Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast

For founders who are in the early stages of their product concepts, they should begin the process of determining how to make their solution real. If you are bootstrapping founder who does not have a technical resource in-house, developing your MVP can be cost prohibitive if you choose to develop locally.  Also, many non-technical founders, especially those who are part of under-represented groups or are immigrants may have great ideas but may not have the network and relationships to find a good technical cofounder. 

Offshoring could be another option for you. Offshoring can help early stage, nontechnical founders turn their ideas into tangible and commercially viable products at a very low cost, compressing their time to market and improving their chances of getting early-stage investing. 

But this doesn’t come without risks. You are exposing some critical parts of your company to a third party – your tech infrastructure, databases. How do you deal with the time differences and project delivery? What are the communication challenges when it comes to culture and language?  What are the security risks that come into play? What are the ideal use cases for offshore development? 

We spoke with Tauseef Riaz, Co-Founder and CTO of ConsidraCare, and Cofounder of Mashcraft, a digital transformation offshore services company. He is a serial entrepreneur, who is also all too familiar with the benefits and challenges with offshoring.  Tauseef helped break down the benefits and showed how offshoring can reduce scaleup cash burns and lower the costs of any pivots around the business model or the tech stacks. 

In an era that has given rise to e-commerce and digital transactions, fraud has become an ever-pressing challenge for retailers. Cybersecurity Ventures estimates cyber-crime cost organizations $1.9 million every minute, and with cybercrime costs predicted to grow by 15% to a staggering $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, businesses are grappling with the need to optimize their revenue streams while safeguarding against the downside risks of fraudulent activities.  

Some alarming statements from the report: 

“If it were measured as a country, then cybercrime ...would be the world’s third-largest economy after the U.S. and China.” 

“This represents the greatest transfer of economic wealth in history, risks the incentives for innovation and investment, is exponentially larger than the damage inflicted from natural disasters in a year, and will be more profitable than the global trade of all major illegal drugs combined.” 

Amid this complex landscape, Signifyd, a company driven by big data and machine learning, has emerged as a champion of “fearless” commerce, providing retailers with a powerful shield against fraud and chargebacks. I spoke with Raj Ramanand, Co-Founder and CEO of Signifyd to discuss how they are tackling this pervasive threat. 

You are ready to develop your Minimum Viable Product (MVP). You’ve done your research and you feel you have everything you need to move to the development phase. Have you truly considered who you are developing for? Have you tapped into the earliest users and their needs? What are the essential functions and features?  Have you developed a test plan?  

Michael Siebel of YCombinator professes that your MVP shouldn’t be that special. It has extremely limited functionality based on what your initial users need from the highest order of problems. 

Did you know that AirBNB’s MVP was not that special?  The first version had users exchanging payments with the host in real life. They also did not have a map feature to denote location. 

The YC ethos for any prelaunch startup is to launch quickly. And if you can, launch something “bad” quickly. This will save you much grief down the road.    

We hosted Stephen McCabe, Co-Founder of Northern Devs, a software development company with a goal to make building tech approachable, equitable, and efficient.  They help many startup founders launch their MVPs. Stephen helped us dive deeper into defining processes and best practices that startups can use at the early stages of their product development. 

Privacy has become a precious commodity. It is often at odds with the pervasive nature of surveillance. Tech giants and governments alike have harnessed the power of technology to gain unprecedented access to personal data, raising concerns about individual privacy and the health of democratic societies. 

To examine this complex issue, I sat down with Andy Yen, the Co-founder and CEO of Proton, a privacy-focused company behind Proton Mail, to discuss the implications of the surveillance society and the urgent need for safeguarding user privacy. 

Today, TikTok is arguably one of the most engaging social networking platforms in the world. Available in over 150 countries, with over 1 billion users, with downloads over 210 million times in the United States alone, this app is used by about 130 million Americans and 3.2 million Canadians per month. It is the 4th largest social networking site behind FB, YouTube and Instagram. Its user base is more pervasive among Generation Z. In 2022, TikTok’s annual revenue from ads came in at $11.04 billion, a 200% increase from 2021.

Recently lawmakers in Canada and US have continued to express concern that TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance maybe putting user sensitive data into the hands of the Chinese government. Recently, the US Federal government has banned TikTok on all government devices. The Canadian federal government including Ontario followed suit. India and Pakistan, had, already 2 years ago banned TikTok. Other countries on this bandwagon include France, Netherlands, UK, Belgium, Denmark, Taiwan, and Afghanistan.

By all accounts, there is a real possibility that users and businesses in Canada may soon further restrict access to TikTok. This will have significant impacts on business, especially access to and engaging the coveted Generation Z.

We invite Sergey. Ross, a video content creator, YouTuber with an in-depth background in marketing. He has worked with business from startup to enterprise on podcast production, demand generation, marketing and content strategy. He recently co-founded a new type of video production company called SWAY, bringing creator knowledge to B2B. Sergey’s experience makes him the ideal expert to delve into the best practices when it comes to effectively interacting and engaging with your customers. We’ll discuss best practices for these digital formats, as well as address the implications of the real possibility of TikTok’s permanent ban and what this will mean to founders.

The International Education Market is expected to soar to $433Billion by 2030. Admission Overseas has developed a solution to move at the speed of global demand. 

Across the globe, the demand to pursue education in North American post-secondary institutions has witnessed an extraordinary surge. Students are increasingly drawn to the exceptional academic standards, extensive program offerings, and career prospects available in Canada and the United States. The reputation of these institutions for providing high-quality education coupled with the multicultural experiences they offer has created an unparalleled appeal. As a result, the demand for admission to North American colleges and universities has reached unprecedented levels, creating both challenges and opportunities for students and recruitment agencies alike. 

This study by HolonIQ stipulates the International Education Market of $196 Billion is expected to soar to $433Billion by 2030. Currently 75% of demand is coming from Asia. With the rising middle-class populations, increasing disposable incomes, and a desire for global exposure and better educational opportunities, countries like China and India are taking advantage of post-secondary education opportunities abroad.  

One startup, Admission Overseas is emerging as a trailblazer through a solution that can move at the speed of the global demand. Led by founder Himanshu Barthwal, the company is at the forefront of leveraging generative AI to streamline the admission process, enhance success rates, and foster diversity in colleges and universities. I spoke to Himanshu Barthwal to find out how Admission Overseas is making a significant impact in this market. 

The resistance to change is emblematic in a sector that has idealized practices and the legacy systems that have been working for decades. One founder seeks to disrupt this. 

AI adoption continues to lag in the healthcare sector. The complexity and sensitivity of patient data, how they’re governed and communicated within systems and between institutions requires significant time and investment. The last decade saw health information data slowly becoming digitized however strict privacy regulations, security requirements, and liability concerns–have all made AI challenging to fully integrate into the industry. 

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare holds immense potential for transforming patient care and outcomes. Navigating the ethical landscape of healthcare data usage is a crucial consideration.  

I met with Devin Singh, the founder and CEO of Hero AI, an early-stage health tech company, to delve into the challenges surrounding healthcare data usage, the need for advocacy as he pushes for significant change within a highly regulated sector.   

Chemical surfactants, ubiquitous in our everyday lives, serve as critical ingredients in an array of consumer products, ranging from cleaning agents, personal care products to cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. These compounds enable the effective dispersion of substances and are vital to enhancing the properties of the products we use today. Over time, this has come at a steep cost to the environment and human health. 

Derived primarily from palm and petroleum sources, the conventional surfactants have contributed to depletion of natural resources and the mounting concerns over the downstream impact of toxic chemical agents on the individual well-being as well as the adverse effects to our environmental ecosystems. 

The global surfactants market was valued at $41.3 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach $58.5 billion by 2027, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.3% during the forecast period from 2020 to 2027. 

Despite this surge in demand, the market faces its own challenges including stringent government regulations on synthetic or petrochemical-based surfactants. This has led to a shift towards bio-based and renewable surfactants. 

One company, Dispersa, emerges as a beacon of change, transforming food waste into eco-friendly biosurfactants. Recently, Dispersa closed $3 million in funding, led by Invest Nova Scotia, and included the participation of the Fonds Économie Circulaire (Circular Economy Fund), Fondaction, Dragonfly Ventures, Good & Well, and BoxOne Ventures. 

 
I met with Nivatha Balendra, Founder and CEO of Dispersa and with Olga Cruz, Investor of Good & Well at Collision. We examined Balendra’s personal journey, the imperative shift towards more sustainable solutions in the chemical industry and the need for more impactful innovation in clean tech. 

After an exhausting and exhilarating 3 days of Collision, we wrapped up the event with an interview with Paddy Cosgrave, Founder and CEO of Web Summit and Collision, two of the fastest growing tech events in the world. 

The event which was hosted in Toronto since 2019 drew attendance of 36,378 from 118 countries in Toronto.  

In addition, a record-breaking 30 percent of startups this year this year are 

• women-founded; 41 percent of attendees are women; 36 percent of speakers are women 

• 1,727 startups and partners from 76 countries and almost 30 industries exhibited 

 • CA$188 million has been injected into the Toronto economy over the course of the three in-person Collision events since 2019 

We spoke to Paddy about the impetus of WebSummit and the important initiatives to improve representation in tech: The Indigenous Attendee Program and Amplify representing more than 130 startups as part of the commitment to prioritize underrepresented communities. He shared his views on what makes this year different than previous years and why the decision to bring Collision back to Toronto in 2024. 

Stay tuned for amazing interviews from Collision incoming!

Google continues to be the window to the internet. It is the intelligence that informs real time intentions, and what people are searching for. Great SEO continues for business to be the way to let search engines know that your business pages can answer people’s queries.  

The advent of Generative AI can uplevel the playing field and create avenues for content creation, images, code, video.  The speed at which original content creation – loved by search engines – can be created will have significant effects on SEO effectiveness. The larger impact may be to the threat to Google and its bread and butter?  Will this be the technology to finally unseat the search engine giant? 

And will it be the beginning to change the rules for building business awareness, traffic and ultimately revenue? 

We welcomed Steve Taylor, Instructor at Schulich School of Business, who had some significant roots in Search. He started working with Search in the 1990s and has been one of the leaders at Yahoo! Search Marketing as well as iProspect and has seen the evolution of search engine marketing, with the rise of social media, influencer marketing and the multibillion-dollar ad technology industry.  Steve took us through the importance of SEO and where it could evolve in the next decade. 

Sales is one of the toughest jobs in any industry.  And it’s only going to get harder with evolving buyer behaviors towards digital engagement and self-directed research wreaking havoc on sales engagement strategies.    Driving successful sales outcomes means the right composition of individuals and process. What does this look like? How do the two work together? 

We spoke to Robert Simon, VP of Strategic Sales at NOW Vertical Group. Robert is a dynamic, performance-driven sales executive who has been on the leading edge of selling digital disruption and transformation for twenty years. As a strategic sales leader, Robert has led sales, digital marketing, and e-commerce teams into growth engine powerhouses. 

For startups who are developing innovations that will disrupt current ways of doing things, it’s important to understand how much mindset and methodology are critical to sales. Robert shared his experiences in selling transformational technologies and the levers to pull in order to create an effective sales strategy and process that drives revenue outcomes. 

A business needs a leader, a builder, and a marketer. You may find that in one person, but often times, you will need to build a team with these complimentary skills in order to properly manage and scale a business.  We welcomed David Peterson, who founded his own coaching company and was previously a regional manager for IT Operations for HSBC that covered 8 countries. David provides insight in how to develop the right team.

“Collapse does not happen suddenly it is a result of an erosion over time until a breaking point arrives.”  Andre Picard on the state of our healthcare system – Globe & Mail 

We were pleased to host Rishad Usmani, MD  to discuss the state of healthcare system in Canada. From the ack of available nurses, long wait times, our doctor shortage and increasing calls to privatization of our long-coveted free-health-care for everyone is at risk. How did we get here? Do we turn to technology to help fix some of the gaps that exist today?

Entrepreneurs have big ideas. They have a vision for how they want to change the world. They’ve validated their idea and want to get started in bringing this to fruition. They need someone who can, not only build this for them, but someone who is willing to become a significant member of the team to help in its growth and commit to the long term. 

Finding the right technical cofounder goes beyond the skills necessary to build a great product.  There are many other soft-skills required; there are expectations to be managed. 

In this environment where demand for developers means developers, and especially CTOs can command higher compensation, finding the right person to help you lead in this endeavour can be a daunting process. As a founder, your job is not only to find ones that are skilled enough to do the task, but also being able to determine cultural fit, alignment on vision and growth and being able to sell these things as opportunities in absence of the higher compensation they are used to receiving. 

How do you go about doing this? What are the things you should consider in qualifying your cofounder? How do you engage with the right one and manage their expectations? What does this new cofounder marriage look like to ensure a sustainable relationship for the company? 

We were privileged to speak with Glenn Nishimura, 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 scaleups across North America, Asia, and Europe to build and optimize their teams, culture, and people operations.

Glenn provided clarity in finding the right technical cofounder to help a founder build a successful business.

It’s been called the toughest jobs in industry. For startups who are building their business from the ground up, finding the right customer who is willing to buy your product can be daunting.

This is where all companies start out. They have an idea. They go out to talk to people to validate the idea. They build it with all this feedback in mind. And they identify the ideal customer profile that would benefit the most from their product, put this target list together and they’re ready to go out and sell. 

For startups the first 100 days are probably the most difficult. Through all their cold calls or cold emails, they may get a few call backs. Some of those transpire into meetings. Many times, those meetings don’t convert into further meetings. What are they doing wrong? More importantly, How do they adjust? 

We were privileged to welcome our guest, Faheem Rauf of  Rauf and Associates.  He’s a seasoned sales professional and he’s taught his course on Customer Obsession to many of his clients including Ford Motor Company, Royal Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Scotland, HBO, Credit Suisse among many others. He argues these principles apply to early-stage companies.

We are all familiar with the phrase “Fail Fast”.  The “fail fast” philosophy values extensive testing and incremental development to determine whether the idea has value.  The important goal of the philosophy is to cut losses when testing reveals something is not working and quickly try something else known as pivoting.  The goal is not to perfect the concept but get it good enough to get it out to the market, then continuously improve it through market feedback. 

We spoke to Ralph Christian Delos Santos of Biofect Innovations; Pushkar Kumar and Chitral Angammana, of NanoRial Technologies Ltd – two companies who have pivoted and are here to tell their stories.

We see it time and again. One of the last things companies invest in when they’re starting their company is marketing. The developer is hired before the marketer. The product is designed without consideration of who it’s for.  The product is tweaked without talking to a customer. Marketing strategy takes a back seat to product strategy, and this is a fatal flaw. 

One of the most common marketing myths?  Marketing is the same thing as Promotion. In fact, Promotion, which includes PR and advertising, is ONLY one subset of marketing. But this misunderstanding is the reason why companies dismiss the need for marketing. Perhaps you are not ready to talk publicly about your business or products, but this does not mean that you do not need marketing. This is the groundwork a founder needs to establish in order to determine if they have a viable business. The foundations of revenue and building a sustainable business begin here. 

We spoke to seasoned experts, Angela Bourne, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Altitude Accelerator and Kevin Smith, Founder of The Story Architect, and marketing instructor for Altitude’s Incubator Program, who  broke down some of these myths and make the case for how a proper marketing strategy will help founders build better companies that will endure.  

For many start-ups developing a financial model is a daunting task.  Why are they necessary? How do I build one? What should it include? Geoff Simonett, Investor, Advisor, Entrepreneur-in-Residence and formerly one of the founders of GreenSky Capital, and currently the President of Pinelands Capital, joins us to tackle this challenging topic for many startups: the importance of building a financial model; the fundamentals, and what it means as the foundation for their business.

Have we finally arrived? Has technology finally given us the ease and convenience that we’ve been striving for?  
  
From ChatGPT, Dall-E2, Lensa, Generative AI is all the rage... or is it just hype?  
 
ChatGPT has been known to generate emails or replies on any given prompt. It is now a threat to Google search by delivering relevant web results. It can generate text summaries from video and write your tweets and comments and replies. But the same technology has also been known to generate darker capabilities like creating malware, generating phishing emails, steal information and eerily make even the most discerning humans unable to differentiate what is human vs. computer generated outputs.  
  
Is Generative AI ready for mainstream? More importantly, are we ready to trust its eventuality? Have we finally acquiesced human creativity to the machines? If so, what is human purpose?  
 
We welcome Amir Feizpour, CEO and Cofounder of Aggregate Intellect and Patricia Thaine, CEO and Cofounder, of Private AI who will tackle questions about whether the world is ready for Generative AI and vice versa, and what will it mean to the future society? 

In 2022, the state of global venture capital funding reached $74.5 B in Q3 of 2022, minus 34% quarter over quarter loss and the largest quarterly percentage drop in a decade according to CB Insights. 
 
This marked a 9.5% quarterly drop and 7 quarter low – with just under 8000 deals being done in Q3 2022. 
 
For many startups will 2023 follow the same trend from the last 2 quarters of 2022? There are pundits who say the recession, if it happens, will be shortlived because it is Fed Induced, in an economy that is growing. 
 
For startups, they need to consider funding options in light of this uncertainty. Whether it is short-lived or not, this will influence investor confidence. 
 
For early-stage startups, where VC funding is less likely in this climate, what are the funding alternatives? 

We spoke to Alexander Morsink, Managing Director of Equivesto, an equity crowdfunding platform. We  discussed the state of the economy, debunked some myths about crowdfunding and discussed the benefits and challenges for startups considering raising in 2023.