Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast

These days there has been this surge of people who are developing influence within their specific corner of the market. They are digital creators who specialize in a niche and begin to establish themselves as experts in their field. 

The rise of influence has been less about celebrity, but these days it’s a strategic advantage for many entrepreneurs who want to build relationships, and ultimately leverage their personal brand to build their businesses 

Here’s the scenario: You are building your business, building your product and getting some critical traction. You want to move faster and start finding more customers and get ready for potential investment. But you are a small team, have limited social media presence.  

One thing you are good at is understanding the real estate industry. You were a former broker and now realize that this sector needs some major disruption. You are passionate about solving this problem. But for the sake of your growth, you realize you need to make an impact by establishing yourself as a thought leader in the real estate space.  

How do you do it?  Many startups don’t realize the value of establishing their own personal brands. With the rise of social media, that has closed the gap between promotion and community, there are endless opportunities to establish yourself as a tech leader that helps you and your company as you grow. 

We were happy to welcome two founders who are effectively building their tech brand on social media. 

Stephanie Lipp, Cofounder and CEO of MyCoFutures North Atlantic and  

Staci LaToison, founding Partner of Dream Big Ventures  

We’ll uncover their journey, why they decided to do it, understand the importance of authenticity, a critical ingredient in defining their presence. They will provide advice on how early stage founders can develop opportunities by building their personal brands and establishing themselves as tech leaders. 

Growth Hackers' determined that the greatest indicator of startup success is resilience: 

“You might feel that things are moving slow in your company – that is natural. You may make decisions, that, in retrospect may lead to undesired consequences, or perceived setbacks in your goal to reach critical milestones. If you are an entrepreneur building a brand new startup, you probably have trouble seeing any light at the end of the tunnel from time to time.” 

It’s how far startup success is defined by how far an entrepreneur is willing to go and wait to see its startup succeed. 

One often overlooked reality about startups is that launching and sustaining one is not as straightforward as successful entrepreneurs might lead you to believe. Even with the current resources available to aid the growth and development of startups, persistent challenges remain. As a budding startup entrepreneur, be prepared to navigate numerous obstacles and endure difficulties. 

Startups face many challenges in their journey to scale.  An entrepreneur’s ability to effectively manage these issues as they surface is a sign of your character as you grow. 

Many of these challenges are dependent on the relationships you create and cultivate along the way. What stories never get told are the failures that transpire because of these relationships. They could come from opportunistic clients unwilling to pay for services rendered, or from toxic employees or cofounders. They could come from once-enthusiastic partners willing to drive more value through their own relationships, but ultimately default on this promise. For many founders, these failures are hard lessons they take to the new set of relationships they encounter.  

• Developing the right team 
• Finding the right partners and vendors 
• Selecting the right VC 

Personally as a CEO, determining your limitations and making the decisions you think are right for the company, in those moments.

We were excited to host Devin Ramphal, Sector Manager for Innovation and Technology at the City of Brampton’s Economic Development Office and formerly CEO/Cofounder of Clean AIR which was acquired in 2023 and Jennifer Cameron, Co-founder and CEO of INVRS and formerly the founder of hyperWALLET, which was acquired by Paypal in 2018 for $400Million. 

Both had important stories as founders who have navigated relationships in their startup journeys and provided some great insight from their own experiences to help founders build resilience. 

Will 2024 will be another challenging year for startup founders?  

The world bank came out with the following prediction for 2024: 

“Global growth is projected to slow for the third year in a row—from 2.6% last year to 2.4% in 2024, almost three-quarters of a percentage point below the average of the 2010s. Developing economies are projected to grow just 3.9%, more than one percentage point below the average of the previous decade.” 

They are dubbing it the “Weakest Half-Decade Performance in 30 Years" 

This is a so-called recession that never really came (because of low unemployment, despite higher interest rates)  there are indications similar to what we’ve seen at the start of the Ukraine/Russia war (2 years ago) that set off an economic fallout that saw the steep fall of Crypto and NFT and, in parallel massive investment pullout from overvalued startups  that received millions in funding during the pandemic. 

This time while the global economy is in a better place, mounting geopolitical tensions.  Innovation will take a hit as we’ve already witnessed at the end of 2023 with rising tech layoffs 

 “Amazon saw the most workers laid off in 2023 (27,410 workers) followed by Meta (21,000), Google  (12,115) and Microsoft (11,158).” This continued as we ventured into the new year with more layoffs from Big Tech 

In the fall of 2023 David Wright, Investment Analyst remarked, “Investor returns in the VC industry have not always paid up for the risks involved in private investments.” 

Wright noted that in the last 4 decades, VC fund performance had its ebbs and flows with the mid-to late nineties being the standout period. “The average returns from VC investments have consistently hovered around 9%, comparable to public markets,” but Wright highlights that the more telling metric is the “1.8% returns indicating that there is a disproportionate performance that favors a handful of VCs while the “majority have largely underperformed.” 

Will investors be more measured and discriminating in their search for promising ventures this year? For founders, what is in store for them as the year unfolds and how should they be managing their businesses to improve growth, increase their visibility to investors, and to essentially weather this uncertainty? 

We were pleased to host three seasoned startup advisors and investors: 

Bryan Duarte - Bryan Duarte is a Social Venturist, Serial Entrepreneur, a Professional Engineer and has over 30 years of experience in the Energy Industry. He is the Managing Partner at BlackTech Capital and our newest EIR at Altitude Accelerator. 

Glenn Nishimura - Glenn Nishimura is the Principal and Chief People Strategist at Nishimura Consulting, based in Toronto, Canada. As an experienced advisor, consultant, and mentor, he helps early and growth stage startups and scale-ups across North America, Asia, and Europe to build and optimize their teams, culture, and people operations. 

Olga Cruz is a Senior Associate at impact investing firm Good & Well. She leads the impact management practice and sources, analyzes, and invests in early-stage Canadian businesses. Her prior roles involved investing in healthcare and agricultural innovations. She also dedicated her efforts to supporting entrepreneurs in conflict-affected regions, guiding them towards investor readiness. 

Check out the full article on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hessiejones/2024/01/29/is-2024-the-year-of-investor-restraint-and-startup-resilience-eight-experts-weigh-in/?sh=65a49935678a

AI has consumed the tech space and mainstream business. What implications does generative AI have on cybersecurity? Will it change the threat landscape for better or worse?  At Collision, Hessie Jones interviewed Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password to discuss the implications to personal information and how will passwordless technology help combat these threats. 

As of February 2023, 850 million people globally don’t have an ID: no birth certificate, national ID–a legal identification that enables access to basic services like setting up bank accounts, getting a job–a system we’ve taken for granted in the West. Solving the identity problem becomes more pronounced as societies become increasingly digital. This will further elevate the need for secure and convenient ways to verify a person’s identity as they transact and communicate online or remotely. This comes at a juncture as we face many problems with impersonations, deep fakes, AI generated media and content where safety and trust become just as crucial especially as generative AI accelerates.  

We welcome Riley Hughes, CEO of Trinsic, leading infrastructure for issuing and accepting reusable ID credentials from a network of providers. Riley has been early to the Self-Sovereign Identity space. He's worked with communities that have been evolving the technology and governance in this area and with his company, he is paving the future for how we manage our identities. 

Theodora Lau recently wrote a Linkedin post called "Where are the Women?"

This was a timely post that responded to the slap in the face to many women, who have made incredible strides to affect substantive change in AI, who saw the NYT article that snubbed the work of prominent women like Fei Fei Li, Timnit Gebru, Kate Crawford, Joy Buolamwini, Meg Mitchell and others too numerous to mention. 

This article came off the week of drama that saw Sam Altman re-installed as the  CEO of OpenAI, when 5 days before, he had been fired.

What we’re witnessing is an increasing polarization within the industry where, despite the significant efforts of women engineers, data scientists, policy makers and professionals in AI, there continues to be a lack of recognition and respect for their work and their voices in industry, and in the media.   

This continues to be contentious and women across the AI world are rightfully angered at this perpetual lack of respect for the cumulation of work that has been done by women, and the non-binary community – the perpetual underrepresentation of these critical voices. 

This comes at a time when everyone– researchers and mainstream– are worried about the further development of AI technology and its implications for humanity:  jobs, lack of access (knowledge, skills, economic, geography, income), where representation matters as these technologies are built. 

Theodora Lau is the founder of Unconventional Ventures, a public speaker, and an advisor. She is the co-author of The Metaverse Economy (2023) and Beyond Good (2021), and host of One Vision, a podcast on fintech and innovation. Through her work, she explores the intersection of financial services, tech, and humanity. 

Theo’s recent blog post  had me nodding my head and questioning why this is happening? I reached out for a much-needed conversation.

Will new emerging technologies assist engineers in enhancing their capabilities or will their jobs simply be done for them? At Collision, 2023, Hessie Jones met with Maxim Fateev, CEO of Temporal and Anand Kulkarni, CEO of Crowdbotics.

Both organizations are making it increasingly easier for engineers in light of the advances in Generative AI. One school of thought: it's much easier to replace certain aspects of desktop jobs than replace labor skills like carpenters or construction workers. Everything that works well in AI is happening behind the screen currently, but not so much in the physical world and these may be the the jobs most vulnerable.

How has automation impacted current engineering roles and practices? Have there been areas within this segment that have already been disrupted? How do both see the future role of the engineer?

The future of the internet is really all about building on the promise of Web3 is about a decentralized internet, that brings more powers to creators, where monetization dispels of current ad models, and where people become the owners/purveyors of their identity and the things they create.  

I met Julie Smithson at Decoding Tech in Toronto. Julie is CoFounder of MetaVRse & XR Women, host of the Polys Awards & Working and building in immersive technologies since 2010. Julie has been instrumental in educating about the metaverse and pioneering capabilities across different sectors. 

We will learn more about Web3 aka the Metaverse, where it is today and what is the promise of society tomorrow.

From the sidelines, reading the media reports on the weekend of November 17 it was a series of irrepressible events that unfolded that weekend and the coming days. It was considered a tumultuous weekend, a series of uncontrolled outcomes, each with its own significance to the fallout of OpenAI and its employees. While the world watched this drama unfold online, no one would have guessed the outcome of events that transpired within the course of the coming days: the firing of Sam Altman… the quitting of OpenAI president, Greg Brockman and the threatened resignations from 700 employees of Open AI… to the requested resignation of the Board… to the hiring of Brockman and Altman as new MS employees… to the final decision to reinstate Altman as CEO of Open AI with new board members in tow – all in the course of 5 days. 

What these events with Open AI and Microsoft have signalled are some unprecedented implications for the AI community, its researchers and more importantly the more far reaching impacts to the society for which AI is built.

So what does this all mean...
 - when a nonprofit side, with no financial incentives is unable to effectively oust an executive because of legitimate safety concerns
- when a structure that was put in place to mitigate the risk of unilaterial control of advanced AI  and was essentially was usurped by the same capitalistic forces - this structure were designed to prevent

We welcome Christoph Schuhmann, Cofounder of LAION.AI, Large-scale Artificial Intelligence Open Network, a non profit organization, who has a large community of volunteers, data scientistis, researchers, practitioners developing applications in this field, to weigh in on the events of November 17-21, 2023 and what it means to the AI Community

We are currently living in a time of greater uncertainty.  The Pandemic has created an environment that caused us to abandon the safety of what we once knew to be the tried and true, the way things have always been done and to trust in our instincts to create an environment that is safe, productive, effective without risking loss to the team or the culture.  

Some companies within the technology industry have led the way during the Pandemic: the first ones to be able to adapt to remote work, with ready infrastructure to easily morph while the traditional in-person organizations struggled.  But now, everyone begins to see a new world and how it’s evolved; what are the expectations from employees? No longer is anyone expecting that we go back to status quo. Companies need to be different, think differently and adapt to the new world – we are not going back. 

Leadership needs to lead the way in navigating these new expectations and how things change or not.  We will be talking about leadership for startup founders. 

We welcome Carlos Granda former Google VP Customer Success, advisor and mentor and someone who frequently talks about the role of leadership and creating a culture that can sustain a crazy or horrific event like the world lived through the pandemic.  

In 2020, when the Pandemic mandated the move to remote work, Turing raised $32million in Series B funding to define a future where companies could push a button to spin up their engineering team instantly. In 2021, Fast Company listed Turing as one of the most innovative workplace companies. In great company with the likes of Asana, Atlassian, Gitlab, Slack, and Zoom, Turing defines itself as an international hiring platform that brings together remote software developers and leverages their unique AI vetting process to match the right teams with projects.  

I met with Jonathan Siddharth, founder and CEO of Turing, to dive into his AI-powered tech services platform and his vision to unleash the world’s untapped human potential.  

The value of the distributed ledger is baked into the promise of Web3, where equity, access and accountability occur within a shared governance and self-organizing ecosystem; and where creators can truly own what they produce and enable and control new value creation.   

We’ve purposely left out the word, “Blockchain” in this title because it has become synonymous with Cryptocurrency. The value of the distributed ledger, in and of itself, creates an infrastructure that may not only increase access, but also mitigate some of the risks we see today. 

The growth of Internet of Things (IoT) and the connected devices, gadgets and systems will bring the full power of the internet to society and business. International Data Corp. (IDC) predicts that, in 2025, 75% of the 55.7 billion devices will link to an IoT platform of some sort. Though it’s ever-expanding and innovative, it’s not all-powerful. These billions of devices will need more security and efficiency. 

Today, Generative AI and the mounting bias, manipulation, ownership and data privacy issues add a whole other dimension to how we manage systems as IoT, including the increasing computational load created by these technologies. 

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Jacob Mendel, who is a seasoned veteran of Blockchain technology, having served as Managing Director of the Blockchain Institute, Tel Aviv University. He is currently Head of Digital Cryptography & Cybersecurity of State Street. 

We explore the importance of distributed ledgers and why this is critical to the future infrastructure. We will define decentralized technology, how it may solve the problems of central authority, and how emerging AI technologies will adapt to a future in a distributed infrastructure.  

2023 is a year that has been marked by technological leaps. It is not surprising to see the confluence of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics which promises to reshape industries and redefine labor.  

Today there are about 3,000,000 industrial robots around the globe, with roughly 400,000 new robots entering the market every year. And the global market is expected to reach almost $43.8 billion in revenue in 2023 with a 10% CAGAR growth through to 2029 in North America alone.  

Many startups developing robotic arms could help factories address labor shortages and mitigate future supply-chain disruptions. 

I had the privilege of speaking with Peter Chen, the Co-founder and CEO of Covariant.  Peter and his co-founders have been at the forefront of AI advancement since they were research scientists at OpenAI.  We discussed the implications of AI-infused robotics in manufacturing, the critical challenges in labor shortages and supply chain disruptions, the transformative journey that Chen and Covariant are pioneering and when AI Robotics will have its ChatGPT Moment. 

In a digital environment rampant with adoption of emerging artificial intelligence technologies, data continues to drive considerable value. The risk to confidential and personal information continues to be an ongoing threat.

Enter decentralized identity, an emerging paradigm of digital identity that champions the principles such as individuals having control over their own information and being able to selectively share them with others as needed. Verifiable Credentials, a rising standard and enabler of decentralized identity, are gaining adoption by public and private sectors across the world, including the European Union.  

Verifiable credentials are a type of digital credential protected by modern cryptography. They contain digital representation of information or attributes about an individual, organization, or thing. These include educational degrees, digital driver’s licenses, employment records or certifications. These credentials can be shared across various services to streamline processes that require proof of identity or qualification while still maintaining the privacy and security of that information.

Verifiable Credentials are designed to provide a secure and tamper-resistant way of verifying and sharing personal or organizational data. Together with other decentralized identity technology, Verifiable Credentials are enabling our systems to allow individual data control, and to increase trust by reducing reliance on central authorities. What does this mean to the future of data privacy?

We welcomed Lucy Yang, Managing Partner of Identity Woman in Business. Lucy has been working in the decentralized identity space for 4 years and was also Community Director and Committee Chair of the Covid Credentials Initiative, which sought to address privacy issues and concerns of sharing COVID and health information through verifiable credentials. We discussed the principles of decentralized identity and how a community has evolved them into new infrastructures to solve today’s data privacy issues and how this will interplay with the rampant development of Generative AI.  

Great fundraising stories require robust financial models. Founders looking to raise capital need to be able to effectively articulate performance and future activities by defending their numbers. Investors want to understand your overall business strategy and the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ behind your performance and your projected financials. 

Your ability to answer questions at the macro and micro level of your business is crucial to obtaining stakeholders’ confidence as your business grows. A good financial strategy developed will be the key to making critical decisions over time and allows you to articulate your business strategy and growth plans. 

We spoke with Yanky Li, an advisor to technology start-ups who had previously co-founded an AI/real estate company and helped a fintech unicorn get to where it is today.  He is a CPA in both Canada and Australia.  By having a founder mindset, he has helped those who want to change the world in their own way. Yanky helped us break down the importance of not only building a robust financial model, but also how it interplays with all aspects of your business. We will delve into how it can be leveraged for resource allocation, strategic planning and for risk management.  For startup founders, a comprehensive financial provides transparency, evidence of financial viability and a roadmap for a company's growth. 

The inspiration behind Superhuman struck CEO, Rahul Vohra during an Uber ride, an experience that reshaped his perspective on productivity, giving users the gift of time. 

As the CEO of Superhuman, Rahul Vohra has dedicated himself to solving one of the most pressing challenges of our digital age - email overload. I met with Rahul Vohra, who proudly shares Superhuman as the fastest email experience in the world, with platform users enjoying inbox speeds twice as fast as traditional email clients, empowering them to respond to crucial messages promptly.  

In this interview, we talked about the early years at Superhuman and his seemingly elusive goal of achieving product/market fit, how Generative AI is changing the game for productivity, and how he’s helping fuel growth for other startups.  

Marketing ROI continues to be a budget black hole. 

The advent of digital has created mechanisms for marketing accountability. Before digital, it was difficult to validate the halo effect from television impressions or magazine or print reach. With the rise of digital came services within AdTech, the growth of SEO, SEM, attribution software. now more than ever Marketers have a wide range of opportunities and tools to develop sound ROI model that is trackable. 

But here’s the rub, companies are often frustrated by marketing spend by not understanding how to effectively track their return to the pipeline. In larger organizations this is typically a rift between marketing and finance. But even in highly technical startup organizations – they too miss the key step of establishing marketing operations early in their journey. 

We welcomed Samantha Lloyd to discuss this. Samantha Lloyd is the co-founder and Managing Director of Skeleton Krew, a marketing agency focused on achieving a strong, high-growth return on marketing activities for business-facing technology companies across US and Canada. Samantha offers over a decade of experience building organic growth, brand, and digital marketing channels for business-facing companies. Samantha acts as Marketing Director or Head of Marketing for various clients in the technology industry. 

We discussed how marketing has evolved and how startups should begin to see marketing as a tremendous opportunity to build awareness and brand strength even before they are ready to sell. Samantha believes that by understanding what is important to track and why -- for business growth and properly investing in the correct channels this can make a difference in the success of a business. 

This is the state of Generative AI Today. The stunning speed of adoption of ChatGPT since its release in November 2022 has been extraordinary 

ChatGPT currently has 1.16 billion users. It crossed 1 billion users in March 2023. These numbers depicted an increase of almost 55% from February 2023 to March 2023. 

It managed to cross 1 million users within 5 days of its launch and 100 million users within two months. 

By the end of 2024, it is expected to generate a revenue of $ 1 billion.  

Almost 88% of the traffic on ChatGPT is direct traffic 

Let’s compare this in context with other major technology adoption: 

It took 38 years for Radio to reach 50 million users 

It took TV 13 years to reach 50 million users 

When Ipod first launched, it took 3 years to reach 50 million users 

Facebook added 200 million years users in less than a year 

What users quickly found was that productivity went through the roof.  ChatGPT could understand and answer questions beyond a normal search query.  It could be a great source to brainstorm ideas. It could explain complex things. It could draft letters. It could summarize long documents. It could write and debug code. It could translate in multiple languages. It could also write long form content or essays. 

It is the one solution that’s being integrated into our everyday lives – to increase productivity, to access the right information much more quickly. 

While there is this growing dependence on it, right now we should be cautious about how we’re using it. It is not a panacea or replacement for human reasoning. There are areas where technology is still nascent and it’s not performing so well. 

We hosted Dr. Augustine Fou, a veteran of digital marketing with nearly 30 years of experience. We dove into questions about ChatGPT and why it’s been taking the world by storm, why you should still be cautious and interrogate its efficacy, and more importantly, how should you be leveraging the technology in a rational way. 

Today, we are witnessing the price of progress. As generative AI swiftly evolves amidst a booming landscape of adoption, the marvels of artificial intelligence are met with astounding costs and challenges. The allure from the VC community and tech giants, who have invested billions of dollars into startups specializing in generative AI technologies have not considered the underlying reality of these high costs that threaten this current boom.  

As of June 2023, ChatGPT has received 60 million visits daily, with 10 million queries per day. As of April 2023, it was estimated that to run ChatGPT would cost $70,000 per day at an average cost of $0.36 per question. In June, however, “Tom Goldstein, an AI ML Professor at Maryland University, has estimated the daily cost of running ChatGPT to be approximately $100,000 and the monthly cost to be USD$3 million.”  

This recent article profiled one startup, Latitude, which found itself grappling with exorbitant bills as their AI-powered games, like AI Dungeon, gained popularity. Latitude's text-based role-playing game utilized OpenAI's GPT language technology, resulting in soaring costs proportional to the game's usage. Content marketers' unexpected usage of AI Dungeon for generating promotional copy further exacerbated the startup’s financial strain.  

One of the primary reasons for the high cost of generative AI is the substantial computing power required for “training and inference.” 

I met with Laurent Gil, former lead of Oracle’s Internet Intelligence Group and current Cofounder of CAST AI, which is an ML powered cloud optimization platform that analyzes millions of data points, looking for the optimal balance of high performance at the lowest cost.  CAST AI determines how much you can save, then reallocates your cloud resources in real time to hit the target with no impact to performance.  

What investors want is not always aligned with what founders expect in how they appeal to investors. The gap between what investors expect and what founders believe when it comes to funding is often attributed to different goals and perspectives.  

Investors are primarily focused on maximizing return on their investments and managing risks while founders are emotionally attached to their ideas and prioritize growth and innovation.  This gap can lead to misalignment in expectations.  Founders may not have a complete understanding of the investors’ decision-making process and criteria, so regardless of their own confidence in developing unique value to a market, it may not necessarily conform to these elements for which they are being judged. 

In this time of inflation, uncertainty and rising interest rates, these conditions increase the cost of capital, which in turn, may result in downward rounds for startups, and ultimately influences the shift towards safer investments. While the environment plays a key role in determining whether a company is funded there are other factors at play. 

We were pleased to host two seasoned investors in the startup space: 

Karen Grant – has been involved in early stage investing since the 1990s, after a 12-year career at IBM.  She has launched four angel-investor groups, operated a business incubator and a commercialization centre for the University of Toronto, and been a founder, investor and director of a number of technology companies.  

David Wright – has spent his career supporting technology-enhanced, high-growth companies. He provides capital markets, corporate finance and valuation advisory services through Capital Advisors. He's a mentor for a few of Ontario’s Regional Innovation Centres, and was an equity research analyst, investment banker, and an executive director of an Angel Network. 

Karen and David helped an understanding of what matters to investors and deconstruct the myths in startup investing especially in today’s climate.