, and CEO of IntelliShift (and VTS), discusses how roles have drastically changed in fleet management over the last twenty