The Next Great Thing

Our pets aren't just furry friends, they're family. And the pandemic brought this bond into focus for millions of Americans, with one in five households adopting a new dog or cat. But like any family member, pet parents need to care for their pets – and many of them turn to Rover, the world’s largest online marketplace that connects pet owners with pet sitters and dog walkers. That wasn’t always the case. Back in 2011, when Aaron Easterly and his two co-founders started Rover, they faced two big challenges: building trust with customers and convincing investors of the market potential. Back then, the pet care industry was haunted by the failures of companies like Pets.com during the dot-com boom, leading to negative perceptions of tech in the pet space. Furthermore, pet owners were relying on friends, family, and neighbors to take care of their dogs and cats – would they really trust a stranger? Aaron, Rover's CEO, joins the podcast to reflect on the company’s early days and share how Rover used data-driven decision-making and patience to build and grow the world’s largest online marketplace for pet care.

Show notes, episodes, and more at thenextgreatthingpodcast.com. For more information on SF AppWorks, visit sfappworks.com.

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The robots are coming! Actually, they’re already here. Every day there’s a new story in our newsfeeds about how AI technology is disrupting everything from education to healthcare to the workplace. Remarkably, one of the greatest benefits of AI is its ability to improve human communication. AI communication assistants are quickly becoming our trusted advisors, stealthily upgrading our language skills and making us sound like bona fide geniuses across all of our digital platforms. But according to Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, we haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s possible. He should know. Rahul spent more than 14 years at Google, where he served as the company's VP of Product Management, and today is the Global Head of Product at Grammarly, one of the most popular and advanced AI communication assistants. Grammarly’s platform reaches more than 30 million users and 50,000 organizations worldwide. It uses natural language processing and AI to check written digital text for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors, and it can even give you suggestions for improving your tone, sentence structure, and clarity, and help you make your writing sound more engaging. Rahul joins the podcast to talk about how AI communication assistants like Grammarly won’t replace human communication but, rather, through improving our communication, give us the capability and confidence to be our best selves.

Show notes, episodes, and more at thenextgreatthingpodcast.com. For more information on SF AppWorks, visit sfappworks.com.

Follow Andrew on LinkedIn at @Andrew Greenstein

Questions? Feedback? Guest recommendations? Email us here.

Show notes, episodes, and more at thenextgreatthingpodcast.com. For more information on SF AppWorks, visit sfappworks.com.

Follow Andrew on LinkedIn at @Andrew Greenstein

Questions? Feedback? Guest recommendations? Email us here.

Look around you. Chances are, most of what you see has, at some point, been shipped on a truck and driven around by a truck driver. Trucking is a massive, $800 billion industry in the U.S. — 80% of every dollar spent moving freight is spent on trucking. Despite its size and scale, America’s traditional freight network of brokers, shippers, and carriers is fragmented, inefficient, and antiquated. It’s also harming the planet. Nearly 35% of all trucks on the road are empty, and all those empty miles create 87M metric tons of carbon emissions a year. But trucking’s digital transformation, and zero waste mission, has begun. Dorothy Li is the Chief Technology Officer at Convoy, the nation’s leading digital freight network that uses AI, machine learning, and data analytics to optimize and automate a marketplace for matching a trucker to a shipper. Before Convoy, she spent 23 years at Amazon innovating everything from the initial launch of Amazon Prime, to Kindle, to AWS Cloud. Dorothy joins the podcast to explain how her team is creating more efficiency across — and visibility into — the freight network and expanding elastic capacity for shippers, just like cloud did for compute capacity. 

Show notes, episodes, and more at thenextgreatthingpodcast.com. For more information on SF AppWorks, visit sfappworks.com.

Follow Andrew on LinkedIn at @Andrew Greenstein

Questions? Feedback? Guest recommendations? Email us here.

What if software could actually treat a disease? That’s the question that Eddie Martucci, a biochemist and biophysicist whose focus is in drug design, wondered 10 years ago. It’s also the question that set his digital therapeutics company, Akili Interactive, into motion. Today, as Co-Founder and CEO at Akili, Eddie and a diverse team of cognitive neuroscientists, data scientists, software engineers, and video game designers (who’ve worked on games like Medal of Honor, Plants vs. Zombies, and Bejeweled) have developed EndeavorRx, the first-ever FDA-approved prescription video game to treat kids 8-12 with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Eddie joins the podcast to talk about the new and growing field of medicine called digital therapeutics and share how “software that is the medicine” is innovating and disrupting traditional medicine as we know it. He explains how software has the potential to treat a range of health conditions – like depression, anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain, multiple sclerosis, Long COVID brain fog, and more – and how digital therapeutics are on track to becoming “a brand new pillar of medicine.” 

Show notes, episodes, and more at thenextgreatthingpodcast.com. For more information on SF AppWorks, visit sfappworks.com.

Follow Andrew on LinkedIn at @Andrew Greenstein

Questions? Feedback? Guest recommendations? Email us here.

Seeing your favorite band or artist in concert can be a life-changing experience. Live music bonds us to one another in a way that no other art form can. And with the pandemic waning, live music is having its renaissance moment. Artists are hitting the road, and fans are packing into concert halls, clubs, and arenas to see them play live. But knowing when your favorite artist is coming to town – and when and where to buy tickets before they’re sold out – can be tricky to navigate. Or is it? Fabrice Sergent is the Managing Partner at Bandsintown, one of the most sophisticated and powerful architectural engines in music. Fabrice joins the podcast to talk about how this mobile app, massive database, and powerful discovery engine is connecting more than 70 million music fans to over half a million artists worldwide. He shares how artists – especially new and emerging artists – use the platform to connect directly with fans under their own branding and voice and (finally!) own their fan engagement data. Fabrice also gives his perspective on the future promise versus current reality of Web3 and the metaverse, and how both could impact the music industry and the fan / artist relationship in the future.

Show notes, episodes, and more at thenextgreatthingpodcast.com. For more information on SF AppWorks, visit sfappworks.com.

Follow Andrew on LinkedIn at @Andrew Greenstein

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Every year we throw away nearly 40% of our nation's food supply – perfectly edible – leaving it to rot in landfills and release harmful greenhouse gasses. Meanwhile, more than 10% of U.S. households are food insecure. Why do we throw this food away instead of getting it to people in need? Hunger isn’t a scarcity problem, it's a logistical one. That’s according to Jasmine Crowe-Houston, the founder and CEO of Goodr, an Atlanta-based startup that’s using technology to fight both battles: food waste and food insecurity. Jasmine joins the podcast to explain how Goodr has built a mobile app that uses delivery partners (like Uber Eats, Roadie, and DoorDash) to redistribute millions of surplus meals from businesses to nonprofits that feed people from Atlanta to Dallas to Denver. She also shares her fundraising experience as a Black female founder and gives advice to social entrepreneurs on how to raise money, pitch a solid business case, scale, and, ultimately, become “a company that can do well by doing good.” 

Show notes, episodes, and more at thenextgreatthingpodcast.com. For more information on SF AppWorks, visit sfappworks.com.

Follow Andrew on LinkedIn at @Andrew Greenstein

Questions? Feedback? Guest recommendations? Email us here.

Nearly 100 million new digital jobs are projected to emerge in the next five years, while another 85 million will be displaced. But with a global shortage of tech talent, there simply aren’t enough highly skilled workers available in areas like data science, programming, cybersecurity, and engineering. Businesses are therefore looking internally to upskill and reskill their employees. At the same time, workers in industries outside of tech are eager to learn new skills, get certified, and earn new degrees to level up their careers -- all at their own pace to fit their busy lives. And, they’re learning it all online. Shravan Goli is at the forefront of this educational transformation. He’s the Chief Product Officer and Head of Consumer Revenue at Coursera, one of the world’s largest online learning platforms. Shravan joins the podcast to talk about the shifting dynamics in the global workforce, and why online learning creates a more equitable and sustainable future of work. He also explains how his product team is building hands-on digital learning products and experiences designed to fit the needs of today’s learners -- and empower them with the confidence, skills, and certifications they need to land the careers of tomorrow.

Show notes, episodes, and more at thenextgreatthingpodcast.com. For more information on SF AppWorks, visit sfappworks.com.

Follow Andrew on LinkedIn at @Andrew Greenstein

Questions? Feedback? Guest recommendations? Email us here.

It’s official. Electric vehicles are out of the R&D and early adopter phase and racing towards mainstream adoption. In 2022, EVs account for about 8% of all vehicles sold in America, but in the next 10 to 15 years that figure could approach 100%. But there are plenty of roadblocks ahead – most notably, our EV charging infrastructure. Charging today is a fragmented and frustrating experience, full of disparate hardware, unreliable networks, inconvenient locations, and wonky mobile apps. Zak Lefevre, Co-Founder and CEO of ChargeLab, is creating a smarter, more seamless way to charge our EVs. His team is building an intelligent, open-source software layer that sits on top of any EV charger, giving customers the flexibility to use whatever hardware they want with a simple, consistent, and elegant user experience. Zak joins the podcast to discuss the current EV charging landscape and the major challenges that lie ahead in creating an expansive and reliable EV charging infrastructure. He explains how ChargeLab’s technology aims to be “the Android of EV charging systems” that will provide a critical software infrastructure for the future of refueling. He also shares stories from his experience as a founder navigating the VC-backed tech landscape and argues why it’s never too early to think about product distribution.

Show notes, episodes, and more at thenextgreatthingpodcast.com. For more information on SF AppWorks, visit sfappworks.com.

Follow Andrew on LinkedIn at @Andrew Greenstein

Questions? Feedback? Guest recommendations? Email us here.

Social isolation has a profound negative effect on our mental and physical health. Many of us experienced the effects of this first-hand during the height of the pandemic. But for millions of senior citizens, there is no escape from social isolation as they get older. The impact is devastating, often resulting in increased rates of depression and anxiety and an increased risk of stroke, heart disease, and dementia. Kyle Rand has made it his life’s work to help seniors feel less alone and make aging a lot easier for all of us. He’s Co-Founder and CEO of Rendever, a virtual reality platform that’s designed specifically for seniors. In senior living communities across the U.S., Canada, and Australia, older adults are using Rendever’s VR platform to travel the world, revisit their past, get fit, swim with dolphins, see the Aurora Borealis, and even climb Mount Everest. Kyle joins the podcast to talk about why VR is such a powerful and promising technology to combat social isolation in older adults, helping to create connection, community, and joy through positive shared experiences. He also shares what it’s like to be a “longevity entrepreneur” in the AgeTech space – and the massive opportunities that exist to create social and economic impact for our growing aging population.

Show notes, episodes, and more at thenextgreatthingpodcast.com. For more information on SF AppWorks, visit sfappworks.com.

Follow Andrew on LinkedIn at @Andrew Greenstein

Questions? Feedback? Guest recommendations? Email us here.