TNW Podcast

Welcome to the new episode of the TNW Podcast, the show where we discuss the latest developments in the technology ecosystem and feature interviews with some of the most influential people in the industry.

In today’s episode, we’re happy to present an interview with Avani Prabhakar, Chief People and AI Enablement Officer of Atlassian, the company that builds teamwork and collaboration tools for knowledge workers. Avani explains why Atlassian treats AI as a people transformation rather than a tech one, and why deploying AI turned out to be the easy part.

We dig into the AI wallet every employee gets, why she monitors token usage instead of rewarding it, how Atlassian defines an AI super user, the Teamwork Graph context layer that saved about 48% of tokens, and why she warns against AI mandates and ROI-first business cases. Her advice for leaders: when you don’t have the answer, say “I don’t know.”

Feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, and opinions at [email protected].

Chapters

00:00 Intro
00:16 What Atlassian does
00:44 Why AI is a people transformation
04:24 AI rollout mistakes to avoid
08:35 Token maxing and AI wallets
10:17 Bringing IT and people teams together
11:28 What blocks AI adoption
13:27 Why a written culture helps AI
15:01 Team Anywhere and mandates
16:03 Becoming Atlassian's customer zero
17:04 Avani's path from GE to Atlassian
19:27 Don't pick a career out of fear
21:12 How Atlassian hires for values
22:20 Keeping people engaged

Episode Show Notes / Description

Welcome to the new episode of the TNW Podcast, the show where we discuss the latest developments in the technology ecosystem and feature interviews with some of the most influential people in the industry.

In today’s episode, we’re happy to present an interview with Job van der Voort, founder and CEO of Remote, which makes it easy to hire and pay anybody anywhere. Job explains what Remote learned when it made its own AI course mandatory, including why some teams believed payroll work couldn’t use AI, and why his focus is on helping the people he already has get better.

We also get into what Remote sees in the job market, why more PhDs now label data for AI companies, the growing challenge of Europe’s labor rules, and how Remote competes with local payroll providers while staying profitable and private. His advice for anyone starting out: join a startup, fail a lot, and stick around.

Feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, and opinions at [email protected].

Chapters

00:00 Intro
00:30 What Remote does for companies
01:07 From neuroscience PhD to Remote
02:24 Getting more from the team Remote has
03:45 Making the AI course mandatory
05:06 Reinventing how the work gets done
06:07 What Remote sees in the job market
07:37 How AI is changing contract work
09:45 Are companies replacing people with AI agents?
10:23 Funding, profits, and IPO plans
10:49 Uncertainty and Europe's labor rules
12:36 Remote's MCP server and AI agents
14:41 Competing with local payroll firms
17:40 Robotics, hardware, and acquisitions
19:06 Advice for 20-year-olds in tech

Welcome to the new episode of the TNW Podcast, the show where we discuss the latest developments in the technology ecosystem and feature interviews with some of the most influential people in the industry.

In today’s episode, we’re happy to present an interview with Steve Lucas, chairman and CEO of Boomi, a data activation company that delivers integration, automation, and AI capability to over 30,000 companies. Steve explains why he expects AI to bring 10x more work before there’s 10x less, and why he thinks the SaaS apocalypse is overrated.

We dig into why telling your team to use AI doesn’t work, how AI handles about half of Boomi’s accounts payable with humans in the loop, and why AI projects get stuck on data. Steve shares how Boomi tripled revenue in 4 years and why his book, Digital Impact, argues AI may give us back our humanity. His advice for anyone starting out: be curious.

Feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, and opinions at [email protected].

Chapters

00:00 Intro
00:42 From Microsoft to Marketo
02:22 Why companies need a platform like Boomi
04:01 Where the name Boomi comes from
04:58 How Boomi rolls out AI internally
06:25 10x more work and the SaaS apocalypse
08:41 Where companies get stuck with AI
09:21 Which AI agents drive ROI
10:39 Have we already reached AGI?
11:48 How Steve spends his days
14:12 Digital Impact and 350 productivity apps
16:00 How Boomi tripled revenue
17:40 Why saying no is the hardest part
19:29 What's next: AI governance
20:40 Advice for new grads: be curious

Welcome to the new episode of the TNW Podcast, the show where we discuss the latest developments in the technology ecosystem and feature interviews with some of the most influential people in the industry.

In today’s episode, we’re happy to present an interview with Ivan Burazin, co-founder and CEO of Daytona, the infrastructure company that gives AI agents their own computers to train and work in. Ivan explains how Daytona grew about 50% a month for 18 months without any salespeople, through in-person events and his Twitter account, which he calls the company’s second growth channel and credits for its Nvidia partnership.

We also get into the pivot that took Daytona from Fortune 500 customers back to zero, why agents need Windows and GPU sandboxes, and why Ivan expects a CPU crunch bigger than the GPU crunch. His advice to young founders: learn to handle risk and failure, because everyone plateaus once they stop taking risks.

Feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, and opinions at [email protected].

Chapters

00:00 Intro
00:47 Ivan's background and the Daytona name
02:17 Why customers pick Daytona over Kubernetes
03:52 Winning customers in person
05:12 Growing 50% a month without salespeople
06:18 The 3 reasons customers choose you
07:48 How Twitter led to an Nvidia partnership
10:34 Kill it or grind through it
12:57 Post-training and the CPU crunch
13:52 The pivot back to zero
14:47 Why Ivan hires for grit
15:26 Living between Europe and San Francisco
17:51 Why AI agents need Windows and GPUs
20:18 Risk, failure and how Ivan got started
24:12 Where the Daytona team is based

Welcome to the new episode of the TNW Podcast, the show where we discuss the latest developments in the technology ecosystem and feature interviews with some of the most influential people in the industry.

In today’s episode, we’re happy to present an interview with Arvind Jain, founder and CEO of Glean, the enterprise AI company that connects to every system a business runs on and turns its knowledge into context for people and AI agents. Arvind explains why AI needs that context to work well, why 80 to 90% of it lives in people’s heads, and how Glean feeds it to tools like Claude.

We also get into how Glean protects employee privacy, why word of mouth is still its biggest growth channel, and Arvind’s advice for graduates worried about AI. His most surprising answer is about lock-in: Glean wants to be easy to replace, because the memory its AI builds should belong to the enterprise.

Feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, and opinions at [email protected].

Chapters

00:00 Intro
01:51 How companies use Glean
06:46 Why not just use Claude?
10:27 Why Glean wants to be replaceable
13:13 How Glean protects employee privacy
15:28 How Glean got started
16:56 Word of mouth and rapid growth
18:25 What context really means
21:06 Rapid fire: scaling and fundraising
22:53 How Arvind spends his day as CEO
23:36 Career lessons and advice for graduates
25:34 Where the idea for Glean came from
26:08 Why big companies get slow
27:37 Where Glean saves people time
29:34 Is Glean Asana plus Claude?

Welcome to the new episode of the TNW Podcast, the show where we discuss the latest developments in the technology ecosystem and feature interviews with some of the most influential people in the industry.

In today’s episode, we’re happy to present an interview with Michael Atalla, Chief Marketing Officer of UiPath, the Romanian-born business orchestration and automation company. Michael explains why AI agents won’t replace humans: they can’t grasp intent or learn on the job, so the exceptions that need trust and judgment stay with people. He also argues that AI should augment our skills and that cutting junior jobs is a mistake.

We also get into the AI agent his marketing team built for ad data, the Process Atlas and Cartographer launches at FUSION, why low-risk AI pilots stall, and why AI slop means marketing still needs humans. His advice for anyone starting a career in tech is simple: move.

Feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, and opinions at [email protected].

00:00 Intro
00:51 Robots, agents, and orchestration explained
01:59 What companies use UiPath for
03:10 Why Michael joined UiPath
04:29 How UiPath automates its own marketing
07:30 Process Atlas and Cartographer at FUSION
11:34 What AI agents still can't do
13:12 How Romania shaped UiPath's culture
15:46 Why AI pilots get stuck
17:06 UiPath's vision beyond the AI hype
18:14 How AI is changing marketing
20:58 Will AI agents replace humans?
22:15 Why cutting junior jobs is a mistake
24:13 From writing code to CMO
24:59 Advice for anyone starting in tech

Welcome to the new episode of the TNW Podcast, the show where we discuss the latest developments in the technology ecosystem and feature interviews with some of the most influential people in the industry.

In today's episode, we're happy to present an interview with Tom Eggemeier, CEO of Zendesk, the customer and employee service company helping businesses automate their interactions with AI. Tom explains how Zendesk's AI revenue grew from about $0 to a projected $400M in 2 years, and why the company is moving from seats to outcome-based pricing.

We also get into why companies should always offer a human option, what AI means for jobs, and Tom's own use of AI, including how Meta's Muse agent saved him $3,105 on internet, TV, and mobile bills in 5 days. His prediction: within 2 years, more than 50% of customer interactions will be a personal AI agent talking to a company's AI agent.

Feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, and opinions at [email protected].

Welcome to the new episode of the TNW Podcast, the show where we discuss the latest developments in the technology ecosystem and feature interviews with some of the most influential people in the industry.

In today's episode, we're happy to present an interview with Xuedong (XD) Huang, CTO of Zoom, recorded in Amsterdam at a Zoom event ahead of HumanX. XD has worked on AI for more than forty years, over thirty of them at Microsoft, where he founded the Speech Technology Group and became CTO of Azure AI. He explains what he calls C to C, Zoom's shift from conversation to completion, and why he says My Notes and ZoomMate are like bringing Steve Jobs to every meeting you attend.

We also get into why Zoom runs models from OpenAI and Anthropic alongside its own small language model, an approach XD compares to a panel of gymnastics judges, and why the speech technology behind My Notes is now open to other companies through the Scribe API. XD shares how he uses AI in his own meetings, why the language barrier is still not solved, and his closing take: the more AI slop people have to deal with, the more valuable a face-to-face conversation becomes.

Feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, and opinions at [email protected].

Welcome to the new episode of the TNW Podcast, the show where we discuss the latest developments in the technology ecosystem and feature interviews with some of the most influential people in the industry.

In today's episode, we're happy to present an interview with Jim Lanzone, CEO of Yahoo, who joined the company in 2021 to lead its turnaround after the Apollo acquisition. Jim, who previously ran Ask Jeeves, CBS Interactive, and Tinder, explains why Yahoo is now past that phase and into its comeback, with 700M users a month and its biggest growth coming from Gen Z and Millennials.

We dig into Yahoo Scout, the company's new AI answer engine, and why Jim wants to restore the social contract of search by sending traffic back to the publishers that the first generation of AI answer engines left behind. Jim also shares his playbook for turning around big internet brands, the revenue model Yahoo had to reinvent, and his advice for anyone in their twenties who wants to build in tech.

Feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, and opinions at [email protected].

Welcome to the new episode of the TNW Podcast, the show where we discuss the latest developments in the technology ecosystem and feature interviews with some of the most influential people in the industry.

In today's episode, we're happy to present an interview with Chris Skipworth, CEO of PassPack, a cybersecurity company that brings credential security and governance to organizations without the complexity. Chris explains why compromised credentials remain one of the leading causes of breaches, and walks through the five stages of password maturity, from spreadsheets and sticky notes to full credential governance with audit trails and password rotation.

We also get into why small businesses are such a big target for hackers, how AI is changing the game on both the attack and defense sides, and why offboarding employees is one of the most overlooked security risks. Chris shares his own path from the semiconductor world into SaaS, the story behind acquiring PassPack, and his closing take: passwords open the doors, but credential governance decides who gets the keys and how long they keep them.

Feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, and opinions at [email protected].