Dr Bernard Leong is currently the founder and CEO of Dorje AI, an enterprise AI startup focusing on building the next generation business operating system that enables companies to be productive, efficient, and adaptive.

He held regional business roles as the Head of Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning in Amazon Web Services for ASEAN, Vice President of Airbus Aerial specifically on satellite and drone services in the Asia Pacific, and senior management roles in Singapore Post as the Head of Digital Services and Group Chief Information & Digital Office in Woh Hup.

Bernard is the founder and host of the Analyse Asia podcast, and is an active angel investor in web3 and AI startups. He holds a BSc in Science with Merit in National University of Singapore, and PhD in Physics from Cambridge University and has developed machine learning algorithms to search for mRNA targets in the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute from 2003-2005.

In this episode, we talk about leading the AI/ML business in AWS, AI GTM for AI consultants, creating a financial ERP startup, why change management is critical to land the biggest enterprises, and a lot more:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/

https://www.bernardleong.com/

(0:00) - Trailer
(0:30) - Bernard’s Background
(2:31) - ERPless world with AI
(2:55) - Human Genome Project and mRNA targeting
(4:15) - Startup Experience
(5:00) - Singapore Post
(6:50) - Working with Apple
(8:38) - Airbus Aerial
(8:48) - AWS
(9:20) - Digitally transforming companies
(9:52) - Most enterprises use ERPs
(10:18) - Why people hate ERPs
(10:50) - Data silos in SAP
(12:20) - Building an AI first company
(13:31) - Enterprise data readiness
(15:04) - Structuring data for machine learning
(15:21) - Finding patterns
(15:37) - Everyone loves transformation no one wants to change
(16:03) - Board and C-level conversations
(16:33) - Helping the biggest SEA companies
(17:16) - McKinsey vs Bernard on data readiness
(17:58) - What enterprises are missing out on
(19:23) - Expounding on data readiness
(20:45) - Finding your AI use case
(21:11) - Augmenting productivity
(21:20) - Increasing revenue
(22:15) - Netflix and AWS machine learning
(22:38) - Layers of AI implementation
(24:30) - Productivity gains from modern AI
(24:41) - Hyper parameter finetuning
(25:20) - Dorje.AI AI powered ledger
(26:55) - Financial processes into vector embeddings
(28:00) - Not underestimating SAP and Oracle
(28:40) - Challenging the ledger with AI and modern architecture
(29:33) - Why is it hard to use SAP for businesses?
(30:09) - Bernard’s ideal world with Dorje.ai
(31:29) - Orchestrating data
(31:48) - SaaS model upheaval
(33:37) - AI GTM and Product
(33:59) - Finding PMF
(35:28) - Creating hockey stick growth through AI
(36:24) - SAP reworks
(37:03) - AI OCR built by Bernard
(37:53) - Recreating the app with ChatGPT
(38:26) - Refactoring the code easily
(38:51) - AI coding
(39:46) - Cap tables with AI
(40:58) - Productivity gains with ChatGPT
(41:37) - AI first mentality
(43:05) - Automating things with LLMs
(44:32) - AI pre-empting problems of ERPs
(45:18) - One click transfer
(45:47) - What Dorje means
(47:46) - Competition and execution
(48:42) - Conflict of Visions
(49:14) - Constrained vs Unconstrained Founder Visions
(50:11) - Best founders
(51:07) - Reading the only book on SAP history
(52:12) - Building good accounting software
(52:27) - How prepared is Southeast Asia?
(54:03) - What’s making the money in AI?
(54:20) - Sequoia, AI Billion Hole
(55:11) - Local data strategy and startup survival
(56:14) - Business owner BPO in PH
(57:45) - AI Consulting Advice
(58:38) - Buy in and productization
(59:05) - Business development in Amazon
(1:00:04) - Technical POC with 50 customers
(1:00:42) - Automating yourself away
(1:01:32) - Sales levels conversations
(1:02:09) - Creating different sales motions per AI business
(1:02:49) - Iterating the product via GTM
(1:03:49) - War stories in Amazon