UpTech Report: Recent Episodes

Alexander Ferguson

The UpTech Report is a channel committed to diving deep into upcoming technologies that will disrupt how we live, work, and play. We’re also thrilled to share real stories told directly by C-Suite executives about how their companies are leveraging Software as a Service (SaaS), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and other emerging technologies to maintain a competitive edge in today’s rapidly-changing world.

Have you ever considered automating your SaaS and B2B email marketing campaigns?

In this edition of the UpTech Report, host Alexander Ferguson meets with the CEO of Userlist, Jane Portman, to discuss email marketing automation strategies going into 2022.

At its core, Userlist is helping to automate the email marketing lifecycle with its new email automation tool. It makes starting email marketing campaigns and delivering custom email blasts that are personally tailored to SaaS businesses easier than ever before. It’s event-based email marketing, taken to the next level through data.

Through data-driven analysis, Userlist’s email campaign tools and autoresponders are able to learn about your customers on a deep level. Then, they’ll take all of the necessary actions to onboard, engage, and nurture your marketing leads throughout the full customer lifecycle.

In this edition of the UpTech Report, host Alexander Ferguson meets with the CEO of SecondKeys, Amber Hayes to discuss AI enhanced property management and predictive analytics for homeowners.

SecondKeys is bringing artificial intelligence and automation into the property management

space using machine learning to predict maintenance needs for properties ahead of time. However, that’s just the beginning of where this is all going in the future.

What are the aspects of property management that can be automated and how can the information provided in a Maintenance Intelligence Report increase profitability for property managers? How exactly does Automatic Scheduling work?

In this podcast, we’re learning all about property management systems and the role that artificial intelligence is going to play.

The US healthcare system is broken in many ways, and functions great in others, but what are some approaches to actually solving the problems we are seeing currently in medicine?

In this edition of the UpTech Report, host Alexander Ferguson meets with James Lott, the CEO of Scripted to discuss how pharmacies can become point of care destinations. This could be a game-changer for both pharmacies and the patients that they serve.

During Covid-19, we witnessed the staffing shortage in healthcare first hand and saw how it affected patients. However, by empowering pharmacists to utilize their medical training and do more, Scripted is helping to fix our broken healthcare system. Pharmacists can make a difference, helping people to get treatments faster and cheaper, when they need it most, right at their local neighborhood pharmacy.

Waiting in long lines at the doctor’s office is no fun for anyone, but Scripted is helping individuals to skip the doctor’s office altogether and get treatment for common conditions at the pharmacy instead. They are empowering pharmacists to offer prescriptions and various treatments, and trying to get the insurance companies to pay.

What parts of contract management can be automated and what role does data-driven decision making play? Where do blockchain and smart contract technology fit into all of this?

In this edition of the UpTech Report, host Alexander Ferguson meets with the co-founders of the AI-powered digital contract management platform, Revnue, to discuss contract automation tools and where this is all going. Sunny Sharma, CEO, and John Cortez, COO, explain how contract management has typically been a highly fragmented space with dozens of different interacting parties.

“About $28 billion worth of trade was done last year in 2021, and if you look at trade, all that was done by contracts. On an average, organizations lose about 9% of their revenue due to inefficient contract management,” explains Sharma.

However, Revnue’s contract management software aims to change that, allowing companies to automate and unify numerous business processes related to contract management. Plus, they take it to the next level with their contract analytics, advanced reporting, and other tools related to contract management.

Sports analytics and data science in sports are topics that are getting a lot of traction lately in the sports world. Every year, more and more teams are being united around intelligence, and in this edition of the UpTech Report, we meet with the CEO of Kitman Labs, Stephen Smith, to learn why.

Kitman Labs is a company focused on improving human performance in sports by analyzing athlete data. Their Intelligence Platform allows you to consolidate millions of data points about game stats, market value, scouting scores, training volumes, speed, strength, injuries, sleep, mental state, basically everything about an sports player. Even biometrics and blood markers are on the table.

However, it’s not solely about the data either. At Kitman Labs, the real focus is on turning that data into intelligence and empowering the right people on the team to make the right decisions at the right times.

DemandJump is a marketing strategy platform that uses AI to determine the most important keywords for driving search engine traffic, and in this edition of the UpTech Report, host Alexander Ferguson meets with the CEO of DemandJump, Christopher Day to learn more.

Based on Google keyword analysis and understanding search intent, DemandJump’s AI keyword research tool provides a game plan for content marketers who want to increase first page rankings. Artificial intelligence does the SEO keyword research, and in addition to providing the keywords, it also tells you the actual questions that people are asking related to the keywords.

Once the new content goes live, you’ll get a full analysis of which pieces of content and campaigns are actually driving sales. Plus, DemandJump gives you regular consumer insight reports that tell you how customers are behaving and what other competitors are up to.

In this edition of the UpTech Report, host Alexander Ferguson meets with the CEO of Improovy to discuss how he took his painting contracting company and turned it into a tech company. Along the way, he has become an expert in SEO strategy, so he will also be sharing some of his top tips for local SEO and search engine marketing.

Kazimierski has a fascinating Founder’s Journey, and in many ways, Improovy now functions kind of like an Uber for the home improvement industry.

Instead of spending hours figuring out who to hire, how to schedule the work, and coordinating everything, Improovy’s AI system handles the entire process. The consumer simply requests a quote for a painting job, and after agreeing to the terms, the painters show up at the house ready to work — it’s that easy!

Improovy’s algorithms know which contractors are available, who has the specific expertise necessary for the job. Plus, all of the payments and logistics are handled on one simple platform that has an interface designed to improve the lives of both homeowners and contractors.

Why are artists creating NFTs and what are the various NFT use cases going to be in the future?

In this edition of the UpTech Report, host Alexander Ferguson talks to art expert Monty Preston from Saatchi Art to learn more about NFT, digital art, cryptocurrency, blockchain tech, and where this is all going.

At its core, Saatchi Art is an online marketplace for independent artists to sell their artwork. It currently features over 1.4 million original artworks created by 94 thousand emerging artists from around the world, and 110+ countries are represented to date.

But in the future, it’s likely that the focus is going to be more and more about digital art. The real questions are, what will NFT in the Metaverse actually look like and how soon are we heading towards mainstream adoption? Plus, what are the environmental impacts of NFT and cryptocurrency, and should we be worried?

In this edition of the UpTech Report, host Alexander Ferguson meets with the SVP & CMO of Denodo, Ravi Shankar, to discuss data virtualization and the future of big data.

Through various use cases and examples, Shankar walks us through the exciting history of data analysis, what his company is currently up to, and where this is all going in the future. With Denodo’s data virtualization platform, companies can use modern data integration and management to sift through mountains of data to gain a unified view of the information faster, cheaper, and less effort.

Under the surface, data analysis is quite complicated, but Shankar explains how his company aims to make it as simple as turning on a water faucet — you turn the knob and the water simply flows out the end of the pipe.

Denodo’s powerful logical data integration and management enables data to flow from databases, data warehouses, and data lakes, on-premises or in the cloud, to applications used by business users, where ultimately, they use the most up-to-date data to analyze everything and deliver useful, business-accelerating results.

In this edition of the UpTech Report, we meet with Mo Asady, the CTO of Convirza, to learn about how marketing teams are tracking and evaluating sales calls using AI.

If you only have one or two sales calls to make, it’s easy to evaluate what happened after the call. However, if your team needs to examine the trends across hundreds of hours worth of conversations, artificial intelligence is likely a better solution.

Through speech recognition, natural language processing, and ultimately, machine learning algorithms, Convirza’s tech is learning about how your team does business. Then, it’s analyzing the calls, providing actual scores about lead quality and a team’s phone skills.

In the near future, this call tracking technology will even be able to help guide the sales conversation itself, giving the salesperson specific directions about which parts of the script to hit next.

It’s not just about going down a sales checklist, it’s about understanding exactly what is going on in the conversation, in real-time, and then using this information to make data-driven marketing decisions.

What does the future of education and virtual learning look like?

In this edition of the UpTech Report, Alexander Ferguson meets with the CEO of InSpace, Narine Hall, to discuss how her company is helping educators to teach online with video conferencing software.

InSpace’s virtual classrooms try to emulate what a real classroom would actually look and feel like, providing students and teachers with fun features such as freedom of movement. Plus, after the virtual lesson is over, students can break off into study groups to work, chat out in the hallway while waiting to speak with the teacher, or even attend a virtual tutoring session.

In the future, we are all going to be learning in virtual classrooms and attending virtual events in the Metaverse.

InSpace was created during the Covid-19 pandemic after educators realized the limitations associated with video conferencing platforms like Zoom. InSpace is a virtual learning platform, built by educators, for educators, and comes complete with all of the crucial teaching tools that teachers need to thrive.

In this edition of the UpTech Report, Alexander Ferguson meets with Gustavo Rodriguez to learn about online parenting classes, learning activities for kids, and educational games.

Rodriguez is the CEO and creator behind BabySparks — a parenting app that helps parents plan and track meaningful play activities for kids between the ages of 0 and 3. It’s about encouraging a child’s growth and reaching new development milestones through fun family activities.

Their smart adaptive technology learns and adapts to your child’s individual needs through machine learning and artificial intelligence. Then, it makes unique educational game and learning activity recommendations.

Coupled with online classes and other parenting resources, new Moms and Dads now have an educational game plan that they can implement starting from day one. The lessons progress up through the first three years of life and are designed to set a baby up for a lifetime of success.

How can we make virtual meetings less soul-sucking and more productive?

In this edition of the UpTech Report, host Alexander Ferguson meets with David Shim of Read to discuss his computer vision tech for analyzing engagement levels on Zoom meetings.

When you’re looking at twenty different faces on a screen, it’s kind of hard to get a feel for what’s going on, but Read Dashboard provides metrics that allow you to actually scientifically quantify how a meeting is going.

By using deep learning, Natural Language Processing, and other exciting new technologies, we can really start to see who is paying attention and who isn't. Read analyzes facial expressions, body language, speech patterns, voice tones, emotions, and more to provide real-time stats about how engaged people are in the conversation.

In this edition of the UpTech Report, we meet with Katherine Wells, the CEO of Serenity Engage, to learn how the elderly care communication process can be streamlined to help combat Covid-19 and solve the staffing shortage in healthcare.

Serenity is a HIPAA-Compliant Messaging Platform for senior care that helps to streamline communications between care staff and families. In the past, communication has involved three to five hours per week of time per patient, and a mix of phone calls, voicemails, emails, and disorganized sticky notes. Between medication schedules, health checkups, visits, and patient decisions, there is so much to keep track of.

All of the time wasted on communication currently is eating into time that elderly care staff could be using in other areas. But thanks to Wells and her team, there’s now a much better way of doing things. In this episode, host Alexander Ferguson is hoping to find out more about senior living facilities, the caregiver staffing shortage, and how Serenity can assist.

Phygital is a new industry aiming to merge digital content with physical objects in the real world, and Anna Belova, the CEO from DEVAR is a leader in this category.

In this week’s UpTech Report, Anna Belova enlightens host Alexander Ferguson about her company’s augmented reality educational tech and AR creation tools. She also discusses the Metaverse, the difference between virtual reality and augmented reality, and her company’s fascinating journey.

With DEVAR’S MyWebAR platform, your creative team can design and build new AR experiences in a fun, no-code environment. You no longer need to have expert knowledge, special AR glasses, or technical development skills in order to go phygital. It turns out, all you need is a little bit of creativity. You can easily create product showcases, augmented reality advertising content, virtual guides, and more.

In this edition of the UpTech report, host Alexander Ferguson meets with Rema Matevosyan, the CEO of Near Space Labs, to discuss her Earth imaging company. In a single day, Near Space Labs can deploy up to four Swifty balloons on a flight to the stratosphere where they capture images of Earth from an altitude of 60,000 to 85,000 feet. The Swifty is not just a weather balloon though. There is so much technology under the surface of this sophisticated stratospheric robot.

In the insurance industry, its high-resolution imagery can be used to complete post-disaster claims and underwriting assessments. In addition, organizations can use stratospheric imagery to track the effects of climate change including sea level rise, forest fires, and so much more. It’s even possible to use the Swifty to monitor urban sprawl and plan ahead for development.

There are several exciting use cases for a weather balloon flight to the stratosphere, and in this episode, we’re going to learn about all of them.

Software can make the lives of business owners much easier, but assuring that disparate pieces of software can communicate properly with one another is often a difficult challenge for B2B software companies. In this edition of the UpTech Report, we meet with Michael Zuercher, the CEO of Prismatic, to find out more about integration platforms and how they can help.

We’ll learn about Zuercher’s history growing his embedded iPaaS company and how the market is currently evolving.

Plus, what was the integration process like in the past for businesses that wanted to share and combine data between software? Should software companies use a cloud-based integration platform or iPaaS to provide product integrations versus letting in-house developers create their own integrations from scratch? And what are the best integration platforms available for customer-facing teams who want to create custom integrations? In this exciting episode, the host of the podcast Alexander Ferguson dives into it all.

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hat if companies could automate almost all of the hiring process AND make better hiring decisions? In this edition of the UpTech Report, we meet with Omer Molad, the CEO of Vervoe to discuss automated recruitment, applicant tracking systems, and a brighter future for job seekers in the information economy.

Forget about all of those boring, conversation-based interviews of the past. Through a carefully constructed series of skill-based questions and online tasks, Vervoe is bringing AI and machine learning into the human resources department, radically transforming the way that businesses find new talent.

Host of UpTech, Alexander Ferguson learns that this is not just a simple resume screening process. Instead of hiring solely based upon someone’s background and the number of years they’ve spent working, Vervoe allows companies to find the candidate that is actually best able to perform the specific tasks that a job requires. They evaluate candidates based on hard skills, soft skills, and so much more.

In the face of climate change, how can businesses reduce their energy usage, save money, and transition to a more sustainable future?

In this edition of the UpTech Report, we meet with Mike Kirkup. He’s the CTO leading the way at EnPowered, a cCleantTech electricity platform that helps organizations decrease their energy costs and upgrade to new sustainable energy solutions.

EnPowered is giving businesses the ability to make clean, smart energy choices that are actually good for the environment, without any significant upfront investment in new infrastructure. Their solution allows you to reduce energy costs while reinvesting in green technology at the same time.

The host of UpTech, Alexander Ferguson, is curious to learn more about the Texas power outage last winter, renewable energy, and the best ways to plan for the future. Is it possible to solve the various problems surrounding the current power grid and reduce emissions?

Kintone is an all-in-one workplace platform with a fascinating history, and in this edition of the UpTech report, we get into all of it. Host Alexander Ferguson has the CEO of Kintone, Dave Landa, on the show to talk about the wide range of solutions that they offer and what they’ve been up to all these years.

For starters, the platform empowers anyone within a company to build custom workflows and pick and choose the perfect apps for their department. Whether that’s a sales team that requires a CRM, marketers that require a calendar, or a human resources team that’s in need of an applicant tracking system, Kintone has you covered. Employees can select from dozens of different app templates, then customize them so that they work exactly how they want them to.

Plus, it’s all integrated together in a unified system making collaboration between different departments a dream come true. With Kintone, you’ll constantly be pulling in new, important data from every corner of your organization, allowing you to analyze your processes, make data-driven decisions, and increase ROI around the board.

In this edition of the UpTech Report, we connect with Tom Symonds, to talk about building a VR training simulator on his platform — Immerse.

It’s clear that virtual reality training is going to be one of the top ways employees are made job-ready in the future with companies such as Walmart already plowing full-steam ahead. If done correctly, VR training can actually be even more beneficial than traditional methods! However, it’s not just retail that can benefit.

Symonds walks host Alexander Ferguson through his personal journey of launching a VR training company and explains how he has seen this field change dramatically over time. What started as an idea surrounding language learning has now expanded into equipment training in the oil & gas industry, aviation instruction, and even surgery, just to name a few exciting use cases.

Instead of training in real-life dangerous environments, job seekers can now prepare themselves for their roles in a risk-free, virtual setting. The epic training experiences created on the Immerse Platform are fun, engaging, and most importantly, extremely effective.

In this edition of the UpTech Report, we meet with the CEO of Renovai, Alon Gilady, to discuss AI in retail and how AI is changing the way that we approach home decor and interior design. Gilady tells his story of how he first came up with the idea for an AI design tool, plus everything that followed after.

Host Alexander Ferguson dives into all of it, learning about the wide array of fascinating functionality that Renovai’s AI interior design app provides to both businesses and customers.

It’s all about their “Shop The Room” technology.

The AI is essentially like hiring a virtual interior designer, giving you recommendations about exactly how you can organize and personalize your home decor to your liking. What items go together and where should they be placed in the room? Renovai decides based on your desired look and feel. Then you can visualize the room for yourself, navigate around it, and click on the items you actually want to buy.

Professional networking has always been a challenge, but since we’ve been spending so much time out of the office recently, it’s gotten even harder! It’s clear that we need new ways of connecting professionally with industry leaders and colleagues, but what is the solution?

In this edition of the UpTech Report, we meet with Sam Jacobs, CEO of Pavilion (formerly known as Revenue Collective) to talk about professional learning communities in the business world (PLCs) and business networking 101.

Our host, Alexander Ferguson, digs into how Jacobs first got started down this fascinating path with the community Revenue Collective, where they actually barred CEOs and investors from joining at first! You’ll find out why. Plus, Jacobs explains some of his own knowledge that he has acquired along the way while growing his own business.

In today’s tech world, employees often have to juggle dozens of different apps at once just to get work done. Imagine searching for files on Google Drive, so that you can update a Task on Trello, and communicating about all of it over Slack or Zoom. Often, messages, files, notes tasks, and video calls all require different apps that are completely mismatched. Kenzo Fong knew we needed a better, more unified way of doing things so he launched his SaaS company Rock.

“Rock is a new hub for getting work done. Messaging, tasks, files, notes, and meetings. All in one space. All for free.”

In this edition of the UpTech report, host Alexander Ferguson meets with Fong to talk about how Rock helps distributed teams to work more productively. He explains his full story from working at Google and Uber, leading globally distributed teams, and eventually, launching his own software company.

In this edition of the UpTech Report, Co-founder of HomeZada, Elizabeth Dodson, joins us to talk about her software company and its suite of home management apps.

At its core, HomeZada is a digital home management tool that will keep track of your estimated home value, equity, and expenses, as well as show you financial forecasts for the future.

Got a DIY project to tackle? Plan and budget all of your home improvement projects with their home renovation project planner. Plus, you can verify that you are properly insured with their home inventory template, allowing you to keep track of everything you own and document it with pictures in an organized fashion.

In this conversation, Dodson explains how she started her career working for a commercial construction project management software company. After she realized that there were no similar software solutions available for homeowners looking to manage a household, she decided to create HomeZada.

Is it possible to automate lending for equipment and automotive financing? In this edition of the UpTech Report, we meet with founder & CEO of Inovatec Systems, Vladimir Kovacevic, to learn how his loan origination technology company is helping lenders simplify lending processes.

To start, Kovacevic discusses his early days growing up in Serbia and how it set him on a unique entrepreneurial path. He talks about doing business in the United States and Canada, pursuing the American Dream, and starting his FinTech loan management software company — Inovatec.

Inovatec is a loan origination and loan management software provider that helps organizations speed up the lending process and automate their lending business. With Inovatec’s software, lenders can automatically manage credit applications, lending decisions, documentation, onboarding, and reporting requirements all in one centralized hub. Through this technology, lenders can streamline their operations, lower expenses, maintain compliance, and book more deals.

In this edition of the UpTech Report, we meet with Rebecca Clyde, Co-Founder & CEO of Botco.ai Botco to discuss how adding an AI chat bot to your site can help your company to increase revenue and win over new clients. Sometimes, AI conversations can feel just as authentic as real ones.

Clyde talks about her journey growing her own tech company and some of the challenges that she has faced along the way. Plus, how was she able to differentiate her company from other AI chat tools on the market?

One of the major selling points of Botco.ai is that it is HIPAA Compliant, so healthcare organizations and doctors’ offices can use their chatbot as well. If visitors to a healthcare site have questions about the organization’s services, they can get them answered immediately with Botco.ai’s artificial intelligence web chat. Then, when the patient is ready, the AI will direct them to the proper appointment scheduling system.

Which communication messages are trending within your organization and who’s clicking on what? In this edition of the UpTech Report, we meet with Tarek Kamil, CEO of Cerkl, to learn how managers can make smarter, data-driven decisions with Cerkl’s internal communication suite, Cerkl Broadcast.

With Broadcast, you can create beautiful emails and content for your targeted employee audiences.

Kamil explains how not everyone responds to the same type of message in the same way. Why not vary it based on language, their preferred form of delivery, interests, and other attributes?

Broadcast helps internal communications teams modernize their digital employee experience by delivering the content your employees want, on the channel of their choice.

What if you could automate almost all of your social media and content marketing? Would that make your life as a business owner and content creator simpler?

In this edition of the UpTech Report, we meet with KD Deshpande, the CEO of Simplified to discuss how his company is helping marketing teams to design and collaborate more effectively by using AI technology.

Simplified offers “all the content-creation tools you'll ever need, in one app”. Instead of logging onto all of the various different social platforms and content creation resources on your own, your team can collaborate and create posts for all of these services, all at once.

The technology can generate blogs, videos, graphics, and more.

Are you launching a new product line? You’re in luck. With Simplified, you can pull pictures from a royalty-free service such as Pixabay, write the advertising copy using an AI copywriting generator, and then instantly post to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and more, all with the click of a button.

In this edition of the UpTech report, we meet with Brian Sierakowski, CEO of Baremetrics, to pick his brain on everything he knows about growth. His entrepreneurship story began when he had a novel idea for a shared password manager a little over a decade ago, and shortly after, his first company Team Password was born.

From startup to exit, he helped the company to expand at an incredible rate until they were ultimately acquired. His experience makes him an expert in growing a SaaS business and the startup acquisition process.

These days, though, he is leading the charge in a new industry — SaaS subscription analytics.

As CEO of Baremetrics for around a year now, Sierakowski is helping to change the way that Software as a Service companies analyze their data to increase profits. When you simply offer one subscription plan, tracking metrics is easy. However, what if you have dozens or even hundreds of different subscription products with various add-ons?

Baremetrics will help you to track and analyze your subscription data and key performance indicators (KPI metrics), providing you with deeper insights into your business and what to do in order to increase sales.

In the latest Uptech Report, CEO of Prospr.work Erika Wasser introduces us to her new app Prospr and explains how it is increasing productivity for businesses around the world.

Her suite of employee management tools allows companies to access all employee information in the same place. Prospr is known as “the one employee app to replace the rest”, and if one thing’s for sure, it’s that Wasser is definitely an expert on managing people. She is empowering both companies and their hourly workers alike.

Before founding Prospr, she ran a 14 store hair salon chain with over 100 employees. At the end of the day, she realized that there had to be a better way. So she created Prospr — with features such as automated employee scheduling, simplified shift monitoring, and real-time worker performance data, all packaged in one easy-to-use interface.

In this UpTech Report, CEO Pedro Góes of InEvent explains how his company offers everything you need to host a successful virtual event online using video technology. It started with some creative virtual event ideas, a talent for app development, and a dream. Now, they are one of the top event management software companies in the world.

Want to build a beautiful landing page for your event with online registration, meeting scheduling, plus many other important features? InEvent has you covered. They can also help create QR codes, design event staff badges, and prepare financial reports! It’s all included on their exciting hybrid and virtual event platform.

The best part is, there’s no coding required. Just utilize their easy-to-use drag and drop interface and you’ll have your event ready to go in minutes.

Are you thinking about buying a home for the first time? Record numbers of people began their search for a new property online in 2021, but sorting through the thousands of new listings that go up daily can be a huge challenge. Traditionally, real estate has been a heavily human-intensive industry. You need agents to track down properties and set up tours, and inspectors to dive deep and dig up all the hidden info about a property. But going into 2022 and the future, is there a better way for homebuyers and their agents?

At the UpTech Report, we were lucky enough to interview Localize President & COO Omer Granot. His company Localize.city provides a comprehensive solution for prospective homebuyers and their agents looking to navigate the complexities of the current housing market.

Localize aims to make homebuying better for everyone and uncovers data that you wouldn’t find easily online. How much natural light does a home get in summer and winter?? Is there a history of bedbugs at the property? These are some of the important questions answered by their Localize.city marketplace that you won’t find on other popular sites like Zillow, Redfin, StreetEasy, or Trulia.

In commercial real estate investing, less than 10% of all deals ultimately end up getting approved after due diligence is done. This means that for CRE underwriters, approximately 90% of their time is wasted. However, in this interview from the UpTech report, CEO of Blooma, Shayne Skaff, explains how his company’s underwriting platform is helping CRE lenders to evaluate deals using the power of AI instead.

Perhaps the creditworthiness of the potential buyer isn’t up to par, the property has hidden issues, or the listing price is actually way higher than the appraised value. Or maybe, it’s actually the perfect deal!

Blooma is helping real estate analysts to make better decisions and answer these risk-related questions by using artificial intelligence.

Smart split tests can help drive tremendous growth for companies looking to increase sales and conversions. But how do marketing teams know what to test? CEO Andres Glusman of Do What Works gives us some expert guidance on marketing funnel strategies in this interview from the UpTech Report.

Is your marketing funnel optimized or is there still room for improvement? Do What Works recommends that instead of going down this road alone, you draw inspiration from industry giants. They’re helping marketing and product teams do just that to optimize their growth funnels by “doing what works”.

They’ve studied thousands of split tests run across 40+ different industries, analyzing what the top 1600 companies are testing to see what is currently working the best. You can then use these same insights to drive growth in your own business.

They advertise themselves mainly as a Conversion Rate Accelerator, or in other words, a growth team’s dream come true.

In this UpTech Report, CEO Alexander Fernandez of Streamline Media Group meets with us to talk about Metaverse games and the future of virtual reality.

At its core, Streamline Media Group is in the business of Metaverse video game development, building beautiful interactive worlds and Metaverse games for entertainment companies. However, calling them just video game developers is only scratching the surface.

For starters, Fernandez talks us through how his company recently helped a top fashion brand launch their Fall ‘21 catalog online in a virtual world. It gives us a small taste of what is going to be possible with VR marketing in the coming years.

We also discuss what it takes to start a professional video game company in 2022. If you want to become a video game developer, the trend is definitely leading towards immersive digital worlds and VR development. Just check out Roblox, Minecraft, or Fortnite if you want to get an idea of the incredible popularity of some of these platforms.

Although, as Metaverse technology continues to improve and evolve, we are going to see more and more players joining in.

CEO of LongShot.ai Ankur Pandey joins the UpTech Report for a conversation about long-form content generation using artificial intelligence.

We learn that there are numerous AI content generators on the web currently, but very few successful long-form AI writers. Pandey explains how generating well-researched long-form content that is both authentic and natural is a much more difficult problem to solve than simply generating short snippets of text.

However, LongShot’s new AI writing tool is attempting to take on the challenge. It can generate thousands of words of written content with the click of a button on any topic or keyword desired, saving marketers and long-form content writers tons of time.

Humans then look over the results and pick out the best bits and pieces, do some basic editing, and congratulations! You have a fully written blog post or report in a fraction of the time that it typically takes to create one.

Companies such as Snowflake and Palantir have been making headlines lately in the tech world as more and more industries catch on to the fact that data is king. Data-driven decision-making is the way of the future, but have you heard of Outlier.ai yet?

In this episode of the UpTech Report, data analyst and CEO of Outlier.ai Sean Byrnes joins us to discuss exactly why business data analysis has been getting so much attention recently in the media.

Think of it as a Data Analytics 101 crash course. First, Byrnes shares how his company sifts through mountains of data using machine learning to produce novel insights for businesses about consumer behavior and purchasing habits. Then he dives into where this fascinating technology is heading.

In this interview, the CEO of Correlated Tim Geisenheimer explains to the UpTech Report how his company is helping to simplify the sales process for SaaS businesses. It’s all about managing relationships. Correlated helps maintain data and records on all of your various customer accounts, alerting you to the immediate action steps you need to take to turn free trials into paid subscribers.

When you have hundreds or thousands of people in the system, it can be quite challenging to remember exactly what part of the sales process each of them is currently occupying. However, Correlated allows you to reach out to the proper accounts at the right time with a targeted message based on a multitude of different factors. It’s similar to a CRM like Salesforce or HubSpot, but with much more product usage data involved.

Is your business’s data secure? How to implement data governance in an organization is one of the most important questions in tech this year. However, collecting, storing, and utilizing data effectively and safely is no easy task, especially when it comes to managing it at scale.

In this Uptech Report, we meet with Balaji Ganesan, CEO of Privacera to learn how they are helping companies with the problem of data management. It’s about storing data in a way that allows for usability without compromising on privacy regulations.

What are the data governance best practices in 2022 and how can we store data safely while still being able to utilize it for analytics purposes? These are just a few of the questions that we are hoping to tackle today.

Machine learning and AI has grown from novelty technology to essential requirement. But unfortunately, most smaller tech companies don’t have the expertise among their staff to implement these solutions—and sometimes don’t even understand how they work.

This is why Tommy Dang co-founded Mage, which offers a collaborative AI development tool to help companies stay on the cutting edge.

The sad reality is that mass shootings have become commonplace in modern America. This new threat poses a special challenge for schools, workplaces, movie theaters, and anywhere the public gathers. But new threats also mean new protections. Learning that no one monitored the security cameras at his daughter’s school, Mike Lahiff realized that new technologies could monitor them automatically.

And ZeroEyes was born—a technology startup that offers an AI weapons detection system that can quickly identify threats and escalate them to the appropriate security officials for rapid response.

Coming from a family of doctors, Julian Flannery understands the world of medicine. With differing perspectives and needs, primary care physicians and specialists form a complex ecosystem.

Ultimately deciding against becoming a physician himself, Julian entered into the medical space in a different way by helping to manage that ecosystem with his company, Summus, a technology startup that offers a virtual specialist platform, allowing doctors, patients, and employers to connect online to offer fast and effective consultations.

Ken Smerz had a brilliant idea for a company. What if you could take highly detailed laser scans of a facility and create a 3D digital twin so that contractors and developers could safely and quickly plan out upgrades and renovations. “And who wouldn't want to do that?” Ken thought. It turned out, nobody wanted to do that.

At least, not at first. Ken learned the hard way that succeeding in business takes so much more than an awesome idea. Eventually, they learned to demonstrate the value of their product and how to communicate it to contractors and developers. And now, ZELUS is working with clients on projects around the globe.

Andrew Forman has spent much of his life pondering how to make the biggest positive impact on the world. Becoming a volunteer or funding the volunteers? The quest for an answer led him down many paths that eventually inspired him to found a company aiming to make it easier for people to donate to charity.

But though the ambition was sound, the lift was heavy. It turned out his company, Givz, was only the first step toward a better solution. Now Givz offers Shopify stores donation incentives as an alternative to discounts, helping eCommerce sites increase conversions and value by offering their customers to choose their favorite charities.

Working on Wall Street in investment banking, Noah Zandan learned a lot about finance and quantitative analysis—and nothing about leadership. The thought of living his life in spreadsheets terrified him, but he found a dearth of guidance on how to be a leader. His searches for a leadership coach turned up questionable characters and outlandishly expensive consultants.

Knowing he wasn’t alone, he realized this was a bigger problem than he originally expected. And he spent years exploring a science-driven solution. The ultimate result was Quantified, a “conversation intelligence and coaching platform” that uses artificial intelligence and behavioral science to understand your communication effectiveness and train you to be better, whether you want to be a leader, salesperson, or high-performer in any role

Like many promises of the digital age, online learning has loomed large—but not always lived up to its expectation. It seemed that surely the online medium could be used for learning, training, compliance, and onboarding, but no one quite figured out the right way to do it. The content was dull, the effectiveness questionable.

Andrew Scivally was attempting to figure this out as an online learning specialist for JP Morgan Chase when an opportunity arose for him to start a company with his brother, who was also in the online learning space for Wendy’s.

And eLearning Brothers was born. Now they offer a custom LMS, “gamification,” and even VR solutions to industries ranging from healthcare to FinTech to pro sports.

Social networking has been one of the more significant aspects of 21st century life—and yet, it has largely remained exclusive to individuals. Businesses, though, have a need to connect that is perhaps even greater. The survival of buyers and sellers depends on their ability to find one another.

Conrad Smith has stepped in to fill this void with his company, Graphite Systems. More than just a way to forge B2B connections, his company helps manage these relationships with data integration tools and a host of other features.

Rumors of the death of American manufacturing have been greatly exaggerated. Factories across the country still churn on—and are growing. In fact, there aren’t enough machists to meet the demand, and compounding the issue, the more experienced machinists have been moving on, replaced by a younger workforce.

To complicate matters further, managers lack the insight tools to gauge productivity and respond to downtime. After extensive research into these issues, John Joseph co-founded Datanomix, a company that offers automated production intelligence for the manufacturing industry to help manufacturers understand what’s really happening on the factory floor.

While working in marketing for B2B startups, Peter Clark had a simple but powerful revelation. The more emails sent in a campaign, the higher the conversion rate—but you can only send so many emails before they’re all ignored. At that point, the quality of the emails becomes the decisive factor. But writing quality emails isn’t easy.

His bigger revelation was that a way could be developed to help people build more compelling material. This led to the creation of Journey, a platform that helps marketing, sales, and communications teams craft messaging through storytelling.

The largest frontier of computer technology has always been the interactivity. When Apple introduced the mouse and GUI, it turned an esoteric business machine into a common home appliance. Now VR headsets are turning computers into fully immersive experiences. What’s next? If you ask Joe Ward, co-founder and CEO of IKIN, it’s holograms.

IKIN is developing the first 3D smartphone with a limitless range of personal and business applications. In this edition of UpTech Report, Joe discusses the origins of this technology and the many places they’re taking it.

Tom Kieley, the co-founder and CEO of SourceDay, likes to call buyers the unsung heroes of an organization. Developing and selling a product is all well and good, “But if you can't deliver that product because of a supplier miss,” Tom says, “or because of a lead time issue, or just a lack of visibility—which is what everyone in the world is seeing today—it's worthless.”

SourceDay aims to give those unsung heroes the tools they need to optimize their performance and make getting products out the door as smooth and efficient as possible.

As a child, Paolo Venneri began to notice a theme in his beloved science fiction: All space-faring civilizations relied on an ultimate power source. Growing up in Los Alamos, home to the famous national energy laboratory, Paolo was surrounded by scientists and engineers tackling this very issue.

Eventually, Paolo would too, with his company, USNC-Tech, which develops safe nuclear power and propulsion for space exploration. Paolo’s ambition is to make the technology commercially available and used for permanent bases on the moon and beyond.

The days of going with your gut are long gone. Today, it’s all about the data—especially if you’re in marketing. But when it comes to live events, collecting data can be enormously challenging. How do you know how many people attended, what their experience was like, and what happened after they left?

Terry Foster is attempting to answer those questions with his company, Limelight, which offers a platform to capture and track data from experiential campaigns and analyze the results.

Dennis R. Mortensen achieved what is for many a dream—the acquisition of his startup by a major company. But is the dream all it lives up to be? On this edition of Founders Journey, Dennis tells the story of starting x.ai, an automated scheduling tool, and what it was like selling the company to Bizzabo, which offers an event management platform.

Dennis discusses what selling a company actually entails and what life looks like on the other side. And he should know—x.ai is the fourth company he sold.

Despite how deeply we’ve traveled into the digital era, employees at enterprise companies still find themselves devoting hours of their day, if not days of their week, poring over text documents looking for data and answers to questions. AI and machine learning technologies make automated solutions possible, but difficult to implement, often requiring a team of developers and data scientists.

Ryan Welsh aims to make the solution much simpler with his company, Kyndi, which offers an AI-powered reading platform API, allowing companies to quickly and easily build applications to analyze documents and retrieve information.

The events industry is enormous, generating $1.5 trillion dollars annually. But like most of life, this thriving industry was tossed headfirst into the virtual world when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March of 2020. The need to continue holding events remained paramount.

“Marketers understand that the greatest way to get and market to leads is through events,” says Jim Sharpe, the CEO of Aventri, a virtual and hybrid event management technology platform.

Aventri is giving enterprise and mid market businesses an engaging live and on-demand event experience so that people can continue to connect in new ways.

Safety is a larger industry than most people realize, accounting for $56 billion annually. And most people don’t realize it’s also an enormous problem—each year, a staggering 2.9 million people die from workplace accidents. But safety training is still often performed in an antiquated way, with PowerPoint slides and videos.

Mousa Yassin is bringing this industry into the modern era with Pixaera, a tech startup offering VR training simulations to give workers an immersive, engaging, and even entertaining way to learn the important safety standards that could save their lives and the lives of their coworkers.

Establishing a compelling brand is one of the most important challenges every company must face. We know that it’s much more than just whipping up a cool logo and starting an Instagram account—it takes a lot of planning and effort. And yet, there’s very little guidance on how it’s done. Ryo Kikuchi is offering help with his company ZeBrand.

Based in New York City, ZeBrand is a platform that gives companies a process for crafting their story, developing their look, and delivering their brand, allowing emerging startups to define themselves quickly and get to market faster.

Even with modern forecasting, weather is unpredictable. We pack up our picnic baskets with the hopes that maybe this time our standard weather apps are right. But if you’re in an industry that performs any work outdoors, an unexpected change in weather can be more than a disappointment—it can be massively expensive.

Both consumers and businesses alike may wish they had more granular forecasts, so they know not merely what the weather might be like in your city that day, but what the weather might be like at a specific pin dropped on a map, and for how long. Buck Lyons is giving people the answer with his company, Weatherflow Tempest, which offers a proprietary weather station and sophisticated weather data for point-specific forecasting.

Cyrus Hadavi, the CEO of , calls supply chains the bloodstream of every business. “It’s how to get the right product at the right time at the right place.” But this is exceedingly complicated when you have thousands of products and possibly hundreds of storage facilities. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought these issues to the forefront of public consciousness—but they’ve always been there.

And Adexa has been helping companies solve supply chain problems since the very beginning of the digital era. Today they employ a sophisticated, AI-powered solution that didn’t exist at the time of their founding. On this edition of UpTech Report, Cyrus tells us how it all works.

Construction projects are complex processes that depend on strict organization and seamless collaboration. And yet, there are very few ways for construction managers to track all the data necessary for a successful project in a comprehensive system. Costs, material inventory, schedules, specs, crew manifest—there aren’t a lot of easy ways to keep track of it all.

But Raffi Holzer intends to provide one with his company, Avvir, which offers a sophisticated process for assembling and analyzing construction data for better efficiency, safety, and accuracy.

For industries such as Fintech, SME lending, retail, and auto financing, instant application approval is essential—but risk assessment is complex. While consumers have come to expect a seamless process, businesses need to perform complex analysis to protect against losses and maximize earning potential. Provenir offers a sophisticated platform to manage that risk.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Veejay Jadhaw, Provenir’s Chief Technology Officer, explains how their system works, and how they’re helping major brands like Klarna, General Motors and Hitachi make smarter decisions faster.

The way in which we interact with computers has evolved rapidly, especially over the past few years. For a long time, we only used keyboards and mice to control computers. Then suddenly touchscreens became widely adopted. And now we’re entering a new phase where the screen is removed entirely, and we engage with computers using our voice.

We’re only at the very beginning of this era, but Ram Menon is leading the way forward with his company, Avaamo, which offers a customizable conversational platform for enterprise, powered by artificial intelligence. Avaamo technology is being used by major national and global brands, such as Ericsson, Volkswagen, and Anthem.

Smart tech is all grown up and fully integrated into our society and culture. This evolution comes with a set of expectations on what a consumer experience should be: fast, mobile, smart, and able to meet and engage with you wherever you are. Many businesses are catching up to this new era of data and digital.

Debjani Deb is helping them with her company ZineOne, which offers an intelligent customer engagement platform that harnesses innovative technology to understand the customer in-the-moment and deliver a customized experience. ZineOne is relied upon by major national brands, including Kohl’s, Crate & Barrel, The North Face, and JoS. A. Bank.

We’re entering a new world of business intelligence and data-driven insights—and like all new worlds, there’s still much to be discovered and understood. Enterprise businesses especially are collecting mountains of information, but they’re not sure what to do with it all. Often this results in a lot of impressive-looking dashboards with colorful graphics that unfortunately don’t tell you nearly as much as it could.

This is where Ajay Khanna has been stepping in with his company Tellius, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze data to provide a deep understanding of customer behaviors and market trends for better decision making. Tellius serves enterprise businesses across a wide spectrum of industries, including financial services, pharmaceutical and life sciences, insurance, e-commerce and retail, healthcare, and communications.

If you’ve ever taken out an insurance policy on your home, you’ve likely had to answer a long list of questions, many of which are difficult to answer. Do you know how many feet your house is from the nearest fire hydrant? Do you know what type of shingles are on your roof? But answering just one of these questions incorrectly could end up costing you when filing a claim.

John-Isaac “JC” Clark offers a solution with his company, Arturo, which uses aerial imagery and machine learning to analyze your home. With their technology, insurance companies are better able to understand the assets they’re protecting and construct the best policies.

At 19, Brandon Metcalf was a bank teller in Florida. He one day found himself talking to the regional Executive VP, and she asked what he wanted to do. “I want your job eventually,” he said. “What do I need to do to get there?” She gave him some goals, and gradually he met them. Two years later, he was managing a bank, and soon thereafter, he was opening a new branch.

The chief lesson he learned throughout this climb was the importance of relationship building. This lesson would eventually lead him to start several companies, including his current startup, Place Technology, which offers financial forecasting software to help companies produce the info they need to grow and thrive.

Our methods of communicating have transformed dramatically over the past twenty years. Phone calls are a thing of the past. People now greatly prefer the privacy and convenience of texting and instant messaging. This is especially true for sales. But what may be a convenience for the average consumer can be a technological and managerial challenge for sales teams.

The result is leads being answered too slowly—or not at all. As the CEO of Verse.io, David Tal is offering a new solution that leverages the best of artificial intelligence and natural language processing and the authentic power of real people to produce the most authentic AI+ human-powered engagement with prospective customers.

To combat climate change, we need to make buildings more intelligent and efficient. HVAC systems produce seven billion metric tons of greenhouse gases per year—a sizable percentage of the overall contributors.

But building managers face conflicting pressures. They need to reduce costs and meet sustainability goals while simultaneously delivering a consistently great experience to the building’s inhabitants.

Jon Bolen is helping organizations do both with his company Entouch, which offers smart energy solutions to some of the world’s largest brands, including Lowe’s, JCPenney, TD Bank, and FedEx.

Over the past ten years, the world has experienced a data explosion. The amount of data most organizations rely on has required new infrastructures to manage, process, and ultimately make useful. The problems are layered and largely still in need of solutions.

This is where Verl Allen of Claravine has stepped in. Claravine offers a data integrity platform for better connectivity, collaboration, and control for enterprise systems. Their product is relied upon by major brands, including Kroger, Under Armor, Carhartt, and Ancestry.

One of the most important elements of a sale is what happens after the sale. Is the customer satisfied? Are there any issues? When a person buys a product, they’re not merely acquiring a thing—they’re developing a relationship with a brand.

Through the experience of a colleague with a cracked acoustic guitar, Ken Rapp realized there were so many missed opportunities for companies to connect with their customers after the unboxing to help ensure proper maintenance and maximum enjoyment.

And Blustream was born—a company that offers a client relationship platform for brands to connect with their customers.

For most founders, acquiring millions in funding and achieving exponential growth is the dream. But when that dream becomes a reality, it’s not the end of the story. Investors want to make sure you have control of the financials and this requires extensive forecasting.

Brandon Metcalf discovered this problem with his last company—and this inspired him to found his next. The solution is Place Technology, which offers financial forecasting software to help companies produce the info they need to grow and thrive.

At his last company, Adam Berke went from being one of three people to one of seven hundred. It’s rare that someone gets to experience that scale of growth, and the lessons learned along the way are invaluable.

Some of those lessons inspired Adam’s current company, WorkPatterns, a tech startup that offers a simplified people management app to help managers organize, motivate, and engage their teams.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Adam discusses what he realized was missing from how we manage teams, and why the best way to get your business started is hand to hand combat.

Srikanth Muralidhara knew a lot about data analytics and machine learning, but nothing about the oil industry—which is why he was a bit apprehensive to take a meeting with a Shell executive who’d expressed interest in a blog post he had written. But it was, in fact, Srikanth’s position as an outsider that most attracted the executive. “We need to learn from other industries,” he said.

“And there's always concepts which can be borrowed.” This was how Srikanth and his partners quite unexpectedly found themselves solving problems in the energy and industrial sectors. The result was Flutura, a startup that uses data analysis, AI, and machine learning to help these sectors optimize operations and prevent failures.

As an M&A and VC lawyer at a big firm, Etie Hertz helped a lot of young entrepreneurs with big ideas. He had some big ideas of his own and decided to give them a shot. This eventually led him to starting and growing several businesses, including Loris.

Its technology originally developed out of a nonprofit and became highly sought by the private sector.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Etie discusses his path from lawyer to CEO and some of the important lessons he learned through these roles.

Every organization needs to ensure their employees are productive, and receiving the support they need for a positive work experience. For companies with large workforces, this is a challenge. And when much of that workforce is working remote or in a hybrid model, the challenge is especially large. Guillermo Diaz Jr. was dealing with these challenges as the CIO of Cisco.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic. Now Guillermo is the CEO of Kloudspot, a tech startup that creates truly hybrid work experiences by creating seemless engagements and collaboration opportunities between employees regardless of work location.

Now Guillermo is the CEO of Kloudspot, a tech startup that creates truly hybrid work experiences by creating seemless engagements and collaboration opportunities between employees regardless of work location.

One of the primary applications of this KloudHybrid solution is delivering workplace experiences that prioritize health, wellness and safety in a post-pandemic world.

Using the voice of your employees is powerful marketing—but coordinating those voices is exceedingly difficult. Jonathan Baldock learned a lot about this problem working at LinkedIn, where he helped large brands leverage the power of that platform.

Now Jonathan is helping to solve the problems of social media advocacy campaigns as the Head of Growth at Social Horsepower, a startup that offers a system to create, distribute, and track content to be used for employee-driven social media campaigns. Anyone in marketing wanting to get their whole organization involved in social media campaigns should have a listen.

While Tim Metzner’s college classmates were landing work-study opportunities with fortune 500s, he found himself as one of five employees at a tech startup. When he experienced first hand the ambition, the drive, the scrappiness, the innovation, he was hooked.

This set him on an entrepreneurial journey that eventually led him to become the co-founder and CSO of Coterie Insurance, a company that uses data-driven automation to provide small businesses, contractors, and gig workers fast, simplified access to the best insurance plans.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Tim talks more about his life in the tech-startup world and how it taught him to appreciate the power of data.

Managing people is a complicated affair. People aren’t software—they don’t live in the cloud, you can’t check their code or query their database. But understanding the people in your company, their needs, and what you can do to bring out their best on a daily basis, is crucial to running a successful business.

Adam Berke experienced this problem personally at his last company, where he went from being one of three employees to one of seven hundred. Now he’s the co-founder and CEO of WorkPatterns, a company that offers a simplified people management app to help managers organize, motivate, and engage their teams.

If you’ve needed support through a live chat, you’ve probably wondered how much of the person on the other end is actually a person. If it’s not a full-on bot you’re talking to, it’s probably someone pushing out prepackaged responses. The results can often be flat and frustrating.

Etie Hertz didn’t initially set out to solve this problem, but a nonprofit that helped improve crisis hotlines had inadvertently stumbled on a technology solution the private sector badly wanted.

Loris was born—a tech startup that pairs machine learning and empathetic responses to help guide support engines toward more satisfying interactions and better results.

Sometimes you have to be deep into a specialized industry to truly understand the areas needing solutions. As a teenager, Arjun Patel was racing forklifts at his dad’s factory. In college, he was a plant manager focusing on quality, safety, and production optimization. After college, he became a manufacturing consultant.

Growing up on a factory floor and learning its myriad intricacies gave Arjun the realization that there were no software solutions to track production lines. “Everything was manual,” Arjun says. “There’s huge binders tracking logs of what was being done.”

This eventually led him to co-found WorkClout, a tech startup that offers a software solution for automotive engineering teams to improve quality.

We may be fascinated by fortune 500s, but small businesses are still the lifeblood of America. In the past, B2B services for the mom-and-pops were a challenge to navigate, but more and more tech startups are aiming to give them the power of their larger competitors. And there’s no greater need than protecting assets.

Tim Metzner is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Coterie Insurance, a company that uses data-driven automation to provide small businesses, contractors, and gig workers fast, simplified access to the best insurance plans.

Property management is a complicated affair. You must maintain facilities with elaborate HVAC, plumbing, and electrical systems, you must manage tenants, staff and payroll—not to mention insurance and other contracts. As an R&D company working with a large developer in the Middle East, Urbanise recognized the problem and developed a comprehensive property management SaaS solution.

Today they help clients across the globe manage infrastructure, buildings, residential and commercial properties, as well as apartment buildings, strata commercial towers, and large housing communities.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Urbanise CEO Ashley Austin explains how Urbanise entered this space and tech behind their solutions.

Ignorance of the law is no excuse—but when you’re running a company, knowledge of the law can be extraordinarily challenging. If you’re in the BFSI industry, you must pore over hundreds of pages of regulatory documents per week to determine their relevance and assess compliancies, obligations, required actions, and deadlines.

This is why Kayvan Alikhan started Compliance.ai, a company that uses artificial intelligence to automate the regulatory enforcement process. On this edition of UpTech Report, Kayvan discusses the scope of the regulatory challenges in the BFSI sector and explains the technology behind his solution.

Through most of human history, agriculture has remained largely unchanged, but in the last seventy years, it’s undergone a dramatic transformation. And we’re struggling to keep up with the transition.

“There has been quite a bit of degradation, not only to the environment, but to our bodies as we keep up with shifting needs to more convenient foods,” says Riana Lynn, founder and CEO of Journey Foods.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Riana explains how Journey Foods uses advanced data analysis to help food companies incorporate new ingredients into their products and improve supply chains in order to facilitate better nutrition and sustainability.

A hurricane is gathering strength in the Carribean. The Turkish military attempts a coup. Wildfires rage in Australia. A beached vessel is blocking the Suez canal. What do these events have in common? They all pose risks to supply chains.

Until recently, little could be done to understand and assess these risks, but riskmethods is pioneering the field with the use of artificial intelligence.

On this edition of UpTech Report, riskmethods Senior Solutions Marketing Manager Matthew York discusses how they’re leveraging this new technology to help companies across the globe gain visibility into the potential dangers posed to their supply chains.

The internet was pioneered by independent enthusiasts and inspired by the possibility of connecting people and enhancing culture. Though much of its promise came to fruition, it’s fair to say a great deal of it has been corrupted. Central to these issues is how our personal information is traded, sold, and utilized for marketing purposes.

This matters a great deal to Mark Weinstein, who founded one of the first social media platforms, Supergroups, in 1998. Today he’s trying to take the internet back from the data miners with his new social media platform, MeWe.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Mark discusses what motivated him to reenter the social media space, and why he believes his work is so crucial for this moment in history.

We can probably all agree on two things about the digital age: security is essential, and passwords are terrible. We all have hundreds of accounts on various services requiring authentication—using the same password for all of them would make you highly vulnerable but remembering separate passwords for each is impossible.

Password managers are helpful, but passwords can still be cracked, stolen, or simply guessed. Alex Natividad MD has an intriguing solution offered by his company, NimbusID.

They call the product CognitiveID and it uses our natural memory associations to ensure we’re the people we claim to be. Think of it as a True Human Centric IDentity Test to prove it is you behind any device used for access authentication and transaction.

In his youth, Clint Oram shadowed his father as he built an early computer company that offered communication solutions before there was email. “I was standing at his knee looking up starry eyed at this awesome entrepreneur making it happen,” Clint says.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Clint shares the important lessons he learned from his father—and the many lessons he learned with his own company, Sugar CRM, including how to build the right team, and why you should embrace change.

When you think about boosting profit for any business - the first thing that comes to mind is probably selling the most items for the highest cost. However, pricing strategy is often much more nuanced than that. In fact, nailing down the optimal price to stay competitive while also maximizing profit is an incredibly complex discipline known as revenue management.

The history of the practice can be traced directly to a company called Revenue Analytics, whose chairman, Robert G. Cross, invented the revenue management discipline in the 1980’s -- which was then referred to as “Yield Management.”

On this edition of UpTech Report, Revenue Analytics Senior Vice President Jared Wiesel takes us through the history of revenue management and how his SaaS company is helping enterprise manufacturing and distribution organizations maximize profit by addressing their most complex pricing challenges.

People may spend tremendous time and effort on their résumés, but no matter how thoroughly they attempt to present themselves, significant pieces will be missing. There’s only so much you can expect an employer to read, so you may leave out your volunteer work, you may not mention some of the projects you’ve completed on the side, or that you’ve been learning another language.

But these can be essential pieces employers need in order to make the best hiring decisions. Hariharan Kolam set out to solve this problem with his startup, Findem, a talent-search system that pieces together a fuller picture of a person’s history, enabling employees to build more diverse workplaces and find key talent that might have otherwise been missed.

Tobias Kunze began as a classically trained musician and composer. It was his interest in digital sound synthesis that attracted him to coding. But it may have also been his ability to understand harmony and counterpoint that enabled him to recognize the complex interdependencies of modern computing—and the underlying problems that needed to be solved.

“The success of your entire service landscape no longer depends on the code... it depends on how all these systems interact,” Tobias says.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Tobias talks about forming these early realizations and how they led him to create Glasnostic, a tech startup that actively monitors and manages interactions in the cloud, allowing problems to be resolved in real time before they take down systems.

CRMs have become the lifeblood of every sales organization. Being able to track and manage leads has grown far beyond mere record keeping—it’s now an analytical tool that helps analyze performance, chart action, and so much more. And yet, often traditional CRMs themselves become a tool that must be managed, rather than an assistive partner.

So Clint Oram started SugarCRM, a sales platform that offers detailed insights into customer relationships and predictive analysis. SugarCRM is helping companies such as Agfa, Tetley, and Tyson focus on customer relationships instead of managing technology.

We now live in a data-driven society, and that’s probably a good thing. Data is the ultimate gut-check, the final arbiter of our best guesses. But interacting with data can be exceedingly complicated—and often slow.

Kendall Clark, the founder and CEO of Stardog, has developed a faster, more efficient technology that allows you to query data directly, without any copying or migrating. He calls it “data fabric,” and claims it’s the only solution of its kind.

The applications are wide ranging, and in use by eBay, NASA, Bosch, and Cisco.

Gil Friedrich was in the process of completing his graduate degree when he sheepishly asked his professor if he could look for a job and finish his thesis on the side. His professor immediately offered Gil a position at a tech startup he was founding.

This began Gil’s career, which eventually led him into the field of cybersecurity and his own startup, Avanan, which offers an enterprise solution for cloud email and collaboration security.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Gil talks about the many transitions he’s made in his life—from soldier to student, from student to coder, from coder to VP of R&D, and now founder and CEO.

You may have heard about the internet of things (IoT)—or it may have already become so ingrained in your life, you forgot it had a name. Everything is talking to each other these days, from washing machines to lightbulbs to industrial manufacturing equipment.

And they all need a platform to communicate. This is where Charlie Key comes in, with his tech startup, Losant, which offers a development platform for IoT products and services.

Some of their clients include the world’s biggest brands, such as Verizon, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), P&G, and Chevron.

The healthcare sector is one of the most promising spaces for technological advancement—but also one of the slowest to adopt. One of the biggest obstacles is data liquidity.

Healthcare data is confusing and lacks a standard transaction protocol. Andrei Pop wants to fix this fundamental impediment to innovation in the healthcare industry with his startup, Human API.

“Human API is this simple modern transaction layer of healthcare data, so that consumers can share their data with places where they find value,” Andei says.

Human API already has over 30,000 data integrations that covers over 264 million people.

Applications were complicated enough, but with the advent of the cloud, they’ve reached a level of complexity that’s often difficult to manage. With multi-clouds, hybrid clouds, edge computing, and external data dependencies, applications have become a tangled web of interconnected systems. And the more complex a system, the more opportunities for things to go wrong.

Our guest on this edition of UpTech Report is trying to solve this with his startup, Glasnostic, which actively monitors and manages interactions in the cloud, allowing problems to be resolved in real time before they take down systems.

Software development is an exceedingly complex endeavor. And often you have disparate teams with varying approaches that are difficult to connect. When it comes time to test, it’s difficult to know exactly what elements to test, and what tests to use. In 2017, Dan Widing began asking some questions about the process.

“What if you didn't have to hire a bunch of people in QA engineering to scale up testing all of your development project? What would that mean to you? How much faster could you go? How much cheaper could it be?” These questions eventually led to ProdPerfect, which offers an autonomous end-to-end regression testing platform.

They say it’s the first and only of its kind. On this edition of UpTech Report, Dan tells us how it all got started, how he managed to find his first clients, and just how the platform works.

Gil Friedrich was working at a successful cyber security company, and life was good. And then starting around 2011, he noticed that more and more clients were transitioning to cloud systems and wanted to ensure their security. But the solutions were still rooted in more traditional architecture and Gil felt they were inadequate for the job.

“There was an opportunity to protect SaaS applications from the inside,” Gil says. That opportunity eventually became Avanan, which offers an enterprise solution for cloud email and collaboration security.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Gil discusses some of the major cyber security challenges of the 21st century, how his solution works differently than others, and he offers some key advice on what all companies should be doing to protect themselves.

From day one, Rohit Vashisht knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur, and he didn’t waste any time getting started. Right out of college, he founded his first startup, then moved on to become a founder of a fintech startup, and continued on again as a founder of an influencer marketing platform.

Today, he’s the co-founder and CEO of WhizAI, a system designed for life sciences that uses AI and natural language processing to deliver nearly any information requested, mostly in milliseconds.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Rohit walks us through the many ups and downs of his long career, and shares some insights he gained along the way on how and when to acquire funding, building the right team, and finding that first customer.

Hot dog stands, energy drink distribution, custom ping-pong balls—Enrico Palmerino has run about every kind of business you can imagine. His ventures attracted him to data analysis, which eventually led him to found his current tech startup, Botkeeper, an automatic bookkeeping solution for accounting firms, powered by AI and machine learning.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Enrico tells us about his early beginnings and how he ended up creating a lighting company in college that pulled in over $8 million in revenue by his senior year.

Yoav Vilner’s first startup was a marketing firm for tech companies—and with 600 clients, it offered him an unparalleled education in the challenges startups face, and the methods to succeed.

“I was very, very lucky to see the ins and outs of hundreds of startups, in different industries, trying to do different things with different budgets,” Yoav says. The education paid off. After that first startup, several others followed, all of them enjoying varying degrees of success.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Yoav takes us through his career, including what he learned in that first marketing firm, his startup that helped save children from predators—and why he ultimately left that company to found his current startup, Walnut.io, which creates codeless software demos for sales and marketing teams.

As one of four co-founders at Kaltura, an enterprise video platform, Dr. Shay David focused a lot on the technology behind the product. But after time, he began to wonder what companies were actually using it for.

He discovered many were turning to video as an important tool for training employees and developing new skills. It was this realization that eventually led him to turn his attention to the problem of the widening skills gap our world is facing at an alarming rate.

So David founded retrain.ai a company that uses artificial intelligence to forecast and develop tomorrow’s workforce.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Dr. David discusses how the changing job market became so important to him, and why he believes the key to success is an unwavering focus on the value we create for the customer.

Renji Bijoy only discovered his coding skills by accident. While studying to become a medical student, he was forced to take a course in Java programming, and he discovered he was good at it. He took to it so much, in fact, when all his med school applications came back, he threw them all in the trash—both the thin rejection letters and the thick acceptance packets.

What followed was an insatiable desire to advance. Though he excelled in his jobs, he continuously sought something more. “I never asked for more money, I only asked for more responsibility,” he says. Eventually, it became clear he needed to set out on his own, and that’s when Immersed was born—a tech startup that allows people with VR headsets to work in a virtual office space, with features only possible in an artificial world.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Renji tells us about his early experiences as the child of immigrants, how he eventually found his way to leading a tech startup with $12 million in funding—and why playing Halo was integral to the process.

Whether it’s baseball or bioengineering, data is everything now. We’re awash in dashboards showing us so much information from so many perspectives, it can sometimes make us wonder what we’re supposed to be looking at and why.

But the goal has always been to get the information we need—and quickly. Rohit Vashisht wondered if there might be an easier way. His solution became Whiz.ai, a system designed for life sciences that uses AI and natural language processing to deliver nearly any information requested in milliseconds.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Rohit tells us where this idea originated, how it all works, why he chose to focus on life sciences, and the broader impact it could have on the industry.

New technologies, such as cloud computing, have made entrepreneurship more possible than ever. But as more and more people are becoming CEOs and developers, fewer and fewer are becoming accountants—services that are sorely needed to make operations function. Enrico Palmerino encountered this problem with his own startup.

“Our accounting department just couldn't keep up with the growth or the complexities of the business,” Enrico says. He eventually discovered a large part of the problem was the lack of technology solutions in this field.

This led him to found Botkeeper, an automated bookkeeping service for accounting firms powered by AI and machine learning. On this edition of UpTech Report, Enrico discusses how he’s using this advanced technology to give the accountants more time to focus on their clients.

Yoav Vilner was building one of the world’s first tech marketing companies in his 20’s, and he noticed something funny. His hundreds of clients poured truckloads of money to reach their targets. “But when the prospects actually moved on to see what the product is about,” Yoav says, “often stuff broke… like 90% of them failed.” Years after, he finally cracked it.

Walnut.io was born and began to define a new category in tech. On this edition of UpTech Report, Yoav tells us how Walnut creates codeless and customized demos that never crash and are easy for sales teams to share with prospects and marketing teams to embed in materials.

The digital and automation transformation of our society has brought countless improvements to how we work, learn, play, and communicate. But it’s also creating a disruption in the job market, that, according to retrain.ai co-founder and CEO Dr. Shay David, is only just beginning.

“We're using a conservative number suggesting that 30% of jobs are going to either disappear or completely morph in terms of skill sets,” Shay says. “We're talking about a billion people that need to be upscaled and retrained over the next decade.”

On this edition of UpTech Report, Dr. David tells us how his company is solving this problem—perhaps ironically—by using artificial intelligence to help forecast where companies will need to transition and identify employees who possess the aptitude to develop the necessary skills.

Work-from-home culture was already prevalent before the COVID-19 pandemic. Now it’s quickly become a way of life, and many are never going back. But our home offices often leave much to be desired—if you’re even lucky enough to have a home office that isn’t also your bedroom.

And connecting with coworkers on Zoom can highlight the distance between us, rather than bring us together. As a software developer working with remote teams, Renji Bijoy felt these problems keenly. And when he set out to develop a solution using VR, he quickly discovered he wasn’t alone.

“Over the course of about a month, I had a list of 3000 people who wanted to buy this product,” Renji says, “but the product didn't exist.” Thankfully, it does exist today, and it’s called Immersed.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Renji discusses how Immersed allows people with VR headsets to enter a virtual office space for working alone or collaborating with others, and with features only possible in an artificial world—including working on a space station.

If UpTech Report was a real estate show, most of our episodes would feature the house builders—the people who draw up the blueprints and get busy sawing and hammering.

But today’s guest, Paul Farrell, is more like a house flipper. He buys tech companies, fixes their problems, expands them (if appropriate), and then sells them for a profit.

And the perspective of such people is invaluable, as they truly understand how things can go wrong—and how to make them right. Paul stops by to tell us about some of the many tech companies he’s dealt with, where they succeeded and failed, and what was needed to get them back on track. The lessons are copious and crucial, so take notes!

Alyce isn’t Greg Segall’s first startup—his first began when he was 19, and there were more that followed.

But when he talks about the difference between the success of Alyce and the others, it isn’t merely a matter of lessons learned through the years. It was, in fact, the birth of his daughter that inspired him to create something more - with a purpose that makes a difference

“The love that you have for this little baby is like more than you'd ever imagine,” Greg says. “And the last company I started was great.... But it wasn't an impactful business.”

To create a business with more meaning, Greg developed what he calls “the three pillars of giving.” They include giving an authentic experience, giving back to the community, and giving to the planet. On this edition of Founders Journey, Greg tells us how he came to appreciate these principles and incorporate them into the very foundation and platform of a business that’s changing the way we approach digital marketing and relationship building.

The tools for digital marketing are powerful and plentiful. There are advanced tools to help you target potential customers by analyzing online behavior, tools to help you distribute materials through a myriad of channels—when you’re ready to promote your business and engage your audience, you’ll find yourself with an arsenal of software solutions.

There’s just one thing missing… Right, the content. When Ralph Pahlmeyer founded Vestorly, which began as an automated marketing platform, he discovered content is what his clients needed the most.

Now Vestorly uses artificial intelligence to deliver content customized for target audiences. On this edition of UpTech Report, Ralph discusses in more detail his efforts to develop his content engine, and the business decisions that drove him to license this technology to other market automation platforms.

Ike Kavas’ story is uniquely American. A Turkish immigrant, he came to this country with no money, no connections, but a lot of skill and determination. He had thirty days to find a job—but no computer. So he wandered into a local college and used the computers there to send out his resume.

On day 27, he found a job. From there, his career is a series of stops and starts that eventually, through careful capitalizing of every opportunity, leads to him becoming the founder and CEO of Ephesoft, a technology startup that automates document processing.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Ike tells the story of how he went from an immigrant with barely a few dollars in his pocket to the leader of a successful company with over 150 employees and offices across the globe.

When it comes to developing the inspiring technologies of tomorrow, nothing quite beats the fun of physically assembling your own gadget. And with the wide availability of DIY computing components, like Raspberry Pi, it’s easier than ever to build that better mousetrap.

Our guest on this edition of UpTech Report is Marc Sheade of Thine Solultions, which is taking those possibilities one step further by offering an affordable camera and imaging processing system that can plug into Raspberry Pi boards with a long cable, allowing for applications in surveillance, medical tech, biometrics and more.

Marc explains the surprising sophistication behind this technology and some of its many possible uses.

The possible uses for artificial intelligence are endless—and so are the headaches. Designing an AI application can mean running through hundreds of iterations, taking months of time. And managing the scalability is an engineering task most smaller organizations don’t have the manpower for.

As an employee at Facebook, William Falcon didn’t much need to worry about these things. He had an army of engineers and enough computing power to simulate a universe. But what about the people who didn’t work for big tech?

The answer to this question eventually became Grid.ai, a startup William co-founded to give everyone the power to quickly run through hundreds of AI iterations while eliminating the need to manage infrastructure.

On this edition of UpTech Report, William tells us how the technology works and some fascinating use cases.

It used to be that salespeople were the experts at personal connections. They knew how to understand you, and took the time to relate and engage with you, to reach you on a personal level.

Today, salespeople are often more like data analysts. Their job is not to connect personally, but rather to attract attention and hit a number of outreach touchpoints. It can be effective, but consumers are getting tired of it. And though digital marketing is here to stay, our guest on this edition of UpTech Report is trying to bring back the personal to sales. To establish relationships and delivery experiences that matter and help businesses grow.

Greg Segall is the founder and CEO of Alyce, a company that offers what they call a “Personal Experience (PX) platform.” Greg stops by to explain how he’s changing the blast marketing approach to scaling one-to-one relationships, by focusing on the recipient’s #5to9 interests - giving the people what they want.

The potential of computing technology is so vast, we will continuously realize new possibilities that change the way we work, travel, play, and create. But we should not lose sight of the computer’s most central purpose—to make life easier.

So why do they often make life so much harder? One area that’s especially pernicious is document management. Computers are great at creating documents—so much so, in fact, you probably have hundreds-of-thousands if not millions of documents on your hard drive right now. But processing the data in those documents can take enough manual clicks to give you carpal tunnel.

Ike Kavas, the founder and CEO of Ephesoft, believes we should be replacing manual with automated wherever possible.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Ike tells us how his startup is automating document processing, and walks us through some of the major technological challenges the solution faces.

The story of how Alexandra McManus became the co-founder and CEO of Eyrus is worthy of study. Naturally driven to entrepreneurship from a young age, Alexandra found herself a creative problem solver.

And the problems she’s found herself solving throughout her career include how to manage funding a startup, how to identify the right talent, how to secure the first client, and of course, how to develop a product that brings value to others and profitability to the creators.

She’s solved all of these problems for herself as a founder, and some combination of them for others as a consultant. And now she stops by Uptech Report for an edition of Founders Journey in which she shares her story and the many insights she’s developed along the way.

If you think building an app is complicated—try building an apartment complex. Construction projects are extraordinarily sophisticated operations that pose myriad logistical, organizational, and even legal challenges.

And coordinating the activities of all the various workers and stakeholders is especially important. “Having the right number of the right type of people on site at the right time is a leading indicator of project success across the board,” says Alexandra McManus, the co-founder and CEO of Eyrus, a company that offers a workforce productivity and visibility solution for the construction sector.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Alexandra talks about how capturing information and managing its distribution can affect safety, productivity, and profitability.

She also discusses how she’s applying emerging software and hardware solutions for an industry that has historically lagged with digital technology.

James Amrijo was the founding member of Smartcare, a startup bringing technology to daycare centers—a sector in dire need of computer management solutions to track children and manage payments. Though target customers were a challenge to reach, the company was making excellent traction. And then nearly every daycare center in America was forced to close.

When they gradually reopened, their enrollments were decimated. Many shuttered permanently. So how do you cater to an industry that’s barely surviving?

In this edition of Founders Journey, James tells the story of how he weathered one of the greatest storms in a century and came out on the other side stronger than ever, positioning the company for a major acquisitions deal by Vanco, a company that offers a nonprofit payment network.

For twenty percent of the workforce, the idea of being at work typically conjures an image of one sitting at a desk and staring at a computer screen. Yet a more significant percentage of the population is on their feet - whether that be out in the field or on a factory floor.

Our guest on this edition of UpTech Report, Ben Taft, co-founder, and CEO of Mira, is trying to bring innovative technology traditionally adopted by the white-collar workforce to the rest of the world. Ben explains why it’s historically been so difficult to develop and deploy wearable technology for workers, and how he and his team found a scalable solution powered by the world’s most universal tool - the smartphone.

Through the Mira Prism Pro, industrial workers can enhance their operations with augmented reality while sharing their field of vision with remote managers for guidance.

The basic functionality of an app, whether it’s web, desktop, or mobile, isn’t always basic to code. Sometimes it’s those common features that tap so much of a developer’s energy. Notifications are one such example. We expect most all apps to notify us of incoming messages, calendar events, available updates, comment replies, friend requests, and the list could continue for several pages.

This is the plumbing of an app, and it can often be arduous. In his previous experience as VP of Engineering and a CTO and tech startups, Troy Goode saw how marketing automation was handled by various services such as HubSpot, but that other message delivery needs were handled in-house. This is why he founded Courier.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Troy explains how his company created a fully automated notification delivery system, why it is such a complicated problem, and what new technologies they’re developing to make notifications work better than ever.

When just beginning a startup, if an offer was made for a million dollar investment, most people would probably take the money. That’s understandable. The blood, sweat, and tears of scraping along on your own dime is not a choice one would elect if another option existed.

But taking the money could be a terrible mistake, according to Andew Butt, the co-founder and CEO of Enable. “Being venture funded too early can result in spending a lot of capital before there's any proof points,” he says. In his early years, he ground it out, and he says it made his company stronger.

Today, Enable helps companies manage complex B2B deals and has changed the way many leading brands do business. On this edition of Founders Journey, Andrew talks about how he went from building software for other companies to following his dream of building his own, and how and when he eventually knew it was the right time to finally go after that funding.

Data is becoming as precious a commodity as oil. Sales, marketing, dev ops, IT—nearly every operation depends wholly on data of one sort or another. But data is often extraordinarily sensitive. All it takes is a dozen digits in the wrong hands to ruin a person’s life. So when you direly need to analyze data, but need to keep it private and secure, what do you do?

Our guest on this edition of UpTech Report started his own company. Ian Coe is the founder and CEO of Tonic, a company that, in their own words, “mimics your production data to create de-identified, realistic, and safe data for your test environments.”

Ian stops by to tell us how he originally conceived of the idea while trying to resolve some IT issues at a large bank that would have necessitated giving the developers data they certainly couldn’t have—if they couldn’t find another way. Now that solution is being offered to companies around the world.

So much of our economy is comprised of an interdependency between companies. Whether you think of it as B2B, brand partnerships, or something else, it requires a high level of coordination and cooperation between business plans. Often the mechanisms of cooperation are driven by rebates.

If certain metrics are met, rewards are given. Our guest on this edition of UpTech Report, Andrew Butt, noticed there was no software to help track these deals. “Managing all of that was important, but difficult and messy and was being done on Excel spreadsheets, there was a lack of software on the market. So that is where the idea for Enable came from.”

Enable offers a collaboration platform that manages these rebates to help improve efficiency and maximize profit. Andrew stops by to tell us more about the origins of this idea and how his product is helping companies untangle the complexities of B2B relationships.

If you work in sales for an enterprise company, you probably have an expert revenue ops team providing you with engaging visual insights into how you succeed, why you fail, and in what areas you should be focusing your attention. And if you don’t work for an enterprise company… you might find yourself gazing blankly at Excel spreadsheets, wondering what all these numbers mean.

This was the experience of Todd Abbott. After working for a large company with excellent resources and support, he found himself in an entirely new situation.

“I went to a startup that didn't have that, and I was lost. And so that's when I got exposed to InsightSquared many years ago, simply searching the web, like we all do, looking for a solution to a problem I had.” He couldn’t have predicted that he would go from customer to CEO.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Todd tells the story of how he joined the company, and explains how InsightSquared auto-generates revenue intelligence with interactive reports, forecasting, and even coaching through the use of a virtual assistant.

As a young soldier in the Israeli army, something deeply bothered Adi Azaria: the paperwork. But it wasn’t the work that bothered him, it was the paper. “Most of the workers over there in this elite unit were basically ruining a lot of rain forests,” Adi says. “And I couldn't stand it.

We have computers, let's try to do something else!” And through his persistence, he managed to convert his unit to paperless operations. The process eventually spread through the entire Israel army. It showed him that technology can be a positive force of change in society.

Today, he’s making a similar effort, bringing the service-work industry off yellow notepads and into the 21st century, saving people time, expenses, and a lot of wasted gas.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Adi discusses how he determined his product was worth a thousand times more than he initially realized, and also talks about how overcoming the initial fear of starting a business changed him personally.

The most important hill all founders must climb is assembling the right team. For Josh Millet, this undertaking was especially significant, as his entire venture was propositioned around giving organizations better tools for hiring the right talent.

His solution suggested an approach that emphasized future potential as opposed to past experience—and if his growth is any proof of his view, he appears to be correct. His two-person, bootstrapped startup now has 150 employees. The company is Criteria, which offers an HR platform based on organizational psychology and data science.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Josh walks us through the steps he took to lead this company to its current success, and he offers his insights on the hiring process in the age of COVID and beyond.

Anyone who’s seen the film Moneyball understands how computer simulations and statistical analysis has totally transformed the world of sports. Well, it’s not just sports. The same technology that’s used to assess how a batter gets on base is used to analyze how a factory worker retrieves a box. The vast complexity of supply chain and manufacturing systems makes these industries perfectly positioned for assistance from AI and machine learning.

But these technologies are not simple, and even once simulations are designed, there’s opportunities to take them further. Our guest on this edition of UpTech Report is doing that with his company, Pathmind, which offers AI and Deep Reinforcement Learning technologies to bring simulations in supply chain and manufacturing sectors to their fullest potential.

Chris Nicholson is Pathmind’s founder and CEO, and he joins us to explain how Deep Reinforcement Learning uses a reward-based approach to train AI, and he discusses the numerous ways it can help companies increase worker efficiency, save energy, and make smart recommendations for better decision making.

You can think of artificial intelligence as being like a living creature—it’s only as healthy as its diet. And unfortunately, AI these days is consuming a lot of junk food. But don’t blame the data—there’s a lot of it, and it’s difficult to organize. Often, the data simply lacks the proper balance and composition to give AI the fullest power.

Wendy Gonzalez is trying to remedy this with her company, Sama. By training the data to feed the AI, Sama is able to help implement a seemingly endless list of solutions—everything from finding the right shoe size to saving endangered species.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Wendy tells us about some of the many projects she’s worked on, and she explains the complex relationship between data and AI and how her work through Sama is helping us move closer to a new era of computing technology.

When we think of the digital technology boom, we often think of financial, entertainment media, data services, and other enterprise-level industries as the major beneficiaries. But information technology has the ability to benefit the locksmiths, repairmen, electricians, and landscapers as well.

As a former locksmith himself, Adi Azaria understands the need. Transport routing, communications management, invoicing… much of it was done on paper, and it meant a lot of wasted time. “Everything was very manual back in the days,” Adi says. “Surprisingly, 20 years later, it's still very manual for about 70% of the market.” So Adi (who goes by Didi), founded Workiz with his two partners.

Workiz now brings the sophistication of 21st century information technology to the working class service industries.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Didi tells us about how his early experience in the field informed his vision, and how this technology is helping the workers in vans save time and operate smarter.

Jerry Ting was a lawyer in Boston who spent much of his time reviewing contracts. It was tedious, repetitive work. He sensed much of it could be automated with artificial intelligence—a technology he knew nothing about. Fortunately, he had a client who was a graduate student at MIT who knew plenty.

“So I emailed him,” Jerry says, “and I said, hey, look, I'm just curious. I think there's a big problem here. But I don't know if the technology exists. Would you mind grabbing coffee?” They met up in Harvard Square and discussed the problems and possible solutions. What followed is a story that doesn’t get considered enough—how to find a co-founder.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Jerry talks about how his relationship with his partner grew organically over time, how they carefully developed the business idea, and ensured the future success of the venture without writing a single line of code and overcommitting themselves. Eventually, they became the first two employees of Evisort. Today there are a hundred.

Most everyone running a company will tell you that assembling the right team is the single most important task you’ll face. And it's one that will surely continue throughout the life of the company, to some degree. Sometimes the candidates you should seriously consider aren’t obvious from the résumé—and the ones you should pass only become clear once they sit down in the interview chair.

Josh Millet experienced this problem personally when he was asked to manage hiring for a company that had just acquired his first startup. “Anyone who's been involved in hiring has one of those stories where you're in an interview and it's only five or ten minutes into the hour, and you look up at the clock, and you're like, when is this going to be over?” Josh says.

It was that initial thought that eventually led to the creation of his current startup, Criteria, an HR platform that helps organizations make better hiring decisions by combining organizational psychology with data science.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Josh talks about the functionality of this software, how it manages ethical considerations in the hiring process, and how it’s helped companies large and small build better teams.

Image search technology has become an important tool for a wide range of industries and applications, ranging from research, law enforcement, e-commerce, historical archiving, and more. And yet, as sophisticated and useful as this technology has become, it has one severe limitation. It’s flat. Only two-dimensional data can be searched. Yet, we live in a three-dimensional world.

This is a problem Paul Powers understood personally as a patent attorney. “We couldn't find the 3d models that people were using to steal intellectual property,” he says. “We could find anything else—plagiarism, 2d pictures, whatever, but as soon as it was three dimensional, forget it.” When he discovered the emergence of 3d search technology, he became excited. And when he discovered how underdeveloped it was, he started his own company, Physna.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Paul tells us how his efforts to solve this one particular problem turned into a solution for seemingly endless use cases, and he also talks about the relationship to his other venture, thangs.com, an open 3d modeling community.

Reviewing contracts is an expensive, time consuming, tedious, though highly necessary task. A notorious contract dispute in Maine resulted in a $5 million settlement—all because of a missing comma. The importance of the work cannot be overstated, but when you’re the one parsing those commas, you can start to wonder if there isn’t a better way.

As a lawyer in Boston, Jerry Ting found himself in this very position when he spoke with a client at MIT about the possibility of using artificial intelligence to make his life easier. The result was Evisort, a technology startup that automates contract management, saving companies time and money, and saving the lawyers their sanity.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Jerry tells us more about the particulars of contract management issues and how he’s leveraged AI to address those complex needs.

For an enterprise company moving goods and shipments from one part of the world to another, the most minute factors can translate to millions of dollars in savings or losses. When, how, and where to deploy delivery fleets, when to use in-house talent and when to rely upon third parties, choosing the best routes, forecasting traffic and weather conditions --- and many more micro variables matters.

Understanding the interrelationships between a multitude of forces is key to making strategic decisions. This is where artificial intelligence and machine learning have played a crucial role. Our guest on this edition of UpTech Report is a pioneer in the field.

Dinesh Dixit is the Vice President of the Account Management team at LogiNext, a logistics management company that helps brands such as IBM, Samsung, and McDonalds gain predictive insights to help make key decisions.

Dinesh tells us how LogiNext began back in 2014, how the technology has developed, and the complex problems they’re solving.

As the world becomes more digitally fluid—our lives more networked, our devices faster and smarter—change becomes evermore rapid. Trends that once lasted months or years are now as fleeting as fruit flies. And ascertaining the needs, wants, opinions, and attitudes of consumers is immensely challenging.

In the time it takes to assemble a focus group and rent a conference room, life can undergo dramatic transformation. The swiftness of change necessitates even faster business decisions—and a faster means of understanding consumers. This is why Rob Holland founded Feedback Loop, a company that generates consumer feedback in record speed.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Rob explains the difficulties of gathering consumer insights in the 21st century, and how his technology manages it faster.

A company may be well organized, productive, and efficient—and yet, just how it delivers results may remain mysterious, even to those closely involved. How do the kinks get resolved? Where does the information flow? When are employers at their best, and when are they falling short—and why are they falling short?

These are the questions Bradley Killinger wished to answer with his startup, Sapience. He calls it “the Fitbit for the knowledge worker.” With an emphasis on ethics and privacy, Sapience monitors thousands of data points on employee workstations and uses AI and machine learning to generate transparent reports, giving management deep insights into where improvements are needed.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Bradley talks about his inspiration for Sapience and how he’s developed the product in a way that benefits the entire organization.

Usually on UpTech Report, we interview founders about their SaaS startups. This edition is a little different in that we’re interviewing an investor who helps those startups—though his operation is every bit as innovative as the tech companies we typically feature.

Kyle York is the founder, CEO, and Managing Partner of York IE, a vertically integrated strategic growth and investment firm looking to change the way companies grow.

York stops by to tell us how he’s breaking the empty cycle of fundraising rounds and working with entrepreneurs and startups using data science, intelligent market analysis, and hands-on advising and services to help companies build real strength and profitability.

The IT era has in many ways become the ID era. Establishing your identity for security purposes has taken on serious importance and posed a challenge unlike anything our society has ever before experienced.

We’re routinely forced to change the dozens (if not hundreds) of passwords we keep (often compelling us to write them on Post-It notes and slap them on our monitors, thus defeating the purpose of the password), we must upload photos of our driver’s licenses, install authentication apps on our phones, and generally continue to prove we are who we claim to be on an ongoing basis.

And yet, it’s still not enough. Our guest on this week’s UpTech Report aims to change that. Arun Singh is the CEO of Ilantus, a cybersecurity company that simplifies identity and access management with a cloud-based solution. Arun tells us about the many challenges we face in gaining access to digital resources, and the innovative solutions offered by Ilantus.

If you operate a property management system, integrating your service with all the various third party resources can be a complicated and labyrinthine process. But it’s necessary if you want to get the most out of your listings. What if someone could manage the numerous rental, travel, and other booking APIs through a single platform? It could not only give property management systems the widest possible market, it would also open up opportunities to collect and leverage market data to ensure the best possible timing and price.

This is the mission of Channel Connector, a company that adds advanced channel management functionality to PMS platforms using their connectivity API.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Agustin Fiori, the Managing Director of Europe at Channel Connector drops by to tell us about the origins of the business, and how they’re solving the problem of managing and maintaining so many third party APIs and routing them through a single service.

As a young coder, Jan Arendtsz wasn’t so interested in coding. He was much more interested in why the code should exist to begin with—what problem it was solving, what it was trying to accomplish. So he moved from the coder’s cubicle over to the business side. As an early member of NetSuite, he recognized SaaS as the future, which may seem obvious now, but at the time this was a riskier proposition.

“Looking back, you can say, of course you should have thought about that,” Jan says. “But that was a leap of faith to me.” After starting a consultant business, he realized his prescience was more profound than he could have realized. IT systems had become a spaghetti plate of SaaS solutions, and getting them all to work together was a major challenge for most businesses.

So he started Celigo, a company that offers an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) to help companies connect all their SaaS solutions to create smoother automation.

In this edition of Founders Journey, Jan talks about his pioneering years in SaaS, how he funded the startup, and he tells us the one thing he’d do differently if he could go back and start over.

France Hoang says if he had to choose one word to describe himself, it would be “unemployable.” And yet, his resume is unrivaled.

A Vietnamese refugee, France is a military veteran who served in multiple operations, he served as the Deputy Chief of Police and SWAT Commander for Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he clerked for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, he was appointed by President George W. Bush as an Associate White House Counsel and Special Assistant to the President, and he was also the founding member of both a law firm and an aerospace company.

On this edition of Founders Journey, France takes us through his incredible history, how it led him to start his own company, BoodleAI, and how his experience has taught him to view entrepreneurship as a public service.

Over the past ten years, the explosion of SaaS solutions has fully transformed the way we do business, to the extent there’s hardly an individual out there, business user or general consumer, who doesn’t rely on at least a few SaaS products. And if your company is like most, it’s all SaaS all the time.

The flexibility and scalability of SaaS has proven a huge benefit for growth and cost—but automating tasks between them, along with legacy apps, has become time consuming and expensive.

As a business consultant, Jan Arendtsz saw this problem developing years ago and knew where it was headed. That’s why he founded Celigo, an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) that connects thousands of SaaS products for both IT professionals and business users.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Jan talks about how he came to see foresee this problem, and he walks us through the complex technology involved in his solution.

Chris Ronzio was running a video production company with employees scattered across the country—and he needed to ensure they were all following the right procedures to maintain the consistency and standards of their product. So he developed a software tool to assist with their training. After he sold the video business to a competitor, he continued to develop the software tool.

As a consultant, his clients began to request it. Then friends of his clients began to request it. Soon he realized he had a product people would pay for. And his next company, Trainual, was born.

Today they provide training software for some of the biggest brands in the world and serve companies in 120 countries.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Chris talks about his early venture, selling his company, and how he funded his startup with $300,000 in credit card debt (it’s not a strategy he generally recommends).

Every year, companies evaluate the needs of their workforce to purchase their annual benefits package. This is an exceedingly complicated task, and it doesn’t always result in the best deal. As a consultant who helped companies navigate the healthcare market, Rodney Reasen saw these difficulties first hand.

“That process we found was fraught with lack of information, lack of data, and almost a perverse incentivization in the market,” he says. He realized that if he could devise a way for companies to better ascertain the healthcare needs of their employees, they could make better decisions that both saved money and gave workers the best possible package.

His solution became Springbuk, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to analyze workforce data to give companies the deep insights they need to make informed decisions when assembling benefits packages.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Rodney discusses some of the special challenges presented by the healthcare marketplace, and why he believes curation is the future.

Any organization wanting to make sales or raise money knows they need to leverage data. But understanding the need doesn’t mean one knows how to do it. We assemble impressive-looking charts and graphs that may make us feel informed—but it doesn’t always tell us what to do.

France Hoang is very familiar with how companies struggle with making the leap from data to direction. “There's a problem they all have,” he says, “which is where do I devote my advertising or sales or fundraising dollars, and most importantly, time?”

France set out to find a way to turn data into something companies can actually use to make smart decisions. So he co-founded BoodleAI, a company that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze data for actionable items.

On this edition of UpTech Report, France explains how his product not only helps companies analyze their data, but also adds to the data by connecting it to external sources—and he explains how his product can accomplish in 45 minutes what might normally take a team of data scientists weeks.

You might associate the term “employee training” with learning how to submit your timesheet and how to adhere to IT policies. But it can—and should—be much more.

This is something that Chris Ronzio came to realize with his own video production company. “Every business has the secret sauce,” he says. “There's a culture, there's a process, there's procedures, there's rules, there's just a way to be in a business.

And you want to capture that somewhere if you're really going to scale.” It’s why he started Trainual, a tech startup that makes the process of onboarding employees easier and more fun. They emphasize, with some pride, they’re not an enterprise LMS.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Chris explains why he believes his product is better, and how they’re helping companies large and small in 120 countries get their employees up to speed.

Rajesh Kalidindi worked at a large fortune 500 networking company when a GM with a billion dollars in spend asked for his help reducing cost. Rajesh didn’t think it was possible—at least not through traditional means.

He decided to try a heavy, data-driven approach to generate insights that increased value. “That was a huge success,” he says. “What we were doing at 8% per year, we got a 14% reduction that was $16 million incremental to the bottom line with that approach.”

Rajesh recognized an opportunity that went beyond his company—so he started his own, LevaData, which uses artificial intelligence to analyze procurement objectives alongside real-time market activity to generate predictions and customized recommendations.

In this edition of Founders Journey, Rajesh explains more about the initial inspiration behind his project, and he talks about the difference between managing a large team at an enterprise company and putting together a team for a startup.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made remote work common—but most companies still need physical space, and finding it isn’t easy. You need to find a good broker, see dozens of spaces, and engage in a bureaucratically complicated process that makes the entire experience rather dreadful. Jonathan Wassrstrum recognized this problem and saw an opportunity to create something better.

So he founded SquareFoot, a company that offers businesses a streamlined office space rental experience, which includes comprehensive listings, experienced brokers, and easier paperwork.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Jonathan offers his take on the pros and cons of remote work, current trends in flexible workspaces, and explains why ultimately he feels having a physical office is an important need that won’t go away.

Christian Damstra had a difficult job—manage a workforce of coal miners and ensure their safety. As one of the world’s most dangerous professions, keeping coal miners safe involves a lot more than an occasional training video.

A complex framework of procedures, practices, competencies, and standards must be met on a daily basis. But he discovered that despite the complexities of the requirements, there existed no sophisticated management tools.

So he built his own—initially for his own purposes, but soon others wanted it. Eventually, this became Damstra Technology, a startup that offers a full HR platform, specially designed to manage workforces in hazardous occupations.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Christian discusses how he took this company from a small startup with 20 people in an office in Australia to a publicly traded company with 200 employees, nine offices, and operating in 13 countries.

It seems often that founders start off attempting to solve one problem in a market, and that work leads them to an even bigger problem—and their second startup.

This is Johnny Hanna’s story. He began with a startup just out of college that offered a software solution for apartment rental management. Through this work, he discovered that many people chose to rent apartments because they were too intimidated by the bureaucracy and expenses of buying a home. So he started his second company, Homie, which set out to eliminate those obstacles.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Johnny discusses the special challenges he faced in a highly regulated market with a fixed culture, how he eventually managed to raise fifty million in funds, and overcoming the fear of failure in the beginning years.

Despite their best efforts, large companies managing global supply chains inevitably leave money on the table. Working with one such enterprise, Rajesh Kalidindi came to understand this problem well. “Procurement teams, which manage trillions of dollars out there, are managing massive spend complexity—lots of suppliers, lots of parts to keep on top of.

The market volatility does not make it any easier.” Remarkably, many of these teams are still using Excel and other rudimentary tools to manage this massive spend. It seemed a good opportunity to develop something better.

So Rajesh founded LevaData, a company that uses artificial intelligence to analyze procurement objectives alongside real-time market activity to generate predictions and customized recommendations.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Rajesh discusses his experience working with these supply chains, how he identified the problem, and the way he’s used AI to form a solution.

When Kim Stiefel first met her business partner, they thought they’d use their experience as marketers to build a brand. The idea was a subscription service for common clothing items—but they began to wonder whether or not this was something people actually needed. “A big question that every startup founder really needs to ask is, am I actually solving a real problem? Or is this a manufactured problem?”

Investigating the problem led them to realize an even bigger problem—subscription services for products were terrible. They gave you too much or too little of what you wanted and at the wrong times. So they started Repeat, a company that offers an e-commerce platform that helps consumers easily get the things they need when they need them, while helping companies convert one-time buyers into regular customers.

In this edition of Founders Journey, Kim talks about that initial undertaking and the two-year journey that led them to an entirely different company.

When it comes to hazardous professions like mining, construction, and manufacturing, we often think of workplace safety as an environmental quality—making sure the structures are sound, the tools secured, the machinery maintained. And although these are critically important, workplace safety is largely a human resources consideration.

Christian Damstra understands this problem well. “It's about making sure they've got the right skills, the right training, the right competencies, they're not under the influence of drugs and alcohol, they're not fatigued.” It’s why he founded Damstra Technologies, a company that offers an HR platform specially designed to ensure workplace safety for people in hazardous occupations.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Christian describes his own experiences in the coal mining industry, and how he came to appreciate the complexities of this issue—and the need for a sophisticated solution.

Often starting a company means bringing a solution to a market—but then there are those times when the market comes to you. When Shane Hodgkin’s brother went to work for their father’s window installation company, he discovered a system that felt like something out of the nineteenth century. Everything was recorded on little slips of paper that had no logical organizational structure.

So he built a simple app to keep track of everything. It was purely for his own purposes, but soon, everybody wanted it. That was the beginning of Matrak, a company that offers cloud-based materials and progress tracking software that allows companies to track and share information on manufacturing, shipping, installation, and defects for construction projects.

On this episode of Founders Journey, Shane talks about starting this company with his brother, the years they spent developing the product, and how they built a strategy that not only assessed the competition but what the competition might become. He also explains his revelation that the best way to raise funds is to show investors they’re “...just a bunch of nerdy guys trying to help out construction people.”

If you’ve ever bought a home—you’re probably glad you’re no longer buying a home. It’s one of those activities that’s right up there with doing your taxes. And on top of the hassles are the expenses. Those commissions and fees can really add up, making it necessary to live in a house for years before its value materializes.

Johnny Hanna felt these frustrations personally when buying and selling homes. “It was so confusing...what should be part of the American dream was such a nightmare.” So he founded Homie, a technology company that streamlines real estate transactions to save customers time and money.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Johnny outlines the many problems his startup needed to solve, and how he came to understand how technology was only a part of the solution.

When a person comes into a field with an outside mindset, it can sometimes bring a new perspective on what is possible. This was the case with Gil Allouche, a software engineer working as a marketer. As he spent countless hours identifying targets, testing campaigns, and converting leads, he came to realize that much of the work could be automated.

He founded Metadata to make it happen. It took some learning, though, to get the funding he needed. “I can just walk through my path and it will be all the things you should not do,” he says. But eventually he got it right, and Metadata is now helping major brands bring in millions in sales. In this edition of Founders Journey, Gil talks more about those things he shouldn’t have done and how he persevered.

There are plenty of items around the house we need daily—toothpaste, tissues, vitamins, soap. Or maybe we need them monthly. Or bimonthly. And that’s the problem for both consumers and sellers. Buying as we need can be a pain, but subscription services often give us too much or too little and at the wrong times.

Kim Stiefel discovered this when she started her own subscription service. But instead of just solving the problem for herself, she decided to solve it for everyone. The result was Repeat, a company that offers an e-commerce platform designed to turn one-time buyers into repeat customers.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Kim talks about how she came to identify this particular problem in the way we buy and sell certain products, and the technology she’s developed to give consumers a more reliable purchasing experience, while helping companies retain their customers.

Lindsay Tjepkema has drawn a straight line from A to B—to B2B. She’s spent her entire career in marketing. She has a Master’s degree in Integrated Marketing and has spent over fifteen years in B2B marketing, including leading the marketing teams at enterprise SaaS companies.

It was in this role she discovered a lack of resources for B2B podcasting, so she set out to co-found her own company, Casted, a decision she doesn’t regret. “It's been a wild, amazing rocket ship journey,” she says. “And I wouldn't have it any other way.”

In this edition of Founders Journey, she discusses her decision to leave a good corporate job to start her own company, the key steps she took developing the product, and how the most important part of being a founder is getting comfortable being uncomfortable.

As it is with many industries, staying competitive in construction means bringing supplies from overseas. And importing materials may keep costs down, but it heightens risk. It’s more difficult to be at the source, verify the integrity of the manufacturing process, and there are endless possibilities for problems en route to the destination. It can be a disorganized and chaotic process.

This is why Shane Hodgkins co-founded Matrak, a company that offers cloud-based materials and progress tracking software that allows companies to track and share information on manufacturing, shipping, installation, and defects for construction projects.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Shane discusses the challenges of building a tech startup in a space that is historically low-tech and how it’s also created tremendous opportunities.

Lodewijk Bogaards set himself a goal—he wanted to be the CTO of a cool tech startup in ten year’s time. Only one year later, he was the co-founder and CTO of StackState, a company that gives admins full observability on their systems, enabling them to quickly identify problems.

Like all founders, he’s encountered a few problems of his own along the way, including the balancing act of developing the best product while getting it to market quickly.

In this edition of Founder's Journey, Lodewijk discusses how he approached these problems and what he’d do differently. He also explains why he believes we’re heading toward a world of perfect software code.

The typical startup story begins with a vision for a product and a search for funding. Luke Freiler’s story, on the other hand, begins with being stranded in a prison town with his ex-girlfriend and screaming at the ocean.

Things do get better, and eventually leads to Centercode, a company that helps some of the biggest brands in the world test their software and create deeper engagement opportunities for their customer base.

In this edition of Founders Journey, Luke tells the distressing tale of his first venture and how he turned things around to create a thriving tech startup. He also offers an example of how bringing in the right talent led to hundreds-of-thousands in income he otherwise would have missed.

We often think of startups as the manifestation of a dream—an entrepreneur has a vision, they leave their job and spend a couple of hard years scraping together the players and the product with the hopes of someday succeeding.

But startups can also be merely a vehicle to achieve a desired result. Large companies will found smaller companies to solve particular problems or advance an initiative. And in those cases, you probably don’t want to spend years putting a team together. That’s why Chris Cera started his company, Arcweb, to offer other startups the teams they need to move quickly.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Chris discusses the various scenarios where outsourcing your startup team makes sense, and with the health industry being an active market for Arcweb, he explains how recent laws are opening up that sector for new opportunities.

Despite that so much technology has been developed to assist marketers with the complex task of assembling and processing data for the purpose of creating the most promising leads, and ultimately the most profitable conversions, there still exists enormous hurdles for marketers. A CRM can help you organize your leads, but it usually won’t generate them. It can help you flag engagements for follow-up, but it won’t tell you which engagements are the most important.

These were the issues Gil Allouche wanted to solve when he started Metadata, a service that automates target identification, campaign experimentation, and actionable lead creation. It’s an ambitious undertaking, but the results speak for themselves—their technology is used by major brands to generate millions in sales.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Gil explains the details of how this technology works, and where he sees it going.

You sometimes hear a story from tech startup founders—when they began, they knew little about running a business, and maybe they didn’t even know a lot about technology. Anand Kulkarni is the other story.

As a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley with NSF funding, he worked at the bleeding edge of machine learning technologies. In graduate school, he founded his first startup, which he ran for six years. He later got the idea for his next startup, Crowdbotics, a company that lets anyone create React Native and Django apps without coding in its basic form.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Anand walks us through his career and shares his perspective on the best way to get funded, his philosophy on building the right team, and some thorough insights on how to approach marketing.

Podcasting has become an important marketing tool—it helps establish businesses as knowledgable and insightful, it shares important industry information with key audiences, and offers a deeper opportunity for engagement.

But when Lindsay Tjepkema started a podcast, as the lead marketer for a large enterprise global SaaS business, she couldn’t find the tools she needed to collaborate, gauge metrics, create clips to share in social network streams, and ultimately demonstrate the value and effectiveness of her efforts.

So she left the company to found Casted, a tech startup that offers a full podcasting solution for B2B marketers. On this edition of UpTech Report, Lindsay discusses how she’s helping companies create compelling content and integrate that content into a full marketing strategy.

Yotam Orem spent his entire career around big data, but when he looks back, it’s all about the people—the friends, the family, and when it comes to his startup, Mona Labs, the team. In fact, it was the opportunity to build a great team that most attracted Yotam to founding a technology startup.

It began with a phone call from a friend to help solve an embarrassing problem at Google—one of their predictive models had gone from triumph to faceplant. Yotam realized you still need human hands to make AI smart.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Yotam talks about the path that led him to start his own company, and shares his own philosophy on how he brought that great team together.

When something goes wrong in a highly complex integrated system, the damage is potentially enormous. Even the smallest error can cost millions. But when you have so many technologies interacting, isolating the problem can be extremely difficult.

This is a problem that Lodewijk Bogaards understands well. “Think about the process running in a container, running on a bot, running on a virtual machine, running on a hypervisor, running in a blade on a rack in a data center somewhere,” he says. As a consultant for a bank, his client needed a better ability to understand their systems.

And as Lodewijk will tell you, there’s no better way to start a company than when you can find the solution to a problem a bank needs to have solved. StackState was born, a company that gives admins full observability on their systems, enabling them to quickly identify problems.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Lodewijk explains how his technology manages this feat, and the various ways it can help companies avoid disaster.

As a young engineer fresh out of college, Daniel Cunningham was working on a project installing equipment at a power plant in Northern California when he developed a process that saved his employers days of time and significant expenses.

It was then that he made the most important discovery of his career—smart solutions for your bosses bring zero rewards. “That flipped a switch inside of me,” he says. “If I'm going to come up with clever things that make somebody's life easier, it would be nice to be the recipient of the accolades from that, whether they be personal or financial. That set me on my journey.”

That journey led him to found Leonardo247, a company that guides building managers through the complex daily work required to keep tenants safe and happy, while saving money and avoiding disasters.

On this edition of Founders Journey, Daniel walks us through those pivotal experiences early in his career and how they informed his current role as a founder. He also gives some important advice on how to build the right team—and how to move on from the wrong one.

Twenty years ago, the term “beta testing” might not have meant anything to your average person on the street, but today, with apps integrated so deeply with daily life, most everyone is familiar with the idea. But despite how ubiquitous the need to road test software before a full release, few companies have actually developed a formalized process. Instead, they just wing it.

Luke Freiler discovered this as a Web Development Manager at Ericsson. He was tasked with beta testing a massive product and discovered, to his horror, that the company lacked any procedures whatsoever on how to conduct such an endeavor.

When he was given permission to look outside the company for help developing beta testing protocols, he discovered no such services existed. That’s (eventually) how Centercode was born. On this edition of UpTech Report, Luke discusses how he’s managed to leverage a once-in-a-while need into a full engagement lifecycle for some of the biggest brands in the world.

Like the magical path of a quantum particle, William Hurley’s journey is a bit unusual. He started two companies that were both acquired quickly. Then his third company was acquired by Goldman Sachs on their one-year anniversary. And he discovered this rapid success was depriving him of the opportunity to grow. So his fourth company, Strangeworks, is built for the long haul.

Currently, they’re not even developing a product—they’re merely building community around a technology that’s not even yet available, quantum computing. But William insists it soon will be, and you’d best prepare.

In this edition of Founders Journey, Williams discusses some of his early successes and why they led him to explore this remarkable new technology. He also discusses the biggest mistakes people make when seeking funding.

Imagine if to build a new apartment complex, you had to pay a team to copy and reassemble the foundation, walls, electricity, and plumbing from neighboring complexes—and then build an original penthouse on top. It seems a bit ridiculous, but this is how most companies design custom apps. They pay engineering teams to stitch together most of the app with open source pieces and then fill out the remaining 10–20 percent with original code. It’s costly, redundant work.

In 2016, Anand Kulkarni wondered if there was a way to automate this process. The result became Crowdbotics, a tech startup that lets anyone create React Native and Django apps without coding in its basic form.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Anand discusses how this idea started and how the technology works, including their startling newest feature—the ability to describe your desired app to their AI assistant in natural language and then have the system build it for you.

Kashyap Deorah talks about his tech startups almost like they were old cars—there was the one he had in college, the one he had in Bombay, the one he sold to a shop. But he knows each one was useful; they all got him to where he needed to be. And where that is now is HyperTrack, a tech startup that offers a GPS tracking system as a SaaS, allowing companies to track their drivers and share selected information with customers in real time.

On this edition of Founder’s Journey, Kashyap goes into more detail on this long journey and the many lessons he learned along the way, including how to treat investors, how to build the best team, and the right time and way to begin marketing.

Perhaps the most exciting and frequently discussed technology of the 21st century is artificial intelligence. We’re using AI for solutions in everything from diagnosing serious medical conditions to selecting the right shade of nail polish. But every solution brings a new set of problems, and AI is no exception. Predictive models become stale, they adopt biases, and the results can be costly and embarrassing.

Yotam Oren discovered these sorts of problems were widespread—so he started Monal Labs to fix them, a technology startup that allows you to monitor AI performance to ensure accuracy and transparency.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Yotam talks about the original problems he set out to solve and why AI should never be left alone in the room.

Jorge Torres and Adam Carrigan have known each other a long time. They were roommates in college and worked on several projects together before finally founding their first company in London. And that was only the start of their collaboration.

Now they’re running their second startup, MindsDB, a company that treats machine learning as a database layer, allowing you to retrieve predictive analysis by performing a simple SQL query.

Jorge is the CEO, Adam the COO. On this edition of Founders Journey, Jorge and Adam discuss the many lessons they’ve learned in their long colla

Daniel Cunningham was running a property management company in Los Angeles when a boiler in one of his buildings overheated and caught fire. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the residents lost hot water, rent credits had to be given to over 300 people, and the new boiler could only be installed via helicopter.

The community managers simply didn’t know that vendors needed to be maintaining the equipment. Now they knew—but for how long? Managing a building is more than just maintaining heating and plumbing, it’s about maintaining institutional knowledge. Buildings are made up of exceedingly complex systems and components that require an in-depth understanding that is easily lost from one manager to the next.

And it’s not just the inner workings of a building that need to be understood—it’s marketing, real estate law, finance, and more. Daniel’s first thought was to author a book on the subject. His better thought was to start a new company, Leonardo247.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Daniel tells the story of Leonardo247’s inspiration, and how it’s helping companies avoid the next disaster.

For many founders, the precipitating experience to starting a company is merely a desire to solve a problem identified in a marketplace. But for Brian Rainey, it was working his way up the corporate ladder through accounting and finance.

He went from CPA to CFO, all the while knowing it would eventually lead to spreading his wings and founding his own company. “My plan was always to get the corporate background and then apply that into a startup,” he says. Now that plan has come to fruition with his company, Gooten, which connects businesses with a global network of custom printers for fast, scalable on-demand print services.

In this edition of Founder’s Journey, Brian talks about how his experience as a numbers guy influences his decisions as a CEO—and he shares the single-most important advice he tells beginning founders.

William Hurley had a vision—begin an open source space for people to collaborate in quantum computing. It didn’t work out. So he decided to start his own company. And just as the quantum world is a little strange, so is his startup, Strangeworks.

They’re not selling a product—at least, not yet. Instead, they’re building community and offering free resources, which includes tools you can use on their website to begin working in quantum computing right now.

In this episode of UpTech Report, William talks about why he believes quantum computing is important, when we can expect this new technology to have a real impact in the marketplace, and ways you can get involved today. “I don't care what company you use,” he says, “I do care that you get involved.”

If you’re looking for an excellent case study on tech startup founders, Chris Bullock has all the ingredients: A drive to answer interesting questions, an eye for data, identification of a target user base, an openness to communication, discovery of a problem that needs solving, adaptability, and a plan for growth.

It was all of these elements that led to the creation of his startup, ClearGov, which gathers budget and other data on local governments and presents them in an easy-to-read graphical format. ClearGov also offers local governments the advanced tools they need to record and share their budgets.

In this edition of Founders Journey, Chris tells the story of how his startup evolved from a simple question, how he gained his first customers, and later acquired funding.

When having something delivered, or being picked up for a ride, we want more than rough estimates. We want to know where the driver is, which way they’re going, and exactly when we can expect them to arrive. But for the most part, this capability has been limited to companies willing and able to allocate massive resources.

Kashyap Deorah sought to change that with his company, HyperTrack. They offer a sophisticated but easily integrated GPS tracking system as a SaaS, allowing companies of all sizes to track their drivers and share selected information with customers in real time.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Kashyap discusses some of the intricacies involved in offering an API service, how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected his sector, and where he sees his company growing.

Simon Yencken was an executive at Reuters Group in London, when an impromptu invitation to negotiate an acquisition in New York suddenly set his career in an entirely new direction.

That one meeting began a journey that brought him to co-found and lead Fanplayr, a technology startup that uses AI to help e-commerce businesses better understand the behavior of their customers, allowing for a more targeted, customized experience.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Simon talks about his unusual path from studying law to working in finance to being the CEO of a startup. And he tells us what he believes are the essential elements startups need to acquire funding and be successful.

Machine learning is fast becoming a ubiquitous technology—but if you don’t fully understand what it is and how it works, you’re not alone. It’s an evolving idea with complex functionality. But our guests on this edition of UpTech Report figured out a way to conceptualize machine learning in a way that is easier to understand and apply in real-world settings.

Jorge Torres and Adam Carrigan are the co-founders of MindDB (CEO and COO, respectively), a company that treats machine learning as a database layer, allowing you to retrieve predictive analysis by performing a simple SQL query. With their technology, obtaining insights on future sales is as easy as checking your inventory.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Jorge and Adam explain how their implementation of machine learning works and its intriguing potential.

For decades, Ray Hein has been involved in designing products, working with remote teams spread across the globe. He’s always been interested in finding ways to make the process more efficient, which included a ten-year run with a software company eventually sold to Oracle.

Now, for the first time, he finds himself the founder and CEO of a tech startup called Propel, a SaaS product built on Salesforce that helps distributed teams work together faster and smarter.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Ray talks about how he first started working in this space, and his company’s fairytale funding origins.

Consumers in the digital age have come to expect a high level of customizability—we want products that are unique to us and hold meaning. Businesses also wish to create tailored experiences that resonate with their customers.

This was a dynamic Brian Rainey came to realize. “Consumer expectations continue to shift, really desiring personalized items while at the same time, retailers and brands need to be more innovative,” he says. “They need to connect on a more personal level.” But flexible manufacturing processes are key—no longer can companies fill warehouses with items that might never sell.

It was understanding the synergy of these dynamics that inspired Brian to start his company, Gooten, which helps businesses manage on-demand print services that are scalable, efficient, and affordable.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Brian discusses how the idea for Gooten first evolved from a front-end to back-end service, and he walks us through the complexities of managing a global network of on-demand suppliers.

It’s not uncommon that your first startup will end up becoming the process by which you discover your second. This was the case with Pere Codina, who founded a tech company that helped businesses sell online. But their best client was struggling with competition. They were losing money with advertising because they couldn’t keep up with the competitive landscape.

Pere’s efforts to solve this problem became his next company, Kompyte, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to scope out the competition.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Pere discusses how the idea for Kompyte developed from identifying needs of existing customers, and his unorthodox but successful strategy of starting a company in Spain, but targeting the United States as the primary market.

Chris Bullock had a question: How do the finances of my town compare to other towns? The information was out there, buried in annual reports (if you could understand them) and sitting on spreadsheets (if you knew where to find them). Because of transparency in government initiatives, all this data was available to the public—but there were simply no mechanisms of discovery and dissemination.

After digging deep, Chris began to assemble some fascinating town by town comparisons and was able to present them in an easy, readable format. The towns got interested. The results became a tech startup, ClearGov.

Now they not only collect and disseminate data on local governments, they also provide these governments with the tools they need to organize their budgets, making it easier to share with their residents.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Chris tells the complete story of his investigation into local government finances and how it led to the founding of an intriguing startup that offers an important service.

As a software developer and team leader, Darin Brown has seen all sides of the startup world through several companies—big successes, hard failures, acquisitions, and the one thing binding them together, a lot of unproductive meetings.

It was the desire to solve this problem of meetings that led him to co-found Docket, which offers a software tool for making meetings more efficient, directed, and ultimately worthwhile.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Darin takes us through his journey from a junior developer, to a CTO, to the co-founder and CEO of his own company, and what he’s learned along the way.

E-Commerce has brought selling advantages too numerous to mention. But one thing it lacks is the experience of looking a customer in the eye, interpreting their body language, and tailoring a pitch on the fly to accommodate their character. Instead, sellers are often forced to utilize a more blanketed sales approach, which can result in fewer conversions.

But Simon Yencken, the co-founder and CEO of Fanplayr, doesn’t believe it has to be this way. His technology startup offers online sellers the ability to understand the behavior of visitors to produce instant targeted messages. This translates to deeper engagement and greater conversions.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Simon discusses the surprising difficulties of implementing AI, and how he took a company especially positioned for retail into less likely verticals, such as automotive and cellular markets.

Michael Wong’s journey to becoming the CEO of Genea isn’t typical. As an investor at a private equity firm, he learned a lot about what makes a company successful, but had no experience running one. And then Genea came across his desk. “Genea was not even a company at the time, it was more of a technology,” he says. “I thought this technology could be morphed into a great company with all those wonderful characteristics.”

It was too small for his firm to invest in, but after diligent research into the struggling company, the board asked him to become their CEO. Having never before stepped into this role, it was not an easy decision.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Michael talks about how he decided to take on this role, and why his experience as an investor told him the company had great potential to succeed.

Building physical products with distributed teams creates collaborative challenges. Engineers, designers, product managers, manufacturers, and distributors must engage in complicated workflows, often across continents and time zones.

Ray Hein knows this problem has been around for a long time. “There's been a lack of innovation for 20 plus years in this space,” he says. It’s why he started Propel, a company that offers an Al-driven solution, built in the Salesforce platform, that brings together engineering, manufacturing, sales, marketing, and the customer in a collaborative hub.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Ray explains how this technology meets the challenges faced by different parties, with varying focuses and goals, working together to build a better product.

When starting a company, most people like to think big. After all, Steve Jobs didn’t start Apple to make it easier for people to type.

But sometimes those big visions can swallow the small ones—and according to Harjinder Sandhu, the founder and CEO of Saykara, it’s the small visions that keep you going. “Your user doesn't care about that big vision,” he says. “What they care about is, I have this problem today and how am I going to solve that problem?”

On this edition of UpTech Report, Harjinder discusses his journey to solving the problem of healthcare providers being overburdened with administrative tasks. His solution is an AI assistant that can alleviate those day by day, minute by minute hurdles that interrupts practitioners from delivering care.

It’s hard enough dedicating the long hours of work each week toward the success of your company—finding additional hours to then analyze the work of your competitors is next to impossible. But it’s also crucial. Understanding how your competitors are positioning themselves in the marketplace is key to your own growth and direction.

Unfortunately, because of how time-consuming competitor research can be, many companies instead operate in the dark. This is why Pere Codina co-founded Kompyte, which offers automated competitor analysis software to help companies understand what’s happening with the competition across the street—and around the world.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Pere discusses how this technology uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to discover competition and continually deliver in-depth reports on their status and behavior. And as for Kompyte’s competition? They say they have none.

Jordan Husney was a management consultant for some of the biggest companies in America. And it was in those executive offices that he learned, as he puts it, “the world is a lie.” He says that everything is clean and clear in management textbooks, but the reality is far from it. Through this consulting experience, he came to understand the changing, chaotic nature of organizations across the globe and the growing need for agility.

This is what led him to found Parabol, a technology startup that offers a free, online retrospective tool that helps agile teams understand what they need to do better. On this edition of UpTech Report, Jordan tells about his personal journey from childhood scientist, to Fortune 500 consultant, to startup CEO.

Very few people take delight at a calendar filled with meetings. We tend to feel they’re unproductive, dull, and a waste of time. But Darin Brown, the founder and CEO of Docket, wants to focus on the good meetings. “You debated the topics, came up with some decisions, felt like a team in alignment, and you're charged for action,” he says.

His mission is to make all meetings the good meetings. His solution is an online collaborative workspace for creating agendas, documenting decisions, and tracking action items.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Darin discusses how his solution strives to find the right synthesis between building a tool and shaping human behavior, and he offers some advice on how to have better meetings that anyone can use.

Ray Meiring started his company, Qorus, in Cape Town, South Africa, and grew it there for several years before finally relocating to Seattle, WA.

Moving a company to the U.S. from abroad is a complicated process, but, as Ray says, “I wish we had moved out here quicker to work with this fantastic market in the U.S.” With some team members still in South Africa, a ten hour difference, Ray now finds the need for great flexibility in when and how he works.

On the latest UpTech Report, Ray discusses the process of this transition, why he chose to do it, and how he now manages working with a globally distributed team.

Working late nights or weekends at the office can pose problems if you happen to want HVAC services (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning). Tenants usually have to phone the building manager 24 hours in advance to make a request. Engineers would be dispatched to turn on the equipment. Because of the additional cost, invoices would need to be generated for the tenant. It’s a lot of extra trouble just to make sure you can breathe.

Michael Wong endeavors to solve that problem with his company, Genea, which offers a cloud-based system that connects with HVAC systems, and generates automatic billing for tenants.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Michael talks about how this technology works and its implications for commercial real estate.

Most startups feel tremendous pressure to grow fast, get hot, and be the next big thing. But when Matthew Hudelson founded Inertia, he spent years focusing on nothing but the product.

This is one of the big advantages to bootstrapping, he says. “Through the years, it gave us time to understand teams and problems, and the focus wasn't financially driven. It was solution driven, problem solving and relationship building, and just going and proving something.”

On this edition of UpTech Report, Matthew talks about his first efforts to solve problems for construction teams, and his steady, gradual approach to building a company around those solutions.

In the United States, healthcare providers spend an enormous amount of time performing administrative tasks—documenting patient care, making referrals, prescribing medication, and updating records.

To date, most healthcare technology doesn’t address this problem so much as transfering it to new devices and systems. But Harjinder Sandhu set out to find a technology solution that would enable practitioners to spend less time on computers and tablets, and more time helping patients.

The answer was Saykara, an AI assistant for healthcare providers that monitors patient visits and organizes doctor-patient conversations into key points and action items.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Harjinder discusses how this technology works and how it could change your next visit to the doctor.

Partha Panda had a long career in business before he co-founded Cysiv, a cloud-based cybersecurity service to help companies manage threat direction and response. He founded and sold a tech company in the 90s, joined another startup, earned his MBA, and launched a venture capital fund.

And he believes he knows the key to a successful business. A hint: it has to do with the customers. On this edition of UpTech Report, Partha walks us through the long journey he took to co-founding Cysiv, and the important lessons he learned along the way.

In some ways, the Covid-19 pandemic wasn’t so much an economic disruption as it was a propellant. Already, companies across the globe were beginning to transition to agile teams. The pandemic may have merely forced this inevitable change to happen a little faster. But regardless of when or how companies transition, building a cohesive, productive team can be a challenge.

This was something Jordan Husney foresaw, all the way back in 2016. “I could see the change coming,” he says. So he founded Parabol, a company that offers a free, online retrospective tool that helps agile teams understand what they need to do better.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Jordan discusses the development of this tool and how companies are using it to assess and improve.

A lot of people gave Mark Fischer-Colbrie chances in his career to do things he might not seem obviously suited for based on his resume. But that’s how you learn what you’re truly capable of.

Now that Mark is the CEO of Strateos, a company bringing cloud technology to life sciences, he applies that philosophy to his own team.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Mark shares some of the lessons he’s learned on building a great team and fostering a positive and productive workplace culture. And as someone who has raised over half a billion dollars in his long career, he also imparts some insights on how to fund that team.

For many companies, the RFP (request for proposal) is the cornerstone to success. A compelling, informative, and professional document can land the contracts you need to thrive. But RFPs are often exhausting, repetitive processes that prevent your teams from completing other important work.

When Ray Meiring founded Qorus, he experienced first hand the very problem he set out to solve. Now Qorus offers proposal management software built on Microsoft365 and assisted by artificial intelligence.

In this episode of UpTech Report, Ray discusses the genesis of this solution and how he leveraged it toward the success of his own company.

Building a thriving corporate culture is important to most every founder. But for Hemanth Puttaswamy, it’s everything. His team at Malbek doesn’t merely touch base periodically to connect. They sing. They play music. They read poetry. And they do it every Friday.

On this episode of UpTech Report, Hemanth talks about why encouraging these personal connections is so important to his business, and how it’s affected their product.

Startup founders have unique philosophies on putting a team together. Some value experience above all else, others value creativity. We spoke with dozens of founders in 2020 about their team-building approach. Hear what some of them have to say.

Modern construction projects are complicated engineering problems, but unfortunately, construction management has been slow to acclimate to the modern digital world, and many construction projects are still executed much as they were decades ago.

But for Matthew Hudelson, this posed an opportunity, which eventually became Inertia, a company that offers construction management software, enabling seamless communication and detailed knowledge for real estate developers and construction teams.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Matthew describes some of the key problems commonly occurring on major construction projects that led him to found the company, and he discusses how he leveraged those problem-solving opportunities into a successful technology startup.

We spoke with over 80 startup founders about what marketing strategies they valued the most in 2020. Hear the key insights some of them offered that might help you in 2021.

The year 2020 taught us many lessons, but among them is the increasing threat of cyberattacks—and it’s not just the government at serious risk. Corporations across the United States fell victim to one of the most severe cyberattacks in history, and the damage is still being ascertained. And this attack comprises just one of the countless thousands that occur on a regular basis.

Organizations large and small need the most advanced security systems to be protected, but many lack the resources. This is the problem Partha Panda set out to solve when he co-founded Cysiv, a company that provides what they call “SOC-as-a-Service.”

On this edition of Uptech Report, Partha talks about his unique efforts to help companies manage threat detection and response.

Some founders’ stories begin with the MBA, but Miguel Fernández’s starts quite a bit earlier. With a background in mechanical engineering, Miguel earned his masters in nuclear renewables, and then went on to work in consulting.

He started two failed companies and then joined a SaaS company in Moscow, where he built sales teams there and in the UK. It was only then that he went to Harvard to earn his MBA.

Now he’s the founder and CEO of Capchase, a startup that helps SaaS companies gain early access to revenue streams. In this edition of UpTech Report, Miguel takes us through this journey, and offers some important lessons he learned developing pitches to venture capitalists.

Assembling the right team for your startup is essential for its success, which is why most founders will want to know about your previous experience, how you handled pressure situations, an example of your problem-solving skills, and maybe your philosophy on teamwork.

But Ashley Crowder wants to know what you did in high school. “We want to find out, what were your childhood interests and how did that get you to where you are today?” she says.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Ashley talks about the rigorous process she uses to find the people who will create the right culture at her company, Vntana, an imperative that she says outweighs experience.

The promise of the Information Age has materialized dramatically in many sectors—most notably, commerce and entertainment. But for some fields, the progress has been slower.

Life sciences is perhaps a prime example. Mark Fischer-Colbrie describes life sciences as an “…1850 artisan-style of operation that needs to be brought up to today’s standards.” That’s why he joined Strateos as the CEO in 2019.

In this edition of Uptech Report, Mark discusses how Strateos is turning life science into information science with what they call the “cloud lab.” It’s an information workflow system that could enable scientific advancements to come faster, cheaper, and more often.

Usually, developing a product is an additive process. You begin with a core idea and then add new features with each subsequent version release. But there are those unusual circumstances where the product has become a monster of unwanted functionality, and your development job is reductive—you begin with something that’s been overused and eliminate its unnecessary elements.

This is the situation Hetal Pandya found herself in when she founded Edison. The problem she was trying to solve? Email. What was once an excited new mode of communication has become a cumbersome burden to many.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Hetal talks about her experience of taking a preexisting service and turning it into something less.

Whether you’re a small team of five, or a major corporation of five thousand, you’ll be making deals with other entities, and every deal needs a contract. Even small contracts can be costly and time consuming, and tracking them over the years adds another layer of complication that can bog down any business.

This is the problem Hemanth Puttaswamy set out to solve when he founded Malbek, which he describes as “complete contract lifecycle management.”

On this edition of UpTech Report, Hemanth discusses how he came to recognize this problem in his own businesses, and how he developed a solution.

Bill Boebel is a journeyman in the entrepreneurial world. He started his first business in college, transformed it several times, sold it, worked in corporate development, and opened an investment fund.

After all these years of experience as both a founder and investor, when he finally scratched the itch to start another company, there was one major lesson he took with him: finding the exact right balance between acquiring funding and achieving profitability.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Bill discusses his experience and describes how he achieved that balance with his current company, Pingboard.

SaaS is quickly becoming the default mode of revenue for software companies, and it’s clear why. Instead of inspiring your customer base to purchase upgrades, you can lock them into a repeating subscription fee that ensures they continue to enjoy the latest features and compatibility.

But this strategy comes with the downside of having your revenue stream diluted across months or even years, making growth more challenging.

This is the problem Miguel Fernández sought to solve with his company Capchase. On this edition of UpTech Report, Miguel discusses how Capchase enables companies to have access to those revenue streams faster, giving them the capital they need to expand their businesses.

Taking that leap into entrepreneurship can be terrifying. It often involves giving up a secure job, and committing personal finances and resources to follow a dream that has a reasonable chance of dying.

So how do you finally make the decision? For Peter Mahoney, he had to tell thousands of people he was doing it. Only then was it real.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Peter talks about finally overcoming the fear of taking that plunge and how he confronted the challenges awaiting him on the other side.

With so much sales and marketing happening in online spaces, companies more and more are craving to deliver 3D and AR experiences for their customers. Wondering what that couch will look like in your living room? Hold up your phone, and an app will visually place it there.

Want to see that sneaker in a full 360 radius? Just spin it to get a full view. The problem is that software platforms that deliver these experiences need files that aren’t used by most design teams.

Ashley Crowder set out to find a solution, which eventually became her company, Vntana. In this edition of UpTech Report, Ashley discusses the Vntana product, which helps content teams quickly and easily bridge the gap between their product designs and interactive experiences for customers.

Looking forwards to moving on from 2020? Hear what the leading innovators predict will be the key technologies coming your way!

Not having the financial resources to hire the best talent can actually be a great thing. Bring in young talent and nurture a relationship that will grow with you year to year, and possibly even company to company.

This is an insight Jeremy Levy learned after decades in entrepreneurship. His clients were Disney, Staples, and Old Navy. His companies were sold to Match.com and IBM. And his talent stayed with him.

Today his team at Indicative develops an automated customer analytics platform, and he credits them with the success of his business.

Having an email address is as essential as having a home address. If you want to buy a product, take out a loan, apply for a job, or even just post a photo of your vacation, you need an email address.

And yet, unlike your residential address, your email address exposes you to a torrent of unwanted solicitations, notifications, requests, updates, appeals, advisories, and you get the idea. It’s turned a solution into a major problem for most people. Hatel Pandya set out to turn this problem back into a solution with her company, Edison, which offers a two-pronged approach: Their email client, Edison Mail, and their email service, OnMail.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Hatel discusses why she believes these solutions will again make email a useful tool instead of a headache.

In part one of my conversation with Sean McCreanor, the co-founder and CEO of Assignar, he talked about his project management solution specially tailored for the construction industry.

In this second part of our conversation, Sean discusses some of the unique problems he had early on, selling to companies that were still using computers like glorified calculators. He also offers some thoughts on how developing the right hiring technique helped lay the groundwork for their current success.

Keeping employees connected and informed is essential to a healthy and productive workforce. But today, with so many people working remotely, generating a feeling of community in the workplace is an increasing challenge.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Bill Boebel discusses his search for a quality solution, which eventually led him to create his own. The results are Pingboard, a social networking and communications system that’s now used by over 350,000 employees across the world.

In part one of my conversation with Garin Hess, the founder and CEO of Consensus, he talked about his product that dynamically assembles sales demos based on the needs and interest of the prospective client.

In this second part of our conversation, Garin tells us about one lecture in college that inspired him to become an entrepreneur, forever altering the course of his life. He also tells the story of his early failures—and how they led to his current success.

In part one of my conversation with Nitzan Shapira, the co-founder and CEO of Epsagon, he talked about his automated analytics solution for companies using distributed, cloud-based systems.

In this second part of our conversation, Nitzan talks more about his personal story, including his experience working for Israeli intelligence and how that led him to start his own company. He also gives some insights on how to overcome the fear of acquiring funding.

Typically, if you want to gain sophisticated insights into your marketing and sales data, you’d need data scientists and engineers to custom code a solution.

This can be expensive and time-consuming. But Jeremy Levy wants to make it unnecessary with his company, Indicative.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Jeremy talks about Indicative’s product, which offers an automated customer analytics platform specifically designed for product managers, marketers, and data analysts.

In part one of my conversation with Pedro Alves, the founder and CEO of Ople, he talked about bringing the power of AI-powered data processing to organizations previously unable to access this technology.

In this second part of our conversation, Pedro talks about letting his genuine excitement for his vision guide him through the often repetitive task of starting a company, and he also shares how he learned you sometimes have to ignore the advice from successful entrepreneurs.

There was a time, long ago, when marketers relied on instincts and perceptions. Today, it’s all about data. And yet, despite the sophistication of information analysis available, it’s still enormously challenging for marketing departments to understand if their budgets are allocated efficiently, their goals are being achieved, and the value to the company is demonstrable. Peter Mohoney realized this as the CMO of a two billion dollar software company.

His solution became his new company, Plannuh, which quite simply automates marketing, planning, and budgeting so marketing departments understand if what they’re doing is working.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Peter talks about the inspiration behind this idea and how it’s changing how marketing teams work.

There are entrepreneurs who identify a problem in a marketplace and recognize an opportunity—and then there are those who feel that problem personally and need a solution.

Sean McCreanor was one of those people. He started a construction company in Australia and was unable to find a software product that would offer the mobility and functionality he needed. So he founded his own tech startup, Assignar, which offers a project management solution specially tailored for the construction industry.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Sean talks about the ways in which this software addresses the particular needs of the construction industry and he discusses the challenges of selling a tech product in a marketplace that’s often twenty years behind the times.

In part one of my conversation with JB Kellogg, the co-founder and co-CEO of Madwire, he talked about his all-in-one marketing and management software solution for small businesses.

In this second part of our conversation, JB tells the story of walking into a random company down the street from his college and getting his first web design job—despite that he knew nothing about web design—and he shares his thoughts on how to grow your business by growing the leaders.

For sales engineering teams, assembling demos can be exhausting and time consuming. Each demo must be tailored to meet the needs of prospective clients, and that can take hours out of your day, if not days out of your week. Garin Hess learned this firsthand when leading a tech startup earlier in his career.

After one long dispiriting day of putting together these demos, he resolved to find a better way. And that’s how his current startup, Consensus began.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Garin explains how his product dynamically assembles sales demos based on the needs and interests of the client and why he believes this style of personalization is key.

In part one of my conversation with Caren Maio, the co-founder and president of Funnel, she talked about her product that helped property owners and managers pull leasing out of the world of Faxes and into the modern era.

In this second part of our conversation, she talks about how her background in marketing and sales made her the right fit to lead a real estate tech company—and she offers her thoughts on the importance of relationships over dollars.

Cloud computing for many companies has become more than a trend—it’s a way of life. And yet, the logs and metrics used for these distributed systems are often headaches. Engineers can take hours searching through logs and troubleshooting issues that should only take minutes to resolve.

This was the opinion of Nitzan Shapira when he co-founded Epsagon, which gives teams automated instrumentation and tracing for containers like Kubernetes and virtual machines.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Nitzan explains this technology and tells us how it’s helping people easily see the complexities of their systems from first line of code to deployment.

In part one of my conversation with Ben Hindman, the co-founder and CEO of Splashthat, he talked about his company’s efforts to rapidly transform the focus of their product to meet the needs of a world that had shifted to online events.

In this second part of our conversation, Ben tells us how Splashthat originated as a hail Mary effort to promote his other company, which needed a lot of help. He also offers some tips about the right way to speak to potential investors.

Perhaps one of the most significant byproducts of the digital era has been the ability to gather and process massive amounts of data to gain a better understanding of the world around us.

We can now look at business, medicine, education, sports, politics, and more, and discover patterns and relationships that were previously impossible to see.

To date, the everyday application of this ability has remained a kind of wizardry for data scientists. But our guest on this edition of UpTech Report wants to put this power in the hands of anyone.

Pedro Alves is the founder and CEO of Ople, a company that offers a platform that helps organizations gain insights and recognize patterns using machine learning and AI. In our conversation, Pedro explains how this technology works, and gives some fascinating examples of how it’s applied.

Nobody launches a small business because they want to spend their time managing and marketing—but often, for a business to succeed, you have to burn countless hours every week on those tasks. Mid-level and large businesses can hire staff for this purpose, but what about the hardware stores, restaurants, and chiropractors?

These are the people JB Kellogg wanted to help, with his company Madwire, which offers a complete marketing and management platform for small businesses, rolled into one.

On this edition of UpTech Report, JB tells where this idea began, how it works, and why he believes the mom-and-pops require a unique solution that differs from the larger competition.

In the first part of my conversation with Rebecca Krauthamer, the co-founder and CEO of Quantum Thought, she discussed the real-world applications of quantum computing she’s helping organizations implement today.

In this second part of our conversation, Rebecca talks about her transition from studying symbolic systems at Stanford to the pioneering field of quantum computing, a sector very few have breached. She also shares her thoughts on how running a successful company means being willing to be wrong.

The digitalization of our society is so fully upon us, there are college graduates today with no experience of any other way of life. And yet, some industries have remained stubbornly resistant to the 21st century.

Real estate leasing is certainly one. Owners and renters are mired in paperwork, pay stubs, and Faxes. Any of those college students looking to rent their first apartment may wonder if they’ve traveled back in time.

But Caren Maio, the president and cofounder of Funnel, is hoping to pull the leasing experience back into the present. On this edition of UpTech Report, Caren talks about her product, which gives property owners sophisticated tools for marketing and operations with the goal of taking the headaches out of the dotted line.

In part two of this edition of UpTech Report, John takes us through the initial inspiration behind Vouched, and he shares his thoughts on the importance of holding off on outside funding and why it’s key to let yourself fail.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced organizations to dramatically change the way events are organized and marketed. No longer are we rolling our travel cases across airport floors and congregating in hotel ballrooms. Now the events come into our home offices—if we can manage to break away from our other Zoom meetings.

These changes posed a special challenge—and an opportunity—for Ben Hindman, the co-founder and CEO of Splashthat, a company that offers an event marketing platform that gives planners a cohesive, professional, and engaging experience from launch to wrap.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Ben discusses how his company rapidly transitioned their product to meet the moment of 2020.

In part one of my conversation with Danny Tomsett, the founder and CEO of Uneeq, he talked about his efforts to make AI interaction more engaging with his product, digital humans.

In this second part of our conversation, Danny talks about launching his own telecommunications company at the age of 25, making the choice to leave that for something new, and he shares some important lessons he learned along the way.

You’ve probably heard of quantum computing, most commonly understood as a data storage technology built on the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. At least, that’s the idea, someday.

But there are other applications of this principle happening already. Have you heard of quantum communications? Or what about quantum sensing? If you’re already feeling lost, the guest on this edition of UpTech Report may help you untangle all this quantum entanglement. Rebecca Krauthamer is the co-founder and CEO of Quantum Thought, a company that helps organizations implement quantum technologies to assist with everything from cybersecurity, to molecule modeling, to AI machine learning, and more. Hear how she’s making quantum computing happen right now.

In part one of my conversation with Haseeb Bedhani, the co-founder of Rafay, he discussed his platform to help manage Kubernetes. In this second part of our conversation, Haseeb talks about his view that to grow a company, you have to do it like it’s never been done before, and why the successful startups are the ones that revise their vision.

Whether you’re taking out a loan, receiving healthcare, or even purchasing wine, verifying identities is necessary to prevent fraud and protect consumers.

But as more and more of these transactions occur digitally, it’s become a greater challenge to verify identities with accuracy and security. The opportunities for identities to be stolen and for personal data to be compromised is high.

John Baird set out to solve this problem with Vouched—a company that uses artificial intelligence to verify the identities of customers and contractors with speed, accuracy, and security. In part one of this edition of UpTech Report, John discusses this technology and the many problems it solves to determine that you are indeed you.

In part one of my conversation with Ivan Matkovic, the founder and CEO of Spendgo, he told us about his marketing platform that helps retailers and restaurants offer a first class engagement experience to their customers.

In this second part of our conversation, he talks about how his idea transformed from a simple thought in college to a robust solution for small and mid-sized businesses—and how although his company was prepared for the shift to remote work, he sees problems down the road for new startups.

Interacting with artificial intelligence is no longer a technology of tomorrow—it’s a way of life. If you’ve ever adjusted your car insurance, upgraded your cable service, or sought help installing a new printer, you’ve almost definitely found yourself chatting with an AI bot. And it probably wasn’t your most engaging conversation of the day.

Though AI bots can often deliver the solutions you need, they lack the emotional responsiveness we crave.

Danny Tomsett, the founder and CEO of Uneeq, is trying to change that with a product called digital humans, which aims to make AI personal. On this edition of UpTech Report, Danny tells us how the technology works, and what it could mean for you the next time you need help.

In part one of my conversation with Crystal Huang, the co-founder and CEO of ProSky, she talked about her software service that helps HR managers gain deep insights into the state of their companies.

In this second part of our conversation, Crystal talks about her inspiration to stop building companies for others and start building one of her own, and how her own brother joined the effort—a mix of family and business few would desire, but she finds successful.

If you’re on a DevOps team and managing clustered apps needing rapid scaling and deployment, you may use an open-source solution called Kubernetes.

This technology is an ideal platform for cloud-based applications. But like everything in the modern era, the technology in it and around it changes too rapidly for most companies to manage. You’d need a team of ten experts in your organization to keep up—and that wouldn’t be very cost-effective.

This is the problem Haseeb Budhani recognized when he co-founded Rafay, a company that offers a Kubernetes management solution. On this edition of UpTech Report, Haseeb explains how this technology works and how it’s helping companies handle a rapidly evolving marketplace.

In part one of my conversation with Sam Caucci, the founder and CEO of 1huddle, he discussed his effort to merge corporate training with the world of mobile gaming.

In this second part of our conversation, Sam takes us through his journey of starting a tech company with hardly any knowledge of technology, and how he managed the problem of when to build, when to sell, and when to get funding.

Perhaps one of the keys to the success of Starbucks is their digital rewards experience. You pay with your phone, earn stars, get a free drink on your birthday, and the customers love it.

There are plenty of solutions out there for smaller businesses to compete, but they often require people to fumble through emails, QR codes, and obscure apps.

Ivan Matkovic, the founder and CEO of Spendgo is trying to fix all that with a fully integrated commerce and marketing system for restaurants and retailers. In this edition of UpTech Report, Ivan tells how the system works and how, as he claims, it produces even better results than Starbucks.

In part one of my conversation with John Jahnke, the co-founder and CEO of Tackle, he talked about his commerce platform for software companies seeking cloud-based revenue streams.

In this second part of our conversation, John tells us about his unlikely journey from being a college dropout to leading a technology startup—and he delivers some essential tips on the importance of understanding the people on the other end of the product.

Anyone who’s spent five minutes on the internet has encountered a myriad of personality tests—many humorous, some serious, but all offering a new reflection of what sort of person you are.

And if you happen to be an HR person, you may want that same insight into what sort of company you have. Unfortunately, there are scant few tools to help deliver that insight. At least, that’s what Crystal Huang noticed—and that’s why she started ProSky, a company that offers a software platform to help HR managers better understand the state of their workforce so they can chart an informed course forward.

On this edition of UpTech Report, Crystal tells us about the origins of this idea and how she hopes it will help people build stronger, more diverse companies.

In part one of my conversation with Dan Reich, the founder and CEO of Troops, he discussed his vision to build an AI assistant that bridges information between employees and software with the ease of sending texts to a friend.

In this second part of our conversation, he talks about the importance of building a team and a product to get the funding, and he shares some thoughts on how telecommuting has dramatically increased the importance of a healthy corporate culture.

If you’ve ever been onboarded to a major company, you’ve most likely had to complete some kind of corporate training. And it was likely a painful and dispiriting experience. The materials are slow, unengaging, and for some reason perpetually antiquated. Sam Caucci, who spent his entire career managing sales teams, knew this all too well. That’s why he founded 1huddle, a company that turns corporate training into mobile gameplay.

On this episode of UpTech Report, Sam talks about his efforts to make corporate training fun and engaging, and how he harnesses competition as a positive force in the workplace.

In part one of my conversation with Cindy McLaughlin, the CEO of Envelope, she talked about how her startup helps developers navigate the complexities of zoning laws, and the unique partnership approach they employ in their business model.

In this second part of our conversation, Cindy tells us how she’s learned to work through all the apparent catastrophes of running a business, and how she believes a great CEO must be a great story.

Perhaps the most significant transformation in software distribution over the past ten years has been the increasing dominance of cloud marketplaces.

But software developers wishing to engage in a cloud marketplace are often faced with two major problems: adapting their business model and quickly completing the integration. And when you find a good marketplace opportunity, you can’t always wait six months for the engineering team to make it work.

That’s what John Jahnke noticed when he co-founded Tackle–what he describes as a commerce platform for software companies to embrace new pathways to revenue via the cloud. In this episode of UpTech Report, John discusses the evolution of this idea, and how it works.

In part one of my conversation with Erinn Valencich, the founder and CEO of StyleRow, she discussed the platform she developed that’s targeted to bridge the needs of product management and sales for luxury designers.

In this second part of our conversation, she tells about her early years as a horse trainer, then running the business for a lifestyle expert before starting her own interior design company at the age of 24. She also discusses how she struggled launching a new startup—but eventually managed to succeed once finally connecting with the right people.

Over the past few years, there’s been a change in how information flows between people. Gone are the days where we’d log into computer terminals and draft emails. Now we text, tweet, instant message, and post. That’s at least how it is person to person. When it comes to person to computer, we still wheel up our chairs and poke at keyboards the old way. That’s what Dan Reich noticed when he started his company, Troops.

A startup veteran, he envisioned a system where an AI assistant could bridge information between employees and computers with the same ease and fluidity of two buddies texting about a baseball game. On this episode of UpTech Report, Dan explains how it works.

In part one of my conversation with Yasmine Mustafa, the co-founder and CEO of ROAR for Good, she talked about the inspiration behind her company and their product, AlwaysOn, a wearable tracking device that enables hotel staff to alert security.

In this second part of our conversation, Yasmine tells how she took that leap from having an idea to actually quitting her job and starting her own company—and she shares some important insights on how she continued to develop her client relationships in one of the most challenging markets in the past hundred years.

If you’re developing a building in a major city, understanding the zoning laws is a crucial but often byzantine process. You must work through thousands of pages of documents to learn your options on ceiling heights, plumbing systems, occupancy limits, and the list goes on. And changing one factor could affect another.

Cindy McLaughlin, the CEO of Envelope, is trying to help developers navigate this complicated process using software that analyzes plans, locations, and laws to deliver data in an easy-to-understand format. But unlike many other technology startups, Envelope’s offering includes human input—as well as a business partnership. In this episode of UpTech Report, Cindy tells us about the origins of their startup and their unique business model.

One of the great appeals of information technology is its adaptability to wide applications—any given database software system can be implemented in anything from massive infrastructure projects to selling homemade candles. But some industries have needs so specific, the general offerings don’t cut it, forcing businesses to piece together numerous disjointed solutions.

This is what Erinn Valencich realized about her own interior design firm and luxury furnishings brand. She needed a system that integrated the unique project management and sales relationship of her business while reflecting the beauty so integral to her mission.

So she started StyleRow, a software platform tailored to meet the needs of luxury designers. On this episode of UpTech Report, Erinn discusses the genesis of her startup, developing the business model, and where they plan to go next.

Seth Patin didn’t get an MBA at Stanford and lacked the connections to the world of venture capitalism—but he had the skills and the vision to start a new company, so he funded it out of his own pocket.

That company is LogistiVIEW, and they’re attempting to revolutionize industrialized work through the use of Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence.

In this second part of our conversation with Seth, he discusses some of the challenges he met funding his own company, and how early feedback from potential clients caused him to redefine his approach to their product development.

When people think of dangerous professions, it’s usually police officers, firefighters, EMTs and other first responders that come to mind. But hotel housekeepers are especially prone to unsafe conditions, their jobs requiring them to enter private rooms with total strangers.

According to a 2016 survey, fifty-eight percent of housekeepers have experienced sexual harassment on the job.*

That’s why Yasmine Mustafa founded ROAR for Good and developed their product, AlwaysOn, a discrete, wearable tracking device that enables hotel staff to alert security. In this episode of UpTech Report, Yasmine walks us through the inspiration behind this device, how they’ve worked to deploy it in the private sector, and where it could be applied in the future.

In part one of my conversation with Raj Singh, the co-founder and CEO of Loop Team, he talked about his efforts to make remote work feel more connected and productive.

In this second part of our conversation, Raj discusses how his previous startup brought him to this remarkably prescient venture, and how his company has met the challenge of their product becoming so direly relevant, quite literally overnight.

The high cost of legal fees and the lack of standards across the legal system in the United States is not merely inefficient and costly—it’s unjust. And it’s not only taking a toll on those who lack the resources to afford quality legal representation—it also affects the lawyers, who suffer from low morale and depression. At least, according to Raj Goyle. But he would know.

A twenty year veteran of state politics, Raj experienced on a daily basis, quite literally, the trials and tribulations of law in America. So he traded in the state house for a Manhattan office and founded Bodhala, a company that provides transparent data and insights to make legal representation more equitable, help strengthen law firm relationships, and deliver the best results.

In this episode of UpTech Report, Raj takes us on his journey from politics to startups, and talks about his efforts to use entrepreneurship to make a difference.

It may be surprising to hear that despite the vast technological advances in nearly every sector over the past twenty years, tens of thousands of warehouses still operate on paper. Seth Patin, the founder, and CEO of LogistiVIEW recognized the inefficiencies and saw an opportunity.

His solution is a product that combines Virtual Reality with Artificial Intelligence, guiding warehouse workers with real-time information about where they should be, what they should be doing, and where they should go next.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Seth talks about how he started the company, and some of the many adjustments he’s had to make along the way.

The coronavirus pandemic has dramatically accelerated an already dominant trend—working remotely. But the vast adoption of this new way of working has only further revealed the downsides. It’s lonely. It’s difficult to spontaneously interact with your team. Staying up to date and feeling connected is a challenge.

Our guest on this week’s UpTech Report may have a timely solution. Raj Singh is the co-founder and CEO of Loop Team—a virtual office for distributed teams. He hopes it might make this new world we live in feel more productive and liberating.

In part 1 of my conversation with Dennis R. Mortensen, the co-founder and CEO of X.ai, he told us about the simple power of his AI scheduling assistant developed by his company.

In this second part of our conversation, Dennis explains his belief that soon our current way of arranging meetings will seem as antiquated as the FAX machine, and he also discusses his method of staying uncommonly close with the customer and the dividends it pays.

The world is deep in the throes of a global pandemic, the likes of which has not been seen in a hundred years. But even in normal times, the spread of disease is a massive problem.

Harmful pathogens are everywhere—in the plumbing, in the air, on the things we touch. And as bacteria gradually evolves resistance to antibiotics, we face a vital need to find new solutions. Our guest on this week’s UpTech Report may have one.

Larryi Ding is the CEO of ABLE Life, a healthcare technology startup that’s developed a compound that kills harmful pathogens on contact. The applications are immense—and right now, sorely needed.

One of the more notable truths to emerge in the digital age is that as complicated as software may seem, the people using that software remain infinitely more so. This is especially apparent when it comes to scheduling meetings.

Lives are difficult to coordinate, and people may not always remember the numerous requests coming their way. So it may be fitting that software is being developed now to manage the people.

Our guest on this edition of UpTech report is Dennis Mortensen, the co-founder and CEO of X.ai—a company offering a very simple but powerful tool: An AI assistant that can reach out to your associates and schedule the meetings for you.

In part one of my conversation with Krishna Ramineni, the co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, he told us about his efforts to create a virtual assistant that takes notes at your meeting, and can even attend them without you.

In this second part of our conversation, Krishna talks about what it was like moving out to San Francisco to start a company, with no experience and no connections—and why he decided not to raise VC funding initially.

He also shares some of his personal philosophy on exactly what a company should focus on when bringing a product from idea to market.

A lot has changed in business over the past thirty years—but one element that continues eternal is meetings. These days we might have them over Zoom, but they’re still the same as ever.

Our guest on the latest UpTech Report isn’t trying to change meetings, but he is hoping to make them easier to navigate and process. And he’s doing it with artificial intelligence.

Krishna Ramineni is the co-founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai—a company that offers an artificial personal assistant that can take notes on your meetings, giving you transcripts and action items—and even attend them without you.

In part one of my conversation with Sarah Hill, the founder and CEO of Healium, she talked about how her exposure to trauma as a journalist inspired her to create VR and AR software, powered by wearable technology, to help manage anxiety.

In this second part of our conversation, Sarah explains why she recommends starting your company as service-based as opposed to product-based, and she also discusses some of the challenges of starting a tech company in an area of the country not typically associated with technology.

More information: https://www.tryhealium.com/

As a television reporter, Sarah Hill covered a great deal of trauma—soldiers returning from war, violent crimes, and the aftermath of natural disasters. After time, all this exposure to tragedy took a toll, and she found herself suffering from anxiety.

Her solution was to found Healium, a company that delivers VR and AR stories and immersive spaces to help manage stress and treat anxiety. Healium takes it to the next level by powering the entire experience with your actual “brainwaves and heart rate via an EEG headband or Apple Watch”.

It’s yet another example of how virtual reality is evolving beyond an entertainment platform and into a tool that can improve people’s lives.

More information: https://www.tryhealium.com/

In part one of my conversation with Carrie Shaw, the founder and CEO of Embodied Labs, she talked about how her company trains caregivers to understand the perspectives of people needing care through the use of virtual reality.

In this second part of our conversation, Carrie talks about the interesting genesis of this idea—which involved serving dinner to her mother—and how she got from there to winning the Bill and Melinda Gates XR Prize Challenge, and a thriving enterprise.

One of the most difficult challenges for a caregiver is understanding life from the perspective of the person receiving care, both physiologically and psychologically. How do they see, how do they feel? And what’s their perspective on the world? Understanding life as they experience it can be key to offering the best support.

On the latest UpTech Report, I talk with Carrie Shaw, whose company, Embodied Labs, is helping caregivers experience the world, almost literally through the eyes of people needing care, by using virtual reality. Carrie believes it could change the way we care for people in need of life assistance.

In part one of my conversation with Gabe Paez, the founder and CEO of The Wild, he discussed how his company has created a virtual reality platform that allows anyone with a VR headset to collaborate on architectural models with anyone else in the world. It’s a remarkable and fun enterprise.

In this second part of our conversation, Gabe opens up about the painful beginnings of his startup—how he struggled initially to get his company off the ground—and how he eventually found the funding he needed and landed those key first clients.

Even to the non-professional, architectural models have a magical appeal—it’s the presentation of the possible, imagining yourself in a new place, a carefully crafted environment.

Gabe Paez, our guest on this week’s UpTech Report, has developed a unique and marvelous way to bring people into these models. His company, The Wild, offers a Virtual Reality platform that enables anyone with a VR headset, anywhere in the world, to collaborate with others on architectural models, allowing you and your team to actually be in the space you’re designing. It’s wild indeed.

In part one of my conversation with Matt Caywood, the founder and CEO of Transitscreen, he told us about his efforts to help organizations manage the complex transportation needs of their employees.

In this second part of our conversation, Matt goes into more detail about some of the unique strategies he employed to land his first customers, and he also shares some interesting hiring philosophies that involves ascertaining where a potential employee can go, not just where they’ve been.

Most corporations don’t merely exist on paper—they exist in a physical location with a workforce that needs to travel there. In the 21st century, this problem is complicated. As cities grow denser, public transportation becomes more relied upon, and new options, such as bike-share programs and ride-share startups, are always entering the mix.

On the latest UpTech Report, I interview Matt Caywood, the founder and CEO of Transitscreen, a company that’s working to help organizations navigate the complexities of getting their employees from point A to point B.

Their main product allows people to glance at a screen and see, in real-time, a full range of current transportation options, including trains, buses, rideshares, bicycles, and cars—information that can affect everything from getting home to relocating your headquarters.

In part one of my conversation with Elnaz Sarraf, the founder and CEO of ROYBI, she discussed her product—what she calls, “the smart, educational, learning robot toy for kids,” and its unique interactive functionality.

In this second part of our conversation, she goes deeper into some of the challenges she faced crowdsourcing a new company, getting that product ready for launch, and ensuring the deliverables are as promised—and she also discusses what it was about her own upbringing that inspired her to become an entrepreneur.

There are a lot of early education technology products on the market, but most of them are fairly static. They’re apps, or in some cases electronic toys that deliver one-way content.

In this installment of UpTech Report, I talk with Elnaz Sarraf, the founder and CEO of ROYBI, a company that’s manufacturing an interactive early learning toy that doesn’t merely offer up games and puzzles—it can respond to children’s emotions.

Elnaz discusses why this level of engagement is so important for early learning, and some of the unique challenges a technology such as this encounters with such young users.

In part one of my conversation with Christopher Marentis of Surefire Local, he talked about his company’s efforts to bring the online marketing power of a large company into the hands of small businesses.

In this second part of our conversation, he discusses how his first-hand experiences with his father’s business inspired him to write the book that will eventually serve as the basis for his company, and he takes us deeper into the future of marketing, offering some important insight on what to expect on the road ahead.

The story of the internet may come in two parts: In one telling, it created giants—the Amazons, Googles, and eBays. But in the other telling, it enabled an ocean of small businesses to promote themselves and connect with customers in new ways. Unfortunately, for this latter group, fully utilizing the resources of the internet has always been a struggle.

In this episode of UpTech Report, I talk with Christopher Marentis, the founder and CEO of Surefire Local, a company that’s trying to bring the online marketing power yielded by large dot-coms into the hands of local dentists, contractors, and accountants.

In part one of my conversation with Audrey-Laure Bergenthal, the founder and CEO of Euveka, she discussed the inspiration behind the Biomimetic Robot Mannequin, a mannequin that can transform its shape to reproduce a wide range of body types to help clothing designers.

In this second part of our conversation, Audrey-Laure talks about some of the challenges she overcame starting her company, and she offers a glimpse of where she thinks the world of retail is headed in the future.

Visits to the local tailor aren’t as common as they once were. The focus is on mass-produced garments that ideally fit our body type as best as possible. We are short, tall, slight, and large, and clothes require complicated adjustments to fit a diverse population.

But though designers and tailors are working hard at major clothing companies—and also at other suppliers, such as the military and sports sectors—they’re working without the customers to measure.

In this edition of UpTech Report, I talk with Audrey-Laure Bergenthal, the founder and CEO of Euveka, who realized that the industrialization of clothes had only occurred at the production end, not the design end. What if there was a way to replicate that customer base that’s gone missing, to give designers the proper framework to build on? The Biomimetic Robot Mannequin was Audrey-Laure’s answer.

In part one of my conversation with Brandon O’Halloran, the CEO of ReplyBuy, he discussed his efforts to develop a personalized messaging system to help companies quickly and easily complete sales.

In this second part of our conversation, he discusses some of the strategic decisions he made to grow his company, including forming key partnerships and making sure your passions are lining up with reality. And as a first-time CEO, he offers some important advice for anyone aspiring to follow in his footsteps.

One of the great promises of the internet was the ability for companies to quickly and easily engage with an enormous range of potential customers. And yet, while the population has fully embraced the swiftness and efficiency of SMS, sales teams are too often still tied to the antiquity of email and phones to close the deal.

On this episode of UpTech Report, I talk with Brandon O’Halloran of ReplyBuy, about his efforts to offer a text messaging solution for sales teams at scale. Brian believes that text messaging will be a major mode of business communication in the future—and he offers some intriguing numbers to back up the claim.

In the first part of my conversation with Cece Lee of Trendalytics, she talked about her efforts to use artificial intelligence to analyze trends in fashion.

In this second part of our conversation, Cece opens up about her experiences as a CEO of a startup in New York, and the humbling process of transitioning from an account manager to being the head of a company.

She offers some key perspectives on learning by doing and how being at the top can’t mean that you’re above anyone.

One of the biggest goals of artificial intelligence is to process human communication. But communication can change depending on the context. The way you talk to your family may be different than the way you talk at work. And if you work in pharmaceuticals, you’ll talk a lot differently than if you work in fashion.

And it’s the fashion industry that Cece Lee of Trendalytics hopes to crack. In this episode of UpTech Report, Cece dives into her efforts to predict fashion trends so that manufacturers know what to make and retailers know what to stock.

In part one of my conversation with Susan Stevens, the founder and CEO of Wespire, she talked about how her company combines the interactivity of social media and the fun of game mechanics to help people live better.

In this second part of our conversation, Susan discusses some of the immense challenges of running a startup—especially as a woman and a parent. She also gives some important advice on how to develop a realistic path toward growth for your company—and it may not always involve you at the helm.

In 2010, Susan Stevens’ job at the New York Times gave her a front row seat to the social media transformation of our society. She also observed how our phones became tools of both entertainment and personal inspiration.

And like herself, she saw a culture more and more concerned with making a positive impact on the world. An epiphany brought these elements together, and her company, Wespire, was born.

In this episode of UpTech Report, Susan talks about how Wespire combines the interactivity of social media and the fun of game mechanics to help people live better and how companies are using these tools to improve their workplace culture.

In part one of my conversation with Ganesh Sundaram of AlefEdge, he talked about the concept of the “Edge Internet,” and how his company, AelfEdge, is attempting to create the software architecture to make it a reality. In this second part of our conversation, Ganesh discusses how he came to view his software as a metaphor and not just a technology, and in what ways that expanded view helped open up the developmental potential.

As the speed and reliability of the internet has improved, it’s become integrated into the basic functionality of our computer systems, phones—and even dishwashers and cars.

But relying on massive data centers in far away locations can slow things down. Enter the Edge Internet—a global framework that brings the servers you rely on closer to the edge of where you are. But this framework requires software solutions. This is the problem Ganesh Sundaram of AlefEdge is trying to solve.

In this episode of UpTech Report, I talk with Ganesh about his efforts to create an operating system for the Edge Internet and how he believes the technology will be affecting us all in the future.

The ability to order anything online and have it delivered quickly has transformed the delivery industry—and given a distinct advantage to the largest, most dominant retailers, such as Amazon.

But where does this leave the smaller retailers, who more and more depend on online sales? This is the problem Chelsie Lee recognized when she founded Shipsi, a company that enables businesses of any size to link their ecommerce systems to an advanced delivery network—sometimes in only ten or fifteen minutes.

In this episode of UpTech Report, Chelsie discusses how she came to start this company, how their solution works, and in what ways they’ve adjusted their business in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In part one of my conversation with Chelsie, she talked about her company, Shipsi, which gives any retailer the delivery power of large online behemoths like Amazon.

In this second part of our conversation, Chelsie discusses the resources she drew from to help get Shipsi off the ground, how she’s positioning her company for a post-pandemic world, and why she believes funding through venture capital was a mistake.

In part one of my conversation with Bhaskar Raghunathan, he talked about how his background in image processing and data visualization brought him to found his first startup, Takvaviya, which analyzes drone image data in agriculture and solar industries.

In this second part of our conversation, Bhaskar talks about some of the challenges he overcame as a first-time founder, including an important story about the moment he realized the value of his product.

Technologists, entrepreneurs, and science fiction writers all seem to agree that, for better or worse, drones will be a ubiquitous part of our future. Among the many possible uses, drones’ ability to capture images seems especially potent, but perhaps still yet unrealized.

With a background in image processing and data visualization, Bhaskar Raghunathan wondered how drone imagery could be put to better practical use, and this question led him to found Takvaviya, a company that analyzes image data and translates the information to useful insights.

They currently focus on agriculture and solar sectors, but the potential seems vast. In this episode of Uptech Report, Bhaskar tells us the story of his company and how his technology works.

In part one of our conversation with Paul Shahriari, he told us about his company, Ecomedes, and its goal of offering a comprehensive sustainable product catalog for building developers.

In part two of our conversation, Paul tells us about the need for data presentation to be focused and strategic, the importance of truly understanding the granularity of the marketplace, and the key business advice he received from his daughter.

The vast majority of people constructing new buildings, whether it be a home or a skyscraper, want it to be green. It’s not just good for the planet, it’s good for the pocketbook. But Paul Shahriari discovered this aspiration was heavily impeded by a fractured marketplace for eco-friendly systems. So he started Ecomedes, a sustainable product catalog for building developers.

In this episode of UpTech Report, Pauls talks about his business model that serves as an automated middleman, refining research on hundreds of thousands of products and connecting buyers with sellers, which he hopes will make green construction as easy as buying groceries.

Imagine you’re on a phone call with your sales rep—you catch up, swap some stories, and eventually discuss some numbers and updates on the new leads.

A few minutes later, you receive an automated email summarizing the conversation, including relevant action items.

This is the dream of Surbhi Rathore from Symbl AI, a company developing the technology to interpret natural conversations and convert them into useful data. In this week’s UpTech Report, Surbhi discusses the origins of this idea, how it works, and why she’s developing it as an API for all to use.

In part one of our conversation with Surbhi Rathore, she told us about her company, Symbl AI, and their efforts to develop a conversational intelligence platform that can plug into any business network. In this second part of our conversation, she reveals the unlikely path she took to creating this company, and she shares some important lessons that anyone starting their own company will want to hear.

In part one of my conversation with Brad Duea of Restaurant Revolution Technologies, he discussed the problems restaurants have with off-premise digital business—online takeout, delivery, and catering—and his efforts to find solutions.

In this second part of our conversation, Brad tells us what he believes is the most important quality for success in business, including the key business advice he received in college that he now passes along to his own children.

The restaurant industry has always struggled with digital modernization. Sometimes you’re lucky if your favorite restaurant has a menu online, let alone the ability to place an order. But with the Covid-19 pandemic, what was once a useful luxury is now a crucial necessity. Many restaurants have defaulted to ordering services like Grubhub and Seamless, but with high fees, restaurants may need a better solution. At least, Brad Duea of Restaurant Revolution Technologies thinks so.

On this episode of UpTech Report, I talk with Brad about his efforts to bring an affordable and fully integrated online solution for takeout, delivery, and catering—a timely conversation for restaurants struggling to adapt to a rapidly transforming economy.

In part one of our conversation with Olivia Ramos, she told us about the complicated real estate development problems that led her to found Deepblocks.

In part two of our conversation, she discusses the process she undertook in acquiring funding for her company, and some insights on where she sees the most promising technological developments for the immediate and more distant future.

New shopping centers and housing projects seem to rise as perennially as spring flowers. But these developments require a complex and fragmented chain of information between workers, brokers, analysts, and developers that makes each project exceedingly challenging.

Olivia Ramos, with master’s degrees in architecture and real estate development, found that lack of information management untenable, so she started Deepblocks, a company that uses artificial intelligence to analyze developments and streamline the flow of information.

In this episode of UpTech Report, I talk to Olivia about the inspiration behind Deepblocks and how with her product, decisions that once took several weeks and tens of thousands of dollars can now be made in thirty seconds.

In part 1 of our conversation with Dave Billiter, he told us about how his experience as the head of innovation at Nationwide Children’s Hospital inspired him to found Deep Lens, a company aiming to help patients find clinical trials using artificial intelligence.

In this second part of our conversation, Dave talks about the difficulties he faced finding healthcare administrators willing to change their established methods and how to scale in such a challenging market where so much is at stake.

Patients seeking new treatments for their conditions face a special problem: Their need is immediate, but the process for being admitted to a clinical trial is slow and complicated.

As the head of innovation at Nationwide Children's Hospital, Dave Billiter set out to solve this problem with Deep Lens, a company he hopes will quickly and efficiently match patients and researchers using artificial intelligence.

In this episode of UpTech Report, Dave tells us his personal story that led to the creation of Deep Lens, and the special challenges of implementing technology into the workflow of healthcare professionals.

In part one of our conversation with Nitin, he talked to us about his company Appnomic and their product, “Heal,” which aims to heal enterprise level systems using AI.

In this second part of our conversation, Nitin talks about some of the common mistakes people make when innovating, and the holistic philosophy he employs to connect all the pieces of his business. He also offers some key advice on how businesses can effectively position themselves in these challenging times.

Business systems are becoming as complex as the human body—but what if, like the human body, these systems could self-heal? Nitin Kumar, of Appnomic, claims his product can do just that, and even prevent problems from happening in the first place.

In this episode of UpTech Report, Nitin describes how his product, called “Heal,” uses artificial intelligence to predict, diagnose, and prevent enterprise level problems autonomously.

How exactly does it work? Nitin offers some real-world examples.

In part one of our conversation with Stephen Bulfer, he told us about his efforts to modernize mortgage lending with his company, Streamloan.

In part two of our conversation, he talks about how developing new technology isn’t enough—people have to change their behaviors to adopt that technology and his reasons for why he believes technology companies should be investing their key resources in how to inspire cultural change.

Stephen Bulfer was involved in cutting edge technology projects for fortune 500 companies by day, but as a real estate investor by night, he found himself mired in archaic systems and processes that were relics of the 20th century. So he started Streamloan, a digital mortgage technology platform that simplifies the mortgage lending process.

In this episode of UpTech Report, Stephen tells us about his personal experiences as a real estate investor, and the unique challenges of that sector his company attempts to solve.

In part one of our conversation with Larry Freed, of Give and Take, incorporated, he discussed their social platform and the benefits of generalized reciprocity.

In part 2 of our conversation, Larry shares some of his insights on how to maintain a healthy workforce, the keys to innovation, and managing the continual struggle of a startup.

Building a corporate culture is a complex task. You may want to create an environment in which your employees are generous, helpful, and supportive—but how exactly do you go about it?

Larry Freed of Give and Take, Incorporated believes he has the answer in a product called Givitas—a social platform that encourages “generalized reciprocity,” a way of giving without direct expectation of receiving.

In this episode of UpTech Report, Larry tells us how this platform is helping companies improve efficiency, enhance workplace satisfaction, and increase ROI.

In part one of our conversation with Nikolaus Kimla, he told us about his intriguing approach to developing CRM systems by focusing on the psychology of the salespeople and the clients they’re selling to.

In part two of our conversation, Nikolaus expands those thoughts to include some refreshing insights about the nature of salespeople and their greater role in the world.

The art of sales requires not only a market knowledge but also a deep understanding of the social dynamics of the company you’re selling to. This was the realization that inspired Nikolaus Kimla to found Pipeliner, a company attempting to rethink the purpose and implementation of CRM systems for salesforces.

In this episode of UpTech report, Nikolaus tells me how his experiences reading the body language of his potential clients brought him to Pipeline’s current product, which he says can help salespeople visualize the social complexity of their targets.

In part one of our conversation with Jeremy Almond from PayStand, he described many of the problems with current financial infrastructure and his ideas on how to solve them.

In this second part of our conversation, Jeremy goes into more detail about his personal reasons for improving this industry, and how financial systems can touch the core of our lives. He also shares some helpful insight into business challenges he’s overcome, and offers some tips on how to build a great team.

Banking efficiency may not seem a matter of great importance to many, but when Jeremy Almond’s family lost their house in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, he understood how inferior financial infrastructure can have devastating consequences. That’s in part why he formed PayStand, a company that aims to bring the ease of modern consumer transactions to the business world.

In this edition of UpTech Report, Jeremy talks with me about the challenges of implementing blockchain technology to financial behemoths, and some of the lessons he learned from early failures.

The healthcare industry in America can often seem a chaotic tangle of archaic systems. But according to Michael Levy, the founder of Bluedoor, a healthcare growth agency, the problem isn’t merely a matter of technology—it’s culture, talent, and opportunity.

That’s why Michael started the Digital Health Institute for Transformation, a nonprofit education and research institute, where he’s helping develop a universal digital healthcare infrastructure. In part one of our conversation, Michael tells us about his efforts to build a public health utility grid, and why he believes the healthcare industry approaches their mission the wrong way

In part one of our conversation with Michael Levy, he discussed his nonprofit organization, the Digital Health Institute for Transformation and its efforts to build a public health utility grid. In this second part of our conversation, Michael Levy makes an impassioned case on the keys to starting a movement, which he says begins with discovering your deepest motivations and developing a clarity of purpose.

In part one of our conversation with Michael Levy, he discussed his nonprofit organization, the Digital Health Institute for Transformation and its efforts to build a public health utility grid. In this second part of our conversation, Michael Levy makes an impassioned case on the keys to starting a movement, which he says begins with discovering your deepest motivations and developing a clarity of purpose.

In part one of our conversation with Kate Chernis from Lately, she told us about her unlikely journey from rock DJ to startup CEO.

In the second part of our conversation, Kate talks about the essential connection between body, mind, and business, and she tells us about her efforts to bring human emotion into sales.

As a rock DJ, Kate Chernis suffered through an oppressive work environment until she finally realized she needed to set out on her own. She read two chapters of a book on startups and a week later had fifty thousand dollars of venture capital. This journey eventually led her to cofound Lately, a tech company that automates and centralizes core marketing tasks.

In part one of this edition of UpTech Report, Kate tells us her unique story, the challenges of marketing, and how embracing your quirks can be the best business practice.

In part one of our conversation with Jim Johnson from Mobile Solutions, he talked about starting a small company on a family loan and taking it from six employees to a hundred.

In part two of our conversation, he tells us how you may not want to be the smartest person in the room, and he offers some key advice on how to grow your company.

Using their own money and a family loan, Jim Johnson and his wife Kim started a company and took it from six employees to a hundred.

Mobile Solutions is now a thriving tech company, repeatedly winning awards for growth, leadership, and customer satisfaction.

In part one of this episode of UpTech Report, I talk to Jim who tells us about realizing the opportunities to address mobile management on an enterprise level, and balancing the needs of human interactions and automated systems

Mobile workforces are becoming a fixture of the modern economy, offering companies and employees great flexibility and cost-saving benefits—but it can create a fractured and disconnected workplace culture.

Gaurav Bhattacharya felt this way when he worked at a large tech company in New York—so he left and founded InvolveSoft, which offers companies an “Instagram-like” platform to bring workers together.

On this edition of UpTech Report, we talk with Gaurav about the journey that brought him from selling pencils door to door, to founding a startup straight out of high school, and finally to his current position as the CEO of InvolveSoft, where he hopes to build his company into more than just a workplace, but a thriving community.

In our last edition of Uptech Report, we spoke with Gaurav Bhattacharya, the CEO of InvolveSoft, who told us about the remarkable journey that brought him from humble origins to the CEO of a startup.

In Part II of our conversation, Gaurav tells us more about overcoming the obstacles of starting a U.S. company as an immigrant, the goals he establishes for success, and his view that coders will be the next blue collar workforce.

In the 21st century, businesses across the globe, from developing nations to industrialized Western countries, have come to depend on fast access to capital—but the infrastructure is often still mired in the clunky bank models of the past.

Our guest on this edition of UpTech Report, Dmitry Voronenko, sought to change that with his company, TurnKey Lender. Dmitry discusses planning around the complexities of international politics, and how he broke conventional wisdom by quickly expanding into several global markets.

Sometimes businesses come from identifying a need in the marketplace—other times they come from identifying your own.

Ryan Coon was a DIY landlord who needed to manage the time-consuming process of finding and screening tenants, signing leases, collecting rent, and performing maintenance, and he realized there was no current technology solutions for these problems.

So he started Avail, which now serves over 150,000 landlords and 400,000 tenants.

Ryan tells us his story of leaving the world of financing to start a tech company and why merely having a great product isn’t enough.

Millennials are having children and putting them in daycare, and to best serve a population raised in the digital age, daycare centers need to modernize. Or so says Smartcare, a technology company hoping to inspire daycare centers to dust off that PC in the corner and use it to bill customers, track children, and even monitor diaper changes.

On this installment of UpTech Report, we interview James Armijo, Smartcare’s cofounder and CEO, who talks about the challenges of bringing high-tech solutions to a low-tech sector, and how he looks for innovation by swiveling his chair to the people behind him and the business across the street.

Three people meet for lunch and discover they each possess a unique ingredient for a new company. The result becomes Advocado—a company that connects traditional advertising with the digital world to maximize click through rates and ROI.

In this episode of UpTech report, we speak with Brian Handrigan, Advocado’s co founder and CEO, who explains the unique technology they use to find the synergy between television and the internet, and discusses an unconventional hiring approach they use to eliminate unconscious bias and diversify their team.

Workforces are becoming more flexible and fluid than ever—and companies are facing increasing challenges managing contingent labor pools and navigating the new gig economy.

In this episode of UpTech Report, I interview Glenn Laumeister, the CEO of AllWork, a company building the technology to solve these complicated 21st century workforce management issues.

Glenn discusses the depth of AllWork’s end-to-end platform, the technologies they use to help companies manage a complex, dynamic workforce, and his previous experience as the founder and CEO of CoachMarket.

With so many companies working with teams spread across the globe, real-time collaboration has become one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. In this episode of UpTech Report, I speak with Patrick Harr, the CEO of Panzura, a company that’s using AI and machine learning to analyze data, offer multi-cloud data management solutions, and help global teams work in real-time.

In addition to discussing some of the massive technological challenges modern companies face in managing their data on the cloud, Patrick talks about the core values he learned from flipping burgers and delivering pizzas—lessons that can be scaled to enterprise systems.

The largest, most powerful industries are often both the most resistant to change—and the most in need of it.

In this episode of UpTech Report, I speak with Dipanwita Das, the founder and CEO of Sorcero, who recognized the need for life science and insurance industries to organize, interpret, and refine massive amounts of unstructured text.

Sorcero is building the digital tools to help businesses develop governing knowledge bases, unify systems, automate workflows, and help massive corporations operate with the efficiency of a nimble startup.

Dipanwita discusses the paths from human intelligence to artificial intelligence and the inspiration she draws from science fiction and fantasy.

Artificial intelligence is helping us work smarter and faster in every industry from clothing to cars. But can artificial intelligence help us build better artificial intelligence? In this episode of UpTech Report, I interview Jeffrey Haynie, the CEO and cofounder of Pinpoint, a company that uses AI to help software developers gain better insights, improve efficiency, and deliver stronger results. And Pinpoint even uses their product to help improve their product.

Jeffrey discusses his efforts to build a common language to discuss the process of software development, and the challenges of being at the forefront of his field.

Every year, corporations spend a hundred billion dollars on dining—Dinova is a technology company building the digital resources for small and large restaurants to harness that massive market potential.

In this episode of UpTech Report, I speak with Alison Galik, the President of Dinova, who discusses the technological and marketing challenges in facilitating these mutually beneficial relationships and some of the unique opportunities involved in developing B2B technology.

In this episode we speak with Jonathan, head of operations and CMO at UpTop, a technology company that’s looking to revolutionize the relationship between landlords, renters, and property managers.

Jonathan shares his past experience as director of a massive 11,000 unit New York apartment development and the process of integrating chatbots for sales and customer support along with his thoughts on the future of automation in real estate and plans for UpTop.

Workforces are becoming more flexible and fluid than ever—and companies are facing increasing challenges managing contingent labor pools and navigating the new gig economy.

In this episode of UpTech Report, I interview Glenn Laumeister, the CEO of AllWork, a company building the technology to solve these complicated 21st century workforce management issues.

Glenn discusses the depth of AllWork’s end-to-end platform, the technologies they use to help companies manage a complex, dynamic workforce, and his previous experience as the founder and CEO of CoachMarket.

Chadd Kenney is the Vice President and Chief Technologist at Clumio, driving the long-term vision and strategy. Chadd has 20 years of experience in technology leadership roles, most recently as an early founding team member at Pure Storage.

He has now moved on to helping enterprises with fully cloud-based data backup and protection. When you’re working, you don’t want to have to worry about data protection; you just want to know it’s protected. Clumio offers that peace of mind.

In the future, they plan on adding more cloud-based features and reporting features. In this episode of UpTech Report, he talks about what he has learned in his short time with the company and the struggles that still exist when it comes to educating people about the cloud.

Some people are still attached to their legacy systems, and Clumio has made it their mission to show people how much more efficient the cloud is.

There are loads of cloud solutions for file sharing, messaging, conferencing, project management, and overall client/vendor communications, but managing all of these different services can get messy. In this episode, we talk to CEO of PanTerra Networks Arthur Chang, whose focus is on providing a solution for mid-level enterprises that unifies all these cloud services into one solution.

Arthur Chang, who also goes by Artie, has over 20 years of hi-tech executive experience. Artie started his career at Bell Laboratories, worked as CEO of SoloPoint Communications, a provider of telecom equipment, and then was CEO of Cradle Technologies, a multi-core multimedia DSP company.

Here’s how he is innovating and getting more inspiration to develop new ideas and projects.

Thanks to advancements in technology, investing has become easier and more accessible than ever. In this episode, we sit down with Tore Steen at Crowdstreet to discuss their commercial real estate investment portal.

Along with making this type of investment more accessible, their portal is integrated with DocuSign and Verify Investor, and is meant to streamline the entire workflow for investors.

Tore is the CEO and Co-founder of CrowdStreet, previously leading marketing & sales efforts at Janrain, WebTrends and EarthLink. He discusses how the company has focused on direct to consumer marketing and is now switching to marketing to financial advisors.

In this episode of UpTech Report, we speak with Brian Saunders, the founder and CEO of BigTime Software, a cloud-based software for professional services firms. They like to describe it as "the operating system behind the greatest consulting firms on the planet."

Saunders is a graduate of the University of Chicago. He's lived through the boom (and bust) of the '90s, the financial crisis of 2008, and the last decade's explosive growth in the technology sector.

In our chat, Brian shares how he’s grown the company to more than 2K customers in dozens of countries, a few hurdles he’s had to overcome, and how he continues to innovate.

In this episode, we interview Puneet Mehta, Founder and CEO of Netomi. They’re a machine intelligence company that uses AI to turn customer service into a competitive edge. Puneet spent much of his career as a tech entrepreneur as well as on Wall Street building trading AI.

His current venture, started in 2015, is focused on customer service and what he calls a “workplace multiplier for enterprise companies,” striving to give time back to customers and agents.

We discuss Mehta’s ambitious plans to become a publicly traded company over the next few years.

In this episode of UpTech Report, we talk with Khorus CEO Joel Trammell. Khorus is a platform created for CEOs. Your staff fills in prediction and strategy data for their positions each week that can help you put together the overall strategy of the company.

This platform intentionally excludes other data. It is solely for CEOs to make decisions about the company with a simple, democratic process. This process also allows your staff to better see how they fit into the overall strategy of the company.

How can AI help employees? Will AI replace people? How can employees prepare for and adapt to the emergence of AI? What is the future of AI?

This is part three of of our interview series we had with expert Rett Crocker, CEO/CTO of Udu.

How do businesses use AI to become more efficient? How can we better utilize A.I. today? How does AI differ for business vs consumer use cases? How should a business leader construct their team with AI in mind?

This is part 2 of our interview series we had with expert Rett Crocker, CEO/CTO of Udu.

What are the different facets of A.I.? How has it evolved over time? What are examples of A.I. in business and everyday life? How does A.I. power modern consumer technology?

These are just some of the questions we asked expert Rett Crocker, CEO/CTO of Udu.

In our last episode, technologist and author William Ammerman spoke about the dangers of the modern era of digital marketing, and how protecting ourselves requires a deeper knowledge of new technologies.

In our third and final podcast episode, Ammerman walks us through some of the terms we’ve heard many times in the media —but might not totally understand. He then gives us a hopeful story of how these technologies can be used for the public good.

In this episode of UpTech Report, I interview Bret Larsen, the CEO of eVisit.

Historically, the healthcare industry has been slow to catch up with the information technology advancements of the 21st century. eVisit is changing that through their telemedicine platform, currently adopted by over 200 major providers.

Bret discusses the challenges of merging healthcare and technology, the elusive goal of product market fit, the obstacles of running a fast-scaling company, and what he would have done differently.

In the continuation of our conversation with technologist William Ammerman, we explore how modern digital marketing is changing the way people are persuaded. His findings have startling implications for society.

Some say the more significant developments in technological engagement are years away, but Ammerman disagrees.

It seems like there is a new way for brands to interact with us every day. In the United States, brands have established communication methods available to interact with their customers. However, countries with emerging markets have unique challenges.

Today on UpTech Report, we speak with Javier Mata, CEO of Yalochat.

Javier saw an opportunity in these emerging markets, where brands can integrate with existing communication platforms their customers are already using. Yalo uses Whatsapp, WeChat, and Facebook Messenger to allow large brands, like Coca Cola, Amazon, and Walmart, to talk to their customers at scale using AI in Latin America, India, and China. Javier is from Latin America himself. He saw the need in his country and applied it to countries with similar markets. We discuss some of the challenges he has faced when bringing Yalo’s A.I. and CRM solutions to newer markets and his exciting growth plans. To learn more about Yalo, visit yalochat.com.

In this first podcast episode, we talk with Ammerman about the impact this new era of digital marketing has on business and how people can stay ahead of the game.

Renowned technologist William Ammerman is the author of The Invisible Brand, in which he examines the dramatic transformation of marketing in the age of artificial intelligence. In his book, Ammerman speaks of the revolutionary and often controversial tools of persuasion that are shaping our society. From personal assistant artificial intelligence like Siri and Alexa, to political social media campaigns, these technologies are affecting every corner of our existence. Whether we fear or embrace these new forms of public engagement, one thing is certain: It’s here, and we’d better understand it.

Digitzs is a payments company, but not only that. It’s a fin-tech company, a SaaS that can work for different platforms by helping make payments easier.

We talked with Leo Patching, CEO of Digitzs, to see what’s in store for the future of digital payments.

Welcome back to UpTech Report’s series on AI. This video is part of our deep-dive interview series where we share the wealth of knowledge given by one of our panel of experts in the field of artificial intelligence.

In this episode, we continue our conversation with Alicia Klinefelter, research scientist for NVIDIA. Alicia is an expert in her field. She has a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia. Since joining NVIDIA, her focus has turned more towards high-performance hardware, including machine learning circuits and systems.

In this episode, Alicia discusses AI use by some of the biggest brands we know.

Dr. Chris Hazard is a unique figure in the world of artificial intelligence. He connects the experience in software development, psychology, physics, economics, hypnosis, robotics, and privacy law.

In this episode of UpTech report, Dr. Hazard offers some startling revelations on how AI and machine learning can inadvertently expose sensitive and personal information—even when that information was not willingly offered.

Welcome back to UpTech Report’s series on AI. This episode is part of our deep-dive interview series where we share the wealth of knowledge given by one of our panel of experts in the field of artificial intelligence.

This is the second part of our interview with Alicia Klinefelter, research scientist for NVIDIA. Alicia is an expert in her field. She has a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia. Since joining NVIDIA, her focus has turned more towards high performance hardware, including machine learning circuits and systems.

In this episode we’ll take a look at what is often referred to as the “AI Revolution.”

We interview Executive Director Gabriel René of Verses, a revolutionary organization applying the underlying concepts of the world wide web to the real world around us and laying the foundation for a future in which everyone can be Tony Stark.

This episode is part of our deep-dive interview series, where we share the wealth of knowledge given by one of our panel of experts in the field of artificial intelligence.

We sit down with Alicia Klinefelter, research scientist for NVIDIA, and ask her to help define AI and the different types of AI that we often hear about. Alicia is an expert in her field. She has a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia. Since joining NVIDIA, her focus has turned more towards high-performance hardware, including machine learning circuits and systems.

Learn more about AI and machine learning in this episode!

In this episode of UpTech Report, we interview Ariel Assaraf, the co-founder and CEO of Coralogix, a company that uses AI and machine learning technology to help businesses analyze large-scale production projects.

Ariel analyzes solutions to the challenges companies face when developing products, where they should focus their attention when scaling their operations, and how stepping away from the computer and engaging in face-to-face interaction can help a business.

Why the surge in machine learning? Why is data so important for machine learning? How is the A.I. community different than traditional software communities? What's this new age of A.I. look like?

These are just some of the questions we asked expert Robbie Allen, CEO of Infinia ML.

There are many new tech solutions that are improving the way we work online. But today, we take you to the world of Partner Relationship Management and how AI is actually being applied in business these days.

In this episode of UpTech Report, we interviewed Daniel Graff-Radford, the CEO of Allbound. Daniel shares his insights into this challenging aspect of business and offers some helpful tips for those who are struggling.

How is Artificial Intelligence changing right now? How will A.I. impact the workforce? How should business handle the unavoidable implementation of artificial intelligence? Will machines ever be able to perform any intellectual tasks a human can?

These are just some of the questions we asked expert Robbie Allen, CEO of Infinia ML.

In this episode, we spoke with Frank Barletta, CEO of UpTop, a technology company that’s revolutionizing the relationship between landlords, renters, and property managers.

Frank shares his thoughts on how he started his business and how technology can be helpful in the renting industry.

How has A.I. been changed overall with the recent growth in Machine Learning? What's the difference between Machine Learning & Deep Learning? What is Natural Language Processing and how does it work? How do you got about solving business problems with Machine Learning?

These are just some of the questions we asked expert Robbie Allen, CEO of Infinia ML.

It has been nearly impossible to manage thousands or even hundreds of buildings controlled by one organization. Now, a new industry is rising to solve that problem.

We speak with Deb Noller of Switch Automation in this episode of UpTech Report about the struggles she has faced and the value that her company’s IoT and automation solutions can provide to building managers. She discusses the sorry state of analytics in the building industry now and how improvements can be made.

We talked to Chaitanya Hiremath, the founder and CEO of Scanta, whose revolutionary adaptation of augmented reality and machine learning will potentially change the way you commute to work, play a game, and schedule your next meeting.

How is AI actually being applied in business today? Learn it here.

How and where can an AI assistant play a role in sales and customer success teams? In this episode of UpTech Report, I interview Mason Levy with Swivl - who’s aim is to simplify AI training by turning customer data into machine learning-ready models. Where, as they call it, a human-in-the-loop AI will automate most of the work but have people step in when needed.

How is AI affecting content marketing? In my interview with Brandon he shares how their intelligent platform basically tells a marketer exactly what content they should be creating to generate more traffic and sales. I also ask Brandon about how he's integrated AI & Machine Learning technology into the platform.

What are practical applications of A.I. in business? How are you using Machine Learning? What kind of success have you found with using Artificial Intelligence?

These are some of the questions answered by A.I. expert Richard Boyd in Part 3 of this deep-dive interview series on Artificial Intelligence.

How has Artificial Intelligence evolved over the years? How are Machine Learning and Deep Learning Changing Things? How could these new technologies be applied to business? Where is A.I. headed?

These are some of the questions answered by A.I. expert Richard Boyd in Part 2 of this deep-dive interview series on Artificial Intelligence.

What is Artificial Intelligence? How can it be applied in business? What is data exhaust and why is it important? How is AI disrupting and enhancing our lives?

These are some of the questions answered by AI expert Richard Boyd in Part 1 of this deep-dive interview series on Artificial Intelligence.

How is artificial intelligence affecting business leaders? Revolutionizing the workforce? The future of efficiency and profit?

We've interviewed a whole panel of business leaders to ask how they are actually using and applying A.I. in their business today. In this episode, we asked the question: What is Machine Learning? What challenges have you experienced? What's the future look like? How can someone apply machine learning in their business?

This episode is just a taste of our new series focused on Artificial Intelligence. We are exploring how it's being utilized in business today and how it will be used in the near future.

Want more? Subscribe! Get notified when new videos are released.

Are you an expert, entrepreneur or business leader utilizing A.I. in your business today? We want to know you! Please give us a shout.

We've interviewed a whole panel of business leaders and entrepreneurs to ask how they are actually using and applying A.I. in their business today. We started with one simple question... explain what is Artificial Intelligence?

This episode is just a taste of our new series focused on Artificial Intelligence (including Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing). We are exploring how it's being utilized in business today and how it will be used in the near future.

Want more? Subscribe! Get notified when new videos are released. Are you an expert, entrepreneur or business leader utilizing A.I. in your business today? We want to know you! Please give us a shout.