Tech Talks Daily

Serial entrepreneur Tim Mendelssohn had an early entrepreneurial experience, starting his first company, Elephant Branded in university. Famously, it was featured in an episode of BBC's Be Your Own Boss. After that, he had a progressive career in technology and finance before becoming a CEO of Spark, including roles at Sony, Warner Brothers, BP, and Koch Supply and Trading.

With no ability to code but passion for seeing how technology can fundamentally improve how the markets operate, Tim saw the flaws of markets and took on the challenge of using the technology to take on the competition of established companies with 50+ years in the industry.

Spark Commodities was founded in 2019 with a mission to disrupt the trade in the commodity markets thanks to technology and data. Spark's key users are leading commodity market participants, exchanges and brokers focused on bringing value to customers suffering from expensive, unsophisticated legacy providers

In February 2021, Spark beat legacy market players such as Baltic Exchange (250+ years), Platts (100 years) and Argus (50+ years) to secure a listing on ICE - an exceptional achievement for a startup. Tim Mendelssohn shares his inspirational story on Tech Talks Daily

Serial entrepreneur, William West, has founded four startup companies; his most successful sold to a global outsourcing company. In addition, he's written two business books, was featured on CBS 60 Minutes and in FORBES, won twenty entrepreneurial awards, and made the Inc. 5000 list five times.

Now, after twenty years building tech companies using VR, AR, and AI, West is building his piece-de resistance, a passionate endeavor merging his love for the sea with that of building companies. His most recent venture, Regatta VR, trained companies to tackle difficult HR issues and used cutting-edge VR technology to do it.

Regatta Travel uses its technology to tackle more fun issues: planning the perfect vacation for you. If you want to shop, its app will send you to St. Bart's; if you want to hike the rain forest, to Dominica. And if you're a celebrity or a couple just wanting your privacy, Regatta's algorithm can handle that too.

Regatta Travel Co. is built around its Waypoint app, which overcomes the Paradox of Choice typically associated with travel planning and engages the Dopamine Circle the way a dating app does. Unlike a dating app, every option is the crème de la crème and sure to delight – it's simply a matter of what the client wants to do on this trip. In fact, focusing on the activities their customers want to enjoy—the experience—is what sets Regatta apart from other travel companies.

Instead of exhaustive lists of villas or boats that all look like, and leave customers unhappy with their eyes glazed over, Waypoint focuses on what vacationers want to do, and then aligns them with the top locations and accommodations on them.

While Regatta's fleet, one of the largest in the travel industry, includes 1,000 boats, 1,000 villas, 4,000 planes, and 30 private islands across 50 countries, users will only see options based on their vacation vibe they're going for, and the activities they're most interested in enjoying on their trip.

The Amsterdam-based scale-up StuDocu was founded in 2013 by four students, including CEO Marnix Broer, and StuDocu was born out of the need to share study resources more efficiently. Since launching, the company has expanded to markets like Australia, Canada, Germany, the UK, and the United States. It boasts more than 15 million monthly active users, helping the platform become the international leader in the document sharing space.

Marnix shares his startup story and his belief that education is a resource that should be accessible to everyone and built the platform on that premise. In addition, Marnix feels strongly that education technology, particularly platforms like StuDocu, needs to complement teachers' and professors' work, creating ways for students to study for exams and learn the course material applicable in their careers in the future.

Marnix also discusses the continued rise of EdTech over the past 18 months and how StuDocu recently received $50M in funding. I also learn why the solutions so desperately needed during COVID-19's study-from-home period will continue to be important as students return back to school.

StuDocu utilizes a freemium model, where 80% of all documents on the site are free to access by all, and 20% fall into the premium category, which can be accessed by paying a small quarterly or annual fee or by uploading your own study materials for premium access.

Tom Gearing is the CEO of Cult Wines, the global leader in fine wine investment. But I wanted to learn more about how Cult Wines is leveraging technology to disrupt the fine wine investment industry. Traditionally, fine wine investing was targeted to the "snooty" high-net-worth investor, but Tom uses technology to bring more accessibility, transparency, safety, and credibility to the industry.

Tom grew up with an investment banker father who took him all over the vineyards of Europe as a boy, and he learned and sampled wine and is more knowledgeable about fine wine than people twice is his age. But his love for technology has been instrumental in making Cult Wines a leader in innovation. They released the first NFT in their industry for auction on OpenSea, and they are continuing to utilize blockchain and other technologies to set Cult Wines apart from its competitors.

Tom shares his tech story and how he appeared on BBC's Apprentice a decade ago. He has also overseen the growth of the business, receiving several awards, including appearing on the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 in 2015 and 2017 and receiving a Queen's Award for International Trade. But here in 2021, he regularly appears as a market commentator on media outlets such as Bloomberg, CNBC Europe, CITYAM, and more.

Both Google and Entrust recently announced support for email authentication specification BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification). A survey of 1,000+ US and UK adults from Red Sift, a leading cybersecurity company, looks at consumer interaction when brands are able to display their logos in an email inbox consistent with BIMI standards – revealing how this will affect consumer interaction with emails, open rates, buying behavior and brand recall. For example, the study found that BIMI has the greatest impact with Gen Z with 28% reporting that not deploying BIMI would negatively impact purchasing decisions. Rahul Powar, CEO, and Founder of Red Sift, joins me in a discussion about the rise of BIMI standards and what this will mean for marketing and security.

We talk about the impact of BIMI and how this standard will translate into market value, why BIMI will be the new standard for logo visibility in email, and how BIMI will become a crucial part of security protocol in the future.

Since its inception, SevenRooms has served hospitality operators from independent restaurateurs to global hospitality groups. They created the company to overcome a challenge they recognized within the industry: limited access to and ownership of guest data.

Over the past ten years, they have built a platform that unlocks a 360-degree view of the guest journey and empowers operators to deliver highly personalized experiences to every on- and off-premise diner. As a result, they are leveraging technology to helping hospitality businesses, big and small, increase revenue and create loyal guests for life.

Joel Montaniel, CEO & Co-Founder of SevenRooms, returns to the Tech Talks Daily Podcast for a catchup. We discuss on-premise and off-premise dining, vaccine passport mandates, and how customer's needs have evolved over the last 15 months. We also talk about how Joel sees hospitality adapting to these needs by leveraging technology.

Finally, we discuss how restaurants can create a seamless journey that diners prefer from discovery to booking to the dining experience itself with technology.

According to ABI Research, the market for metal payment cards is expanding rapidly and is expected to reach 90 million cards (cumulative) by 2025. In addition, CompoSecure, the category leader in metal payment cards, and Nok Nok Labs, the co-founder of the FIDO Alliance and leader in passwordless authentication, recently revealed they would bring to market the first Internet ID and Payment Card that can be used as a virtual ignition key for the authentication of a user into any digital service on any device.

This new offering will combine Nok Nok's passwordless, secure and scalable authentication server with CompoSecure's three-factor authentication technology and patented metal NFC hardware to ensure a high level of security on any device or card. In addition, all transactions using the CompoSecure internet ID and payment card will be enabled to be used for either a POS or a card-not-present transaction.

Other everyday use cases for the card include cryptocurrency transactions, eGaming, online gambling, and identity verification applications. Phil Dunkelberger joins me in a conversation about the recent announcement and shares insights from his career in tech.

About Nok Nok

Nok Nok is a trusted leader in passwordless consumer authentication to the world's largest organizations. Delivering the most innovative authentication solutions in the market today, Nok Nok empowers global organizations to improve the user experience to access digital services, while meeting the most advanced privacy and regulatory requirements.

The Nok Nok™ S3 Authentication Suite integrates into existing security environments to deliver a proven, cost-effective, future-proof and standards-based passwordless consumer authentication solution. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, the company has delivered unique inventions and innovations that are protected by a robust global patent portfolio.

As a founder of the FIDO Alliance and an inventor of FIDO specifications, Nok Nok is the expert in deploying standards-based authentication, and its industry leading customers and partners include BBVA, DDS, Inc., Ericsson, Fujitsu Limited, Hitachi, Intuit, Lenovo, MTRIX GmbH, NTT DATA, NTT DOCOMO, OneSpan, SoftBank, T-Mobile and Verizon.

The FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance was formed in July 2012 to address the lack of interoperability among strong authentication technologies and remedy the problems users face with creating and remembering multiple usernames and passwords. By harnessing the collective expertise of hundreds of leading technology, consumer services, and government organizations, the FIDO Alliance enables simpler and stronger online experiences and more secure online identities and services.

Did you know that every device you open right now has FIDO and WebAuthn through a simple API? FIDO Executive Director/CMO Andrew Shikiar discusses how the FIDO Alliance recognized a need for service provider help with User Experience, and for FIDO to take off, it needed some common elements to drive the change.

I learn how Top Tech Design Engineers and UX Leads from companies such as VISA, Wells Fargo, Facebook, JP Morgan Chase, and Microsoft were involved in shaping the new UX guidelines and formed the UX Taskforce.

Authentication is moving towards less dependence on knowledge and more on inherent authentication. I learn more about their mission to let people log in the same way they unlock their devices and make access easy for everyone by offering a standardized way of doing it.

Anthony Caiafa, Chief Technology Officer at SS&C Technologies joins me in a conversation about how automation and AI can help the finance industry's burnout problem, further exasperated by the pandemic and the loom of a hybrid workforce. We also talk about where technology fits in to revolutionize the traditional wealth and asset manager role, and the reception from Wall Street to these broadening tech capabilities.

Anthony is a technology leader and innovator with a deep understanding and experience across the entire stack. SS&C has emerged as the largest hedge fund, private equity, and transfer agency in the world, growing to over 25K employees, 18K+ clients, and over 200+ products and solutions in its portfolio, in its 35 years in operation.

I also learn more about how it is rooting itself first as a technology company, and always looking to bring automation, advanced technology, and digital transformation to a traditionally antiquated industry known for being slow adopters amidst mass regulations and compliance restrictions.

Recent research by the Bank of Ireland reveals that many people have become accidental savers during the Covid-19 crisis. Understandably, half of those surveyed want to build up a rainy day fund for the future. Moreover, within today's climate of low interest rates and high living costs, many are considering investing as a way to make their money go further.

Offering a new investment alternative for the Irish market, BUX, Europe's fastest-growing neobroker, officially launched its zero-commission investing app, BUX Zero, in Ireland this week, making it the first exclusively mobile platform to offer investing in the country.

The arrival of BUX Zero in Ireland promises to make investing easier and more affordable through commission-free investing. In addition, BUX aims to remedy the findings that only 23% of people claim to have sufficient knowledge of markets and investment options. It is a platform that provides intuitive tools to start investing and educational content that helps users to invest responsibly.

Yorick Naeff, CEO of BUX, joins me on the podcast to share the story behind the company. I also learn how BUX's flagship platform, BUX Zero, is making commission-free investing more accessible and allows users to invest in the companies they believe in.