Kobus Jooste, Co-founder and CEO of Syllable, is our guest speaker on this episode of Oceanside Chat: L.I.T.E. Beyond Generations podcast! Kobus is a technology leader and former director of software engineering at Google, where he worked on Google Assistant, Google Search, Verily, and Google Payments. Prior to Google, Kobus was a technical leader at VMware, IBM Research, and various start-ups in information technology and big data. Kobus has two decades of experience in machine learning, voice recognition, and natural language processing.

[Part II: Soul of a Start-up] Kobus mentioned the importance of mentors who fill in the gaps between classical training and having one’s “boots-on-the-ground” when starting a company. What is the soul of a start-up? From his experience with five start-ups and multiple large companies, Kobus thinks leadership holds together innovative start-ups or small teams, but what enables the team is equally important: “In my mind, it’s really three things: do you have the right team that can build a right and great product with enough funding to be able to succeed.” As for leadership, the most important responsibility of a start-up is to survive their first birthday. “If you can make it from launch to your first birthday after launch, that’s a really good indication that you are going to succeed!”