Sam Talks Technology

Sam Sethi talked with Andy Evsans about the start of his entrepreneurial career in 1985 at the age of 15, selling concert tickets and trips and learning about business from the school of life.

We then talked through the challenges Andy faced in building two online publishing and advertising companies.

In 1999 he founded one of the UK's first digital publishing businesses & first vertical ad-network in the UK, Net Communities, and in 2015 sold it to Future plc.

Frustrated with ad quality, transparency and brand safety online, he co-founded award-winning viewability technology provider OnScroll in 2013, which after tremendous growth, he sold to Sovrn Holdings, Inc. in April 2016, where he worked until May 2019.

We also talked about the future of print publishing, advertising and especially podcasting as Andy started the UK's first Podcast production company in 2005.

Sam Sethi talked with Dave Isbitski about v-commerce, Alexa auto, privacy, skills payments, new devices, localisation and much more.

Dave's quote below pretty much sums up my thinking about voicefirst development for the next generation of the web.

"I feel like voice is the new HTML" - Dave Isbitski

Sam Sethi talked with Richard Edwards about the rollercoaster high's and low's of being an entrepreneur as well as his previous corporate life where he was the 'Man from Del Monte' traveling the world as a supermarket buyer.

Today Richard is starting a new stealth ‘AI focused’ startup in the fintech space. We also briefly talked about how machine learning on large volumes of data can help with trading.

Sam Sethi talked with Marcus Cauchi about why getting your prospect to say no quickly can lead to faster/shorter sales cycles and 90%+ closure rates.

Most salespeople have a wishbone, not a backbone. And they qualify in sales by being given a business card and a phone and told you are one.

Professional selling is like any other profession, you need to work at it. You need to train constantly. So most sales training, frankly, is a total waste of money, you would be better at buying a bunch of lottery tickets. - Marcus Cauchi

He also has a new book 'MAKING CHANNEL SALES WORK': Ten Tools to Create a World-Class Third-Party Selling Program.

Sam talked with Glenn about the entrepreneurial journey he has had to travel in order to reach this point of success. The challenges of up-scaling, fundraising in the US, letting staff go and stepping aside to let another CEO run the show.

Sam Sethi talked with Hugh MacLeod about his amazing business cards and where he gets his inspiration, his books and his work with Gaping Void.

Hugh and I first met in 2005 in central London at the Tex Mex in Trafalgar Square at an event with Robert Scoble. Hugh was kind enough to do me a unique drawing for the launch of Techcrunch UK in 2006 which hangs on the wall of my study.

Hugh is one of the most creative and lateral thinking people I have had the pleasure to meet in my 30+ career in technology. - Sam Sethi

Hugh explained that he nearly gave up creating his mini masterpieces. I am so glad he decided to review that awful decision.

Sam Sethi talked with Noury Bernard-Hasan about his 16 year Microsoft career as Director, Global Analyst Relations and his recent switch to Amazon, as well as his music career with The Touch - 70s Mod group.

We also talked about my prediction for a new Amazon 'Phoenix' Phone, the future of Alexa and his upcoming music revival gig in London.

Sam Sethi talked with Robert Scoble about what is Spatial Computing? We talked about Facebook's new PC-free Oculus Quest (£499) and the higher end Oculus Rift S which just came out and how they could really be game changers in the VR gaming world but also in many other industries including health, education and entertainment.

We also discussed the new Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2 (which costs £999) it's a newer version of its business-focused Glass augmented reality headset.

Robert also gave us his insight about what and when Apple might release the 5G iPhone and possibly Apple glasses?

Other companies we discussed include Amazon, MagicLeap, Bose and Unity.

Scoble is writing a new book about Spatial Computing and recording his thoughts using Otter.AI to transcribe his thoughts.

Sam Sethi talked with Dan Scarfe about how NewSignature help companies of all shapes and sizes make major investments around Microsoft technologies

We also talked about the impending 'Cloud Wars' between Google, Amazon, Microsoft and some of the other players such as Alibaba and IBM plus who might win.

Sam Sethi talked with Paul Walsh about how MetaCert is building a query and response web protocol on the Blockchain that enables a 'Decentralized Trust and Reputation Protocol' for the Internet. e.g imagine being able to look up the record for every domain and see who has owned it and what it was used for overtime.

Think of this as a distributed and trusted newer version of WhoIs Domain Lookup but with more detailed information, that is validated by the community who are paid in 'Tokens' to ensure its validity and maintained over time.

Then in the future, the information stored on the MetaCert Protocol can be used by developers using an API to build products or services to address issues such as phishing, malware, brand protection, child safety, and fake news credibility.