Modern CTO

Today, we're talking to Etienne, founder of 7CTOs and author of the new book Refactor. We discuss why the CTOs who survive this next shift will be the ones who understand how LLMs actually work rather than the ones optimizing token spend, how the C-suite has quietly moved from sharing knowledge to enrolling people in a point of view, and why curiosity, not seniority, is the closest thing to real job security left.

Today, we're talking to Alan Williamson, professional CTO for private equity-backed companies and author of Think Like a CTO. We discuss why the industry's $20-a-month AI subscriptions can't possibly cover a trillion-dollar cost structure, how some companies are quietly deleting the word "AI" from their marketing to win customers back, and why the old playbook for modernizing legacy systems no longer applies now that AI can out-rebuild it.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast!

To learn more about Alan Williamson, check out his website here https://thinklikeacto.com/

Today, we're talking to Anthony Scriffignano, PhD, a longtime chief data scientist now working on hyperspectral space intelligence and global AI policy. We discuss why AI has put technology leaders in what he calls a "Red Queen problem," where you have to run faster just to stay in place, how most people wildly overestimate how much of the internet an LLM can actually see, and why leading with the technology instead of the problem is one of the costliest mistakes in enterprise AI right now.

Today, we're talking to Tony Davis and John Balsavage of A&I Solutions, the team behind Scout, their AI agent governance platform. We discuss why they built a literal terrain map to visualize what's happening inside an AI agent's mind, how two agents secretly colluded to overturn a vote in their own testing lab, and why every AI agent you build today will be obsolete within a year no matter how well you built it.

Today, we're talking to Moran Cerf, neuroscientist and professor who studies live human brains through implanted electrodes during surgery. We discuss why the person who sees reality clearly drives more change than the one with official authority, how ant colonies and corporate boardrooms follow the same hidden rules of swarm leadership, and why the smell in a room might quietly decide the outcome of your next negotiation.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast!

Today, we're talking to Mauro Stara, founder of Six Pack CEO. We discuss why working out less, not harder, was the real fix behind one of his most dramatic client transformations, how a health scare in his twenties pushed him out of banking and into coaching high-performing men, and why getting genuinely healthy often means letting go of the people and identity that made staying unhealthy feel comfortable.

Today, we're talking to Francisco Trindade, VP of Software Engineering at Braze. We discuss why code review, not code generation, has become the real bottleneck in AI-driven engineering, how the leap to a codebase run by thousands of autonomous agents could repeat the failed promise of microservices at ten times the scale, and why the best career advice only makes sense once you stop trying to plan five years ahead.

Today, we're talking to Campbell Brown, CEO and co-founder of PredictHQ. We discuss why the world's smartest AI models are still blind to real-world context, how a single film festival can quietly drain a retailer's entire workforce, and why the best way to get customers to follow your rules is to stop making them read the instructions.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast!

To learn more about PredictHQ, check out their website here.

If you fear failure, you’re not going to get very far. Neither will your team.

Today, we're talking to Arnie Katz, CPTO at GoFundMe. We discuss why asking for help is harder and less understood than giving it, how AI now writes fundraiser titles that outperform the ones people write themselves, and why the biggest lesson from his failed startup was that believing you're customer-obsessed is worthless if you won't look at the data that proves you wrong.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast! 

To learn more about Arnie Katz, connect with him here.

In the future, self-checkout will come right to you.

Today, we're talking to Yev Tsirulnik and Naresh Keswani of Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions. We discuss why the next decade of retail is about digitizing the physical store rather than the website, how loyalty data is quietly turning into a trust score that decides whether your store forgives you at self checkout, and what it actually takes to move agentic AI from a flashy experiment to something a thousand stores can run.

All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast! 

To learn more about Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions, check out their website here.