The Georgian Impact Podcast | AI, ML & More

Wouldn’t everyone like to clone their most successful sales reps? While we can’t do that (yet) what if you could analyze conversations to understand what it is that makes one person more effective than another? In this episode of the Georgian Impact Podcast, Jon Prial talks with Roy Raanani, CEO of Chorus, to talk about how Chorus is capturing the most valuable data set available during the sales cycle - sales conversations - and analyzing it to improve win rates and shorten ramp time for new hires.

Listen to learn:

• Why sales conversations are an untapped resource offering insights into the voice of your customer
• How you can develop expertise quickly in your sales organization through intentional improvement
• How you can identify where your deals stall and what the best closers are doing

Roy Raanani is CEO and founder of Chorus. Roy is an engineer with a passion for business and sales. He’s spent his career working with start-ups and advising technology companies on strategy and ops. Prior to Chorus, Roy was a Manager at Bain & Company in their Zurich, San Francisco, Toronto and Singapore offices. At Bain, he focused on technology, leading the mobile strategy team for Bain’s flagship tech client. Roy holds a BASc in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He was the first hire at Innovation Endeavors and co-developed the Runway incubator.

Quantum computing is still years away from widespread commercial use. But did you know that you should already be protecting yourself and future-proofing your encryption against the power of quantum computing? In this episode of the Georgian Impact Podcast, Jon Prial welcomes Mike Brown, CTO of Isara and former VP of Security at BlackBerry to discuss why we should address the risks of quantum computing sooner rather than later.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• How encryption works and how it will change with quantum computing
• How quantum will help solve some of our hardest problems
• Why quantum computing will pose a threat to today’s encryption standards
• What you can do to prepare your organization today

As Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder, Mike is responsible for the technical vision and direction of ISARA Corporation. His teams are singularly focused on research into the state of the art in Quantum Safe algorithms as well as how to implement them in a secure and efficient manner. Mike was most recently the Vice President of Security Product Management and Research at BlackBerry, where he co-founded the product security practice and was responsible for the vision and execution of security for all BlackBerry products. Mike has spoken at global security events including RSA, CTIA, GTEC, Bloomberg, APECTEL and InfoSec Europe. He holds a Masters of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo, focusing on cryptography.

Imagine being able to capture every source of end-user interaction - from both structured and unstructured data - to provide a rich view of customer experience and actionable intelligence, in real-time. In this episode, Jon Prial talks with Derek Wang, the founder and CEO of Stratifyd, a company with an AI-powered end-to-end customer analytics platform that is enabling its customers to do just that.

On the show, Jon and Derek discuss Stratifyd's vision and how he and his colleagues have taken a trove of unstructured data and applied it to a specific market space using machine learning and NLP to deliver valuable insights and workflow automation.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• How Stratifyd built a startup outside a traditional tech hub
• How they are using unsupervised learning and NLP on unstructured data to provide immediate automated insights into vast amounts of customer data
• How they then use supervised deep learning to generate automated workflows and decision-making
• Why privacy and trust are a priority when handling such vast quantities of data

Derek Wang is founder and CEO of Stratifyd, a customer analytics platform designed to equip business leaders worldwide with deep business insights in minutes instead of months. Before starting Stratifyd, Derek worked in academia, as Associate Director of the Charlotte Visualization Center working on visualization and visual analytics.

The use of AI raises a lot of new questions about the use of personal data. For companies, this means being more thoughtful about how you collect, store and use data. But where do we stand when it comes to the law? In this episode of the Georgian Impact Podcast, Jon Prial welcomes Carole Piovesan, Partner and Co-founder at INQ Data Law. They discuss some of the ethical implications of gathering and using data in artificial intelligence and how to square autonomy with liability.

You’ll hear about:

• How meaningful consent and privacy policies define our relationships online
• Where we draw the line between the private and public domains in our digital lives
• Whether current laws are sufficient for the evolving privacy challenges of artificial intelligence
• Where liability lies in autonomous systems and where new regulations might emerge
• Algorithmic accountability, fairness and trust

Who is Carole Piovesan?

Carole Piovesan is a Partner and Co-Founder of INQ Data Law, a law firm focused on data governance, privacy law, cybersecurity and AI. She has advised the Canadian government on legal and policy issues related to AI and provides advice to companies on their data practices. In August 2018, she served on behalf of the federal Minister of Innovation as one of six appointees to lead Canada’s digital and data transformation consultations (#CDNdigitalTalks).

Before launching INQ Data Law, Carole was a lawyer at McCarthy Tetrault LLP where she served as co-Lead of the National Cybersecurity, Privacy and Data Management Group.

Tech giants like Airbnb and Uber tear up the rule-books for their markets. They grow so fast that by the time competitors and regulators react, it’s already too late. There’s fascinating research being done into their impact and how they have reshaped society. In this, the 100th episode of the Georgian Impact Podcast, Jon Prial is joined by Alex Rosenblat, Data & Society Research Institute researcher and author of Uberland: How Algorithms are Rewriting the Rules of Work. They discuss how these companies challenge the status quo with new business models, new employment models and new ways of thinking about management.

You’ll hear about:

• How tech companies are disrupting employment models and challenging our concepts of entrepreneurship
• What this means for the future of work
• The trust challenges of managing through algorithms

Alex Rosenblat is a technology ethnographer. A researcher at the Data & Society Research Institute, she holds an MA in sociology from Queen's University and a BA in history from McGill University. Rosenblat's writing has appeared in media outlets such as the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, the Atlantic, Slate, and Fast Company. Her research has received attention worldwide and has been covered in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, MIT Technology Review, WIRED, New Scientist, and the Guardian. Many scholarly and professional publications have also published her prizewinning work, including the International Journal of Communication and the Columbia Law Review.

Alex Manea joined our team as Chief Security and Privacy Officer last year to lead our trust thesis and its adoption. In this episode, Jon Prial and Alex have a wide-ranging chat covering risk, privacy, different types of security attacks and how to protect your business. They also discuss how a business should be preparing for a new world at the intersection of fairness, value and trust.  

You’ll hear about:

• How everything flows down from leadership’s philosophy on security and privacy
• Why perceptions of privacy, security, fairness and transparency are changing
• The value exchange we make with brands for our data

Who is Alex Manea?

Alex Manea is our Chief Security and Privacy Officer and a member of the Georgian Impact Team. Alex uses his detailed knowledge of security and privacy concepts to help portfolio companies identify opportunities to build and monetize technologies that protect assets and build trust. Alex is also responsible for Georgian’s internal policies and infrastructure.

Prior to joining Georgian Partners, Alex spent 12 years working at BlackBerry, most recently as Chief Security Officer. As a founding member of BlackBerry Security, he has worked to protect mobile, desktop and IoT devices, networks and infrastructure for over a decade, helping to transform BlackBerry from a mobile hardware vendor to the world's leading provider of enterprise software and security solutions. Alex regularly writes on security and has been published in dozens of international publications in multiple languages.

We’re all tempted by the newest, shiniest technology when looking for a solution to a problem. But often the best results come from proven techniques, so it’s wise to find a fast, pragmatic solution to your problem, whatever the technology. How do you know what’s the right choice for your business? And how do you select the right opportunities to pursue with AI, so that you’re augmenting your customers’ experience and ability to get their jobs done?

In this episode of the Georgian Impact podcast, you'll hear about this and more as Jon Prial is joined by White House Presidential Innovation Fellow and growth-stage advisor Adam Drake.

You’ll hear about:

• How you can identify opportunities to use AI/ML in your business
• Why you should start with proven modeling techniques
• Getting valuable products out with customers, rather than stuck in R&D
• How to develop an AI BS detector

Adam Drake leads technical business transformations to help growth-stage technology companies continue their rapid acceleration through leadership, technology, and data architecture guidance. He is currently a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow and IEEE Senior Member. Adam’s professional background spans a variety of industries including e-commerce, online travel, online marketing, financial services, healthcare and oil and gas.

Read his thoughts at adamdrake.com. Jon references these articles during this episode:

Novel Results Considered Harmful

Artificial Intelligence and The Heilmeier Catechism

To get started with AI in your business, read our Principles of Applied Artificial Intelligence and rank your organizational readiness with our maturity matrix. You can download your free copy here.

When Brad Katsuyama was working on Wall Street, he saw that the stock exchanges were giving an unfair advantage to high-frequency traders that was costing his clients - pension funds, mutual funds and hedge funds. Worse still, the exchanges were making huge profits from selling this advantage. His response was to create the Investors Exchange, a stock exchange founded on the premise that people want to trade on a fair platform that doesn’t provide advantages to predatory traders.

In this episode of the Georgian Impact Podcast, Jon and Brad discuss how Brad broke the mold to create an exchange that is founded on building trust between all participants.

You’ll hear about:

• How unfairness in high-frequency trading led to the founding of IEX
• How exchanges work and how they are incentivized
• How IEX has built a different type of exchange based on trust
• Why trust is opening doors to new revenue streams

Who is Brad Katsuyama?

Brad Katsuyama is the CEO and co-founder of the IEX, the Investors Exchange. He co-founded IEX to create a fairer stock exchange. Katsuyama is the focus of Flash Boys, a Michael Lewis book about high-frequency trading.

Before founding IEX, he was the Global Head of Electronic Sales and Trading at the Royal Bank of Canada. There he was responsible for electronic sales, electronic trading, algorithmic trading, market structure strategy, client implementation and product management.

To learn more about IEX and their business, visit their website or check out the best-selling Michael Lewis novel Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt. You can read more about Georgian’s investment in IEX here.

To learn more about the fundamental principles of trust and how they can help your business, check out our Principles of Trust and download the CEO’s Guide to Trust.

You’re always faced with trade-offs. Cleaning up technical debt or adding new features. Hiring more sales reps or investing in customer success. You have to make these decisions. But what about security? Threats are constantly evolving and solutions are too. Is it ever worth the trade-off? 

In this episode of the Georgian Impact Podcast, Jon Prial talks with Kerry Bailey, CEO of eSentire. Kerry emphasizes that it’s not whether, but when you will be breached. Taking this mindset sharpens your focus on security as a strategic initiative and shows that there are no trade-offs worth making. 

It’s why we published our thesis on Security First and it’s more relevant today than ever as security performs a foundational role in building trust with your customers. 

You’ll hear about:

• Why cybersecurity may just be the best use case in the world for AI
• How managed security has evolved from human-driven to AI/ML 
• Why security is about more than tech: it’s a cultural issue and a board level item

Kerry Bailey is CEO of eSentire. eSentire has been part of the Georgian portfolio since 2014. As CEO of eSentire, Kerry is driving the company's market acceleration and its evolution as the industry's leading Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service provider.

His executive experience spans security, managed services and cloud computing at Fortune 50 and early-stage growth companies, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise , Verizon Enterprise, Betrusted and Security Assurance Group.

Quantum computing will revolutionize your approach to a whole array of business problems but it won’t solve everything single-handedly. Your task as CEO is to know where quantum will make a difference and make sure you’re ahead of your competition. In this episode of the Georgian Impact Podcast, Jon Prial sits down with quantum computing expert Vlad Gheorghiu to help you understand the use cases where quantum will be most effective and why by giving a quick primer on the quantum tech stack.

You’ll hear about:

• How to think about quantum computing in relation to traditional computing
• Where we are now versus where we will need to be for certain use cases
• The quantum computing stack and how the different parts function
• How to develop a business strategy for quantum and what the first use cases might look like

Who is Vlad Gheorghiu?

Vlad Gheorghiu is CEO, President and Co-Founder of softwareQ Inc, and a researcher at the Institute for Quantum Computing, working with Michele Mosca on theoretical aspects of quantum computation and (post-quantum) cryptography. He also collaborates on quantum risk assessment with evolutionQ Inc.

Vlad is involved in the CryptoWorks21 Quantum-Safe Cryptographic Infrastructure Program and is a member of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Quantum-Safe Cryptography Standardization Group. Vlad graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a PhD in Theoretical Physics.