This podcast interview focuses on the journey and the big resilience lessons learned by a startup as it moved from start, to launch, various pivots towards ultimate success. My guest is Paul Wickers, Founder, and CEO of Huggg.me Paul spent 14 years in the Structured Finance team at RBS and then Santander. During this time he came to study the social economics of the greetings card industry. He realized that the success of physically sending a greeting card in the offline world had never been achieved in the online world. This helped him develop the insight that the principles of giving and receiving emotionally impactful gifts could be applied in a digital way - it just had to be done in a different way.  This became the launch of Huggg in 2015. Paul build the platform in his spare time, left his job in 2016, and the platform was first launched in July 2017. But the journey of his company wasn't an instant success from the start. And it's the story of business resilience that really caught my attention - and inspired me to invite Paul to my podcast.  Listening to this interview will feel like watching a movie trailer unfold. We explore the lessons Paul learned as he took his product to market. Initially towards Consumers, later towards Business to Business. We discuss the importance of product-market fit. We discuss his lessons learned when it comes to allocating funding to the right levers in the business. We go through what happened when COVID hit the world - the rationalization that followed, then the hibernation, then the rebirth, and finally how sheer perseverance and focusing on the problem, not the product helped him succeed.  Here are some of his quotes: At the start, any startup idea, especially if it's novel, is a great big bag of all the things that are likely to go wrong. Because in all likelihood, it won't be a success, it's just statistically unlikely for you to actually succeed. So on day one, you've got a great big bag of problems that you're going to have to overcome. And your job over time is to make that bag lighter before you take it to an investor. Because the more of those risks you've gotten rid of, and you've got a lighter bag, when you go forward to raise the next round of money, the better your proposition is because you don't want to prove it. Now what I spent was too long on like creating the first product and not enough time just knocking over those barriers. Actually, because I underestimated I was confident that the idea would work. And I didn't realize how hard product-market fit is.  During this interview, you will learn four things: That if you can create a constant feeling of genuine urgency around the mission you'll get the best out of people longer term. That your company will become stronger by being plain honest about what's the real situation in a crisis situation. It helps create great bonding That nothing is ever as bad or as good as it first seems.  That when one thing goes away, other things will open up. So focus on the positive things that you can do, rather than the negative  For more information about the guest from this week: Paul Wickers Website Huggg.me 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 grow the impact we can make by superpowering our communications. My guest is Surbhi Rathore, Co-Founder, and CEO of Symbl. Surbhi is an international tech leader who advocates for Women in AI with a personal mission to inspire more women to work in Data Science. She comes with experience from technical and customer-obsessed roles in both startups and enterprises such as Nevis Networks and Amdocs. She is a national speaker, an accessibility equity champion, and the ultimate adventure capitalist. Today she's is the CEO and co-founder of Symbl.ai. With her team, she's on a mission to leverage AI technology to democratize conversational tech to make collaboration effortless. And in line with that, they created a new category of voice tech infrastructure – “Conversational Intelligence as a Service”.  This inspired me, and hence I invited Surbhi to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we communicate and collaborate digitally. We discuss what is required to capitalize on the potential of human intellect by making collaboration effortless. We also address the tough choices Surbhi made in not going with the flow - but instead taking a radically different approach to solving the big problem in the market. Last but not least we discuss what it takes to build a remarkable software business.  Here are some of her quotes: When we started the company, it was super crowded. There were so many businesses trying to build automated meeting notes products. I think we always had the right positioning in our minds. But as a founder, it's so hard to articulate that and other people. It was hard for us to just articulate our go-to-market motion of the product that we are building the right way. Although we had an idea that what is going to set us apart. But I think it just came over time as we evolved in terms of 'Okay, we want to we want to build a platform that enables businesses to analyze conversation data without building an in house data science team.' So making it absolutely easy and removing the dependency on data. So there is no data labeling training annotation that goes in the cycle. It's a plug-and-play experience. And that really created a very compelling like aha moment for businesses. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why, to streamline your business and get razor-focused, it's key to get crystal clear on your positioning. That love for the problem is critical to success, but there are some other equally crucial skills to develop/look for in new hires The importance of the role of marketing and content creation early in the lifecycle of your company to establish the foundation for inbound traffic How to prevent investing your newly gained funding on the wrong initiatives For more information about the guest from this week: Surbhi Rathore Website Symbl See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to transform our workplace into a fair workplace - starting with fair pay. My guest is Maria Colacurcio, CEO of Syndio Maria is a tech veteran – she previously co-founded Smartsheet, which went public in 2018. She spent three years at Starbucks, one of the first Fortune 50 companies to go public with pay equity results. Having started her career working on congressional campaigns, she has a long history of mission-driven work, and a compassionate and competitive attitude to spur change. She serves on the board of the nonprofit Fair Pay Workplace and has been named by Goldman Sachs Builders + Innovators Summit one of this year’s 100 most intriguing entrepreneurs. As a CEO and a mom of 7, Maria is walking the walk on eradicating workplace inequities. Today Maria is the CEO at Syndio, a SaaS startup helping companies around the world create an equitable workplace for all employees, regardless of gender, race, or ethnicity.  That inspired me, and hence I invited Maria to my podcast. We explore what's broken in today's workplace when it comes to valuing people for the contribution they bring and paying them fairly independent of who they are.  We discuss the pivot and what it took to change course. We discuss the effects the Pandemic introduced, and what was critical to not only bounce back, but actually come out stronger. And last but not least we address the role of the CEO in creating a business that people love talking about.  Here are some of her quotes: If we get it right we quite literally transform society. I think the gender and race pay gaps resulted in lifetime wages that are often hundreds of 1000s of dollars less for women and people of color. So I think when you think about the wealth gap, and how we just compound over time, that's where we have a tremendous opportunity to transform society. And for companies, it's just as big because, if we get it right, it means they move away from this cycle of annual one and done remediation. And they actually get to stay on top of this proactively overtime on both sides.We really believe that workplace equity is a combination of two things. We started with pay equity, and now we're moving over to more broad workplace equity to look at promotions and when you can get to both. That's when you have a company that Really has an enduring ability to create value and to measure how they're valuing their employees not just for who they are, but the contributions they bring. During this interview, you will learn four things: That the odds of success and surviving any crisis starts with having a solution that's perceived as mission-critical, and not a nice to have. How to prioritize your roadmap by focusing on the smallest ingredient that driving the biggest impact for your ideal customers That your ideal customers are not the ones that have the biggest budgets, but the ones where you align on world-views and show the courage to stick to it no matter what How to focus your leadership team on looking at a problem and brainstorming a solution collaboratively without blaming and fingerpointing For more information about the guest from this week: Maria Colacurcio Website 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 move us to where we are at the centre of our own digital life, and back in control over our own data. My guest is Julian Ranger, Executive Chairman and Founder of Digi.me. Julian is an aeronautical engineer specialising in interoperability and the military internet. He founded STASYS Ltd in 1987, and grew it to a staff of 230, with subsidiaries in the USA, Germany, Malaysia and Australia prior to sale to Lockheed Martin in 2005. He's an angel investor in more than 20 start-up businesses, including firms such as Hailo, DataSift, and Astrobotic. His passion for the power of personal data led him to build new businesses. Today he's the Exec Chairman and founder of digi.me, a company that's on a mission to enable the Internet of Me, enabling us to do amazing things with our personal data without compromising our privacy or security. And that inspired me, and hence I invited you Julian to my podcast. We explore how the internet has become a place where no one is in control anymore over their own data, but no one is in control over all data. And exactly the latter is the problem that stops us from having the level of personalization we really want, and the big breakthroughs we all need, like precision medicine.  Fixing privacy, security and consent is not the way forward. That's about stopping the bad stuff from happening. What we need is a way to share more and better data - to make the good stuff happening (without the bad stuff) Here are some of his quotes: Rich data, now ask yourself, is there a company in the world that can do that? And people say, 'well, Google, and Facebook and Axiom', but if you take a circle of my data, they have a wedge. But they don't have my health, my purchases, or my media, my wearables, and stuff. In fact, because of all the stovepipes or silos, whichever analogy you like, it is impossible for any company to bring all that data together to get a rich data library view. So we are effectively stopped from our future at this point. And the laws are shrinking those wedges that people have, but nobody said, Well, how do I open up the whole circle to do it? Now when you look at it, no company can. But there is one entity in the whole system that knows all about you and me. Yourself.You know where your data is. You have a right for that data. And you're the only entity with unlimited usage rights. When you understand those three things, you can only aggregate rich data at the individual. And that's the key insight for what my business does. That's our big idea. And it's no less than enables the future of the world.  During this interview, you will learn four things: Why too often we approach the problem from the wrong end - by not looking far enough ahead: the simple desired outcome for the user What it requires to succeed when your big idea hits the road and you discover that the road is not quite as smooth as you'd like That everybody is lucky - but that many are just not seeing the luck around them. Why as entrepreneurs we often spend too much time on the idea and the instantiation of it, and not enough time on the internal and external messaging  For more information about the guest from this week: Julian Ranger Website Digi.me 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 art to transform our visions into reality - and with that create products that create meaningful change. My guest is Radhika Dutt, Author of Radical Product Thinking Radhika is an entrepreneur and product leader who has participated in four acquisitions, two of which were companies that she founded. She is an Advisor on Product Thinking to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Singapore’s financial regulator and central bank. She teaches entrepreneurship and innovation at Northeastern’s D’Amore McKim School of Business and is an advisor to several startups. She graduated from MIT with a Bachelor of Science and Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering, and speaks nine languages, currently learning her tenth. Radhika co-founded Radical Product Thinking as a movement of leaders creating vision-driven change. She was on my podcast in December 2019 as a consequence of that. Recently she released her book Radical Product Thinking - and that was the perfect reason to interview her again. We explore what's broken in the way we build software products - and the challenges that lead to excessive cost, compromised growth potential, demotivated teams, and so on. We discuss in detail how you can recognize looming problems, and what you can do differently to fix them once and forever.  Here are some of her quotes: It's not that companies don't have a vision, you can have varying degrees of good visions. But it's incredible how expensive it is when your vision isn't quite right, or you haven't uncovered these misalignments. And the cost of not having this alignment is what really keeps coming up in organizations. You see it at every step where somehow your vision becomes disconnected and you start running into what I call 'product diseases', which is where innovation kind of dies on the vine. And that's really the cost of them. Not starting with a deep enough detailed enough vision. During this interview, you will learn four things: The methodology to create a remarkable vision and translate it into everyday action. What signals to look for to understand whether you have a sizeable innovation problem  The simple framework to avoid vision debt in your organization and how to empower everyone to successfully apply it how to engineer a culture of innovation by approaching it as if it was a product For more information about the guest from this week: Radhika Dutt Website Radical Product Thinking 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 provide all of us with a highly intelligent and hyper-personalized assistant. My guest is Peter Voss, Founder, CEO, and Chief Scientist of Aigo AI Peter is a serial entrepreneur, engineer, inventor, and pioneer in Artificial Intelligence. He coined the term ‘AGI’ (Artificial General Intelligence) with fellow luminaries in this space. He started in electronics engineering, then fell in love with software. His first major success was developing a comprehensive ERP package and taking that company from Zero to 400-person IPO in seven years. Fueled by the fragile nature of software, he embarked on a journey 15+ years ago studying what intelligence is, how it develops in humans, and the current state of AI. This research culminated in the creation of a natural language intelligence engine that can think, learn, and reason -- and adapt to and grow with the user. He founded Aigo in July 2017 where he's focused on commercializing the second generation of their AGI-based ‘Conversational AI’ technology. The most simple way to explain what the product is about is this: It's a chatbot with a brain.  What does this mean? It remembers what was said before. It can learn interactively. It has a deep contextual understanding. It can reason and explain itself. The result: It finally makes meaningful ongoing conversations with technology possible. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Peter to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of Chatbots - and why conventional approaches can only bring us so far. We then explore what can be i.e. what potential is ahead of us if we take a different approach. Peter further talks about the challenges he faced and overcame through sheer perseverance.  Here are some of his quotes: We started with a brain. This was really my motivation of initially starting the AI company in 2001. It was not to build a chatbot. The motivation was to build an intelligent machine, an intelligent system, a system that can learn and reason and understand and remember, and so on. So that was the starting point. And then we said: "Okay, we have a brain. What do we want to use this brain for?" Do we want to put it into a robot to help, run the robot? Do we want to use it for conversation? Or do we want to use it for image recognition, to help it to drive a car or something? And, as I said - we decided that the best path forward for us was to focus on the conversation. During this interview, you will learn four things: That the more human our software becomes, the less friction in adoption we'll experience That staying true to your vision and aiming to be different (not just better) will give initial pushback, but will help overcome the biggest hurdles That true innovation is not about embracing the latest shiny technology, but about solving meaningful problems in a remarkable way. How to overcome the trap of losing all your resources and energy on building table-stake features to overcome sales bottlenecks - thereby risking you'll lose your biggest sales argument: your edge For more information about the guest from this week: Peter Voss Website Aigo AI 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 big resilience lessons learned during the recent Pandemic. My guest is Ronni Zehavi, CEO and Co-founder of Hibob Ronni has over 25 years of experience in multinational, hi-tech companies. Prior to setting up hibob, he was an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Silicon Valley-based Bessemer Venture Partners. He’s the strategic advisor and co-founder of Team8 Cyber Security, a powerhouse developing disruptive tech in the cyber security space. Ronni was also the co-founder and CEO of Cotendo, a content delivery network which in 2012, just four years after it was founded, was acquired by Akamai in a $300m. Ronni has a BA in History and Educational Management from Tel Aviv University and a MA in Organisational Sociology from Bar-Ilan University. This is the second time Ronni features on my podcast, the first episode was launch in December 2019. The reason why I invited him again is to hear about his story of what happened after that - and in particular - how they navigated the effects of the pandemic. We explore what happened with HiBob the moment COVID kicked in in March 2020. How did Ronni and his Management Team shift their focus? What became the critical priories (and why). And what decisions did they take to not only survive but to actually come out stronger as a business?  Here are some of his quotes: The restart around COVID had a very good impact from an 18-month retro perspective. We were more focused. Really made a crystal clear vision, so we all understand what we do and why we do it, i.e. "all hands on deck, let's make sure that we cross this uncertainty together."We slowed down expansion to the US because we were new there. And we doubled on the markets where we felt more comfortable: Europe, UK, Israel. We tried not to cut our budget in engineering. Because we knew, at some point it will be over, so we really want to take advantage and speed up some other projects that we thought are relevant. During this interview, you will learn four things: The critical things to refocus the business on when a crisis kicks in, especially if you don't know if its behavior will be U, V, or for example W-shaped  What to do differently to ensure you will come out stronger from a crisis Why you should be on your marks not to BS yourself - and how to avoid that in a smart way. Why a crisis is a great opportunity to grow the bond inside the business, the alignment, and everyone’s commitment For more information about the guest from this week: Ronni Zehavi Website Hibob Link to our initial podcast interview See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give blind people their sight back and make robots see and interpret exactly what we see. My guest is Sheila Nirenberg, Founder, and CEO of Bionic Sight and Nirenberg Neuroscience. Sheila Nirenberg is a professor of neuroscience at Cornell Medical School and the founder of two start-up companies in New York City – one that develops new kinds of prosthetic devices (Bionic Sight, LLC), and one that develops new kinds of smart robots (Nirenberg Neuroscience LLC).  Her lab at the university focuses on basic science, and her companies take what’s learned in the lab and use it to develop solutions to real-world problems.    She’s won numerous awards for innovative research, including a MacArthur “genius” Award, and has been featured in a TED talk, a BBC documentary, a PBS documentary, the Discovery Channel, Scientific American, as well as many peer-reviewed publications. The reason? Her work on cracking the neural code of the retina i.e. the code the retina uses to communicate with the brain to allow us to see. And that inspired me, and hence I invited Sheila to my podcast. We explore what's still broken in deep-learning approaches and how that holds us back. We dig into her breakthrough - and what opportunities this enables for remarkable innovation that impact all of us. During our conversation, she shares some of her biggest challenges which were often led by the limited mindset of humans rather than driven by limitations in technology. She also shares her vision on what it takes to shape a software business that people keep talking about.  Here are some of her quotes: My claim to fame is that I cracked this code in the retina, so the transformation mathematically from images to the signals that leave the eye, and go to the brain, As soon as I did that, I realized immediately the application of it is that you can make an artificial retina that could restore sight to the blind. And then I was thinking, well, if I could make if that really were true, and I can make send the same signals to the brain, why couldn't I send it to a robot’s brain? So I quickly patented that and started a second company. During this interview, you will learn four things: True value can arrive when we challenge ourselves to find innovative approaches that require exponentially less data That often technology is not the issue to drive meaningful change, but skepticism, fear, and narrow mindedness - and how to go about that  The lessons to be learned on how to go about funding and taking the Venture Capital route The big lessons around having grid and perseverance to succeed For more information about the guest from this week: Sheila Nirenberg Website Nirenberg Neuroscience Website Bionic Sight 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 create top-performing sales teams that live and breath their sales ambition - because they're highly motivated and their natural competitive instinct is supercharged.  My guest is Sindre Haaland, Founder and CEO of SalesScreen. Sindre is the CEO & Founder of SalesScreen. Born and raised in Norway, but today lives in Brooklyn, NY.  He believes that the success of every company is a result of their combined talent. That even the leading products and services fall short if the people behind them can’t perform at their very best.  That sparked the big idea behind SalesScreen. A tool that turns the process of selling into a team effort, combining individual motivational instruments with cultural aspects and a winning mentality.   In short, SalesScreen transforms the challenging work of sales into a professional, motivating and exciting game. A game where all your employees will have fun whilst competing amongst each other for the top-position! This inspired me, and hence I invited Sindre to my podcast. We explore his journey as a tech entrepreneur. What he did wrong, that caused him to waste a full year. What it takes to break new ground in a highly competitive space like Sales Automation. We discuss why humanizing software (rather than automation alone)  is key to delivering remarkable impact. Lastly, Sindre shares his experience about the importance of embracing emotion as a way to stand out in the market.  Here are some of his quotes: At our first client, I remember one guy there, he took up the mobile phone application, went to the middle of off the sales floor, kind of demanded attention of everyone, and then he hits "sale." Then all the TV screens lit up with Eye of the Tiger playing. Everyone was just going crazy, the energy was so good. We were like, "Okay, we found something here." And look and behold, a week later, this executive from a large insurance chain in Europe called because she had visited this particular call center and seeing the energy for herself. She said "I'm not sure what this product is called or if you're the right one, but we want to buy. We want this for our sales teams as well.  During this interview, you will learn four things: Why making people love what they do rather than just like it can mean the difference between success and failure. A massive innovation opportunity The journey to create a product that has a wow-effect that's too compelling to ignore How to break new ground and defend your price tag when you're selling something people aren't necessarily looking for Why investing in amazing people who have relevant experience and have done it before is the best thing you can do as an entrepreneur. For more information about the guest from this week: Sindre Haaland  Website SalesScreen  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to enable creative thinkers and storytellers to create content people actually want to read. My guest is Ryo Chiba, Co-founder, and CEO of Topic. Ryo started his first business in 2012 at USC. While in college, he co-founded a marketing technology company called TINT which he grew to 40 full-time employees, millions in annual recurring revenue, and 1000+ customers in 172 countries. In 2018 we sold the company to Filestack. Today he's working on his next venture, Topic, which he co-founded in 2019. Their mission: Helping organizations produce better content. This inspired me, and hence I invited Ryo to my podcast. We explore what's broken in content creation and how current solutions are obsessed with metrics and creating more content, not content that people want to read and engage with. We also dig into the key learnings Ryo took away from his entrepreneurial journey, why he stopped obsessing about the competition, and what's required to create a business that can accelerate growth based on word-of-mouth. Here are some of his quotes: We were working on a Pinterest clone because social media and visual social media were a big trend at the time. However, we struggled to gain users, pivoted to turn it into a b2b product, and we almost ran out of cash. But then, with about two months of runway left, we were looking for some way to create a sustainable business. I'd self-learned SEO and sort of taught myself how to produce content. And we ended up taking that business and growing it and bootstrapping it to around 40 employees and hundreds of customers. And we were able to do that all through our SEO program and the content that we were producing. What I found during that journey was that the actual act of scaling up content is extremely challenging, even for highly technical and analytical people. So you can imagine how much more difficult it is for people who don't have that kind of mindset, who are more creative thinkers and storytellers. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why building relationships with your competitors can be extremely handy as you evolve your venture Why being supercritical with yourself on 'who's it for' i.e., which persona to become your ultimate ambassador is critical to securing product-market fit and creating momentum Why, even if you're loaded with funding, you should keep a bootstrappers mindset and be disciplined and legitimate about deploying them How it's possible to operate in a highly competitive space and still find space to succeed and stand out. For more information about the guest from this week: Ryo Chiba Website Topic Free Content Tools by Topic People Also Ask Question Finder Wordpress Table of Contents Generator Ideal Blog Post Length Calculator Blog Idea Generator See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give marketers the freedom to leverage the combined power of direct and digital marketing while removing the compromises. And my guest is Dennis Kelly, CEO of Postalytics Dennis is a serial entrepreneur. He started off as a sales guy, spent time building products, and running data centers. Late 90's he co-founded Anyday.com which was sold to Palm in 2000. This immersed him into the world of wireless.   After leaving Palm he co-founded Adjoin to tackle some challenging Webservice management problems. He sold this company to Computer Associates, to then become the CEO of Adesso Systems, an enterprise mobility software company.  In 2006 he became the co-owner of Wireless City - a chain of 37 Verizon Wireless stores. He sold this company to Go Wireless in October 2011.  From there he switched his focus to researching startup ideas, angel investing, and helping local startups with strategy & advice. This led him to become the CEO of Boingnet, a software platform helping direct mailers generate personalized, multi-channel campaigns across mail, web, and email channels. This is where he saw a big disconnect in the market between direct and digital marketing, and that sparked the idea behind Postalytics of which he's now the CEO As digital marketing channels get more crowded, and marketers are all using the same playbook, they’re increasingly looking for new ways to put their messages directly into the hands of their audiences. That's why they are giving direct mail another look. The problem is that the direct mail industry hasn’t kept up with changes in technology. It feels very…1990’s - it's slow, costly, disconnected from the marketing technology stack, and impossible to track. That's what Postalytics solves. This inspired me, and hence I invited Dennis to my podcast. We explore the opportunity for value creation by blending the online- with the offline marketing world, and how this can create a  1+1=3 concept because you're combining unique strengths into one. We also address the lessons Dennis learned to create growth and momentum in B2B technology, and what it takes to build a great software business that customers just keep talking about. Here are some of his quotes: We started having some brands come to us and say, "Hey, I just invested in Salesforce, you guys are living in this kind of a hybrid between digital and direct. Can you help us deploy direct mail more efficiently, more quickly, as a part of our Salesforce as a part of our HubSpot?"  And it took a few of those conversations, let's realize there's a bigger opportunity out here to take some of this measurement and analytic work that we've done and to solve a problem that is far more pervasive and has a much bigger scope. That was happening in 2015, and 2016, and we spent about a year just heads down building Postalytics. And now Postalytics is our primary focus. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why limiting your focus on a highly specific audience  is essential to maximize buzz and fuel the growth and momentum of your software business The positive things that happen when you decide sales is actually part of your onboarding process Why killing something early is often the best move - and what early signs you should be highly sensitive to Why the goal of a startup should be to create a great business instead of focusing on a great exit For more information about the guest from this week: Dennis Kelly  Website Postalytics See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to take our personal growth to new levels in a way that's not only fun and easy to accomplish, but also highly accessible and affordable. My guest is Elena Agaragimova, Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Bessern Elena is both an entrepreneur as well as an engaging skilled trainer and talent development specialist. She is known for her ability to drive change within individuals and organizations that are looking to reach their potential and maintain their competitive edge in the business world. She has started her career in higher education but then shifted towards corporate learning and talent acquisition in the last few years of her career, providing talent onboarding and development to multi-nationals across the MENA region. Elena has a strong passion for L&D, promoting creative and engaging workplaces, and all about optimizing performance through the development of others with a keen interest in neuroscience. In 2019 she co-founded Bessern - and is on a mission to fast-track behavior change and disrupt the way people learn. They believe the future of learning is individualized and that learning is about action and consistency. Change is not easy for most of us; unless we create consistent routines (micro-actions) so that change does not depend on our motivation This inspired me, and hence I invited Elena to my podcast. We explore what's broken when it comes to the traditional approach to Learning & Development. We dig into how people learn, and how technology can help people learn more, faster, and with more joy by taking a radically different approach. We discussed their journey from idea to go-to-market and how this could be done in a way that was financially attractive. Beyond that, we explore how they overcame one of their biggest challenges to creating app-stickiness - a critical ingredient to their growth strategy. Here are some of her quotes: Being self funded, b2c is a very expensive market, a very saturated market. To spend the kind of marketing that you need to get noticed in a b2c market is very high.  We purposely tried to avoid investments for as long as possible. So we said; "How can we make/create a product and how can we test it in a way that makes sense for us financially?" What we know and what we practice is that at the end of the day, it's about creating processes. Just like when you're building a startup - you're going through that agile methodology, where you're just continuously experimenting, like the lean methodology for startups. And we apply the same for the personal growth, whether it's leadership development, etcetera. So it became more interesting for organizations, and we already had the network. So it was a much easier market entry for us to be honest with you. During this interview, you will learn four things: How you can deliver transformative change to any industry even if it has not changed in decades How, by offering a solution that's delivered through a blend of both technology and people can give you a highly defensible advantage.  That stickiness grows once individual users start to realize they get nuggets of value that they'd miss if they were gone That creating new products to take to market can accelerate if you're architecting for reusability  For more information about the guest from this week: Elena Agaragimova Website Bessern See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to transform the virtual experiences we have today into near-live experiences. My guest is Sean Heiney, Founder and COO at SignalWire. Sean is an experienced entrepreneur and product marketing/management start-up executive with extensive expertise in SaaS, network security, communication, and VOIP. He has 18 years of startup experience as a serial entrepreneur. In the early 2000s, Sean formed and built Periscan, a pioneer SaaS-managed security software company specializing in VISA/Mastercard PCI Compliance. The company got acquired by Catbird Networks in 2006. Sean then led, developed, launched, and marketed new products at Barracuda Networks to over $300M in revenue and IPO.  In December 2017 he co-founded SignalWire. He drives strategy and business around the SignalWire products and services as well as the FreeSWITCH open-source project. SignalWire has, in the meantime, become the technology backbone of modern communications applications like Amazon, Netflix, and Zoom.  Their mission is a simple one: To empower you to build whatever you can imagine utilizing software-defined telecom capabilities.  SignalWire wants its customers to do one thing: To focus on their ideas instead of worrying about developing, scaling, maintaining, and of course, overpaying for complex communications technology and services. This inspired me, and hence I invited Sean to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the telecom industry and what’s kept it behind for so long. We also discuss why the video communication tools we’ve become use to like Zoom and Teams are very degrading, demoralizing or even soul-sucking. Sean elaborates on ‘what can be’ – that it’s up to our own imagination to create the experiences we hope for, and how they are growing a global community of developers from the grass-roots up to enable this. He finishes by sharing his believes about what it takes to build a software business people keep talking about. Here are some of his quotes: Everything we're doing with our tools, we're enabling developers to do. We don't claim that we're gonna have the best ideas around the best way. But we know that the world's changing, and the current video and audio products that we're left to collaborate with our soul-sucking. And what we hope to do is enable the next developers, the next product builders: “hey, you don't have to worry about the technology on the audio-video side. SignalWire has that taken care of. I have to just think about the interface, how I'm going to creatively interact with people using this new technology and make something more human than the current options. During this interview, you will learn four things: That business resilience can be hidden in simple things – like productizing elements that underpin the power of your own infrastructure That to build virtual experiences people keep talking about is about understanding the essence of what people truly value from the non-virtual experiences How giving away some of your product can help you build a vending-machine for growth, and give you the platform for true leverage Why it’s key to break-away from the pack i.e. have an x-factor, and how that can be achieved with very simple, but very lucrative ideas. For more information about the guest from this week: Sean Heiney SignalWire Website See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give under-represented groups a fair opportunity in the workplace while helping businesses attract 70% more diverse talent and twice the relevant talent, in half the time. My guest is Helen McGuire, Co-founder, and CEO of Diversely. Helen is a champion of under-represented groups. She’s an international speaker on the topics of diversity, equality, and inclusion and has meanwhile become an award-winning entrepreneur in the diversity space. She founded the first women’s careers platform in the Middle East – Hopscotch.work – in 2016, which grew to a worldwide community of over 80k working with businesses like Facebook, Mastercard, and Nestle. Still, she experienced frustration with the lack of impact of its in-person business model and the fact that 75% of businesses say they are committed to improving diversity, yet just 8% have the tools in place to measure hiring improvement;  This led her to found Diversely in 2020 together with her co-founder Hayley Bakker. The vision for the company is clear and compelling: A global workplace that’s freed from bias for all those from under-represented groups – not just women. Their mission: to provide an integrated solution to the issues around diverse hiring. This inspired me, and hence I invited Helen to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the workplace when it comes to hiring the best people for the job, and how this bias is actually impacting the performance potential of many businesses around the world. We discuss Diversely’s approach to solving this massive global problem at the very core, and what obstacles they had to overcome to ensure a rapid go-to-market. Here are some of her quotes: You don't see representation of real-life within those offices in those boardrooms, or those shop floors, or those restaurants or wherever it might be, you're not seeing a genuine representation of even the customers or the clients that you're trying to serve. And that really puts you on the back foot in terms of attracting the right employees to your business, but also in terms of being able to serve those people in the best way you could possibly serve.  And if you don't have the perspective of 50% of the population where women are concerned, or 20% of the population where disabled people are concerned? Or whatever the percentage population is of your specific race and ethnicities in the location that you are, then how are you really understanding what your client or your customer wants? And are you actually limiting your sales revenue because of that? During this interview, you will learn four things: That teams that are slightly uncomfortable with each other, come up with much better solutions. How starting with solving the essence of the problem, not aiming to reinvent the wheel, and changing behavior in that very moment can spark momentum How pricing can be used as a lever to get to market quickly Why taking a rebellious mindset and looking at the problem from a completely different perspective is the recipe to create something remarkable (and not burn out along the way) For more information about the guest from this week: Helen McGuire Website Diversely 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 creative people know upfront whether their Creative will work – and with that produce work that has an exponentially bigger impact. My guest is Coen Olde Olthof, CEO of Alpha.One Coen started his career at KPMG in information risk management. He then moved to Getronics, where he became responsible for digital identify management and later on IT Services Sales. When Getronics got acquired by KPN, the largest Telco in the Netherlands he was asked to lead the process to turn KPN into an online organization. Shortly after that he added Marketing to his portfolio as well.  Today he’s Ranked as a one of the top 10 Marketeers in the Netherlands and the CEO of Alpha.One. Alpha.One a fast-growing consumer neuroscience company that’s on a mission to ‘Helping good companies make better decisions.’ Coen has a fascination for decision  architecture. What drives people in their day-to-day choices? And how can we use neuroscience to decode this.  Together with a team of scientist he analyses the brains’ reaction to content to predict market level outcomes.  And that inspired me, and hence I invited Coen to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the creative media & marketing landscape. We discuss why the traditional approaches don’t work, and why it’s not technology but and open mindset that prevent the route to success.  Coen shares fascinating wisdom about what drives the behavioral change that lead to adoption and more sales. He also explains how exponential thinking helped them create the remarkable solution they have today. Here are some of his quotes: “I was brought up with an understanding that if your NPS scores are higher, people are more likely to buy from you or more likely to stay. If you look at the research, that's not the case. People that give you high NPS still are not likely to buy more. The only thing that you can really measure from that measurement is that if you have a very low NPS, that's a solid basis for people going away. Byron Sharp, an Australian Professor of Marketing, who looked at 10s and 10s of years of data, concluded that if you have a product that is physically available, and mentally available, you will do very well. Those are very data driven, solid insights that most of the marketers should know, but not all of them do” During this interview, you will learn four things: How driving momentum is highly dependent on your ability to hit the right nerve i.e. creating positive tension and desire with the right people Why making things memorable is essential to influence behavioral change How exponential thinking puts you in the right mind-set to create transformational change in a market. That if your customer doesn’t say ‘Exactly’ you won’t have a deal. And that’s all about finding the unfair thing that hurts your customer most. For more information about the guest from this week: Coen Olde Olthof Company Website Alpha.One  Platform website: Expoze.io Coen’s Ted Talk  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 enables small & medium businesses around the world escape the chaos of managing their software subscriptions. My guest is Gordian Braun, CEO and Co-founder of onetool Gordian is bilingual, analytical, and a highly creative leader experienced in entrepreneurship & innovation. He’s got a strong passion for product marketing, performance marketing, product management & development, and business development. He started his career as a financial analyst, and quickly after that became the co-founder of a music record label startup in 2010. In 2015 he co-founded his second startup, Locana. He went back into the financial world in by joining G51 Amplify Venture Capital, after which he became the director of growth and business acceleration at CleverShuttle in 2017. In 2019, he then co-founded onetool – where he acts as CEO. onetool is on a mission to solve the daily chaos and outrageous fees small & medium sized businesses encountering when it comes to managing SaaS subscriptions, software usage and access rights.  This inspired me, and hence I invited Gordian to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the SaaS market when it comes to managing subscriptions, usage and access. The sheer simplicity of adopting SaaS solutions is growing the problem every day. We discuss what’s missing, and what’s required to solve the problem. We dig deep on what it took to create a solution that stands out from the pack, and what mindset tech-entrepreneurs need to embrace to shape a software business that creates products their customers cannot live without.  Here are some of his quotes: The first strategic choice that we had to do is: “Do we do long sales cycles with a lot of consulting effort, or do we do, what I call, funnel automation?” A lot of people will say, especially in the VC industry, if you are a b2b Enterprise product, then do Enterprise Sales. Whereas we decided to do the opposite – saying “No, we want the more customer centric approach around this. We want to make it so easy that people can start using the whole thing in 10 minutes.” That's obviously a very challenging decision. Because on the one side, you spend endless hours optimizing your product, and you cannot really sell something if it's not perfect. On the other side, you have the highest demands on yourself, and you know what you would like to be using, rather than what our competition is offering. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why approaching things differently gives you powers that are hard to beat by competitors That becoming a great entrepreneur is about shipping fast (not perfect), being open minded and don’t worry too much. That just because you spend five years on something, trying to make it perfect, doesn’t mean it’s going to be perfect eventually Why it’s essential for every CEO to not have one mentor, but to surround themselves with a lot of the right people around key aspect  For more information about the guest from this week: Gordian Braun Website onetool See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to transform the way we experience commuting for all of us. My guest is Ryan Green, Co-Founder and CEO Gridwise.   Ryan is a driven, self-starter with a passion for building businesses that positively impact the lives of millions. He co-founded his first business, FXConnection back in 2012. FXConnection was a platform that provided tools to educate people on the Forex Markets, and connects them to trading coaches. He then joined PNC in FX Sales and trading, after which he co-founded Gridwise in June 2016 to turn an idea that sparked during his time at the US Navy into reality.    Their mission: To impact the global society by improving the way people and goods move in cities. How? By creating a smarter mobility grid that empowers on-demand drivers, cities, and mobility stakeholders to plan ahead by understanding transit patterns across the major service providers in real-time.   This inspired me, and hence I invited Ryan to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in mobility, and all the problems that lead to. We then dive into his founder story, what sparked the big idea, and how persistence helped Ryan succeed when no one believed in his idea upfront. We discuss his extremely lean approach to innovation and what he believes is required to build a software business your customers just keep talking about.   Here are some of his quotes: What was really important was – and I think a constant battle for people who are starting out a new concept but also just people at different stages of growing a product in launching new features - is always taking initially a minimal and iterative approach to product development. We started with an email that we manually produced every week and a text message service that was us manually typing alerts to drivers. There's no automation to it at the start. And we did things that didn't scale. But it allowed us to prove out, and just save a lot of time and a lot of money by being able to learn from our users, before we built something that nobody wants. And so I think that was that approach and that mindset, we applied to the first concept, and then the next version of the app, and the next version, we just continued to maintain that mentality. And I believe that really led to our success and enabled us to grow Gridwise to what it is today.   During this interview, you will learn three things: 1)   How taking an abundance approach to problem-solving can help you make an impact on a global scale 2)   That just because people don’t believe in your idea at the start doesn’t mean it has legs. Just start – start small, validate, iterate and evolve your vision from there. 3)   Why our assumptions are sometimes totally off – and that can stop us from achieving our biggest breakthroughs in creating value 4)   How giving something of value away can help you unlock and accelerate much larger value monetization opportunities. For more information about the guest from this week: ·     Ryan Green ·     Website Gridwise   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give every business the intelligence to anticipate hacker attacks before they happen. My guest is Karim Hijazi, Founder and CEO of Prevailion Karim is a cybersecurity veteran who has worked closely with the US intelligence community for many years. He’s been at the forefront of attacker counterintelligence and infiltration research for the last decade, developing new ways for security teams to clandestinely monitor hackers and anticipate attacks before they happen.  His previous startup, Unveillance, was acquired by Mandiant (now FireEye) in 2012. Karim noticed a vulnerability in the way businesses have begun to rely on their third-party partners. The size of a business’ perimeter had increased along with the size of their third-party ecosystem, and there was no clear way to monitor that vast new space. That inspired the start of Prevailion. Prevailion envisions a world in which the adversary no longer has the benefit of stealth and surprise, but is instead openly tracked and monitored through a real-time intelligence platform that all companies and organizations have access to. Through clear visibility and real-time tracking, we can turn the tables on threat actors and give network defenders the upper hand. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Karim to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the market of cyber crime protection. Why the typical reactive approach of traditional solutions is more a hinder than a help – and why to really tackle this problem we have to approach it by taking an outside-in perspective. We discuss the challenges of solving this problem – not only technically, but most of all also commercially, since so much is in changing perspectives and behaviours. You’ll be inspired with some fresh thinking and true entrepreneurial mindset. Here are some of his quotes: What makes us uniquely different is that instead of looking at the victim organizations, and determining, by way of investigations and looking through their data to see if they have anything that can be considered malicious, we actually chase down the adversary back to your point about that we look for the infrastructure that these criminals setup. Those servers are intended to be the equivalency of what would be like a dumping zone or drop zone for something. That dumpster is effectively the equivalency of what we're looking for online to infiltrate and sit and wait to see what actually gets dumped there. And we do this without the adversaries understanding of that.  So what's really powerful about that is that because it's digital, everyone that gets impacted by these adversaries all communicate to that digital dumpster, and we are able to see who's victimized by it, just like the adversary can see. So our perspective is that of the adversary. And that does exactly highlights the fact that the security technologies in these organizations may or may not be working. During this interview, you will learn four things: How creative spirit combined with highly technical science skills can give you an advantage that’s hard to beat Why instead of creating solutions that are about repairing something that’s broken, we should aim our efforts at taking out the root cause. That we’re too focused on communicating how we help reduce cost, while we can easily flip the narrative around how our solutions accelerate growth How to create critical mass by changing behaviour of people  For more information about the guest from this week: Karim Hijazi Website Prevailion 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 make difficult conversations about money, that little bit easier. My guest is Cormac O’Neill, CEO of Webio. Cormac is an experienced business leader with extensive hands-on experience of multiple aspects of growing profitable businesses. He led myTravelGuide from start-up to €15m turnover in the period ’99 to 2011. He then moved to Voice Sage to establish them as the UKs leading omni-channel customer contact provider. He loves to inspire and motivate people and teams, challenging, supporting and mentoring them to reach higher than they thought possible. Beyond that, he’s passionate about Retail and Sales including effective Customer Communications, the Customer Journey and the Sales Process. He understands the impact that financial wellbeing can have on a person’s mental health, as an entrepreneur he’s had had his fair share of financial challenges. That inspired him, Paul Sweeney and Mark Oppermann to co-found Webio in 2016. Webio is on a mission to make those difficult conversations about money that little bit easier for everyone concerned. That inspired me, and hence I invited Cormac to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the Credit Collection space and why traditional methods just drop in effectiveness. We discuss how taking a different perspective on the problem can fix this – and what the critical ingredients are to stand out, and deliver a remarkable impact for both your customers, and their customers. Last but not least we discuss how to stay resilient and come out stronger from crisis situations and why success starts by making tough decisions to say goodbye to groups of customers. Here are some of his quotes: What our customers have seen, and something we've seen ourselves from having experience in the industry is that traditional methods of how these companies communicate are just not effective anymore. And to solve a problem, you must be able to have a conversation. Communication is fundamentally key here to solve the financial difficulties.  So, historically, debt collection agencies or collections departments would use the telephone to try and contact their customers. And unfortunately, as an engagement tool, the engagement rates have been declining on telephone over the last number of years because it's stressful talking about money. Sometimes asynchronous conversations are better than real time conversations. Sometimes people need that little bit of breathing space between their answers. So, the first thing you're doing is you're increasing the engagement rate. Once you got engagement, then you've got opportunity to solve the problem. During this interview, you will learn four things: How thinking in micro-steps can help your customers make massive-steps forward in progress as a result of changing behaviour  Why the problem you’re solving often isn’t so much about improving what your customers do, but how they feel doing it: The relief of stress, anxiety, frustration,.. Why asynchronous conversations often result in better (data) quality, engagement and outcome than real-time conversations – especially if it’s about stressful topics Why you shouldn’t second guess your customers – get your product into their hands as early as possible and let them tell you (even if you think it’s far from ready) For more information about the guest from this week: Cormac O’Neill Website Webio 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 get all of us closer to professionals we value. My guest is Ashley Friedlein, CEO and Founder of Guild Ashley is one of the most influential and connected figures in digital and marketing. As one of the 100+ recommendations for him on LinkedIn reads, “If Ashley doesn’t know it – it ain’t worth knowing.” He’s the author of two best-selling books on digital. A columnist, commentator and blogger, he speaks worldwide on digital and marketing trends and best practice. Ashley is involved in a number of digital businesses and ventures as investor, adviser, mentor and operationally.  He believes the world deserves a new kind of digital communications platform and hence founded Guild, a messaging platform for professional groups, networks and communities.. The purpose behind the company is bring people together for professional good. It’s a technology business, but it cares most about human behaviours and the power of connecting people to collaborate and do good things together. And that inspired me, and hence I invited Ashley to my podcast. We explore how technology can help in creating more meaningful connections around professional use cases, and how there’s room for new players, even in a market that densely populated. Asley shares his wisdom around where he puts his focus in building a remarkable software business, what it takes to grow by word-of-mouth and create virality. We also dig into the potential pitfalls to avoid in growing your start-up, especially when venture capital steps in. Here are some of his quotes: Obviously we want and we'll need growth. We want quality and value more than quantity. We don't need massive volumes of usage to drive an ad funded revenue model, because ours isn't an ad funded revenue model. But we, if we're going up against the WhatsApp and LinkedIn and things, ultimately we do need to get engagement, even habits. There is a network effect thing that the more people are on Guild, in many ways, the more valuable it becomes. And if your contacts or professional contacts and your most valued professional contacts are all on Guild, that builds massive defensibility against other competitors or future competitors. We experienced that the other way around, like when you're going up against WhatsApp and stuff, it can be hard cause some people say ‘Yes, I'm just used to using that and yes, yours is better, but I still can't be bothered to switch.’ So you know, we do need the growth but I need to try and not sacrifice quality at the same time. So, what we're trying to achieve I call various things but intimacy at scale. During this interview, you will learn four things: How you can create remarkable products by not only solving a specific problem – but also cater to a human need or desire Different insights how to think about creating a viral effect with your product Why big impact is often created by being relentlessly focused on the adding incremental improvements all the time How to go about spending (VC) money in a phase where you haven’t reached product market fit yet For more information about the guest from this week: Ashley Friedlein Website Guild 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 potential to prevent well over half a billion females on this planet suffering from mental health problems. My guest is Michel Valstar, CEO BlueSkeye AI Michel Valstar is a visionary scientist and new-found entrepreneur. He’s the founder and Co-CEO of BlueSkeye AI, and remains a part-time professor at the University of Nottingham, where he also is the deputy-director of the Biomedical Research Centre’s Mental Health and Technology programme. Having worked for 15 years on computer vision and machine learning for facial expression analysis, Valstar now wants to see his ground-breaking research turned into real products to improve the lives of people. He is particularly interested in solving the problem of self-management of mental health using technology that runs privately on people’s own hardware. This inspired me, and hence I invited Michel to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the world of treating Mental Health. We discuss why this domain is still in the dark ages and what can be done with technology to take it into the 21st century and make a meaningful impact. We explore what it takes to build solutions people in different demographics actually love to use day to day – and build a trustworthy relationship with. We also discuss how take on this massive global problem, with a very small team, while being resourceful and profitable very early on in the journey.  Here are some of his quotes: With blue sky, we really wanted to grab a big problem and try to solve it, not just conceptually, but all the way through to implementing it, validating it, making it self-sustaining. Making it actually value generating in the end. And in perinatal mental health, roughly half of the people on this planet will give birth to a child at some point. And 10 to 20% of those women will suffer, unfortunately, from poor mental health. These are extremely large numbers. We hope to help a very large percentage of these people. But even if we could only help 10% of the people that suffer from this is still a massive contribution to humanity. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why creating something for everyone will end up pleasing no one  How you can speed up time to market by working with partners that break your stuff How leveraging one product category can become the funding source for realizing your big vision Why the two core selection criteria for picking your projects should be: Alignment with vision and employee motivation For more information about the guest from this week: Michel Valstar,  Website BlueSkeye AI 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 mindset and approach to shaping a software business that successfully plays the infinite game. My guest is Chairman and CEO of Sensory Todd has broad business and general management experience. He's got a Stanford MBA with technical roots and is a founder, co-founder, or early management team of 3 successful venture-backed high-tech silicon valley startups. Each startup has been involved in audio, music, and speech & AI technologies for consumer electronics markets, including toys, musical instruments, Bluetooth headsets, mobile phones, voice assistants, smart devices, or IoT.  He founded Sensory with the mission to enable people to communicate with consumer electronics as we communicate with each other.  And this inspired me, and hence I invited Todd to my podcast. We explore their journey as a pioneer in neural networks and how they transformed from inventing everything in house to leveraging the open-source eco-system in a way that strengthened their advantage. We also discuss their drive towards embracing deep fusion – blending different technologies to create exponentially more value. Last but not least, Todd shares his wisdom around building a software business that thrives long-term. Here are some of his quotes: When you have really smart PhDs from the top schools that have strong egos, sometimes, the not invented here syndrome exists with a lot of our customers and within sensory itself. And to get people that are really smart and really capable, and tell them: 'let's not do it ourselves, let's use what somebody else has done,' that can be challenging. When we move to the cloud, we started using open-source acoustic models, but with our own in-house language models There are some advantages to being small. We can move faster, and it's easier for us to integrate different technologies because we don't have these giant groups that are in separate silos. So, for example, we talked about deep fusion of face and voice. Well, it's not like Google and Facebook, and Apple aren't doing voice and face, but they have them in different silos. So, kind of combining them isn't as easy as for a company like sensory. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why focus on solving the hard thing first can give you instant profitability How blending technology enables you to grow a position of advantage while creating impact previously believed unattainable for your customers Their secrets in obtaining highly valuable feedback from their customers How to shape a software business that your best people don't ever want to leave For more information about the guest from this week: Todd Mozer Website Sensory See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give everyone of us the opportunity to deliver our best work by controlling our work-environment. My guest is Benjamin Carew, Co-founder and CEO of Othership Ben started his career as an engineer, working on electric and special vehicles for Ford, Ricardo and Nissan. He then led a team driving digital transformation at Ford, before moving to BP as a Digital Program lead.  Ben is passionate that the best commute is no commute. His ambition is to break down borders by making it possible for anyone to work from anywhere. That’s how he started Othership. It’s is a membership for people who want to work the other way. It’s built around the believe in a new world of work that revolves around you. That adapts to your needs, and allows you to pursue the work you want to do, wherever you are. Where working for yourself doesn’t have to mean working by yourself. And where fulfilling work is a fundamental right, not a rare luxury. Othership was founded to spark a global flo-working™ revolution. Inspiring people to adopt a new way of working controlled by them. This inspired me, and hence I invited Ben to my podcast. We explore how the world has changed with regards to the way we do work. We dig into the role of the workspace – and what important values it drives that we too often ignore. We discuss how critical it is (for creating traction) truly understand what users care about – and what drives their use-case. And last but not least we discuss Benjamin’s secrets to build a software business people keep talking about. Here are some of his quotes: The way that we try to deliver value is to constantly seek for feedback and use our own service as well. So we live the life that we do. So we work from our spaces, if I'm not working from my spaces, then would I want to be paying that membership. If the answer is no, why am I not working from that space? Why am I not doing that phone calls from a space? Why am I not having a meeting from that space? It’s just accepting that that's our place in this point is to take the pain away from building that relationship, building that connection, finding that right space. It's just our responsibility day in day out to do that. And that's why we will do better than everyone else. Because our first point in is to just make sure that it does add value to you. And then I will worry about making money During this interview, you will learn four things: Why often what customers buy from you is not at all what you instinctively think it is That technically your product fits many people – but to thrive is to get really specific on their exact use case – and exceed expectations there That to grow a position of advantage is to challenge your business by aiming to become your own best customer That if your customers aren’t talking about you – ask them why. They’ll tell you. For more information about the guest from this week: Benjamin Carew Othership Website  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 approach to product innovation to grow remarkable momentum in enterprise software by creating a swell that keeps building because of bottom-up user demand. My guest is Rick Hall, CEO of Aginity Rick Hall is a software entrepreneur focused on the analytics market. He has led the development of over a dozen software products and taken several companies from the early stage to an eventual sale. He founded Kairn Corporation in 2018 to help organizations, plan and implement intelligent products and systems. Together with his co-founders he have defined a "Pathway to Intelligent Systems." to guide companies on their journey. In support of this journey they begun to invest in companies that will simplify the process of building and implementing analytical programs. That has led to the purchase of Aginity in March of 2020 where Rick has taken over the CEO role as a result.   Aginity was an early innovator in Analytics Management. They are on a mission reinventing the Analytics Engine Room and with that do with the challenges of complex architectures which are dependent on highly skilled engineers, frequently cost millions of dollars, and are not flexible to move at the pace of business. This inspired me, and hence I invited Rick to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the world of Enterprise Analytics and why the millions and millions of investments underdeliver. We dig into the effects of switching to a product-led growth approach, and how creating a community of fans helps drive multiple X growth with a minimal marketing budget. Last but not least we talk about the secrets to staying resourceful – and resilient for anything that’s next to come.  Here are some of his quotes: I think the three key areas of a SaaS company are Sales, Marketing, and Product and Engineering. Product and Engineering is a natural tension. So, I always say that if the two heads of those two groups don't kind of love each other and hate each other, then there's something wrong. Because product is about the idea of anything that I could do - big ideas. And engineering is about the world of the possible. And there's a tension built in there. And then sales is the third piece of that, because sales and marketing is about the demands of the customer. And so, putting the three things together in a world of what I like to think of as constructive conflict is really, really key. I think that is probably one of the most important elements of success for a company. During this interview, you will learn four things: That real value unlocks when you realize it’s not about solving a users’ task in isolation, but about how they effectively collaborate with the business  How introducing a freemium model is not about giving away your software, but about creating software that users love How to convince even the most stubborn C-level decision makers about the value of your product even if they’d never use it Why to succeed in SaaS is about constantly evolving the interplay between a big vision and what people can actually achieve on a stretched goal. For more information about the guest from this week: Rick Hall Aginity Website See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses what product innovation should be really all about and how complacency can kick-in silently and give you a slap in the face. My guest is Mike Seidle, Co-founder and CTO at PivotCX Mike Seidle is an technology entrepreneur based in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is a man of many talents with an entrepreneurial mindset. In his past, he founded White River Technology Group, Indy Associates, Professional Blog Services, and Virtual Payment Systems.  Today he’s the CTO at PivotCX – a company that’s on a mission to help companies respond to every job candidate in seconds. The result: Recruitment teams will be able to handle 4-6x current candidate volume, improve hire quality and most importantly, deliver an award-winning candidate experiences This inspired me, and hence I invited Mike to my podcast. We explore the journey they’ve been through and how Covid became their wake-up moment. We discuss the big lessons learned in bringing their solution to market and what it means and requires creating solutions that customers not only need – but also want – a solution that grows in value as things get tough. Here are some of his quotes: The hardest thing in all of this was that we held on to what we were doing originally for too long. We did our first little foray into doing chat, in 2018. And had we been paying attention to that, we could have made the pivot that we ended up making because we got an extreme slap in the face from the market with COVID. If we had been listening, I almost hate to say this, and I hope none of my investors are listening. But if we had heard that from the market two, three years ago, it's almost frightening to think about how successful this would already be. What I did learn from all this is probably the best way to be prepared, is to really focus on making sure what you're doing is business critical.  If you're doing something that's valuable, it will become more valuable. If you're doing something that's extra, it will be extra when things are lean and probably get cut. During this interview, you will learn four things: The importance to start paying attention to the early signals from customers that you are on the wrong track instead of listening to your own stories How shifting focus from selling “cost savings” to “giving your customers a position of advantage in the eyes of their customers” can be the difference from having no traction to winning 8 out 10 deals  Why we often think we are smarter than everybody else – and why that doesn’t help at all How small ideas can mean the difference between having 10 users and 10000 – and how to find them. For more information about the guest from this week: Mike Seidle Website PivotCX  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give every brand a wealth of opportunities to grow trust with their customers. My guest is Boaz Grinvald, CEO of Revuze Boaz is a serial entrepreneur, and this is the 5th company he’s managing. He loves building businesses and solving real-world problems. His background is in computer science, started his career in building out technology products but was always drawn to the business side. Today he’s the CEO of Revuze. They realized many analytical solutions on the market focus on what/when/how much consumers buy. However, 97% of consumers will walk away from a purchase to buy something else, and brands don’t know why. So this is Revuze’s mission to solve.  This inspired me, and hence I invited Boaz to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the world of understanding customer and consumer buying behaviour. We also talk about how to grow momentum by taking a counter intuitive approach to your Go-to-Market. And beyond that we discuss Boaz secrets to building a remarkable software business – and the lessons that he learned doing so. Here are some of his quotes: I once had a boss that said: ‘One man with conviction can make a difference’ Until you get to hundreds of people, one man with conviction is the core of everything. I love the fact that you can create a business out of no business. And suddenly there's dozens of families that make a living off the business. To me, I think that's a big part of the magic. And obviously, the other part is changing the lives of the customers. When you hear customers that tell you that they get the job done within days that before took them maybe six months. That's like music. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why your SaaS solution shouldn’t give insights to users on ‘What’ happened, but that it’s in the ‘Why it happened’ where real value unlocks That your value should not be about making business more efficient – but to provide them with a position of advantage Why so many SaaS businesses undermine their potential by hanging on to business principles that are serve them more than their customers.  Why we’re often too late in making the right personnel decisions – leaving the wrong people in the wrong place for too long and how no one wins doing so For more information about the guest from this week: Boaz Grinvald Website Revuze 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 story behind Pollfish – and their approach to reinvent market research for a new era by shortening cycle times to get faster, high-quality feedback from customers. My guest is John Papadakis, Founder and CEO at Pollfish John started his career as an Android developer. He’s passionate about platforms and businesses that scale and has always had a particular focus on the mobile domain. In 2011 he co-founded Pajap, a service which allowed to create native Android applications, that didn’t need update or installation thereby combining the best of native app world and web app world  In 2013 he founded Pollfish, a platform that provides brands a revolutionary way to learn, communicate and interact with existing and prospective customers. That inspired me, and hence I invited John to my podcast. We explore their journey to create a new category and the challenges to grow customer trust by establishing a large enough audience of close to a billion consumers . We also discuss his secrets of growing the Pollfish business – and how simplification and trust in people have been a great asset in that. Here are some of his quotes: Essentially Pollfish started because we had apps, and we want to monetize them. But advertising didn't work for our apps. And we were thinking: ‘There must be a better way to monetize those apps, and that way to be less intrusive since we don't want to spam our users.’ So, we created the Pollfish library first, and we saw that people responded to surveys within the app. In a few days, we had hundreds of thousands of people.  So, the company started from a need to monetize, and from the opportunity that the mobile app ecosystem (in 2013) was a new distribution channel for market research. It's a two-sided marketplace: you need supply and demand. And you've got to have both. So, we started with the supply, focus there for a couple of years, and then we launched Pollfish as it is today to solve the father decision making problem. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why – if you want to boost momentum - it’s key to focus your go-to-market on your core strengths and true values – and avoid anything that’s outside of that scope  How smart packaging can enable you to change perception and with that open complete new market opportunities Why your customers don't want to worry about ‘figuring your messaging out’. They want it simple – so simple they can share it with their boss. Why throwing way an impressive KPI sheet and focus on just 2 numbers gave focus and boosted creativity amongst all staff For more information about the guest from this week: John Papadakis Website Pollfish 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 us create the critical connections that can transform their world. My guest is Stephen Choi, Co-founder and CEO of Hi Right Now He started his career in investment banking, then quickly started his entrepreneurial journey by co-founding Moxy Media Group in 2009 and Lets Branch in 2017. A surprising detail about Stephen is that he’s never lived anywhere for longer than 3 years. This nomadic experience taught him how to quickly make friends wherever I went. At the same time, floating around from place to place meant he struggled with keeping his friendships.  This let him to co-found Vuybe in 2019 and Hi Right Now in 2020. Hi Right Now is on a mission to empower humanity to form deep meaningful connections. When COVID swept the world, we entered a new era of work – an era where remote work has become ubiquitous. And with the majority of the workforce working remotely, people are feeling lonely, disconnected, and having a hard time communicaing freely. That’s what Hi Right Now about to change. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Stephen to my podcast. We explore one of the new challenges that have become more apparent during the pandemic: Building meaningful connections. We discuss why this is so important for human beings and why current technology options available aren’t a real help. We dig into how, by introducing a different approach, we can not only take the problem away, but also deliver a range of unexpected benefits for both individuals as the organization they work for. Here are some of his quotes: I just experienced this rapid-fire transitionary period: Graduating from this program, than trying to pursue this entrepreneurial venture and then trying to fundraise and everything.  So, I need a lot of connections, I need a lot of help and I'm just trying to navigate all these things. So, how do I meet these people that I want to meet. Surely there are entrepreneurs and start-up founders that have walked the same type of journey that have gone down the similar a similar path. There was a huge problem: People belong into multiple online and offline communities, yet it’s still incredibly difficult for you to meet people in a fun and consistent way. Number two: with the progression of the pandemic, social distancing has made it incredibly difficult for you to meet new people. And then the last thing is that networking is just stressful and awkward and solace sometimes During this interview, you will learn four things: How value can be unlocked by ignoring current connections and relations, breaking down barriers, and introducing serendipity That you can create virality around your software by making people the stars inside your product Why the most remarkable ideas for innovation are often right in front of you – just be willing to see that what’s normal to you isn’t necessarily normal for others. That measuring your success by the level of impact you make on the world isn’t about numbers – but about stories. Stories that spread. For more information about the guest from this week: Stephen Choi Website Hi Right Now 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 let every employee have its fair share in the capital in our society. My guest is Quintus Willemse, Co-founder, and CEO of The Share Council Quintus is on a mission. Every day he is solving societal problems with technology and entrepreneurship. This mission started in 2014 as a long journey to change the world with the use of technology. To change how people work together and the working conditions, change how life and work are perceived, improve education and knowledge spread, improve the equal division of capital, and prepare the world for the next generation of technology and innovation. This is inspired me, and hence I invited Quintus to my podcast. We explore what's wrong in society when it comes to the capital divide. We talk about the biggest bureaucratical hurdles and how we can leverage technology to overcome that. We talk about the importance of big vision thinking when drawing the right people in – people who share the belief – and help spark the momentum. Lastly, we discuss some of his big entrepreneurial lessons learned. Here are some of his quotes: One of the things I stumbled upon along the way was the enormous divide in the capital in our society. Just the example of Europe, 64% of the capital in Europe is in the hands of 10% of the population. The reason that the divide is there is that the return on capital is higher than economic growth. So my salary will never keep up with the speed at which there's a return on capital. If you can leverage that, if you can get more people the leverage of capital, one of the forms is having savings account fine. Another form is having a share. About five years ago, I ran into that and wanted to make everybody co-owner. And I figured out it's pretty difficult in the Netherlands to make someone co-owner of your business. I had a company of about five employees, and to make them co-owner, the first bill I was looking at was between eight and 10,000 euros. This is more or less a smack in the face for any entrepreneur, any good willing entrepreneur who wants to give employees this opportunity. During this interview, you will learn four things: That some of the most remarkable software businesses start because they were bold enough to solve the problem that was in the way of their own success How to spark momentum by having a sensitive eye for the most critical (and often illogical) roadblocks to be removed Having a strong vision and believing in what you do will act as the magnet to get the right people to join you on that journey. That as an entrepreneur, you better be prepared you will make all the big mistakes at the same time – And surround yourself with the right people to protect you. For more information about the guest from this week: Quintus Willemse The Share Council Website 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 essence of the book ‘The Wicked Company’ and my guest is Markus Kirsch, FRSA, Author & Founder The Wicked Company. Marcus is a .com veteran with nearly two decades of award-winning, international and integrated design and technology project experience. A Royal College of Art alumni and ex-MIT Media Lab Europe researcher, Marcus Kirsch has worked as a transformation, service design, and innovation specialist. With project experience for companies like British Telecom, GlaxoSmithKline, Kraft, McDonald's, Nationwide, Nissan, Science Museum, P&G, Telekom Italia, and many others, he believes that we need a new narrative, mindset, and way of working to align ourselves with what society needs today.  As he states: We live in an era of wicked problems. Problems that continue to evolve and morph beyond your solutions even as you form them. The ways that always worked to solve problems, doesn’t work anymore.  The days of tame problems—mass production, building bridges, solving for x —are behind us, but we’re still designing companies to solve those tame problems. As a consequence, 70% of digital transformations are failing (McKinsey). Marcus Kirsch is on a mission to change all that.  This inspired me, and hence I invited Marcus to my podcast. We explore how the nature of problems are changing from tame problems into wicked problems, and what this means to the mindsets, organizations and cultures we need to develop to succeed. We also address how our measures should change and how qualitative measures become essential in the process. Last but not least we talk about what Tech-Entrepreneurs need to do differently to drive the transformation and unlock new margin-boosting sources of value. Here are some of his quotes: The big thing to realize is that we're living in an era of problem evolution, not a technology revolution.  We have organizations who have spent a lot of time creating solutions, without having reviewed what the actual problem is.  We know that some problems have changed, because technology has entered our life. Technology has to some extent changed our behavior the way we are connected around the globe. And that has led to a type or characteristics of problems to grow and evolve around us, without organizations or people being able to identify those characteristics. And because we haven't identified it, I think that's why we're failing a lot. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why it’s key to fall in love with the problem, not the product  Why the better way to look at finding solutions it in aiming for effectiveness (i.e impact) rather than efficiency That we have to develop an idea about sustainable failure – to learn faster and grow your innovation muscle better, quicker and more effective Why it is key to embrace emotion as a skill to truly understand what the problem really looks like. For more information about the guest from this week: Markus Kirsch The Wicked Company 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 shape working environments that increase our productivity and wellness. My guest is Tim Panagos, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Microshare Tim is a technology executive with 20 years of experience in Enterprise Software. He’s a change agent and a vision setter who’s thrilled by building and sees the wisdom in maintaining. He believes that technology is a weapon for strategic competitive advantage, and is most productive when he can team with a business partner who shares his big ideas He was most recently Chief Architect of Accenture’s global Business Process Management (BPM) practice leading architecture innovation. Prior to that, Tim was CTO at Knowledge Rules, a global consulting start-up and held multiple engineering leadership roles at Pegasystems (PEGA). He holds a Masters in the Management of Technology from MIT and studied Computer Science at UNH. In 2013 he co-founded Microshare™, where today he’s in charge of strategic product vision and the implementation of it. Microshare is all about squeezing more value from more data. The focus has been on harnessing and sharing previously hidden insights on client operations. This unveils vast cost-savings opportunities and delivers new metrics on occupant wellness, building performance and sustainability – and enables the businesses to deliver novel business models that will create new industries and disrupt existing. That inspired me, and hence I invited Tim to my Podcast. We explore how businesses are challenged to make the right and best decisions how to deploy the space they own or occupy, and how COVID has made that challenge worse. We address what opportunity we have in taking employee wellness and productivity to the next level when we bring in meaningful and live data from sensors into the picture. Beyond that we talk about what it takes to build a software business that create solutions that not only has an edge, but also keeps it. Here are some of his quotes: When I was leaving Accenture what I was being getting to see were that there were patterns in how these very large projects, 50 million hundred million dollar a year projects that were being executed, were combining technologies that I felt were ripe to be harvested and democratized. And so being a systems thinker, I began to kind of visualize how we could take and boil these will large projects down and create building blocks that would allow more people to take advantage of them. People who didn't have the budget or the risk profile necessary to launch a $50 million Accenture project to apply these things. How would we kind of redesign and reconceived these technologies to make it more broadly applicable? During this interview, you will learn four things: How to create solutions to aid decision making in areas where there’s a lot of human bias, emotional tension or invisible behaviour. How removing friction in the adoption and decision/buying process of enterprise solutions helps drive momentum How data-privacy can become your key differentiator if you think about it differently How you can grow faster and bigger by focusing with dedication on a smaller, less educated, and narrower defined market For more information about the guest from this week: Tim Panagos Website Microshare See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on what secrets investors are looking for in B2B SaaS companies. My guest is Akeel Jabber, Investment Director and GP at HoriZen Capital Akeel is an expert in growth marketing strategy and business operations. He’s also an engineer who was previously a partner and operations director at Wired investors, a micro private equity firm focused on digital asset acquisitions and has been involved in over 15 company acquisitions.  Today he’s a general partner and Investment Director at HoriZen Capital, an investment firm that invests and acquires SaaS companies over $500k in ARR. He’s also the host of the SaaS District podcast where he interviews entrepreneurs and investors on topics such as leadership, B2B sales, growth marketing, innovation, scaling, funding and M&A.  The combination intrigued me, and hence I invited Akeel to my podcast. We explore what’s essential to make the ‘marriage’ between a start-up and investor magic. What do investors look for, what do they value and care about and what turns them off. Besides that we discuss (through the eyes of an investor) what it takes to build a remarkable software business. Here are some of his quotes: When you're building a company, try to think outside the box, and be so good they can't ignore you. There's kind of two kind of trends that I found with how people stumble upon starting to their company Number one, you have the people who just know it from the beginning: I'm an entrepreneur. I have to build something.And then once I build the next one, I go to the next one, and it's just in my DNA. And then there's the other side, that people don't think about it. They're stuck into a problem that they never even thought to monetize or build as a solution. So, they just build a solution, because they're creators The moral of the story is like, it doesn't matter. You don't have to be a born entrepreneur think that it's built into you, you just have to be able to look around for a problem to solve.  If you feel you can solve it, take that courage, take that step, I think you have nothing to lose, you'd be surprised with yourself. During this interview, you will learn four things: That it doesn’t matter how you start and build your SaaS business. The power is in starting. Ideas are cheap. The value is in bringing it alive Why you should avoid fitting into the norm – build your business the way you want to build it.  That your ability to have customers stick around for the long-term is more important than growing fast.  That we tend to be proud in saying we’re doing ABCDEFG – but focus is king. It’s more important to showcase how you do 1 thing extremely well. For more information about the guest from this week: Akeel Jabber Website HoriZen Capital SaaS District Podcast 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 change the way that marketers create. My guest is R.J. Talyor, CEO and Founder of Pattern89 R.J. has been a B2B software entrepreneur for well over 15 years. He fulfilled various roles ranging from strategist, director Product Marketing and VP of Mobile Products at ExactTarget, became VP of Messaging Products at Salesforce, and served as the VP of Product Management at Geofeedia. He’s recognized as one of the Indianapolis business Journal’s 40 Under 40. In 2016 he founded Pattern89. With this company he’s on a mission is to inspire creativity – and to build something that will change marketing forever.  Their strong believe is that AI will make brands, agencies, and marketers more creative, and more human in an increasingly automated world. This inspired me, and hence I invited R.J. to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in marketing – especially on the creative side. We discuss how marketing is becoming more and more metrics driven, while we still make creative decisions based on gut-feel (often by the highest paid person in the room). We also dig into what it takes to build a remarkable software business – creating software that’s extremely sticky – software that people want to use. Here are some of his quotes: Marketers spend a ton of time on audience development, on reach, on frequency. Everyone talks about journeys, but they don't talk about creative. What I saw was that there's a better way to create what images or videos or copy that you see, and machine learning provides marketers with tools to allow them to do that, like never before. So, the big problem is how do we get more efficient at the creative process, without asking marketers to act more like machines? What they want to do is understand if their idea is going to work or not. And so marketers are kind of trained themselves into machines to try to compute that when we should say: “Hey, no, no human marketer, go create something else. You're the creator, you're the idea person, you're the idea. Machine machines can come up with ideas, let the machines simulator validate what's gonna work, and you human, you do what humans can do best.” During this interview, you will learn four things: That very often stickiness of your applications increase not by building a better User Interface to perform a task, but by making it magically happen How you can help your customers make a difference is by avoiding the ‘highest paid person in the room’ to feel inclined to make a decision Why your future success and momentum can be hidden in killing your darlings i.e., get rid of those things you’re just hooked to. How Data-Coop across your customers can shift from a nice to have into your primary selling point For more information about the guest from this week: R.J. Talyor Website Pattern89 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 engage your support team and empower them to do their best work. My guest is Justin Winter, Co-founder and CEO of Boostopia. He has been an advisor to over a dozen companies and acted in a consulting capacity with over 150+ consumer brands and technology companies across areas of growth, retention, product, and operations.  Justin studied for his Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing from Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA.  In 2010 he co-founded Diamond Candles, the fastest growing and largest online  home fragrance brand in the world. He lead the company as the CEO for 5 years. In that process he became frustrated with the solutions available to him to deliver customer support that his customers loved. So he decided to set out to assemble a team to lead to build what he wish he would have had during his tenure there.  This became the spark that started Boostopia of which Justin is the the Co-founder and CEO. Boostopia is a technology company that helps B2C companies decrease the number of tickets they get, discover ways to efficiently manage support issues, and transform support into a new revenue generating channel. This inspired me, and hence I invited Justin to my podcast. We explore why bad customer support still exists and why the current approach of focusing on the support agent is not enough to solve it. We also discuss the opportunities to turn the support department from a cost-centre into a profit-centre, and the opportunity to increase the wage of support team members by a mere 50% as a consequence of that. Here are some of his quotes: We fundamentally believe that the way to create better customer experiences isn't by getting the latest and greatest fancy ticketing system. It's really about engaging your support team that you have and empowering them to do their best work. Why does customer support, from our perspective as a consumer, why is it so horrible? We all hate talking to customer support. We have lots of frustrating experiences. So, we fundamentally believe that the reason why bad customer support still exists. It's not because companies don't know that that's happening. It's because they don't have an underlying attribution model for understanding how those bad experiences lead to them making less money. During this interview, you will learn four things: How to spark momentum by overwhelming your users with opportunity i.e. give them a clear picture of the value they are creating with your product How to find balance in your investment between ‘selling what you got’ versus making ‘the next big thing.’  Why companies that bet on product-led growth are proportionally better rewarded than those that are sales led. Why you’d drive more value for your customers by instead of helping them be more efficient, help them eliminate the underlying problem all together. For more information about the guest from this week: Justin Winter Website Boostopia 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 to build the meaningful relationships with the right companies. My guest is Riaz Kanani, Founder and CEO of Radiate B2B. Riaz is a mix of marketer, technologist and entrepreneur who worked with cutting edge technologies throughout his career, whether it be the nascent flash/java video space in the early 2000s to combining email, mobile and social media marketing technologies in 2008. Throughout it all, he’s used data as the backbone behind these technologies to better understand how people behave and use these new approaches. In that journey he founded 6 companies and worked for IBM, Lyris, Alchemy Worx and Profusion. He’s also a mentor at Techstars. Today he’s helping to build a better way to do B2B Marketing that increases both average contract values and the speed of closing contracts. And this resonated with me, and hence I invited Riaz to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in marketing automation and why the answer is in choosing a different approach, not in more tools. We also discuss what it takes to succeed in B2B software, and what decisions and mindsets are fundamental to stand out. Here are some of his quotes: It became really clear when talking to those companies that we've become in the b2b or business marketing space, very reliant on content and events to drive lead acquisition, nurturing, email marketing obviously as well. Basically, we were all reliant on exactly the same things, and b2b marketing would become homogenous. And the only way to stand out was really to be doing better creative. And I think that's a marketer’s worst nightmare. I felt that there had to be a better way. The more I looked at it, the more I realized that if you were building a marketing automation company today, you wouldn't build a platform that looked anything like the marketing automation platforms that exist today. During this interview, you will learn four things: That there’s no nice handbook that tells you exactly what’s going to happen with your software business: so, to succeed it’s your duty to hire people that can think on their feet Why your marketing will become exponentially better if you start thinking about the world as being a list of companies that you build relationships with How defensible differentiation can be created by blending a strong product with an irresistible business model. That your decision how to position yourselves in a space can create a significant problem around your messaging For more information about the guest from this week: Riaz Kanani Website Radiate B2B 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 radically evolve the way people search and transact property. My guest is Bobby Bryant, Founder and CEO of Doss. Bobby has been in real estate for 20 years. He began his journey in the mortgage business. In 2008, he took one year off to relentlessly study and understand the collective real estate industry, what happened, and what's to come. That sparked the idea to found DOSS.  DOSS is on a mission to develop the best technology to make homeownership in America more affordable. This inspired me, and hence I invited Bobby to be a guest on my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the Real Estate industry when it comes to finding and buying properties. We dig into the opportunity to create a win-win approach i.e. a world where nobody has to lose, and how technology and data has a fundamental roll in realizing this. Finally we discuss what it takes to build a software business people would miss if it was gone.  Here are some of his quotes: Every industry in the country has become more automated and economical. If you think about the promise of technology it was to do two things. The promise of technology was to save us time and money. So, in real estate, when you think of all of the technological advancements of today, yet the cost of transact real estate hadn't changed. The biggest issue for a lot of people is the barrier of entry of costs to get into a home. Or a seller who has a million-dollar house and to give away $60,000 of their equity. How can we be in 2020 charging the same fee that we charged in the early 1900s? The real estate industry struggles with a win-win. Why does somebody have to lose in this equation? During this interview, you will learn four things: How a position of advantage can be created if we think about win-win i.e. provide unique value to both parties at the table – not just one. Why instead of talking like a rocket scientist you should soften your message and talk like a truck driver  Why the companies of the future are going to be the companies that figure out how to make people feel good, and feel good about themselves  Why you have to be prepared to pay attention for continuous evolution.  For more information about the guest from this week: Bobby Bryan Website Doss 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 discussion around the essence of the book ‘The Innovation Ultimatum – how 6 technologies reshape every business in the 2020s. My guest is Steve Brown, Author and Founder of Possibility & Purpose. Steve Brown is a futurist, author, entrepreneur, and advisor with over 30 years of experience in high tech. Prior to building his own consulting business, he was Intel’s Chief Evangelist and worked in Intel Labs as a futurist, where he imagined and built plans for a world 5, 10, and 15 years in the future. After leaving Intel in 2016, Steve built his own company, Possibility and Purpose LLC, which helps businesses to be more innovative, more resilient, and more profitable.  In 2018 he co-founded The Provenance Chain Network, an open standards approach to bringing transparency to global commerce. In 2020, he published his latest book, “The Innovation Ultimatum: How six strategic technologies will reshape every business in the 2020s” This inspired me, and hence I invited Steve to my podcast. We explore why the gap between those that embrace the new technologies and those that don’t is going to dramatically widen. Why it’s about agency taking responsibility and decide you’re going to participate in building the future that defines the winners. We also address what’s qualities leaders are required to develop to lead and be remarkable doing so. Here are some of his quotes: There are two pieces to the innovation ultimatum, there's one that's sort of more obvious on the surface, which is the competitive imperative, which is kind of the stick The gap between those that embrace technology, and those that don't, has always been there, but that gap is going to widen dramatically in the next decade The other side of the innovation ultimatum is the moral obligation for us as individuals and as companies to do the right thing and to create value for humans and to solve human problems. During this interview, you will learn four things: That you should ask yourself two questions. What's the future we want to build? And what's the future we want to avoid?  That to be great a leader in the 2020s you should be equipped to ask the right questions, become very clear eyed and understand the application of these technologies Why the smartest companies are thinking five or six steps ahead and then they work their way back to a starting point. That too much of the ‘innovation’ we put out is still about boosting productivity and efficiency, and that in doing so, we’re leaving so much on the table that we risk irrelevancy. For more information about the guest from this week: Steve Brown Website 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 empowers internet users and content creators with the tools to build a safer and more trustworthy internet. My guest is Sebastiaan van der Lans, Founder and CEO of WordProof and Chairman of Trusted Web Foundation Sebastiaan van der Lans has a big heart for open source. In 2006 he co-founded Amsterdam’s first WordPress agency ‘Van Ons’, which is a leading digital agency now, serving over 100M page views a year.  Sebastiaan has a strong passion for improving the playing fields of publishing, SEO, and e-commerce. In 2019, Sebastiaan founded WordProof with which he’s on a mission to restoring trust on the internet. This inspired me, and hence I invited Sebastiaan to my podcast. We explore what’s underpinning the fact the internet is broken when it comes to trust and how this is undermining our progress. We also address how to get a movement going in a situation that’s characterized by multiple ‘chicken & egg’ dilemmas. Finally, we discuss the mindset and approach required to achieve results that have remarkable impact for everyone around the globe. Here are some of his quotes: Even though the Internet has brought us so many great things, it has a deep-rooted issue. And that's what it's trustworthiness. And therefore, all sorts of obnoxious human behaviour, like theft and manipulation and fraud thrive. Normally in society, we have systems in place to make sure that those obnoxious behaviors don't thrive. But on the internet, trust simply isn't part of the internet's DNA. And that goes back to society.  So what we say is: “To save the world, we need to fix the internet, we need to make trust part of the internet's DNA.” That's what we aim for. And Wordproof is a Time Stamping tool to achieve the mission of the trusted web.  In a few years from now, if you don't timestamp your information, you’ll be considered a fraud. What are you hiding from? During this interview, you will learn four things: That just because technology isn’t scalable or mature enough is no reason to not embrace it. How to solve a business model challenge where the audience that benefits most are not the one that will pay for it. Why it requires to declare war on a specific problem to create solutions that are remarkable Why spending 1000 hours on a 1-minute pitch pays off For more information about the guest from this week: Sebastiaan van der Lans Website WordProof  Website The Trusted Web 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 enables us to rediscover the places and the people that make the area we live in or visit unique. My guest is Tom Charman, Co-founder and CEO of Nava For the last decade, he founded, been involved in, and scaled high-growth consumer-facing products that aim to solve questions relating to understanding and predicting human behavior through data.  He’s a fan of lean startup methodology and spend most of his day building products. Tom gave a TEDx on A.I. and quantum computing, advised corporates on data privacy/security, and UK and EU parliaments on data and innovation. He co-founded NAVA in 2017 around the vision to connect people together through food. Their mission to realize this through creating immersive city experiences across Europe by helping locals better understand what’s going on around them.  UNWTO recognised NAVA as one of the world’s most disruptive tourism startups. This resonated with me, and hence I invited Tom to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the process of restaurants and venue reviews and how this is not only impacting us as consumers, but also many business owners – simply because their ‘larger peers’ have an unfair competitive advantage. We discuss how to solve both the B2C and the B2B challenge with smart technology, and how to do this in a way that fuels itself by designing for virality.  Here are some of his quotes: When you look for, say, a restaurant or a place to visit on Google, the kind of the general feeling is: ‘if it's above four stars, it's worth going to.’ But actually today, most restaurants about four stars. So how do you pick out a restaurant that's 4.3 versus a restaurant that's 4.4. And at the end of the day, that’s ignoring the kind of things that come with it like boosted posts and information to try and manipulate reviews. The general feeling here is this is a system that's flawed and fundamentally broken. The whole independent market of local restaurants, local bars, independently own places, it's such a disjointed and fragmented market, which makes it hellishly difficult to actually work. But if you get something like this working, what you're doing here is creating a global platform for independent venues to actually compete against the Starbucks, the McDonald's the all of the other big chains that are out there - giving them a level playing field. During this interview, you will learn four things: That too many business software companies say they are talking to customers, but miserably fail to do so. Why we should make it the standard rule to consume less data instead of more (without compromising quality) Why too many features can become your biggest problem and what to do about it How rapid +50% growth isn’t always an indicator you got product market fit For more information about the guest from this week: Tom Charman Website 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 avoid people that get paralyzed from having to start their lives over. My guest is Mark Daniels, Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Mark Daniel was born and raised in Pensacola. He injured his spine almost 13 years ago and have been using a wheelchair since. In 2010, Mark was asked to assist IHMC with evaluating their first powered exoskeleton, and he kept this involvement since. He has now joined IHMC as a full time research intern to work on the design, fabrication, and testing of the exoskeleton for the Cybathlon. Mark anticipates the Cybathlon to make a huge stride in technology and awareness to improve quality of life for those with loss of mobility due to injury or illness across the world.  "Every day I am confronted with the reality that I am paralyzed. Every day I face this reality to find comfort in my abilities and not anger in my disability – we all have disabilities and I encourage everyone to live unrestrained.”  This inspired me, and hence I invited Mark to my podcast. We explore the world of Exoskeleton, the major advances over the last 10 years and how the blend of hardware, software and active user involvement has been fundamental to this. We discuss what the innovation should be really all about, how to accelerate it, and what mental obstacles one has to overcome to come out as a winner.  Here are some of his quotes: I look at everything that we're doing here at IHMC and all the other exoskeletons, and the other technology that is giving mobility back to people with disabilities.  I look at all of this as hopefully, that 18 year old kid that I was. An accident will happen to him, and he will get paralyzed. And some of the technology that I'm working on or helping to push or develop will be what he's given whenever he has the same problem that I did. And he'll go back to the same job that he had and he won't have to start his life over. We notice who makes strides in the market, and who wins in that market. And it's the people that pay attention to the feedback of their end user. And the way to do that is to get somebody that's gonna want your technology and then give them a reason to want it. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why it is key to create solutions that smartly balance working with you, as much as for you That users have alternatives – sometimes radically different from what you offer. And to make them want to change you have to deliver a shift in value. Why it is key to not argue with a user whether what they want is a good idea or not.  That art and technology are not that different – and that’s where the opportunity hides For more information about the guest from this week: Mark Daniels Website IHMC 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 sales & marketing space that has the power to increase sales productivity by over 80%, and my guest is Ilan Kasan, Co-founder and CEO of Exceed.ai. Ilan is an accomplished product leader with proven successes in driving product, user experience, strategy and execution and building products users and enterprises love such as Webex. He has deep expertise in mobile, web, & application software & SaaS products, and built an 18 year career in general management and product management for leading global technology companies including , Cisco, WebEx, Comeet and others. Ilan has been an earlier guest on my podcast. Our first interview was back in February 2019. Lots has happened since, and what triggered me to get him back on the podcast is to hear his story about how the market has changed, how he orchestrated his organization for growth, what he’s changed to survive the pandemic, and what lessons he learned in this process. Here are some of his quotes: We learned a lot. And the biggest change: we know very well who is not our customer. We have Product Market Fit. We know that we solve a real problem. We know who we should sell to you. But we hadn’t figured out the Go to Market Fit. The Go to Market fit is one of the balance between product, sales and marketing to help us sell the product. Another way of looking at it is that's a good Go to Market fit is: If your understand how your customers buy. Your Go to Market has to fit the way they buy and not the way you sell. By listening to this interview, you will learn four things: How to move from product market fit to Go-To-Market fit Why it’s liberating to say no to prospects That products don’t only need to do functionally what it says it does – more importantly - It needs to do it in a way it delights customers Why it’s not enough to just have a good story and a good message For more information about the guest from this week: Ilan Kasan Website 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 transform education by taking out bias. My guest is Claudia Rademaker, Co-founder Dugga Claudia has worked internationally with start-ups, scale-ups and international business development in various industries. She’s worked as Assistant Professor at Stockholm School of Economics and Stockholm Business School, Stockholm University. She did her doctoral thesis within consumer media behavior and communication effectiveness. After her dissertation, she was awarded the prestigious Wallander stipend from the Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius foundation, Handelsbanken. Her work in education inspired the foundation of Dugga in March 2015. Their mission: In every school, each child deserves equal opportunities and needs to be given the right to quality education.”  This inspired me, and hence I invited Claudia to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in today’s education system – where every single day individual students get still graded on other things than their actual performance. We assess where the problems originate from and how, by breaking the norms transformational value can be created – and what’s required to do that in a way that people keep talking about.  Here are some of her quotes: The passion is that you want to make a difference. My personal mission is that I want to make a difference in education. Help young individuals or pupils to obtain equal opportunities to learn and grow. We want to create solutions for teachers to obtain a better, but also a more honest and unbiased understanding of the skills, knowledge, and abilities of their students. No one should be graded based on his or her last name, skin color, or in class behavior. More importantly, no one with a special need should have less opportunities to learn and grow. One in five has some form of special need. If you think about that, if we stand still by that fact, then it is just unbelievable that we have come this far. I mean, can you then imagine the need in just one classroom? And this can be made possible with modern technology and pedagogy During this interview, you will learn four things: What value we can unlock when we take bias out of the process.  Why actively seeking to break the norms makes it so much easier to create something remarkable How, by ‘Thinking out Loud’ can help winthe heart of your most difficult and stubborn users and unlock your tipping point Why every team member should feel like a VIP for end-results For more information about the guest from this week: Claudia Rademaker Website  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to enable wholesale and manufacturing organizations to a build the same kind of relationships online as they’ve always done offline. My guest is Michiel Schipperus, CEO Sana Commerce Michiel has been working in e-commerce since 1999 when he joined ISM eGroup.  In the years following he consulted with many distributors and manufacturers on how to successfully set up an online sales channel. These lessons learned from more than 100 B2B e-commerce cases were used to develop the Sana Commerce  concept.  In 2011 Sana was founded. Since then Michiel is pursuing two missions simultaneously: 1. Helping companies worldwide achieve e-commerce success 2. Building a company culture people love and that enables them to be their best selves. This inspired me, and hence I invited Michiel to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the market for e-commerce and why so many companies don’t achieve the e-commerce success they hope for. We dig deeper into the question what needs to be done differently from a product strategy standpoint to solve this global challenge. Lastly we discuss Michiel’s standpoint on what’s required to build a software business that turns customers into advocates in a way that’s highly scalable. Here are some of his quotes: We learned 10 years ago that that B2B was very different from B2C. The problem for these companies if they have this very special unique relationship with their customers and they put in place a B2C ecommerce platform, is that this platform is not supporting the nature of their relationships. They run into all kinds of issues with their customers. They don't see the adoption that they would like, because these customers, they go online, they try to order but they do not see the information that they're looking for, or the information is inaccurate. So, they will not use the ecommerce platform anymore. They'll just pick up the phone and revert back to their old way of working. If they're not able to make this transition with them, and service these customers online the same way to have been doing offline, well, that will definitely damage their business. During this interview, you will learn three things: Why what customers say they need, is often not what they want. And getting this wrong could severely undermine your competitiveness. That value differentiation starts with your foundation – and done well helps you can escape the competition on feature Why you have to be more strategic earlier in your journey – to avoid things just ‘happen to you’ - especially around your value proposition.  For more information about the guest from this week: Michiel Schipperus Sana Commerce See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give every one of us the luxury of financial freedom. My guest is Sam Abrika, Co-founder and CEO of Cash Coach. He’s an engineer, contrarian, ex-banker, and now gamifying personal finance. After he achieved his Master of Science at the Paris Sud University and MBA, he started his career as a Risk & Analytics consultant at IBM.  Sam then moved to PWC, followed by UBS where he became Head of EMEA Liquidity and Funding Risk. Finally he moved to Mitsubishi UFG Securities where he designed new liquidity analytics which allowed to save $1Bn liquidity.   He then co-founded Cash Coach, a company that’s on a mission to gamify personal finance and make the world better at managing money and more fun for the millennial generation. This inspired me, and hence I invited Sam to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the consumer world when it comes to financial health – and how most consumer technology companies are designing to make this worse, not better.  We dig into why there are not incentives to fix this, and what innovation opportunity that really brings. We also address why having a solution is not enough – and that changing user behavior is possibly the biggest challenge to crack. Lastly we explore what’s required to build a software business that’s worth making a remark about. Here are some of his quotes: The big idea is in nowadays in our economy, you either be in debt or wealth. And unfortunately, no education or university, no one is telling that to people. It doesn't tell them how to manage their money, how to live their life financially free.  And actually, it's even quite the opposite. The whole financial industry and the consumerism machine is trying to push people to consumerism for so that they buy stuff they don't need, with money they don't have, to impress people they don't like. We want to reverse that trend. We want people to feel actually rewarded when they have good behaviours; when they're saving; when they're building their wealth; when they're achieving financial freedom.  So the big idea is to make it a game. And we want people to compete against themselves, against the friend, to being better at saving. During this interview, you will learn three things: That a lot of innovation can be found by doing the opposite of what the industry aims to achieve That making black and white choices is key, even if that means you’re going side track millions and millions of users  Why going for some ‘extremely happy’ users is so much more valuable than to have everybody lukewarm How to uncover opportunities people don’t even know they have a problem around For more information about the guest from this week: Sam Abrika Cashcoach.io 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 make artificial intelligence accessible to any business. My guest is Dr. Tom Heseltine, CEO of Aurora AI Tom has been with Aurora for over 15 years, becoming CEO in 2016 and guiding Aurora’s transition from a face-rec centric company to a successful AI specialist. He has a deeply technical background, he mentors and tutors Aurora’s Core Technology team of PhDs in solving the most difficult challenges He has a PhD in Biometric Face Recognition from the University of York, UK, following his first-class honours degree in Computer Science. Tom introduced Deep Learning and AI to Aurora’s technology portfolio, establishing Aurora’s AI Framework and instigating a step-change in face recognition accuracy. This evolution is now creating a revolution in how some of the most complex and specific challenges are solved in record time. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Tom to my podcast. We explore why the accessibility to AI is still so limited and why the results are often far from what’s expected. We discuss the options to address this – and how this both a technological as well as a business problem. Finally we discuss Tom’s point of view and experience to create a remarkable software business. Here are some of his quotes: Solving problems. It's coming up with an idea, testing a hypothesis, creating a system that puts that into practice, and then particularly seeing it being used and doing good. That's what really drives me, I want to see good ideas, being used to solve really challenging problems. It's to make artificial intelligence accessible to any business AI needs no introduction these days. It really is fantastically powerful. But it's difficult to get right. It's expensive, and it requires real expertise. A lot of people are trying it and failing. And what we're trying to do is provide application specific API's designed for a business built to specific precise requirements by a team of experts, and seeing that right through to deployment. And we're trying to do that for companies that are otherwise missing out. During this interview, you will learn four things: How you can accelerate adoption of your software products by going beyond the feature /function challenge How by bringing different disciplines together you can crack the formula to produce something exceptional That being remarkable starts with having courage, courage to adopt and change, step into the unknown and get out of your comfort zone  That solving narrow and highly specific problems will be the key to create broadscale momentum For more information about the guest from this week: Dr. Tom Heseltine Aurora AI 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 protect each of us from wasting our life by being trapped in the wrong job within the wrong company. My guest is Nina Alag Suri, founder and CEO of X0pa. Nina is a geek at heart and an entrepreneur by choice. She grew up in India, close to Mumbai, the financial capital. She worked for large companies such as ICL and Steria but was always determined to be an entrepreneur.  In 1997 she started her first company in India - in HR Consulting, which she expanded across three regions - Europe, Asia Pac, and North America.  She was voted Female Business Personality of the year Singapore, The European Consultancy of the year, European World Finance- Entrepreneur of the Year, and the list goes on. Three years ago, she thought it's time to disrupt and pivot her own business before somebody else would disrupt it. That's how X0PA was formed. X0PA is on a mission to change the art of hiring and make sure that everybody is in the right space, in the right company, the right role in the right team.  This inspired me, and hence I invited Nina to my podcast. We explore how, even in today's highly automated world, people still get hired for the wrong reasons - and what's the cause of this. We address the complexity of the problem and that it goes far beyond just fixing inefficiencies.  We also explore the big lessons Nina learned on her entrepreneurial journey and what's required to create software products customers don't want to live without.  Here are some of her quotes: I studied engineering started my career as a in a tech role. And I said, Oh, my God, this is totally not for me, people is what excited me, you know, dealing with different people, diversity of people, the you know, the different colours of people. And I wanted to be in a people business The biggest thing that really kind of spoke to me was about the subjectivity in the in the nature of hiring, you know, we've had Industrial Revolution 1, 2, 3, 4 come and go. But hiring has still been a very, very subjective process. It leads to human bias human errors. These biases tend to kind of screen people out, rather than screen people in. And I thought it would be great to use technology to make something which is very objective, very fair. And most importantly, it finds the best match between employer and an employee. You spent a fair bit of your time, in fact, the majority of your time at work. And if you are not in the right place, and the right job, you know, you're wasting your life. By listening to this podcast, you will learn three things: That real value is delivered if we move from solving 'what is' to solving 'what might be'. How solving the recruitment problem in finding the perfect fit in relevance, future loyalty, and future performance provides an approach many software solutions could benefit from. Why software companies are better of when tech-entrepreneurs apply an 'all voices are heard' approach. For more information about the guest from this week: Nina Alag Suri Website 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 let us live the lives we want, without killing our planet. My guest is Terry Swack, CEO of Sustainable Minds. Terry is an Internet and environmental entrepreneur, pioneer in customer experience strategy and thought leader in the product sustainability software industry. Her career has focused on making complex ideas and technologies useful, usable and desirable. She started her first company, TSDesign, in 1994: an Internet strategy and product design firm that lead the industry in user experience design. It was acquired by Razorfish in 1999.  In 2002 she became VP Customer Experience & founding member of StillSecure, a network security software startup where she brought 3 best-in-class products to market in 18 months In 2005 she founded the Beam, a venture-backed Web 2.0 marketplace to power the emerging demand for cleaner & greener products and services Finally, in 2007 she founded Sustainable Minds a company that’s mission is to operationalize environmental performance into mainstream product development and manufacturing in an accessible, empowering and credible way.  Sustainable Minds’ Eco-concept + LCA Software was the 1st cloud tool for product manufacturers to design greener products has been used in industry and higher education in 90+ countries. This resonated with me, and hence I invited Terry to my podcast. We explore the massive challenge we have at hand to make the world more sustainable. We discuss how technology can help accelerate solving this problem and what’s needed to leverage the impact of technology to its max. How we can create growth by consuming less, and what mindset we should obtain to create solutions people will embrace and talk about.   Here are some of her quotes: There is the opportunity for economies and businesses to grow, and there's a different way to do it. Because if growth is still driven by consumption, the way most economies function, and especially first world economies, it's all about consumption and more.  But innovation through improving environmental performance and also now material health is going to mean less consumption due to developing product service systems, using fewer raw materials, circular economy, all the things that people haven't yet waded into in a mainstream way, will become the way. People all over the planet want to live the way people live in a first world economy. For that to happen we’d need 5 plantets to support the carrying capacity of today's population and the rate at which it's growing,. During this interview, you will learn three things: To create meaningful change you have to help people to think differently before they can act differently  How to start and accelerate company growth when the main thing you solve isn’t even ‘cool’ yet Why companies that measure (and not think differently) will only deliver incremental impact Remarkable software is created when you focus on creating something very specific people can use instead of something that everybody can use. For more information about the guest of this week: Terry Swack Sustainable Minds 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 turn "dead air" into actionable intelligence, helping Retailers, Healthcare, and Hospitality facilities improve on-site experiences and the health of their businesses. My guest is Van West, Founder and CEO of Vocalytics. Van is an accomplished strategic business development and marketing executive with 15 years’ experience leading teams in startup to Fortune 500 environments.  He has a product-minded entrepreneurial approach with focus on strategy, growth, and product and is passionate about digital engagement to creatively exploit revenue opportunities.  He co-founded GiftyOne in 2013, was Director of Channel Marketing for Lookout Mobile Security, SVP of Marketing at Oomba, first hire & VP of Global Business Development at VMAXX as well as Chief Strategy Officer at Reality Smash. Besides that, he’s a guest lecturer at the University of California, Irvine. In November 2019 he founded Vocalytics, an enterprise-grade voice and sound analytics platform built for the physical world. It’s on a mission to improve enterprise performance, associate engagement, and customer experience - all through the power of voice and sound. That inspired me, and hence I invited Van to my podcast. We explore why so many enterprises today are unaware of the context and triggers impacting human behavior of their people and customers – and how that is leading to compromise in experience, loyalty and the performance of their business. We address what can be done about that, but also dig into the big lessons learned in bringing such products to market in a time where everything we have become so used to changed. Van shares his insights behind the choices he made to deliberately not enter the obvious, high-growth categories in the market.  Here are some of his quotes: Understanding the best practices of your top performers and deploying that knowledge at scale is really that's ultimately been our play. We've also recognized that in the COVID world that we're living in, there's less in person exchanges occurring and those that do occur are less face to face.  With all the traction and all the momentum that we've built understanding at this point in time, we now have to start building towards what that new normal is and recognizing that.  So my little sister has a highly compromised immune system, severely compromised immune system. And we built a technology to listen in the physical worlds. Coughing is the number one way to COVID spreads. So rather than filtering out the background noise, let's lean into it to differentiate our product beyond COVID towards this new normal, while also we can help and serve the general population, whether it's returned to work, returned to campus, or returned to the physical worlds for in-person interactions.  We want to keep everyone safe.  During this interview, you will learn four things: How to get things off the ground faster, and with more impact by listening to your customers with intent.  The essentials to carve out a space that you cannot only be successful in, but actually dominate Why time is the most important resource for start-ups – and how to utilize that optimally How to create velocity by ensuring every member of the team is committed to the journey ahead and enabling them to shine.  For more information about the guest of this week: Van West Vocalytics See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices