Tech Talks Daily

Real estate is the largest expense for most companies. More than a trillion dollars is put towards unused (but leased) space. But for buisness leaders paying expensive leases, how much office space do they need? And how do they know how many people are in the building?

The second challenge is how space used in a world of hybrid working? Are certain amenities empty while others are always crowded? Some businesses even have entire floors occupied by five people. This year, two of the most significant opportunities are optimizing real estate during a pandemic and designing real estate spaces, so employees/customers have exactly what they need and need it.

When COVID hit, Density Founder and CEO Andrew Farah realized that bringing people back to the office safely, it would require new types of real-time data to ensure social distancing. They created go/wait screens for customers that gave people the necessary information to know when it was safe to enter and launched new sensors that gave even more insight into usage. Things started to take off in three months, Density had seen more revenue than all of 2019 combined.

Andrew went on to raise a $51M Series C from Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Jason Calacanis, and others to scale further. By the end of the year, the company had nearly doubled in size and signed a record number of Fortune 100 enterprises, universities, governments, warehouses, etc.

There was no way to forecast what 2020 would hold, but Andrew was able to turn one of the worst scenarios facing any founder into the fastest growth period in company history.

In today's episode, Andrew shares the journey he has been on and talks about how their technology sits above any open space and gives a real-time view of that information. There are no cameras to track people or behavior -- on purpose. Its privacy-focused and highly advanced tech uses infrared light, artificial intelligence, and depth data to determine what's happening below.

Imagine the room you're in right now represented by billions of dots, with your movement shown as different colored dots lighting up in that space. Then A.I. analyzes what's happening from there.

Eric Adler is the CEO and founder of Flume, a smart device that wraps around your water meter and detects leaks and water usage across your entire property - inside and out. He was studying chemical engineering in hopes of designing a product that would have a positive environmental impact.

Flume is a purpose-driven business that came about because in 2014, California was experiencing its worst drought in 1,200 years. Officials encouraged ways to reduce consumption, but no one really knew how much water they were using.

Eric designed Flume when he was a grad student at Cal Poly to provide a better way to share high-definition water data with people and the communities they live in. Now, Flume puts the power of water consumption and conservation in consumer's hands, protecting their home, and improving their relationship with our most precious resource.

Over the last twelve months, people worldwide sheltered in place to stem the spread of COVID-19. As a result, video gained a new level of prominence in a wide variety of fields – from online lessons to virtual business meetings to streaming content.

Tom Livne is the CEO and Founder of Verbit, the world's leading AI-powered transcription and captioning platform that recently raised $60M in Series C funding. Verbit leverages Natural Language Processing technology to provide over 99% accurate transcripts and captions to diverse customers in the education, legal, media, and enterprise sectors.

Verbit harnesses the power of artificial and human intelligence to provide a smart transcription and captioning solution. Built on adaptive algorithms, it is the only technology that generates the most detailed speech-to-text files to provide over 99% accuracy, delivered at record-breaking speed.

Smart AI technology supports on-demand CART services for real-time results. Verbit's customized solution helps organizations maximize their audio and video files' potential by making information searchable, accessible, and actionable.

Tom joins me on the podcast to share how Verbit's platform has played a key role in ensuring that all media shared in classrooms, workplaces, and online platforms is accessible.

The switch has been flipped - and there's no going back. In today's episode, Heath Spencer, CEO of TraitWare, and Anil Kumar from Citrix join me in a conversation about the importance of cybersecurity. With remote work and hybrid working here to stay, I learn how Traitware and Citrix are working together to help companies adapt to their new digital surroundings.

As we approach the first anniversary of COVID-19 lockdowns, the enterprise has seen enormous change. Experts say that remote and hybrid working is likely here to say. According to a recent Upwork survey, by 2025, 36.2 million Americans will be working remotely, an 87% increase from pre-pandemic levels." One area hugely affected by remote work is cybersecurity.

As cybercrime increasingly tops the news, it is critical for all enterprises to ensure that solid cybersecurity plans are in place. But where do we start? Fortunately, there are solutions that drastically reduce the risk of attack and make life easier for the entire company while also saving on costs in the process.

If I were to ask you, what does ROKU mean to you? I imagine you would immediately think of streaming players and smart TV apps. But did you know that Roku also works with 90% of the Ad Age top 200 advertisers?

In 2020 Roku introduced OneView- the ad buying platform built for TV streaming – to the market. OneView reaches the most cord cutters of any ad platform and bring identity and viewing data from America's #1 streaming platform. OneView's device graph covers an estimated 4 in 5 homes in America. Even if an advertiser doesn't want to buy ads through OneView, they can still add their existing deals into OneView to improve targeting, avoid ad collision, measure deduplicated reach, and more.

Louqman Parampath joins me on Tech Talks Daily to discuss the background on OneView Roku's Ad Platform built for TV streaming. I learn more about the impact of COVID on the TV/ad industry and the importance of first-party data in advertising. We also talk about how streaming uniquely positioned to help advertisers reach their goals, the future of programmatic in streaming and it streaming is changing the ad funnel.

In today's episode, I want to learn more about the role mobility plays in enabling employees to be productive as the nature of work continues to evolve given the pandemic. Joseph Boyle is a listener of the show and also CEO of Truce software and is the perfect person to talk discuss these topics.

Truce provides a contextual mobile device management (CMDM) platform so businesses can ensure safe and appropriate device use by employees at work. In February new research gauged workforce sentiment on whether employees believe mobile devices enable or inhibit productivity at work.

It also looked at how workers' views of mobility have shifted over the past year due to the pandemic evolving the nature of work for many (e.g. fewer people going into physical offices, as one example) and whether they believe increased usage is leading to more blurred lines between work and personal lives.

They found, for example, that 62% of respondents said they agree mobile phones or tablets play a key role in helping them be productive at work. Over a third said their mobile device usage at work has increased more or significantly more than a year ago. Another interesting finding: 56% of those surveyed believe it's their right to use their personal device on the job.

Founder and CEO of Method Media Intelligence (MMI) Shailin Dhar joins me on the Tech Talks Daly Podcast in a conversation about Ad fraud, Ad-tech, and giving advertisers a path to be more successful. I also learn more about their mission to bring trust and transparency into the fragmented online advertising ecosystem.

After his experience working at ad-networks and in the affiliate marketing space, Shailin began speaking out against ad-fraud in 2014. Called the "Fraud Crusader," Shailin takes ad-fraud very seriously because of the wider implications to the economy and integrity of the open internet.

Working with international advertising trade bodies, agency groups, brand advertisers, ad-tech firms, and ad-verification companies to fight advertising fraud has solidified his reputation as a leading expert on the topic.

Shailin's time working independently since 2014 led him to found Method Media Intelligence in 2017 to take his crusade to the next level by teaming up with like-minded experts that can help make a real impact on the industry.

Shailin is a firm believer in "Knowledge is Power." Having written many publicly available articles and research pieces on the topic of ad-fraud, Shailin's goal is to increase the level of awareness across the industry.

About MMI Method Media Intelligence offers comprehensive digital admeasurement to ensure validity, measure viewability, and support brand safety & suitability while covering every transaction and respecting user privacy. Its core product MMI360 offers complete protection of digital ad budgets and provides clear data and guidance for verification, analytics, supply path optimization, media planning, and billing reconciliation.

Innovation can be disruptive, so MMI supports all change management for its customers in their journey to having transparency in online advertising.

The pandemic has forced many businesses to digitize and do so in a smart way. Those who weren't technologically ready to respond to an unprecedented shift in how business was done quickly struggled to keep the pace. In some unfortunate cases, companies have folded. Having an IT architecture that can pivot quickly and seamlessly as a business' needs change is now critical.

The MACH Alliance was formed in June 2020 to help enterprise organizations navigate the complex modern technology landscape. It aims to guide and show the business advantage of open tech ecosystems: Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless. All MACH Alliance members meet certification principles. The Alliance welcomes technology companies and individual industry experts who share the same vision for the future.

MACH Alliance president Kelly Goetsch discusses how the pandemic has forced IT leaders and the C-suite to rethink their IT architecture. We talk about how businesses can cut ties with a long-term platform partner despite spending millions on them over many years. We also discuss when it makes sense to stick with an incumbent commerce platform when there are "cheaper" or "slicker" platforms out there.

I learn how the Alliance has had an immense amount of traction by way of members and ambassadors joining and companies inquiring about starting their transition to MACH. I ask what the rise of the Micros-service, API-driven, Cloud, Headless (MACH) ecosystem means and if it now makes sense to ditch what you have and go 100% MACH?

2020 brought massive disruption from COVID-19, and the abrupt shift to a remote workforce In March created holes in the cybersecurity landscape for malicious actors to exploit. Amid the pandemic, the harrowing spike in cyberattacks toward the government, hospitals, education institutions, and even security firms forced all enterprises, large and small, to take a closer look at potential vulnerabilities, starting at the API level.

I have invited Cyber Security Veteran Jasen Meece from Cloudentiy onto the podcast today to talk about how he sees the landscape right now and explore some of his predictions for the road ahead.

Jasen Meece, CEO and Board Member of Cloudentity, joins me on today's episode of Tech Talks Daily. Jasen is a dynamic, results-oriented executive who leverages technology products and services to achieve business value-based transformation efforts. He has over 20 years of leadership experience in IT, driving both internal and external facing organizations.

Cloudentity is a provider of dynamic authorization solutions for modernizing and integrating legacy applications and cloud services. Unlike traditional security models based on roles or lists that present multiple points of security failure, Cloudentity dynamic authorization grants or denies access to applications, data, or other sensitive assets in real-time based on policy and according to the context of the user and transaction.

Studio Z specializes in social media-enabled open air photo booths for weddings and events. Established in 2012, the company aims to give their clients all the fun of a photo booth with high-end quality photos they can share and treasure forever. The company is based in NYC and has partnered with world-class brands such as Estee Lauder, Lego, and Warner Bro Pictures to name a few.

Since COVID, the company has evolved and is helping brands create digital experiences at virtual events too. I felt compelled to find out more after learning how they have built a reputation on being the masters at using experimental marketing to boost brand awareness and help companies stand out online and offline.

Founder Zach Schiffman has a vast amount of knowledge in brand activation, experiential marketing, modern branding, stage management, and production technology! And not only does he run an exciting business, but he is also the floor manager for the Today Show!

Zach joins me on today's episode of Tech Talks Daily in a discussion on Photo technology in the event industry and brand activation world. I learn how technology has evolved and then pivoted in the covid era.