Tech Talks Daily

Approximately 2,217 startups were founded in 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic to meet new industry demands, many of which were spawned by large enterprises. As a result, these organizations began using digital transformation as means of survival to accommodate remote work operations.

However, rapid-paced deployment of innovative technologies often leaves the door for potential cyberattacks -- such as the recent Parler breach -- which is why security must be top of mind, especially for startups. To address this, startup companies must look beyond their internal security teams and leverage external security researchers via a bug bounty or vulnerability disclosure program (VDP) to help identify and disclose vulnerabilities before bad actors can exploit them.

After reading how Bugcrowd is trusted by more of the Fortune 500 than any other crowdsourced security platform, I invited their CEO, Ashish Gupta, onto the podcast to learn more about this topic.

More enterprise organizations trust Bugcrowd to manage their bug bounty, vulnerability disclosure, attack surface management and next-gen pen test programs. By combining the largest, most experienced triage team with the most trusted hackers around the world, Bugcrowd generates better results, reduces risk through remediation advice, and empowers organisations to release secure products to market faster — with no hidden fees.

Samer Al Moubayed is the CEO of Furhat Robotics, one of the world's fastest-growing social robotics companies. Furhat's 'Social Robot' is highly customizable and allows for building very sophisticated robot personalities.

Companies such as Disney, KPMG, and Honda are already utilizing Furhat for employee training scenarios, HR purposes, and day-to-day operations with customers. It also comes with its own SDK and flexible development platform which allows each individual unit's "personality" and capabilities to be tailored to desired functions.

As a former specialist for robotics R&D at Disney, Samer has learned very early on in his career that robots can also be more than mere appliances or tools. They can be beloved, helpful companions for even the smallest or most vulnerable members of society. It's this exact thought on which he founded his company Furhat Robotics in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2016 after his time with Disney.

About Furhat Robotics: Headquartered in Sweden, Furhat Robotics are pioneers in social robotics, where robotics technology meets a sophisticated, adaptive language AI capable of picking up social queues and communicating in real-time over forty languages.

The newest line of robots has a built-in camera with facial recognition software and a silica mask that uses projected, customizable facial animations to make the interaction between humans and machines as lifelike and seamless as possible.

However, the plans Samer and his team of visionaries have for their growing invention do not stop merely providing services for businesses. They are currently looking into the field of psychology as well, where they conduct experiments in empathic capability to ultimately be able to use their creation in child psychology and assist with care for patients with Alzheimer's or dementia.

The world looks so much different than it did this time last year. In just 12 months, the global workforce shifted remote and gone is the day of the desk. Approximately 80% of the total workforce, or 2.7 billion people, now make up the deskless population, including sales reps, customer service advisors, technicians, and more.

Those new to remote work faced issues arising from a lack of digital tools to aid with productivity, inability to access real-time information, and dated communication/reporting systems that do not reach consumers on mobile devices.

To survive in 2020, companies were forced to evolve fast. Now aware of the vast disparity between traditional office technology and deskless tools, top management is taking action to accelerate the development of deskless tools.

Ashish Joshi from goDeskless explores this topic with me in today's episode. We discuss how their AI-powered workforce automation platform was designed for the frontline deskless workforce. We also talk about the lessons learned from 2020's mass push towards a digital workforce.

Luca Rossettini is the CEO and founder of Italy-based D-Orbit, the global market leader in the space logistics and transportation services industry with a track record of space-proven technologies, successful missions, and customer outcomes.

The company is committed to helping companies profitably and sustainably maximize the opportunities to do business in space today and into the future. Having developed proprietary space logistics technology and transportation solutions, they are accelerating the growth and development of a trillion-dollar space economy, including human expansion into space.

With an incremental strategic approach to the space marketplace, D-Orbit is delivering successful customer outcomes today while developing advanced products and services for the needs of tomorrow. In today's episode, I learn how D-Orbit has successfully flown 44 payloads into space.

We discuss how just as companies on Earth depend on logistics providers, the future of space (including satellites, human expansion, etc.) will also require logistics companies. D-Orbit is the first company to address these needs. This could include satellite life extension, active debris removal, interplanetary logistics, and more.

About Luca Rossettini

Luca Rossettini is CEO and founder of D-Orbit, Expert at the Space Advisory Group of the European Commission, Board member of AIPAS (space SME industrial association), Board member of Confindustria Florence, and corresponding member of International Academy of Astronautics (IAA). He is an aerospace engineer with a Ph.D. in advanced space propulsion, awarded with honors by Politecnico di Milano. He holds a Master in Strategic Leadership Towards Sustainability and a Certificate in Technology Entrepreneurship from Santa Clara University, California.

Ryan Kelly is a marketing leader at Domino Data Lab and author of the world's first-ever children's book about data science. But he didn't write this children's book to encourage the next generation to get passionate about future careers in data science. He also wrote it to inspire a passion for problem-solving.

Ryan believes that our world is full of problems, and our future relies on the passion and willingness of future generations to solve them. He was also tired of trying to describe to his daughter what he did at work. I invited him onto the Tech Talks Daily podcast to learn more about the story behind Florence, the Data Scientist.

Domino Data Lab powers model-driven business for the world's most advanced enterprises, including over 20% of the Fortune 100. Its Enterprise MLOps platform speeds up the development and deployment of data science work while increasing collaboration and governance to scale data science into a competitive advantage.

The platform enables thousands of data scientists to develop better medicines, grow more productive crops, adapt risk models to major economic shifts, build better cars, improve customer support, or recommend the best purchase to make at the right time.

Since the dawn of the Internet, advertisers have been targeting consumers in an increasingly invasive and distracting manner, resulting in users fighting back by installing ad blockers, privacy-based browsers such as Brave and even going so far as to delete their social media accounts entirely.

Furthermore, big tech has been aggressively collecting and monetizing user data without consumers knowing how, where, and when their data is used. It's against this backdrop that ⁨Permission.io⁩ was born to change the status quo via their platform that empowers consumers to own their own data and to be compensated for it.

By returning control to users, consumers are properly rewarded for their time and attention, and advertisers are assured of reaching a willing and truly engaged audience. Google has partnered with ⁨Permission.io⁩ to bring permission-based ad solutions to its users.

Permission.io⁩ is powered by the ASK token, the currency of permission, which allows users to earn ASK by securely sharing their data and opting in to receive relevant ads and content. Marketers can "ask permission" and deploy ASK on their own channels as an incentive to drive loyalty through personalized ad campaigns, thereby increasing ROI, driving conversions, and building consumer trust.

I invited Charles Silver onto the podcast to discuss how Permission.io⁩ is solving critical problems in the privacy/data puzzle for a new Web. Charles is a start-up business expert who has built several enterprises from the ground up to successful exit. I learn about the story behind Permission.io⁩ and how the platform enables businesses to connect with individuals on a permission basis, building trusted, transparent, and interruption-free relationships.

NETSCOUT, one of the leading cybersecurity and network diagnostics firms, recently revealed the findings of its bi-annual Threat Intelligence Report. The report provided insight and analysis into the unprecedented nature of Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks in 2020. Darren Anstee, Chief Technology Officer for Security at NETSCOUT, shares insights from the report.

We discuss who the suspected attackers are and how the attacks have differed over the last year. I learn how attackers focused on COVID-era lifelines such as healthcare, e-commerce, finance, and educational services with complex, high-throughput attacks designed to overwhelm and quickly take them down.

We talk about what business leaders need to be aware of when it comes to a DDoS attack and its impact. Darren also shares how NETSOUT helps businesses with the challenges presented by DDoS attacks.

Kathleen Delaney, the CMO of Kofax, joins me on the Tech Talks Daily podcast. Kathleen is an innovative marketing leader and digital strategist who has lead her team towards amazing accomplishments because of her ability to navigate and innovate complex projects. An example of this has was displayed through Kofax's recent "Work Like Tomorrow" rebrand campaign.

With over three decades in marketing leadership roles, Kathleen joined Kofax in 2018 to lead the private-equity owned company through a massive rebrand. Dubbed the Work Like Tomorrow campaign, Kathleen dusted off the company's previous brand promise and coordinated a global effort to change its image of being a legacy technology company to its current position as a leader in the Intelligent Automation space.

The campaign drove roughly 2.0B impressions in 2019 from over 1K global media placements, leading to a nearly 20% global share of voice, from almost zero in 2018. It also led to analyst recognition, including placement in the Gartner RPA Critical Capabilities report

Kathleen reveals the best practices she learned from a successful global rebrand and her market-tested strategies for driving revenue, increasing profit, and invigorating brands.

From Moses and his stone tablets to Elon Musk revealing his plans to colonize Mars, people have been leveraging the persuasive power of presentations for thousands of years. But while the basic elements of a great pitch have remained the same, today's most successful presenters employ a host of hi-tech tools to drive sales like never before.

James Ontra from Shufflrr shares how AI, cloud storage, and machine learning are changing the presentation paradigm — all while saving time, increasing productivity, and helping businesses put their best foot forward.

With over 30 million PowerPoint presentations created every day, it's no surprise that the internal presentation situation at most companies is a tangled morass of out-of-date, redundant slides. It doesn't have to be this way. James also explores how top companies are cleaning up the quagmire and reclaiming their digital assets.

Movie theaters. Marriage. Mayonnaise. These are just a few of the things millennials have been accused of killing. Here's one more thing you can add to the list: old-fashioned PowerPoint presentations. In their place, a new generation of spontaneous, interactive presentations are infiltrating the business world — James reveals how to take advantage of this emerging trend to reach a valuable new audience.

Stephane Giraudie, a mobile/SaaS entrepreneur, is an expert in developing forward-thinking solutions. He currently heads up Cloud Communications at Dolby, which acquired his company, Voxeet, in 2019.

As founder and CEO at Voxeet, Stephane pioneered in-flow communications, enabling leading apps in telemedicine, e-learning, and collaboration to significantly improve their users' experience while creating new revenue streams. Previously, Stephane was one of the patented early innovators of digital photography and built corporate sustainability and philanthropic fundraising solutions.

Stephane joins me in a discussion about the future of how we Meet and Connect. We discuss the future of employee and customer engagement depend on interactive, audiovisual experiences. We also talk about how the increase in consumer listening and user-generated content has created a boom for audio-first businesses.