Tech Talks Daily

Under the "Great Resignation," millions of people are leaving their jobs to start their own businesses. However, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20% of those businesses will fail within the first year. And those that do survive the first year will likely not turn a significant profit for quite some time — if ever.

What if people could keep their day jobs and monetize their expertise without significant risk or time and capital expenditure? Well, that's exactly what Kajabi is doing. With Kajabi, users have a single platform to publish, market, and sell online courses, membership sites, communities, and other digital products. Tens of thousands of entrepreneurs rely on Kajabi to build and manage their online businesses, and the company has helped these entrepreneurs generate over $2 billion in sales from nearly 50 million customers to date. As an example of how people are growing their businesses on Kajabi, Dr. Jamie Wilkey earned $230,000 in 2021 on Kajabi through her online class that teaches pharmacists to use personalized medicine to change the trajectory of their careers.

Ahad Khan is the CEO of Kajabi, an all-in-one platform for knowledge entrepreneurs and creators to build, market, and sell educational content. I learn more about the story behind Kajabi and how they are helping people and businesses with their tech.

A company called LANDR recently set off my tech spidey senses when they launched Chromatic, a first-of-its-kind virtual instrument featuring exclusive sounds by well-known artists, session players and producers. These sound sets are grouped by color and mood to spark more creativity for music makers.

With an impressive streaming library growing with new material in the next month, including artist-generated sound sets by 2020 Grammy nominee D Smoke (Best New Artist, Best Rap Album) and platinum selling Montreal singer-songwriter Ariane Moffatt (with her SOMMM collective), Chromatic offers the artist community a playable interface they can use in producing new works.

Chromatic will soon incorporate royalty splits for creators who are contributing sound sets and those who utilize them in their works, generating potential new revenue streams for artists everywhere while allowing for artful collaboration and exchange in a unique way. It will function as an intriguing additional asset artists can use to promote their recordings and projects and boost their income.

Khaled Said shares the story behind LANDR.

Tina D'Agostin is the CEO of Alcatraz AI, an artificial intelligence company that employs facial authentication technology to create autonomous access control solutions for enterprises. D'Agostin previously served as the Chief Revenue Officer for Alcatraz AI, responsible for driving top-line growth and expanding Alcatraz's footprint globally. As CEO, she plans to take Alcatraz AI into its next chapter to modernize the access control industry. Tina brings over 25 years of experience within the security technology and solutions industry, with leadership experience building high-performing organizations in hardware, IT, and smart technologies. Prior to Alcatraz AI, D'Agostin was the General Manager of Building Technology & Solutions at Johnson Controls, focused on delivering smart building technologies to global companies. Tina earned her undergraduate degree and her MBA from Rockford University. An avid and lifelong student, she has continued her education at Stanford University, receiving professional certifications in Innovation & Entrepreneurship and Energy Innovation & Emerging Technologies. Tina currently serves on the board at the Bay Area Council and is a contributing member of the Forbes Technology Council. In today's episode, we discuss the touchless future awaiting all of us as well as how buildings are getting smarter and how these technologies evolving are making for safer physical environments.

Should small startups care about cybersecurity? Did you know that the average cost of a ransomware attack is $500k? For most small businesses and startups, this means they go out of business. Even if they can afford to pay the ransom, the reputation damage is permanent. For that reason, more than 60% of small businesses & startups never survive the attack. Scary statistics.

Brian Fritton, CEO & Founder of Havoc Shield shares how they've taken the technical and legal ocean of complexity in the security arena and turned it into a simple step-by-step action plan that integrates many of the products, services, and policies companies normally need to wade through and implement individually.

Brian discusses why cybersecurity is not only for the big players as 43% of attacks target brands under 500 employees. He also shares easy-to-apply strategies that can literally save the businesses of everyone listening.

Finally, we talk about how something as simple as putting a cybersecurity badge on your website increases the conversion rate by more than 5%. And that's just one of the underleveraged strategies.

Panos Siozos is the Co-Founder and CEO of LearnWorlds, an online course platform for creating, selling and promoting online courses. He formerly worked in the European Parliament as a policy adviser for research and innovation issues (2009-2014). He is currently 'tasting his own medicine' having co-founded his edtech SaaS startup.

LearnWorlds is a powerful, easy-to-use and reliable training solution for individuals and enterprises. A fully customizable, white-label solution to train employees and associates, educate customers, or sell online courses to a wide audience.

The cloud-based e-learning platform offers Professionals, Entrepreneurs & Training Managers a solution tailored to their specific needs and a team of experts to help achieve your goals. Much more than just selling online courses, LearnWorlds comes with a built-in Social Community. But I wanted to learn more about the technology that makes it easy for anyone to create, market, and sell the most engaging online courses.

Panos joins in on Tech Talks Daily shares the story behind LearnWorlds, how the pandemic affected the way we learn, market trends, and surge in demand.

In 2017, Andrew Butt launched his third startup -- Enable, a venture-backed ($58.6M) cloud-based SaaS solution for B2B rebate management. The software is used by procurement and finance professionals in distribution, wholesale, and manufacturing across over 50 industries so that they can have an easy, seamless solution to execute and track their full range of trading programs.

More than $1 trillion in rebates are issued each year, and 4% of potential rebate revenue typically goes unclaimed due to companies using old methods like inadequate software solutions and excel sheets. Enable makes sure this revenue doesn't fall through the cracks and has more merchants and suppliers in the UK and US than any other comparable software solution.

Andrew Butt, Co-founder, and CEO of Enable, shares his story with me on Tech Talks Daily Podcast.

Andres Rodriguez is the founder and CTO of Nasuni, a cloud file storage provider. He is also the former CTO for the New York Times. We last spoke a few years ago, and I was eager to invite him back onto Tech Talks Daily for a catchup.

Andres talks about why ransomware has finally pushed back up to the breaking point. Backup, especially as the last line of defense against disasters like ransomware, is dead and ineffective. If it's taking an enterprise or organization 2 weeks to recover their files (because they are following "best practices") and suddenly paying the ransom seems like a good idea for business continuity, then the model is broken.

Prevention is no longer enough. It's the detection and, most importantly, recovery. Unfortunately, the IT silos and no one wanting to take responsibility for recovery exacerbates the problem, causing it to fall between the cracks.

As ransomware attacks continue into the new year, the traditional backup will be more widely exposed as entirely inadequate for business continuity and minimizing disruption to the business. But we discuss how cloud-native, global file systems can make a recovery in minutes possible, not days or weeks.

Most of today's DeFi lending and borrowing protocols have inflationary token models, don't capture or pass on the value the protocol generates, often lack cross-chain capabilities, and offer an overly complex user experience. Minterest changes that.

Having launched in September, following a $6.5 million from top-tier investors, the team is made up of ex-Cardano, Prysm Group, Chainlink, and IBM leaders and members with elite academic and technology credentials.

What sets Minterest apart from DeFi incumbents is that it is engineered from the ground up to capture the value it generates. By utilizing its buy-back mechanism, the protocol passes on 100% of revenue generated to its community of active participants.

Josh Rogers, the CEO and Co-founder is an Australian entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience as a serial entrepreneur. Josh has been a founding member of numerous start-ups, including COMindico, the world's first point-to-point IP telco (US$300M raise); Oriel Communications, the world's first micro-billing content engine including the world's first monetisation of Big Brother 2 content; Freelancer.com, and the world's largest freelance marketplace.

In today's episode of Tech Talks Daily, Josh discusses why the Minterest protocol provides users with decentralized token money markets, combined with a uniquely fair incentive structure. He also shares how Minterest recaptures crypto's vision of creating a fairer, more egalitarian financial system and the industry's current issues.

IRIS is a revolutionary new audio experience that dramatically increases sound quality by introducing the space usually missing from recorded audio, unlocking the 'live' dimension that's often lost. This is achieved through a proprietary algorithm that splits out and increases the phase information sent to the brain. The listener's brain then reassembles this vast increase in information and becomes far more active in the listening process.

The audio technology company has also just launched IRIS CLARITY, a desktop application that eradicates all background noise in online meetings, ensuring the voice of each participant is heard clearly and bringing control to otherwise uncontrollable environments.

Jacobi Anstruther joins me on Tech Talks Daily to share how this new audio technology company is on a mission to enable the world to listen well. Their patented algorithms use advanced psycho-acoustics, machine learning, and AI to create cutting-edge, sound innovation software that enhances audio streams in real-time and dramatically increases sound quality.

About Jacobi

Jacobi Anstruther has been considered a leading innovator in the music industry for over 15 years. Possessing a background in finance and an irrepressible entrepreneurial spirit, he has been behind start-ups spanning technology, music, venues, and record labels.

With a clear vision and desire to instigate change in the music space by bringing 'live' experiences to everyone, Jacobi became obsessed with tackling music compression and audio quality issues alongside neurological behaviour and human performance.

It was in 2016, while building a music festival in California that would blend music and social change with audio quality at its heart, that he was introduced to the two key engineers behind IRIS technologies Ltd. Instantly blown away by the superior audio experience and their unique understanding of the neurological effects of sensory input stimuli, he began to build a business model focused on hacking the nervous system to improve human performance and quality of experience looking to solve the many issues found with digital content.

Today IRIS has been recognised as the most innovative steps forward in audio and human performance in over 10 years. IRIS continues to expand its understanding of this area and the book of patented technology solutions.

Every piece of data tells a story. Ordnance Survey data is more than a map. It keeps us all safe, helps businesses be more productive and gives people the freedom to step outside and explore.

The emergency services depend on it to get exactly where they're needed. And when disaster strikes we work with our partners to minimise damage and save lives. Its data is used to plan smart cities, brings gaming worlds to life, helps lenders and insurers assess risk and prevent fraud, and supports over £100 billion of our nation's economy.

For over 230 years, Ordnance Survey has been mapping Great Britain in extraordinary detail. But I wanted to learn more about the company's digital transformation and how it has developed one of the world's largest spatial databases. So first, Lloyd Clarke shares how its old products and data sets were on multiple Oracle databases. Then, we discuss how Ordnance Survey (OS) has completely overhauled its approach to data storage with Pure Storage and achieved its innovation goals.

I also learn how thanks to FlashArray™, the company can now deploy servers and spin up virtual machines in minutes, which allows it to react to its customers far quicker than before.

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