Thank you.

Speaker 2 

What you’ve done to kind of shape the company to where it is and from where it start? 

Speaker 1 

Well, I think that my major contribution has been. 

Speaker 

Oh. 

Speaker 1 

On culture, really imposing a culture of, of innovation, of failure is acceptable, and that you really, when someone tells you that something is something, is a is a urban myth or something is something that. That you cannot change really grow and challenge steps. And that started with the at the end of the 90s, there was a perception that software. Late projects were effective life. So you talked with a lot of CIO’s, a lot of it a. Lot. Of software developers, and they usually blame the business because they couldn’t get the requirements right, so everything was always late. There were missed the misconceptions about what was built and the when we looked into the. Problem is that why is that everyone accepts that projects are late projects take long. You cannot predict them and so we kind of almost look at the problem and the reverse engineer until we got into the Asus platform and then add those. Of challenging the status quo has always been part of the culture. But not only with me. Most of the innovations do not come really from my head anymore, OK, so. 

Speaker 2 

You. Driven your company to a point now where? Can you? You’ve developed? Low code so that it is now accessible to. Everybody. But now you’ve you’ve brought in generative AI. To become a little. Bit more accessible and more effective for for enterprise applications. So can you talk about some of those use cases and scenarios that you’ve done using the combination of these two technologies? 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. What what we’re facing now, we’ve been. So we’ve been using AI and Gen. AI especially. In order to enhance our products, so there’s a lot of agents and generic technology inside our platform, but what interests also is is. I’ll do a business applications change with inclusion of AI agents in the middle, because today the components are things like portals, workflows, logic, business rules, repositories of data. And where is the rule? Where can you put an agent? Where can you put the AI so that you change the way digital systems are built? And what’s interesting is that we building a new agent. Is, is, is, is, is is one step. That needs to be surrounded by a bunch of logic by a bunch of software until it becomes really effective. And so we’ve we’ve been having a lot of experience with our customers as they deployed agents and Gen. AI. That a lot. Of the work, and that’s by eventually becoming a mixed. Of the typical. Additional software like a portal on top of an agent or a collection of policy rules. With that control, an agent access to data, so a lot of these things create are are are necessary so that we can create a system that’s actually usable and adoptable. 

Speaker 2 

1. So you’re you’re talking about, when I heard the word policy. So it seems like. They’re trying to inject almost rules and processes in a more automated way in the system, through an agent that allow it to be what we what do we say trustworthy?

Speaker 1 

Yeah. For instance, we have a. We have a big customer rush, OK? Or decided to create. In this first instance ChatGPT, but the safe ChatGPT for the whole company. 

Speaker 2 

Is it The thing is a safe ChatGPT? 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, because what happens is that that particular ChatGPT can access internal data from rash. So what they did is that they they they deployed that in the multi set up depart. And for instance, when they reach HR, you can ask any questions about your benefits, about a bunch of stuff that otherwise you’d have to call somebody in HR. But one of the things you can ask is. How much does my boss make? Are paid in terms of salary and so one of the things that they had to do was whenever you accessing and emerging these agents with access to internal data, they put a series of policies that have to do with the what is the data that you actually can access and mesh. That with the bonds, all of that was done with the low code and it was very iterative. We have solutions that can be deployed in one week, but in the meantime there are probably 50 to 60 versions and so being able to iterate. Test them and see if they are. If they really are respecting policy access rules. If they don’t, go into too much hallucinations, you know all of these things are crucial to build a highly adaptable, adaptable. 

Speaker 2 

System. OK, I want to change a little bit. And talk about. The. The ability for you to actually tackle impossible projects, and when I say impossible, let’s talk about the legacy systems because we know a lot of companies have it. They’ve invested millions and millions of dollars on it, but in the past it’s been difficult to integrate transformation. Transformative solutions against legacy systems. Can you talk about how that’s? 

Speaker 1 

Changing. Yeah. What what we find today? A lot of organizations have a large number of legacy systems. That are fundamentally end of life. There are 1520 years. We’re just talking with the custom that has a system that was built in 70. 4. And so you can imagine the language. Yeah, it was a global system mobile RPG. 

Speaker 2 

Mobile. 

Speaker 1 

But all developers have disappeared. There is no manuals, there’s nothing. And so a lot of these systems are chain balls that actually are attached to the to the feeds of the the business. They cannot evolve, they cannot. They cannot build new systems on top of it. And what? The the potential. Of this disruption of of compressing the time that you develop is that instead of looking into a two to four year development project to replace something. You can now do it a project of three to four years. You can do it. In seven months, right? And when you do it in seven months with the technology like for instance out systems where the cost of change is so far. Best you can actually not only compress the time, but any type of surprise that you might find like requirements that you software a particular way kept on changing. You can incorporate them in real time and so suddenly you go from a two year plus project that you didn’t know if. You’re going to deliver. The seven months project that you deliver on time and on budget and that has made a lot of these legal. Projects that were considered impossible because they have no way of being transformed. Suddenly it becomes possible to rewrite them. 

Speaker 2 

So from your perspective, does that mean over time, even with the use of your systems and a couple? Regenerative AI that. The cost of development will come down significantly. 

Speaker 1 

The will and the. For instance, what we’ve seen is we have so many, so much experience with this that we’ve been compressing projects of about four years into between seven months and four. And what we see is that a lot of the Genii capabilities in a lot of steps today done manually can actually further compress at least two ex and so reduce something that would otherwise take three years to about 3 months. And so we’re seeing orders of magnitude of compression. That’s certainly for a lot of organisms. That are looking into. I want to build this. I want to build a new project or a new system because I want to release it three to four months and it’s pretty complex. Certainly it’s possible to do this with a relatively small number of people and a lot of tooling and a lot of help. Assistant school, right? 

Speaker 2 

Now Jen AI is still very nascent. It still has its issues. So what are the current risks that you see right now that you’re trying to solve for? 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, one. One of the the ways training is being used for these these type of platforms, the software development platforms. Is really this this concept of copilot where you have a companion to developer that helps you generate pills. And what we’re seeing already is that the code that’s generated is 5050%. Longer than what you actually need if you write. It by hand. So you’re right, you’re already creating a large chunk of technical debt in the code that’s being generated, and we were expecting this because we faced that back in 2004 when we started deploying our first versions of the platform. And so one of the issues that we realize is that as you build these systems that you generate more code, the code becomes more opaque. It’s more difficult to understand. What it does? To a point where after a while you start to have a bot that explains you. What the code does? And so you have a bot that generates the third another bot that explains that the code becomes less and less important. Is it knowledge transfer mechanism and So what we find is that it’s extremely important to be able to explain how did a Genii model created the particular piece of code that why? It what was the rationale behind it and that we believe that that that is a a fundamental function of research in the next year. 

Speaker 2 

Umm. 

Speaker 

Well. 

Speaker 1 

Because otherwise it’s going. To be very difficult to apply. 

Speaker 2 

This. Yeah, absolutely. 

Speaker 1 

It’s a it’s a problem we solve with the combination of techniques that involve local the Genii, but it’s a real problem for very large systems. 

Speaker 2 

It’s been a problem even in narrow AI, especially when it comes from an IP perspective. Start to see you say you start to see companies who want to protect what’s in that. Black box, right? But if there is a lot of organizations are going to trust these systems, there needs to be a level of transparency that you’re talking about for it. 

Speaker 1 

Right. And you can do it with tests. But it. But we prefer in the software development arena. One of the things about software developers is they want to understand why. And when they write it, they understand why, when it gets generated, they don’t understand, they don’t really understand why. That’s why it’s very important. The systems need to kind of reverse engineer and explain what they’ve done. If they become very, very automated. So there is an explainable ality factor. 

Speaker 2 

Perfect. 

Speaker 1 

That’s a crucial aspect of this system that’s very difficult. 

Speaker 2 

So from your perspective, the significance of generative AI in in the application of of software development in the future it it is going to be a catalyst to change. So so you you believe that the speed, the power, the agility. 

Speaker 1 

It’s massive. 

Speaker 2 

Expected to see is that going to be a standard? For our future. 

Speaker 1 

I think it’s going to be a yeah. Because if you think about. What we did from. From 20 years ago was really a modernization and and remove automation of the craft of software developing not only software development but also managing of the cycle of change and deployment. And there’s a lot of oil. There’s a lot of bad stuff. Stuff that you don’t really need to do. And Jenny I produces the capability of automating more of the tasks, more of the functions of that cycle. And so as the as the potential to elevate the role to a much more strategic, much more gratifying role of developers. If I miss it so our comma. Which is that 10s of thousands of developers today, 50% are proud developers. They are computer scientists, a lot of them from grade school, and one of the things they like is the fact that tools like these allow them to elevate to a point where they become more architects. They become designers of. Very large systems. They absolutely compress the time it takes to deliver business value. They like that they’re like, they’re like that, the pregnant is getting stuff done weekly. 

Speaker 2 

Right. 

Speaker 1 

And at the same time being. Able to design at the much higher level than marks the marks of. 

Speaker 2 

It it’s a significant shift if you think about it. If you think about the common developer today, they don’t necessarily go to school to aspire to the role of a. 

Speaker 

So. 

Speaker 2 

A development arc. They love the idea of coding and figuring out and challenging themselves on on solving problems. So what? Do. You. How do you speak to those that are coming out of school or that have been doing this for many years and they’re quite satisfied with have they been? Developing and letting them know, by the way your role was going to change, right? 

Speaker 1 

I’m a computer scientist, right? Like came out of time, I. Went to several schools. I’ve always felt software development as a mixture. Of artistry with engineering. There’s a lot of creativity going on. And what’s going to happen is there’s going to be more needs for software developers. But software developers that can really add value from a strategic point. 

Speaker 

Of view. 

Speaker 1 

In terms of high level design. Time. Thinking about what is the right construction of the system to provide a particular type of outcome, a real understanding of how some disruptions can be integrated to get the maximum benefit. And if you think about it today, if you. A lot of our. Communities made out of people after 10 years that have 10 years of experience, that have become tired of becoming support engineers. And being waiting up at 4:00 AM to go and fix the big attached to a piece of software for 10 years because there’s no one else who can maintain it. They don’t like that. That’s style. That’s not creative. And so. The future of this is going to elevate the profession where we think it’s going to be more strategic in one way and in some areas where you need very precision. Still you need to code, you need the. To go down a little bit like like what happened with the Elon Musk when the over engineer that tells the fact. 

Speaker 2 

Right. 

Speaker 1 

That he thought everything could be done with bots and then a lot of screws and a lot of precision work actually had to be complemented by humans. And we see that also in this new generation of the way software development is. Going to evolve. 

Speaker 2 

OK, perfect. I could talk to you forever, but I think we’re running out of time, so. Thank you so much for joining. 

Beth Nevins 

Thanks Hessie for that amazing introduction. Yes, my name is Beth, I’m founder of developer dot IO and I’m based in London. So what do we do? We support founders and the founding team in C2 Series C Venture Capital backed tech startups and specifically across the. People and talent expertise arena. There are three sort of core services that we really help with. One is candidates and the talent strategy that comes with that and actually sourcing talent. For the founders, the second one then is more on people, projects or consulting bringing in strategy around good design as we scale regarding people and talent. And the third thing that we support then is coaching, which is more on leadership development and specifically a founder program that levels them up on their recruiting. And leading leaders capability. Uh. So that’s us and I I love the idea that you said Founder HR hacks coverage to get into that. There’s plenty of. 

Hessie Jones 

No, exactly. So I would, I would say you have the credibility in the chops to actually answer a lot of these questions. OK, so, so let’s start about the definition of human resources, because you and I had a discussion earlier that this term is actually a little bit antiquated. So tell me about it. 

Beth Nevins 

Yeah, I mean. Personally, I’m not fanatical around language, although I see the value in in. Changing that over time. So let’s break this down. So traditionally, when we think about work and and and how work used to operate more in the industry. Sense there’s a lot of focus on output and productivity and measurement, so traditionally HR supported, you know, you know, productivity efficiency, you know, administration, back office type support and so forth. But now the shift is focusing much more. On what’s called. X which is people. Experience and the irony of of that is focusing much more on cultivation rather than purely focus on on measurement. So what goes in to enhance that output and ideally the outcome of what we actually want to get in the right way for sustainable growth. So people experience is all about good design and healthy design around that input. Enable us to to cultivate high performance and the only place that I focus slightly differently, different to some of the people in my community is. Some people would equate PX to people first in their definition where I personally. Would say that PX and people experience is all about alignment. There’s no first involved. It is aligning the business need and the people the employee team need at the same time. That gives us the best outcome, having weighed up all needs and all trade-offs involved and the right design that goes with. That is, is important. So yes, there’s a new branding. I think that’s important. Historically, HR has been seen and has certain associations with that language. So I think it is healthy to have a a new brand and a new definition of the. Way forward for for. People, teams and the value that they can bring. 

Hessie Jones 

That’s excellent. Thank you so much and I’m happy to hear that this has evolved as as we discussed and it’s always been one sided and the goals of the organization tend to tend to, I guess be prioritized against, you know compared to you know the health and happiness of the organization. Overall, so I’m glad to hear that that has changed. OK, so let’s let’s tackle the 1st. So there are founders that that wear multiple hats in the very beginning. So they take on many tasks including the the role of HR or even as you say people management despite the fact they don’t even have any real training. So they bring on their Co founders, they bring in employees they. They established these contracts and processes used, but they may not necessarily be compliant and so like the role of HR, may actually be either outsourced or it’s actually attributed to, let’s say, one of the senior managers role. So at at this stage, what kind of responsibilities should, let’s say, the person that that’s executing on this role have? 

Beth Nevins 

All right. Well, it depends on the stage. So I would start very early onwards and be sensitive to to my risk appetite. But very early on if the founder is pretty much you know, 0 to one and what I mean. Why? That is fundamentally the most critical thing that businesses do or die. So they want to prove the market potential by having early stage customers with a minimally viable product. So they need to build that in the beginning. So what that means is the fundamental concern at this point. To be very honest is talent. It’s hiring. So what can HR help? Advisory at this stage is fundamentally getting them to understand what stage fit is and in the very early days when they’re finding their founding team, in my opinion, stage fit is pretty much synonymous with the world with the word culture at this point. So what I mean by that is fundamentally. This one thing. Thing. So let’s just say we were using their recruiter as an example, and the recruiter was coming into a seed stage or a very early stage company and we’re interviewing them and we’re saying to them, OK, so you need to find us some people, what do you need fundamentally that you think is the lever to help us find these people their. Answer will be too late now. They’ve answered with tooling because they are from a 500 to 1000 person company. And they have a lot of. Resources so then. We have to go to that candidate. OK, well, we have nothing. We have no money, no resources, and all the constraints. So now, what would you? 

Now, if they can answer that, that’s demonstrating first principles thinking and that’s what we want. But the difference here is if we already had the right stage fit candidate. Who had already. Been in that zero to one environment, they would have already taken us to that answer naturally. And that’s the fundamental thing in terms of. Getting that right fit in the culture very early on. Is making sure we’ve got that raw first principles mindset that can literally box their way out of any problem by hook or by crook, to still give us the outcomes with with pretty much next to nothing. And you need that across the board and your first 10 to 20 highs at the very least. So that’s what we’re looking for there from a compliance perspective though, you’re right, there are I think we’re developer. My company is useful even at this stage as we have done the people HR element down the line. So one of the things we keep an eye out for where there is some risk early on is the contract side of things where of course the founder will be issuing a contract themselves. And to save money, they can sometimes be using some automated or some off the shelf SAS tools that do do contract management, but there’s some risk in that if you don’t. Know the nuance to. The clauses that we oversee and can advise them on, for example, making sure the housekeeper and on location, depending on how they’re operating hours, who they report into. Is important, but more important than that on the contract or spotting things on the nature of the business. If they are an AI company, IP is something that we can spot. If that’s pretty weak or that can attract some lovely developers and. And also looking at things like have they actually integrated their position on share options or equity as part of the employment contract? And if you speak to most employment lawyers, that’s usually not advised, not necessarily shouldn’t be done from a compliance perspective, but it’s not always beneficial. The reason for that is. You will not be putting all the terms and conditions around share options or equity as part of that employment contract that will exist as a separate agreement. And so if that is the case, it. Should remain separate. Particularly when you may change things in the business down the line that impacts equity, you don’t want to be going through a jurisdiction compliant consultation then with all employees around that change. If it simply can be changes changed based on the nature of the the share option agreement, which is a separate agreement. So that’s certain nuances that. Only we can kind of spot because you’ve got the HR hat that that an external recruiter might not spot. So there are those types of things that we look out for. And then once your post product market fit. Then the founder needs to take off some of those hats. So there are a few things that they start working on the company and their team, their leadership team rather than all the minutia of every single task that needs to go under them. And the thing you’re coaching founders on at that point is then how to make the most impactful fewer. Decisions and decisions on everything. That’s the mindset shift. You have there. And then the role of HR and the skills they can bring as you’re scaling. Is focusing on a few things, not just the obvious life cycle management. You know what I call people, operations, design, training and compliance, but they are very useful for three things. One is business, partnering with managers, particularly when you may have a lot of first time managers that come with scaling startups and that’s a benefit of joining those types of companies. Two is they should have good change management skills, ideally better than most because the rate of change now is growing at different rates across multiple teams and could be in different territories and that’s a lot to control and facilitate leadership to keep an eye on how we have a bit more consistency and how we manage the rate of change and navigate through that going forward. And the third skill set that HR people people can really bring in this scale up transition post product market fit is being able to speak different languages of different teams and different micro cultures and territories. But also interpret the languages to each other and bring those perspectives in the same room. Then when making decisions and the reason that becomes very important is not just from multi functions, but actually the founder will no longer necessarily be day-to-day with employee number. You know 87104 for example. And you want to make sure that there’s not a disconnect, or their perspective still being facilitated and brought to the table when we’re trying to make those decisions. So as I go back to my original. Point on PX and the evolution is it’s those perspectives that we can bring to the table together and facilitate that as really. Useful as you scale. 

Hessie Jones 

1. That’s great that you’re able to to actually show the distinction and on how that rule changes over the different stages. Let’s let’s go. Back to, let’s say the company size where where you are very small, so you could be you and your co-founder or you can have let’s say up to 10 employee. These what are the key things or element HR elements that that founders cannot absolutely neglect in in this stage because regardless of you know, budget constraints, these are the things that that they have to. They they must have in order to minimize their risk down the road.

Beth Nevins 

Yeah. I mean, they will have to spend money. On a contract. So I think that that’s the first thing that they should seek some advice on, and OK, they may decide to use an automated tool or get some, you know, legal advice from an employment lawyer to build you one. But I think that that is spend that you can’t avoid, you know, contractually upfront. So that’s the sort of main thing and and potentially depending on the nature of the business, you may think it’s very important even to have an NDA. You’ve seen how some companies around competition and AI and how. Competitive some of these things are that can be very important in technology. So I think you know those two key areas where spend would have to go on from a compliance perspective. And then I think you know to be honest, you know I say this throughout the talent who you hire in is the make or break regardless because they design the strategies. But very early on, right. If Co founders don’t align and haven’t got the same goals, they may break down, but if you have not got the right. Element in the first sort of 0 to 20. You’re not getting anywhere anyway, so working out how you can use that budget creatively is going to be important on getting the right initial founding team. Now you may hack it and leverage your investors other founders in your network. You know, you might have to hustle, get creative with what you can do with, you know, the best agents or. Which people you know, where is it equity? Is it that we make an agreement down the line that we can give them more roles in the future? Is it that we can do some sort of collaboration but get creative in terms of trying to see the long term partnership or opportunity that could be created with suppliers that gives you the the best, more cost effective strategy, leverage your existing team to be recruiters? For you, you know, three people may have 10 connections. Each is already 30 connections. You can sort of tap up. So it’s really making sure that you’re leveraging your inner your outer circles as much as. Possible. And you know, there’s also the skill and being a great communicator. If you can’t translate that vision on free platforms that are to your disposal and articulate that really well from a copywriting perspective, then it’s very hard then to attract the people that you need when you’ve got low brand, all you’ve got is yourself and your words. So that’s really important to really refine that articulation as early as Poss. Go. 

Hessie Jones 

That’s it. That’s a really good point, because I think in the in the, in the age of social media, this is one of the best ways to actually when I say hack in hack the HR role it’s it’s it’s actually doing that on LinkedIn etcetera and you’re talking about. A little bit about the the importance of brand and how that gets established very early on in, in developing some of these early messages on social media and how that starts to find you not only as founder but founder of. Of what kind of culture you’re you’re planning to develop? 

Beth Nevins 

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I I tend to to be more intentional, branded a little bit later on the line because I think a founder goes through such a transition of who they are and then how that plays out in the business. You know, that’s something that I, you know is even a separate offline exercise to be very honest that you need a safe space with the founder on to to do that and that that’s more a coaching. Conversation. But you’re right. You know, cash is king. But these days, content is. OK, the strongest, the strongest brand these days will will tend to win. So you need to be thinking about that far earlier than before where OK, first of all, you’ve got a good product you know no matter how good the marketing is, the product’s not great. So please don’t you know spend all your time on LinkedIn and not on the not on the product. But you know it is important when you’re. Thinking about building up that awareness a bit earlier than you might have done, or your personal brand to attract, yes, I mean. The challenge is it’s a self perpetuating like prophecy. Everyone’s on there, so you’re kind of not in the game or part of that game you’re you’re kind of behind through the peer pressure whether you like it or not. So you kind of if you don’t wanna beat the game, you kind of have to join it at at this moment in time and the way social media’s going. So you know, it’s. It’s kind of something we can’t ignore these days. 

Hessie Jones 

You. You’re helping me segue into the next question which which is really about the role of, as you say, people management and how to help startups attract and retain some of the top talent especially now. With with I guess technology evolving the way it is and the skill sets also changing every single day and the requirements and and. Also, the cost of getting some of the top developers out there, how what? What would you say the role of people management would be at this stage? 

Beth Nevins 

So I think the like the playbook or the strategies of how you go about thinking about this hasn’t changed. It just means what we’re looking for and what they need has changed. So. So I’m talk about the state of play right now because I think I think we’ll go into future work in a moment. But you know, if you’re attracting, you know the role that. Talent and HR together and. I. Mean people here, people. Things can support founders with thinking about is OK, like, what does the business do? Then. What do we need capabilities wise? Who do we need? And that’s what’s called a candidate persona. So like what typical type of person will be successful here? And then, you know, looking at. Where do we find them? You know, where do they hang out? That’s kind of our attraction strategy. And then people teams can really help them define what’s called your value proposition. So, like, what makes us different to our competitors that will meet those needs of the markets and the talent? You know, we, you know, we want to find employees. And what are we going to double? Down on because. I think that’s. The the key thing I try and coach people teams early on is we literally can’t do everything as much as we want to be the best at learning and development. We want to be the best at reward. We pay everyone 100 percentile, blah blah blah. We just can’t. So like what are the two or three things? That really we want to be known for at this point in time and really excel at in that messaging. In addition of course first and foremost, the vision and mission early on is where you kind of need to focus the the playbook on at that stage and time. And then ironically, there’s like 2 roles really, with first time founders and the recruiter skills that you need to look at with attraction. So first time founders in my experience like core capabilities is they’ll be able to pattern recognition reasonably well based on some early training that they can sell. You know that’s the fundamental role of what they’re doing in attraction. And what that? Means then is that the mantle on the recruiter and expectation of their responsibility is massive, so founders need to hire absolutely unbelievable recruiters because they need to do the. They will probably have very high weighting and experience then to have to navigate through the situational relevance. Have they actually done the right projects, the right technologies? They will be fundamental in EQ and leveraging that through their training experience, which the founder won’t have yet in terms of assessing for risk. Assessing for motivations of the candidate, assessing for that stage alignment, asking the right type of questions, which is situational questions, behavioral questions, different techniques, and they’ll need to deploy. So there’s they’re doing a lot of assessment and being relied on for that plus then. Doing a lot of selling themselves too. So that’s the big mantle that good recruiters need to be used for, which is why you need to be very careful early on that you get an absolute a player recruiter partner with you because they play such a bigger role than the founder capability. Maybe at that point in time. And that’s not all founders. That there is a big. Gap there sometimes in the training that’s needed because they may not have done that before simply through, you know, not enough candidates through yet to to be able to build that recognition up. And then on the retention side, that’s where you know the founder and the people team play a big role together and that’s on a wider strategy. But you’re thinking a lot more on if we’re thinking of what’s called people as a product. So the company is a a product. In the beginning you’re focusing much more on acquisition and activation. You know can we get them to the effect of through on boarding and do their first sort of impact piece. But the longer to thing about retention is you know are we improving impact as kind of like a North star? And in doing that then it is this cultivation piece of thinking about their engagement that leads to sort of performance and retention. How do we think about then the enablers to that through, you know, management, training, development, all these other things that we have to start looking at well-being are different variant pinpoints. But again all of the retention piece. Uh comes down to a bigger strategy piece of how far the business needs to retain people, which is a very commercial discussion to be had. And and there are different unique business needs at different times based on uh, whether a company should be restructuring or redesigning. And I don’t mean right sizing or over hiring, that’s a separate problem. But what I mean is the org design of where we need to put people in different roles at different stages of time based on whether you might want to, I don’t know. Be moving from mid tier customer to enterprise all of a sudden to go from you know XR to something over. Time. That’s an entirely new business strategy that’s going to fundamentally impact the business on a on a big level. So that will impact existing hires and how you look at retaining them and perhaps skilling them to be able to move to enterprise clients for example. And then fundamentally bring in a whole other set which may impact then you know retention and and what they may need. Those new highs coming in as well. So it’s it’s, it’s super multifaceted. Once you get into the retention piece long term. 

Hessie Jones 

Yeah. Can I ask you a personal question? Have you ever dealt with a company that had to do a major pivot and had that impacted their existing culture and employees. 

Beth Nevins 

Oh well, it pretty much happens at every inflection point. I mean, pretty much after every fundraise, there’s a significant change in, you know, the acceleration of the business, not just in terms of like the rate that needs to keep growing like 10X in every single like year basically. But also as I. Said like how you do that. So like if you’re going to increase your revenue, it could be through like you know product diversification and that. Impacts, like a lot of like how you’re building robustness of the platform technology and uptick, as I said, it could be like different customer segmentation or. A customer base that you start going into and they may need different features or different needs. It could be simply then just using selling the. Same product but. Then into multiple countries. So all of a sudden you’ve got different cultures all come in and that impacts people of how they, you know, work with diverse talent and teams in different times and all the rest of that comes with scale. So this has happened operationally just through like. Organic growth and like success in that way, but then you also have it in the state of play that we have post COVID world, which has been a lot of over hiring as we’ve seen. I don’t need to tell you about  that and there is a a a change and shift of focusing a lot more on performance right now and what we can get and going back to those lean core principles and less. Is more and. So forth. There’s a balance there though, because still the best companies still need to grow and and do so. So we don’t want to be stuck in that cycle. So again, this is all nuance. And context related and. And yeah, I’ve been part of that. I’ve been part recently of a company cannot name but 100 million plus in in funding and came in and did an audit for the board and the complete whole you know. The the the entire strategy didn’t fit the commercial. You know the business model or even the commercial direction. So that needed a whole new strategy and and and right sizing that comes with that to take the business forward in the right direction. That was ultimately the right thing for the right people who stay there and the right thing for the company to to survive. 

Hessie Jones 

OK, that’s I and I. It’s par of the course. I I’d say as as technology ebbs and flows and as technology companies start to get into this fray of uncertainty. Then I guess uncertainty becomes the norm. I would say so let’s how does tell me about culture and and because that’s the thing that ends up permeating an organization from the early onset to now that a company being like. Seven say 100 plus even 200 employees. How does that change and what is the role of HR or slash people management when it comes to infusing and maintaining that culture? 

Beth Nevins 

All right, I’m getting. I’m getting no philosophical here but. I I tend to come back to fundamentals and and arguably this does come back to language actually ironically, but I think like first of all I like to look at roles and then definitions. So like what is the role the founder plays in culture now? For me, the founder is accountable for the culture. 

The CEO, depending on what stage you are and titles and so forth. So the founders accountable for culture in the company, that’s very important. It’s not just or only HR or people, it is the founder. The CEO. So that’s very important to understand that and how does that play out then in, in their responsibilities? Well, fundamentally it’s role modelling and how they make decisions that is very important in terms of their role and responsibility when it comes to to culture, then we look at the role of the people team. I think the people team are critical and. Needlers to you know the culture that they found and the vision they want to set and and people, teams certainly can create people, visions that align with with that. But you know we have to appreciate this very much. Found alleged as founder LED companies for a reason. So I encourage the founder to lead on on people where some people get excited that they’ve got this role at the table. So full but and and I’ve been in that camp years ago and I was younger and didn’t really understand. And then I came to really appreciate no, it’s it’s all about founder like push it onto the founder, help the founder, make sure the founder wants this in terms of their, you know, their vision and their their view on people. And then there’s like two things on the the definitions then that need to be like super clear that aren’t always. So for me like. Values stay the same overtime. And culture evolves is more fluid. So let’s break that down on what I mean. So values are things that we believe are key enablers over a period of time to achieve in our mission and and how we can make decisions. And for me they are more useful in times of conflict. Crisis and how we commute. 

That’s how I think they should be used. I’m less concerned on whether they used day-to-day and we can like, seriously. See them embedded. All over the place, or suck up on. The wall where? Culture is much more around the idiosyncrasies and things you might see organically, day-to-day, and the rituals we have at that stage in time that help us get the work done and how we tend to sort of operate. And there are two things I think need to be explained and then. Where people teams come in to help culture then is on two big enablers. One is like good design. So can we help facilitate some like like touch design principles and how we want to do? Mine operations and infrastructure and people products and things people will use in the company, that sort of standardized and keeps to the sort of philosophy and principles that we want, whether that’s lean, light, whatever, transparency, whatever. And and two is like good people, that’s the people role in in culture as they keep going back to these inputs obsession. That I I seem to have today is, you know, making sure that we are. The gatekeepers or focusing attention there on making sure that we bring in great people that align to then build those systems and and teams that we need to to take us forward and with that then some people argue that culture is defined by the lowest level of behaviour that you will tolerate. Well, that’s when we think about good people and standards. That’s where people teams can really help with standardising what is our definition of high performance and and low performance and so forth and standardize that across the company. 

Hessie Jones 

That’s great. That’s great. I like how, like you’re even talking about how culture develops organically and that that you don’t necessarily sit around the table with your Co founders to define your mission and vision without without infusing an understanding of what is the kind of company. Want to create. I wonder if those are the those are the discussions that are even had at the very early stages. 

Beth Nevins 

Yeah, I I look, I think culture is organic, but it’s again, I I don’t want to contradict myself too much, but it it also has to be a little bit intentional. As I said, you know what, what are what is the target state that we might want to be going through operationally and and again cultures the rituals and changes that might need to happen to to make that happen. And again you know let’s say. Culture is intentional in the sense that I go back to some of that stage fit synergy. You know, we don’t want to hire people that can’t and block themselves early on, and that’s quite important then in the culture that you might want. And how that looks and feels and how we do things early on in in the company too. So I think you need to be a little bit intentional for what you’re looking for and how that might play out at the stage and time. But again, it’s likely to form very early on in that DNA around the founder behaviour in any event and that’s the beauty of early stage performance. It’s just so visible. 

Hessie Jones 

Mm-hmm. That’s that’s a that’s a great answer. OK. So I have one more question for you. That’s OK. So for companies who haven’t invested in developing a lot of the stuff that you’re talking about the the practices, some of the policies, what kind of risk do they run into and how can they? And can they catch up? And I’m specifically looking at what does that look like from the first meeting that you have with the founder who is just exploring like what to do as he starts growing? 

Beth Nevins 

OK, so I think this will comes down to like being very careful on how you position risk and discuss risk with a founder. So what I. Mean by that is, you know, as I said like, you know, write an order for a board or a, you know, a professional COO is very easy to discuss. You know, you go. Into business and you look at what’s going on with people and talent. And fundamentally, there’s three business risks, which is. One execution risk. Two can be financial risk and three is like brand risk and there are definitely certain minutiae risk like legal. Security and all that that. They fall into those 3 buckets ultimately, and those are the things that you can spot very quickly. As a experienced people or talent leader, when you’re looking at the current state of play and certainly when operations are skilled and and things have got a bit out of control. But the conversation we have with the founder then about how you position these things is OK like a. Like how great is that risk and the likelihood of it to actually happen? B. We then analyze the reward versus the risk, and this is where like bit scaling like Reid, Hoffman’s book and the theory of that kind of helps. Like, you know, do we believe that just growing and forgetting about this debt and the risk is actually, you know, a trade off to achieve brick things if it pays off, it’s just better to ignore some of these fires right now and just carry. You know, bulldozing through for growth reasons, then that’s a discussion we have from a commercial perspective and then like, see, you know, this where values does come into play, right, we’ve we’ve got these risks. We’ve got these problems. Uhm, you know how from a values perspective, whatever they may are, do we want to address these? Because that will be indicative and play out then in terms of how people perceive we’ve ignored them or addressed them or whatever. So I think, you know my point is people teams should be able to accept that we can make recommendations for sure and that is our job to do that. But you know, particularly on the outside now my my job is to advise not necessarily influence or I’d be more of an influencer as a as an operator perhaps. So I think you need to be mindful of that with founders and if if founders align and you come to a conclusion. Then that things need to change. Then first of all, you need to agree then what that target state might look like and just come back to that. Why? Why we’ve agreed that this is the case. So you’ve got full buy in and that messaging is consistent across that leadership team. And then look at baking into your road map, how we then that’s going to to play out. Now the one thing I see with people, leaders that I’ve mentioned over time. As an operator and as a consultant is. It if the risk is ignored and then you know it happens, then the people leader needs to be very smart with the fund to make sure that that’s discussed upfront, that if we ignore this and it happens, this is the impact then on our existing road map in terms of delivery because this is where burnout happens where the people leader hasn’t had the foresight. Perhaps of like the the scenario playing and and then they are still expected to deliver on this colossal road map, particularly for quite lean and trying to do all these things and then fighting some of these risks that didn’t pay off there and which could come through disputes or certain. You know different employee relations problems and that leads their burnout of their time. So it’s that’s the way you have that conversation then with the founder. CEO is as I go back and just summarize is you know, play out those scenarios and how that would impact an existing road map that remains or do we create a new one together. 

Hessie Jones 

Thank you. That’s a. That’s a great synopsis on on why this this needs to be done even earlier on. So thank you so much. I think that’s all we have time for today. And my goodness, you’ve opened up my eyes to to the role, the important role of of people management and I think I don’t think. People understand actually at this stage like how important this becomes, especially as the company grows. So thank you so much, Beth. Where where can people reach you if they need to contact you? 

Beth Nevins 

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. Hessie, by the way, where can you find me? So my website is developer which is DEVELOPA dot IO and I’m on LinkedIn. I do tend to post quite a bit going back to our branding point and I’m Beth Nevins and we also have a company. Page codes to. 

Hessie Jones 

OK, perfect. Thank you. So just for just to to kind. Of wrap up. For startups, HR isn’t just about the paperwork and the policies. It’s really about nurturing the heartbeat of of the organization, which are the people. And thank you for for hitting that home in spades. So for our. Audience if you have any other topics you’d like us to cover, please e-mail us at communication. At altitudeaccelerator.ca Tech, Uncensored is powered and is produced by altitude accelerator and we’re hosted on Spotify. You can get us wherever you get your podcasts until next time. My name is Hessie Jones. Have fun. And stay safe. 

Christina Kosmowski 

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me today. 

Hessie Jones 

OK, so I want to. Pull out a couple of statistics, but before. I do that. I want you. To tell me a little. 

Christina Kosmowski 

Bit about your company. All right, so logic monitor, we’re a hybrid observability platform that’s powered by AI. So what does that actually mean? It means that we collect data natively from thousands of different. Environment. So whether it’s from the network to the infrastructure to the cloud. Containers through the application and then because we collect all that data, we’re able to predict anomalies before they become a problem and either bring their systems completely down or there’s performance issues across your entire IT infrastructure environment. 

Hessie Jones 

1. So here’s some things and I think we just updated some of these metrics. But from a scale perspective, you monitor over a trillion, is that right? Trillion trillion records per day? Three 3 million active devices? Or is that updated as well?

Christina Kosmowski 

Billion records? Yes, as per day. Yes, that’s that’s correct. Around 3 million active devices across 100,000. Users, you know we’re in 30 plus countries, you know, so we’re we’re really excited about our scalability, our extensibility, our depth and breadth of of coverage. 

Hessie Jones 

1. So tell me about. Given the number of metrics that you’re actually supporting, which variables do you specifically prioritize to deliver the kind of service that you do?

Christina Kosmowski 

Yeah. I mean, I think it’s super important that you first and foremost can see everything in your environment. So you need to be able to collect this data from all the different sources. So again, whether it’s your network, whether it’s your database, whether it’s your server, whether it’s a cloud container, you’ve got to be able to see all of it. Collect all of it and then that way you don’t have any blind spots, so once we see and collect it, we then have the context from being able to. Use that that ultimately we can become very predictive and find, you know, with pinpoint accuracy and anomaly before it becomes a problem. And ultimately we can we can, you know, also automate and solve that for for our customers directly as well. 

Hessie Jones 

OK, so you have different companies? Coming in from different verticals. So I would assume that there’s also different thresholds when it comes. To I don’t know, critical infrastructure problems, right? So how do you specifically adapt to each one of those scenarios? 

Christina Kosmowski 

Yeah. So we are a great use case for any type of company across any vertical in any size. So we’ve got a fortune. Healthcare company, you know, big retail name brands, we’ve got financial service institutions, we’ve got your local sports team that all use use logic monitor, but each of that data is collected within their own customer environment data. So it’s their. Data specific to their environment and then we have all the expertise around that type of infrastructure and network data that we collect. And so that data constantly gets smarter because it’s learning from our customers own data and it’s not a bolt on, it’s not a ChatGPT wrapper on top of someone else’s data, it’s actually. Our individual customers data and we don’t share that data across any other customers as well. 

Hessie Jones 

OK so. Let’s talk with some of your top company top clients. You have Coca-Cola, top golf, Airbnb. You said you also had healthcare companies. What are some of the top challenges that that they actually I don’t know try to solve on a day. Day basis. 

Christina Kosmowski 

I mean, first of all, I mean, I think we all see this even in our daily lives. But think about IT environments. They are certainly not getting less complex, they’re getting more complex and their surface areas increasing. So people are adding applications, they’re adding databases, they’re adding infrastructures, they’re moving from the cloud, back from the cloud back on. And so these environments are complicated and so more and more data is coming in as we mentioned just even. On this this podcast we’ve updated. The you know amounts of records that we’re ingesting every single day, and so that’s that’s constantly scaling. So it gets noisy and it’s hard to find the signal between the noise. So if you think about an IT operations. And they’re getting diluted with all these this data, all these alerts and they’re quickly trying to find out what alert actually matters, what one actually can really be a problem for them and make sense of all of it and kind of be able to summarize, you know, all of that together to say, where are these more systemic issues that that I can go proactively? 

Hessie Jones 

So and you mentioned anomalies versus fluctuations and so the systems that you’re using. Are they learning from the? I guess the best practices that the humans have evolved over time, or how much better are they than humans? 

Christina Kosmowski 

 Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, we’ve been using machine learning and stochastic model techniques in our platform since inception. So we were founded in 2007. So for 17 years we’ve been. We’ve been using that, but now with kind of the evolution of the generative AI, we can get even more predictive around where we find these anomalies first and foremost. And then secondly, we can use natural language to summarize this. So now we can start to say, oh, you. 

We had 12,000 alerts. Well now we’re going to bring that down to 100 and be able to say these are the. Specific areas that. Those alerts are happening and now an IT person can actually ask questions. You know, in a in a normal language and say, alright, tell me more about what’s happening here and then we can actually give recommendations on what that root cause analysis is and what they should do. And as they get. Comfortable with that and we can then even start to automate those those recommendations. 

Hessie Jones 

OK, so for your client. Help me understand what’s important for them in order to trust that your system is doing the job that it’s supposed to do. 

Speaker 2 

Doing, yeah, I mean, so we just were working, we just were working with a customer recently and they had an issue that they didn’t know about. Three years and within one hour of giving logic monitor in their environment, they were able to find that. Issue. Yeah, I mentioned the number of alerts that are coming at them. They have 12,500 alerts coming at them. We reduced that by 75% immediately. So I think first and foremost is we’re able to get up and running quickly to show this value early and then they’re seeing these real time results about you know being able to reduce the noise, being able to pinpoint the issue. 

It is impossible to pinpoint and then that’s ultimately making them more efficient so that they can go scale and they can go do more strategic innovative projects instead of being buried in the noise, trying to kind of. Find these these issues. 

Hessie Jones 

Issues. OK, thank you so. So how does your? I guess your generative AI, how is it used? First of all, and how is it helping to adapt and and monitor some of these specific use cases when it comes to the different verticals, but because I’m assuming there’s going to be, there’s going to be. These differences among the different verticals, yeah. 

Christina Kosmowski 

I mean, I think I keep going back to we’re not a bolt on, we don’t have a ChatGPT wrapper, we are actually at the first and foremost, we’re a hybrid observability platform. So we collect this data natively. Therefore we use a combination of rag techniques and kind of small language models that get trained on specific observability data, right? So the large language model such as like open AI or even. You know the open source models, like they’re not trained specifically on observability data and we are. We’re trained on that. That’s our bread and butter. That’s what we do. And so we’re in our own customers environments. We’re already that trusted partner in their environment. We’re getting that data natively and so the models are continually getting smarter. You can approve that budget. 

As the customer’s data is continuing  to kind of grow and evolve with logic monitor. 

Hessie Jones 

So you mentioned Reg. Because I just learned about RAG, probably with everyone else like two months ago. What the heck is that? It’s another not another cleaner. It’s actually a technique called. OK. Remind me what it stands for again, because I just had it. 

Christina Kosmowski 

Runtime. Performance and so this is really where. We we’re we’re not reliant on like a single a single large language model. We’re able to go kind of kind of left and get this data kind of real time and and learn on those models instead of being these dependency on kind of these these larger larger models. 

Hessie jones 

So I knew. I don’t know what the R is, but I know it’s oh runtime augmented processing. Is that what it is? OK. 

So I guess from that perspective, because my next question was going to be how you ensure that it doesn’t inadvertently expose sensitive information from one client to the next by it by training it on only observable data, then using Reg, then you’re actually only ensuring that the information that. As is, is what the. 

Christina Kosmowski 

Customers environment, their environment, their own environment and I think that’s super, super important. And you know we take security very seriously. We’ve been you know, we used across thousands of customers. We’ve been in business for 17 years now. So it’s it’s something that’s very important to. 

Hessie Jones 

So tell me about. What makes you unique? Because you’re considered a hybrid? Nature observability. So tell me about that a little. 

Christina Kosmowski 

Yeah, I mean, nobody else can do that. You know, I think, you know back in the day, you had kind of on premise observability tools that were born in kind of the late 90s, early 2000s, then in, you know, the 2010 with the rise of the hyperscalers, you had folks kind of rush to to monitor the cloud. 

There was nobody that was bridging those two things together and the world is hybrid. So over 86% of companies are hybrid and expect to remain hybrid for the foreseeable future. So you had that plus the fact that you know IT proliferation is continuing to happen at a pace. That we’ve never seen before. We’re really in this unique position where we can see the step and breadth of information in a single unified view that nobody else can. 

Hessie Jones 

1. So one last question, Christina, so we know that it we I think we already ran into an AI height about 1.5 years ago. And now we’re generative. AI is a different it’s a different beach. So how do you ensure that you are developing or you’re delivering tangible value to your clients and not just another round? Of hype that. They have to latch on.

Christina Kosmowski 

Too, yeah, definitely. I mean, we use the term practical AI quite a bit and you know everything we do is we innovate with our customers. So this is something that our customers have been asking us for and we’ve been able to Co innovate with them and get you know, again using their real data, solving real business problems that they have and showing those results. In a quick time to value and that’s really why our customers really love working with us. 

Hessie Jones 

Perfect. Thank you so much. Well, thank you and yes. We will be back. 

Emily Reid 

Absolutely. Thank you Hessie so much for having me. Appreciate it. 

Hessie Jones 

So let’s start off with you. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Like how like your interest in this topic, what you have done and how you end up at AI. 

Emily Reid 

Overall, yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So in terms of my own story, I think one of the fastest ways to describe myself as I’m a computer scientist raised by educators, both of my parents have been educators their whole lives. They grew up in a really working class. Background and really kind of use education as a way to bring themselves into the middle class. My father grew up on a farm and became a professor. My mom grew up in a in a project and became a lifelong elementary school teacher, and I’ve always looked at education as a way to solve problems. Though initially in my career I thought I wouldn’t go into education at all. It ended up being something that I really kind of couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t. Away from I studied math and computer science in college and that is around when I really started to develop an interest in and concern about the lack of diversity that I was seeing in the spaces that I was in. I was usually one of the only women you know, maybe one of two or three women in a lot of my computer. Science classes and then eventually when I went into the tech workforce working as an engineer. I I saw the same thing and was also becoming increasingly concerned about what I saw as sort of a lack of ethical frameworks around a lot of the work that we were doing. You know, it felt a bit like kind of the Wild West. There are a lot of other disciplines like law or medicine that have. Then you can, you know, criticize the the structure, but they at least have a structure around and framework around ethical standards, and that’s not something that is standardized yet in the AI space and so. For me it was. I was kind of really becoming concerned by what I saw. I was also experiencing a lot of personal frustration and challenges as one of the only women in this space, and I also knew that I was walking into those rooms with a ton of privilege. And so it just spoke to. To the fact that this was a really deep problem. And so that was really when I became increasingly interested in how we could be using computer science education to address some of these problems, you know, kind of where what’s the root of this issue? I always say to folks, I think computer scientists are problem solvers at their core. And this was the problem I became most interested in. So I ended up going back to Graduate School for AI, and I did research and work in computational linguistics, natural language processing, machine learning. But it was during that time I was also kind of going deeper and deeper into computer science education. I ended up joining what was in a small organization called Girls who code was with girls who code through our kind of hyper scaling period and really learned how to scale high impact education programs. I came to AI for all in 2018 to launch our Open Learning program, which was a program to really take a lot of what we had found as successful in the our early high school programs and take it online and bring it into schools directly. During that time, we were also launching our college programs today, after all, and that was where there was really kind of increasing interest in getting students directly into the workforce. AI was really picking up. And I think what’s been interesting, I became CEO about two years ago and what’s been interesting. During this last two years, has been seeing this real evolution in and and kind of resurgence of AI and generative AI. And of course when. Chachi, BT then Gemini Dolly, like all of these tools, came out. They really they really had such a huge cultural impact. And I think that what’s been interesting about being at AI for all through that period is it’s some, it’s a moment that I think our founders really anticipated when they started that. Original program that you described, they really were. They knew that this moment would come and this society would need to be much more ready than we were. And so I think our, you know, our mission to create the next generation of AI change makers that the world needs. Is really focused on the fact that this is a. This is a train that has left the station. I understand when folks are really concerned about where AI is going, I think those concerns are valid. I also understand when folks get extremely excited about where it’s going and what the opportunities. And I think that’s valid as well. To me, we have a we have a choice about what the future of AI looks like. It’s not something that is already set in stone, but it is going to be written by this next generation of AI technologists. And if we don’t make some changes now around what the diversity of that cohort. Of technologists look. Like and if we don’t make some changes around what the industry standards around, you know, trustworthiness, human centered AI, responsibility, ethics. If we don’t make some changes there, then I think we’re we’re on a really troubling trajectory. So now is the time. 

Hessie Jones 

So like I think even when AI was starting to emerge and you, you and I had this conversation earlier, there was. Is understanding that there was a diversity gap and so industry, not only the tech industry but even outside of tech and even in an investment side, they started making strides to ensure that there there was a lot more representation, a lot more voice. Their diversity of voice, when it came to technology or when it came to actually investing in founders, what have you witnessed recently that that seems to have? I don’t know makes it makes it seem that that we’ve taken a couple of steps back since that recognition. 

Emily Reid 

Yeah. Yeah. No, I love this question has because. I think it’s. Really cuts to the heart of a of a kind of concerning, but also potentially opportune time that we’re in and so. Uh. You. Know. 2022 in particular was an interesting year because when I started out in this role, AI had to actually kind of briefly left the headlines for a little while, and everything was about crypto. And we said, you know, kind of how what’s our kind of position around crypto. It’s like a lot of folks. Like students, funders are asking. About and how do we really make sure that we continue? You know, we know that AI is still going to be pivotal, but it’s sort of not the hot topic right now, which I think people forget about in the wake of the generative AI explosion. But there was really that that period for. For a good part of that year and then we went through towards the end of 2022 tech layoffs, which had an enormous ripple in our industry of computer science education and workforce develop. And because many of these organizations are, if all included, work with corporate partnerships as part of our funding models and it’s something that we’ve really valued because part of what we want to be able to do is to launch these students into their first roles in AI. So we want to understand what’s going on in the workforce. You know what are folks hiring for? That is a space that is changing much more rapidly than the universities that the students are in. And so we see ourselves as really kind of a bridge between that university experience and the workforce that is so rapidly changing and so. You know what we were definitely seeing during that time was there folks that I knew in the tech industry who maybe worked specifically in the DI space or the corporate social responsibility space, that was really kind of getting more constrained at the same time there was, you know, about a month or two. Later, there were these real enormous booms and investment in AI, and those were the teams that were grown. And I would say that folks who were maybe on like responsible AI teams, that was a little bit in the middle, that wasn’t necessarily growing in the same way that like an AI product team was growing, but it was also, you know, AI specific. And so it might have, you know retained. Been retained or prioritized in a way during those tech layoffs, so everything that’s going on in the tech industry ends up having a real impact on the nonprofit organizations that are partnered with tech companies. And so you know, for us it was a it was an interesting period because there were constraints with some of the partners that we were speaking to and there were others who were, you know, excited or coming to us because they wanted to get more involved in AI organizations. I’ve unfortunately seen over the past couple of months, some really wonderful. Organizations like women who code girls in tech global need to shut down and and I don’t know the details around why that is, but I have to imagine that there’s some element of this is sort of a. This is a really critical issue that I I don’t want the tech industry to forget about. I think that there was a lot of progress made for a number of years and the kind of layoff period I think has rolled back some of that progress. So my my feeling is that. We really do have a choice around what the future of AI looks like. We have a choice around what the future of technology looks like. I think I used to really talk about those things separately, but the way that tech has really been developing and AI has been developing is that AI is going to be part of everything. I think junior Rometti from IBM said that AI is going to change 100% of jobs. 100% of industries and 100% of professions, and I I don’t think that that’s hyperbole. There might have been a time where I felt like that was hyperbole and I no longer feel that way, in part because. I’ve and I’ve heard some folks liking this, and I think it’s a reasonable comparison to liking it to the Internet. There were people who said Ohh the Internet. ‘S going to. Be. A fad in the early 90s, right? And we all know that that wasn’t. That didn’t end up being the case. In fact, access to Internet is really critical for students to even have access to learn about. Some of these tools. Never mind. Learn how to. Program them. So that I think is that kind. Of. Really rapidly changing nature. To me means that this moment is very critical. It means that if we don’t make changes right now, then the status quo of a really homogeneous industry that does not have a standard ethical responsible framework is going to be the one that we will move forward with as a society. And it’s going to be increasingly difficult to change as the years go on. At the same time, I think if we are making a lot of changes now, that will become the model of what the future of AI looks like because things are changing so rapidly. So I have both a deep, deep concern about where we could go on one path and a real excitement and sense of hope about where we could go on another. 

Hessie Jones 

It’s it’s the you know I have the same some some days it’s better than others. But like on on some. The areas where where some of these amazing DIY initiatives have failed, like I’ll add, the one that I know for this fund which was specifically started to invest in women of color or women founders in tech, was recently closed down and it had raised over. $25 million the It’s closure set ways through the industry because it was so successful in its race, but through legal issues which they could not afford, they unfortunately were unable to to continue. But I will say from an investment perspective, what I’m seeing is that investors, especially when they’re starting to look at what gender today I can do, they’re increasingly anxious about the technology and not really sure what to trust and what can’t be, what, what to trust and what not. Trust. And so they’re looking to to people, to who who know the tech to get deeper into it, to even provide some elevated form of technical due diligence in order for investors to to be able to say this is good enough for us. So I think in a lot of ways. In advance of legislation, I think it’ll it’ll happen just because you know investors need to make their. Money. And if money talks, then this. Is the way to do it right? 

Emily Reid 

It’s so true. It’s so true, because I think, I mean I I think that is unfortunately a perfect example of, you know, how it affects the the the investment in industry side and I. And it’s interesting. What you what you say mentioned about regulation because I felt like that you know, really a lot of my conversations with partners and advisors in our space in 2023, no question was around generative AI, generative AI. We don’t want to get left behind. We don’t want to kind of miss. This boat, like how do we use? I had. I had friends who work in like relatively non-technical industries like maybe like like a A. You know, might be technical in a different way, but they’re not necessarily using AI in their day-to-day. So I had a friend who’s works in kind of more of a sales position at like a bio Med company called Me to. Be like, well, how do we what? Should our AI strategy be, you know, they were all of a sudden there was kind of so much focus on we don’t and an anxiety as you mentioned around we don’t want to get left behind. And we want to make sure we’re taking advantage of this. And then most of those same conversations this past year or the last six to nine months or so have been around governance. And what does AI governance mean and how do we make sure to manage these risks in the absence of any kind of real legal framework? And that’s something that actually our our founder, doctor Faithy Lee has talked a lot about that we are. You know, looking at what, how that might be something that some of our students are interested in because there is a real lack of. There’s a real lack of overlap in the expertise for folks who are in the kind of policy and legal space. And the AI space. And there really is a need. I think this has always been the issue with technology legislation is that it’s moving at so much more quickly than the legislation and policy. Move and you have so few folks who are really sitting at the intersection of those two areas of expertise. And so I do hope that we will kind of get to a a, a great framework. But I think it’s going to take more folks who have that computer science background working in that space or maybe advising. Not work. 

Hessie Jones 

OK, I want to touch on when we talk about AI advancement and why diversity is so crucial and we’re at a time right now where we’re starting to see some of the impact of why, like, why DI is actually needed. And so I want you to talk to me a little bit about the anthropomorphization. AI and it’s money I actually got through saying that word because it became. A. A word that it is so difficult to say, but it is a mainstream term and so when we talked about this, we’re talking about the attribution of human characteristics, whether or not it’s motion, whether or not it’s it’s, you know, it’s gender related. But we’re starting to see it a lot. More in in some of these AI chat bots, and I know it became a little bit of an issue when when Siri came onto the market as well as Alexa and Google Assistant. But I want you to to speak to me a little bit about. What the implications are from a gender perspective, as these AI chat bots start to roll out in in massive ways. 

Emily Reid 

Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s a, it’s a huge issue and agreed that well, it’s a little bit of a mouthful. It’s good that anthropomorphization of AI has become a little bit more of a household. Concept because I do think that it’s. It it, there’s a lot of complexity to what what the impacts of a really. Of an AI that seems like it could pass the Turing test, so it would be it would be difficult to tell whether this is really an AI or a human. There’s definitely a lot of evidence that users human beings prefer interacting with a an AI that does seem very human. I think you know there’s a lot more awareness of the concept of the uncanny valley, the idea that. That folks are are have a really positive reaction to an AI or a robot until it gets almost too human. And if it’s, if it’s kind of just short of being too human, it’s it’s, it’s really uncanny and that can be, you know, something that then people reject. So there’s there’s some interesting ideas around, like, you know, whether you go kind of further along on the spectrum of recognizing it’s not in AI or it’s not a human being, or whether you really try to make it as human as possible. And part of to me, part of the challenge with that is. It does become confusing. I see my my I have a three-year old daughter. She talks to Siri. I’ve turned my Siri into a male voice just to mix it up, but I think that it’s, you know, she she will chat with Siri and try to ask him questions her questions in ways that. You know, she’s aware that it’s not a real person, I think. But they are kind of growing up around these technologies as though they may be human beings or it might be difficult to. Differentiate which is. Which, especially on the gender side, I think this is a it’s a really big issue because they continue to see the vast, vast majority of voice assistance. Tend to be female coded in some way, whether it be the name and the voice, or both. That, to me is a really, really big concern, in part because it continues to kind of put women in a position of the kind of stereotype of being a helper, being an assistant. Part of the reason why I know that that happens beyond our. Our kind of gender norms and societies that some developers say that folks respond better to a female voice, and that’s part of the the testing, right. And so that might be a legitimate reason, but what are the other impacts of? That and is that the only thing that we should be valuing? To me? This is this is the kind of. This is the sort of issue that we need to be grappling with in an ethical framework for AI. What are the ethics of that choice? I also think that it in addition to it, just really reinforcing gender to gender stereotypes. It can. I think. I really believe that it is something that if we are having a much more inclusive industry, it’s not, it’s certainly not on the shoulders of the one female engineer in the room to make to to kind of raise this as an issue, but. As we have a much more if we are moving towards a more. Inclusive more diverse industry, I think we’re going to have much more nuanced conversations around what this could look like, what our default assistant voice should be, what kind of options are available to change that and being able to properly evaluate what the risks and harms are. We don’t really have developed standard frameworks for that at this point. And again, I think that if we don’t change that soon, we’re going to be in a world where Voice Assistant and female voice seems synonymous. 

Hessie Jones 

Yeah, I wanted to add to that because like. There there are. A lot more emotionally supportive chat bots. I actually tried one. It’s called my pie and it’s supposed to act as a coach and a confidant. And sometimes I ask the questions like how do I deal with this person? Who is highly sensitive or who is an intern? And I really want to convey this message, but I do want I want to do it in a way that’s non confrontational. And it is early effective in its advice. So I I think that so it brings up a couple of questions which which I want you to address is it’s one thing about dependence, but then the the second thing which you kind of covered in the in the last statement you made but. 

Hessie Jones 

But the legalities when it comes to the advice that’s given and and who’s going to be liable if if somebody takes that advice to heart. 

Emily Reid 

Yeah, it’s a really it’s a really, really rich example. I think because I think there’s a number of of issues that it brings up kind of first up point about kind of going backwards here. One of the last things you mentioned around the like what what’s going to be shared, who’s liable, I started out. My my career actually in cyber security and got into machine learning through that process and. So I’m always looking at all of these models with a A-frame around. What? What was what? Should have been the sort of privacy restriction on the data that was used to train this model. And as we’re continuing to feed more data into models, how you know? How much kind of personal information or company information might we be giving up? How is that being used? You know, I think that that’s a that’s a huge issue that companies and individuals are grappling with. But at the same time, you know another example of this type of bot is there was a story recently about one of these kind of emotional support chat bots that are being used with more lonely adults. And we know that loneliness for. Older generations is a really, really huge mental health problem, and so I think to me it’s a. There are some real difficult questions there. You know, one is. I think I think the sort of negative reaction, visceral reaction that folks have to something like that comes from the place of like, we don’t want this to be a Band-Aid, but at the same time the the current. State of affairs is is also not working and so is it going to be the case that maybe having more of those emotional support chat bots available to folks is gonna actually help them, at least in the short term. But then it also runs the risk of being a Band-Aid to a problem. And not really actually treating the the the deeper, the deeper disease, right, like kind of just treating the symptom, not the disease. And so I think it brings up some really challenging questions because I think it is. It’s concerning to folks to to really kind of put these emotional, put some of this emotional labor in, if you will, into the into AI’s, but at the same time it might actually, you know, compared to. The world as it is today. Without it, it might actually help some people. And so I think that’s one of the biggest challenges is really how do we navigate that part. What you mentioned about the pie chart bot I think is a really great example because. You know it. It brings up OK. It is kind of maybe giving advice that you could imagine a world where this is more veering on the could be something that, like therapists are using, right. Like this. There’s one thing that you might you might be using in conversation with your team. And then there’s the kind of another deeper level of what. You know, say a therapist might be using. UM and on one hand, I think that it does bring up a lot of issues around like are we now outsourcing that kind of real human emotional work to an AI that we I think that all of these bring up real questions and anxieties about what it means to be human. And so I think that that’s that’s one part of it. But again at the same time is it knowing how influential these technologies are. Where it would it be better to have an AI chat bot that is not emotionally intelligent at all, and what would that look? What would that look like? Right. And so I think these to me again, these are the really kind of thorny, challenging issues which there’s no real easy answers to my belief and. Then this is really why we do this work at AI. For all is that I have, you know, I always say to folks, I have my own ideas around what I think we should do as an industry and what I think needs to change. But ultimately I really believe that what is going to make the biggest difference and really help us head in the right direction and answer these really thorny issues is when we have a large diverse. Ethically trained generation of AI technologists who are bringing their own areas of expertise, bringing their own life experiences, bringing those perspectives into the conversation, and are feel empowered to do so. Are in positions where people will actually listen to what they say. You know we have we have this, we call the future Forum dinner series. We have these kind of salon style dinners with advisors and partners and and some of our staff as well as our students and we bring up a big issue around. You know what the future of AI is going to look like as we’re having generative AI and Gen. C really intersect? What’s that going to look like? And I’ve been in conversations where folks are talk. Thing about Gen. Z and STEM education and that phrased my hand. And said. This is a great conversation, but there’s no one from Gen. Z in the room, you. Know what do. They think. And so we we we make sure to bring our students into the conversation and keep their their perspectives at the same level as some of our, you know, sea level partners at top AI companies. Because to me, their opinions are just as valid and I’m a really huge believer in that kind of if you will, collective intelligence of our our real human net. Work coming together on these issues because that that that question of, you know, is emotional intelligence being built into a chat bot, positive or negative. It’s a really thorny question without a clear answer right now, but I think that’s the way that we’re going to be able to get to better answers. 

Hessie Jones 

Yeah. No, I agree with you. And I think that the the thing that’s really hard about AI and I think for people that have developed software, they know that you don’t ship something that that doesn’t 100% work. It has a different beast because it it it trains and it gets better, but it has to train on real data in order to get better. So you can’t kind of keep it locked in the box and assume that you keep feeding and other data to get better. It really. It’s it’s the unfortunate part of of being an alter, a different technology than than normal software, right? So I want to get into because you’re you’re talking about students that and I want to switch a little bit to education because there was a recent article. About a company called all here, and they’re an educational platform. That was, I think they’re hired by the Los Angeles Unified School District to actually build. A $6 million AI chat bot called Ed to help both students and parents navigate a lot of the educational resources and supplement some of the classroom instruction. So from all from, I guess, from the optics perspective, it looks like this is a really, really good thing. Not only will it help. Students, it’ll help kind of get them get the teachers moving to to a better level of instruction and help, I guess, reduce their I guess. Being overwhelmed not only within the classroom, which they have been for years, but also be kind of like the catalyst to actually enable a new type of instruction to get their kids moving in the direction that we want them to go. So apparently it failed and so that down the left. As well as the the employees which they furloughed, I want you to to speak to this idea of of education and AI in the classroom and. And situations like this that that have been trying to appeal to bring bringing not only like the technology but also the new wave of of how we do things into into the education system which we know has far been. I guess it’s archaic. 

Emily Reid 

Yeah, I think that’s, I think that’s a fair, fair way to put it because there is a. You know, it’s it’s so difficult for some of these really large institutions to change and there’s certainly some, some reasons why we may be want to be, you know, thoughtful and methodical in that process. But there’s also times when it can just really kind of create a a really challenging. Environment for innovation and and I do think that that you know the way that I think about change and innovation is around opportunity. I think it’s in those moments of change and innovation and when things are kind of shifting, the ground feels like the ground is shifting underneath you. That’s actually when I think we have the most opportunity to. Change systems for the. Better because it’s really hard to change systems when they are really firm and and, you know, immovable objects. And so there is, you know, when I’ve heard about this. Story there’s a couple different things that came up for me. One in terms of the what, what sounded like a. Relatively ambitious project for this for this new organization, you know from from what I from what I knew about the story, it did read to me a bit as something that. Was maybe kind of a victim of the hype cycle of AI. We know that technology goes through these hype cycles. There are periods when we get really hot on a particular technology and has gone through this a number of times and then we go through an AI winter where some of those those ideas. Don’t necessarily bear out and there ends up being a lack of investment in both the private sector and public sector. So I think that that that kind of like both the the business investment and the like scientific investment and kind of R&D in those different technologies, it goes through these cycles. And to me it read a little bit as something that. There probably was a lot of hype and excitement that then really overshot what was possible to do in that period of time and. You know that that I think is going to create a lot of challenges for a lot of these AI companies. Of course, we’re going to go through kind of these, you know, boom and bust cycles. But the thing that worries me the most is kind of who gets lost in that process. I do believe that overtime technological. Action tends to actually create more jobs, and it gets rid of, but it does get rid of jobs and there is a lot of reshuffling in the short term, and it’s the folks who are more marginalized in society that are going to experience the the worst of that, and they may not necessarily be. Trained up or have the social safety net that they need to manage those periods where the jobs are shifting around. So so those are a couple of the the things that come up for me on the industry side when I read that story, but also thinking about the education. Sorry I am a huge believer in the need for AI literacy, and by that I don’t just mean students being able to being competent in using AI tools. I think that that’s something that this generation, as long as they have access to the Internet, which can be its own. Question. But if they have access to the Internet, they’re going to have access to these tools and they’re going to become, you know, more expert on them than than I am. So that part, I believe that they’ll be competent users really quickly as long as they have Internet access. That’s not necessarily the same as being able to to understand what is really underneath the machines and what is really inside of these algorithms, and understanding being able to be real kind of informed citizens or informed users of these technologies, that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be. Teaching machine learning to kindergarteners. But I think that there is actually a way for us to teach the fundamentals of artificial intelligence in a way that. Is. Not dumbing it down is it is really honest about what the technologies. Are what the risks, risks and benefits are and allow for an educational system that is helping students to, at a minimum, become real, informed users of these technologies and understand a little bit more what’s happening behind the scenes? I think in in sort of pre AI world I compared this. Or kind of pre AI focus and and thinking about computer science more broadly. I had compared this to, you know, the kind of Mavis speaking, typing classes and math blaster that. I did in my computer class in elementary school as opposed to learning how to program right and those are two really different things. We can be users of technology. Great, but how do we actually become the creators of it? Or it be able to be informed enough to influence it? So to me that all starts with AI literacy. You don’t necessarily need everyone to become. A machine learning engineer, but even getting more diverse and more diverse group of machine learning engineers is going to have to start with more AI literacy. Because if you don’t even have that kind of point A for. You end up having more and I, you know, have seen this so much working across the high school to college, to early career space is that if you don’t have really broad AI literacy, really broad computer science education, then what happens is that the. Students who end up studying that in college. Maybe you only get the students who were the the top math and science students, or you get a lot more students whose parents were already in the industry and have been around it at home. And so in order to really make that a much more diverse space, we have to be able to start at more of a level playing. Field and so it brings up a lot of those challenges. When I when I read this story is both, you know, the that that kind of like hype cycle and what that’s going to mean in the industry space, but also what the what the role of AI tools in education is going to look like. 

Hessie Jones 

It’s it’s funny that you’re saying that that’s going to ask you a question about the importance of STEM, but then I’m. I’m starting to realize that the way you’re talking it’s it’s not really forcing people into STEM, but but creating a foundation. At the very beginning where they’re understanding the technology and what are the intricacies of it, you may not necessarily be be good in math. You may not necessarily be good in science, but at least know enough about the fundamentals of the technologies that you’re using to apply more. I guess a critical thinking. Perspective. And so if you think about it and maybe this is something that that you could also discuss like there is an importance of going still going into social sciences still going into the humanities and arts. So how does that all integrate as let’s say if I decided like I like AI, I like to use it as a user. I understand it’s important in how I navigate all my daily stuff. But you know, I want to. Be an artist. You know, I want. I want to help people. In in social science. So from that perspective that you’re saying it’s not, it’s not going to limit you if you if you apply some of the stuff that you were. Talking about. 

Emily Reid 

Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s a, it’s a really, it’s a really important example because. I think the in the computer science space, for example, a lot of the kind of workforce development and CS education work has been focused on. There is like one piece around air literacy, but then we’re talking more about how we’re developing programmers, computer scientists, machine learning engineers. Software engineers, to me, AI is really upending that entire system. And and I’ll give a couple examples of why I think that’s true. And I think folks have talked about STEM education for a long time and I’ve I frankly, I’ve always had trouble with that particular acronym because I think that it actually ends up kind of obscuring what we’re talking about. It was often used kind of interchangeably with computer science. But actually none of those things. Math, science, technology, engineering, or math are exactly the same thing as computer science. So right, so, so they’re they’re it really kind of obscures, I think can can run that risk. UM, and now even seeing kind of computer science based versus AI space, there are things that are really different and unique about AI. That’s one of the things that really brought me into this particular organization. When I first joined, because there was a sense of there are while AI could certainly be viewed as. A sub discipline of computer science. There are some real kind of unique qualities around AI that are that are different and that I think really end up being highlighted when we’re talking about the practical impacts in education and workforce. So one example. I during those tech layoffs we talked about in addition to having, you know, friends who worked in the DI space at tech companies experiencing layoffs, I also had friends who were software engineers who were getting laid off, and not just because the company was potentially shrinking. But also because, as you know, in the sort of later phases of that, as more generative AI tools were coming out, it was actually replacing software engineers. In some cases, you know, our conversation around job replacement and AI. I years ago was more focused on concern around blue collar jobs and what we’re seeing now with generative AI is there is a displacement in white collar work for lawyers, for content creators, for graphic artists and for computer scientists and software engineers. If I think in that particular the sort of asterisk I’ll put there is. If they don’t have a a AI skill set that they can actually continue to apply in their work. So I when when we think about AI, AI education? While the computer science world is is changing and shifting, I think there were the kind of concept for a lot of the early computer science organizations education organizations. Was that OK? Having a degree in computer science will give you kind of a ticket to a great career path. And again, I I think that is true when you put the asterisk on it that it’s including AI skills, but at the same time, computational thinking has actually become more important for everyone in every industry, because every time what AI, what generative AI in particular has done. Is it’s turned all of us into programmers. We’re just programming in natural language. So when you go to, you know, chat TBT or you go to Gemini and you’re creating something, I’ll have friends who describe, OK, maybe they want to, you know, there’s some content. The social media that they’re creating or there’s some sort of image they want. To create they have. To go through a number of iterations and they have to give it feedback and they have to test it and run it again. And I say, Oh yeah, you’re debugging your code, your code is just in English or natural language of choice. Right. And so I think that it has really, you know, in computer science we talk about the kind of layers of abstraction. It’s allowed us to now, you know we were we were once really programming practically in in binary and then we built compilers and then we had things like Python And we kind of went further and further up. And now we have. We can program in our natural languages so that kind of that is really a shift in all roles. And I really I do, I sometimes hesitate around this because I don’t want to slip into to the kind of hype. Side but that quote from General Medi around this is going to change 100% of jobs. I think there’s really really something to that because one of the one of the examples that folks have given and I think it is a pretty valid comparison is is this kind of AI generative. In particular, explosion going to be similar to the the onset of the Internet and broad access. The Internet and there were folks in the early 90s who were saying, oh, this is the Internet thing is a fad, and we’re going to, we’re going to kind of come back to how we used to do business. And obviously that wasn’t true. And I think that it’s possible that AI is, if not to that level, certainly within that order of magnitude. So I to me that creates an environment where, yes, artist. Lawyers, social scientists. I know a lot of folks who work in computational social science and have been the lab that I actually worked on worked out in grad school, was really focused in that space. And you have folks who are social scientists and machine learning engineers coming together and working on some really interesting. Problems. And so I think it’s going to become more of just. A way that we all work. And so that real being able to bring that AI expertise into other spaces is a really different story than than years past, where this was something that, you know, only really lived in the most advanced labs and and some of the top research institutions. It’s going to be something that we all are touching in some way. Regardless of what role we may be in. 

Hessie Jones 

Yeah, it’s interesting that you say that because that, I mean, when we talk about AI and potential displacement now, you didn’t say that Gini Rometti said that people will be displaced. You said that AI will change everything. And I I listen to a lot of. Artists and I listen to a lot of writers who you’re afraid that. AI’s going to get good enough that they don’t need me? But I said, you know, writers and and people who have a specific craft have an advantage over others who don’t, and that they may be able to use their natural language programming to up level their skill. So they may not necessarily, right. In scratch, but they will become super editors and. They will go. Faster than those who haven’t written like a stitch of an article in their whole life. Right. It’s the same with artists. Maybe it’ll elevate everyone. To a new level that they’ve never hit before because because it brings on a new type of efficiency and obviously a new type of adaptability. 

Emily Reid 

Exactly. Yeah, I think that there is a. I guess what one of my real kind of core philosophies around technology is that it it should be. We should be looking at it as a tool and as a means to an end and not the end in and of itself. And I think that’s one of the things. That the philosophy that I think prevail tends to prevail in a lot of Silicon Valley companies and tech world is, you know, the technology has this end goal in advancing this technology and and I think that’s where to me some of the personally my opinion is that like the obsession. With AGI is incredibly displaced. To me, this really should all be around. This is a tool for what we the the goals that we have as a society, as communities, as individuals. These are tools, really wonderful tools that we can use if only we have. Access to them and and if only they are being developed by a relatively representative group of people, I agree. I think there’s a lot of potential for innovation in those in those other spaces. And I will say I have. I have friends who say our graphic artists and are really concerned because some of the work that they would be paid to do previously I can do in Dolly, you know, or maybe not as good a version, but I can do a quick version in Dolly in a couple seconds, right? And that does cause a real issue for them in the short term, but I agree. I think if we are. Because we sometimes get into this mindset of thinking about the technology as the end goal. We missed some opportunities around, well, maybe this is really just something that’s more assistive, there might be some areas where this is this is you know the real end goal. But you know I’ve heard a lot of folks talk about it as it really creates a get getting rid of the sort of blank page problem as. A writer, if you need to write a report of some sort, you know within all of the ethical frameworks of whether you’re doing that in a in a company or a school. But I think it does really remove a little bit of that kind of rough draft, you know, kind of first pass blank page issue. Because it gets us started with something. As you said. You can then be editing. You can then be in kind of a different role. I think that the I I was really interested when you know, SAG went on strike and actors and writers went on strike. And I think that there’s some really interesting stories and lessons there of how. You know human, the human beings at risk right now can really use some of their own collective bargaining power to to really force industry to come up with processes, policies that is are going to be more fair because I do think that there is a real. There is a real benefit to using AI in particular areas, but we don’t want it to be. At the risk of some of that real human creativity, especially when a lot of the AI creativity is is has been trained on those artists, right? It’s a lot of the tech, you know, I can I there’s been a lot of stories around that, but I could go into one of the image generation. And tools and say, you know, develop a, you know, a a new logo for for all in this artist style, right. And and some tools will kind of say, oh, we can’t do that and others will just go ahead and create it and there’s no real kind of strict framework. And so all of those. All of that kind of human creativity, some of which artists kind of either gave up, you know, may have kind of given up for free. Those tools are have been trained on and are charging others for, so I think we really need more more activity and we really need those voices to be heard in order for us to figure out what are the economic frameworks that are going to be fair here, given that there are. There is this the kind of value that artists have already created, that they’re not getting the benefit from and some of for some of these paid. Tools in particular. 

Hessie Jones 

I agree with you, it seems it seems like we’re at an inflection point where you know government, you know, policy artists, everyone. This is an interdisciplinary problem that we. Need to solve. 

Emily Reid 

Yeah. 

Hessie Jones 

Because it it’ll hit all of us at some. Point in time. Somebody told me, you know, maybe AI is the biggest equalizer and that it that it will do everything better than that normal human being. And so we bring in universal basic income. And I said, you know. I do not want that to be a default, even though even though it it may be true at at some point in time, there will be jobs that will be displaced and you cannot replace them if unless they upskill themselves that that has to be done. But I apologize, I actually want to talk to you for another. Hour or two hours, but I can’t. Because we have opinions. 

Thank you. Thank you so much, Emily, for coming and I look forward to more discussions like this as we. As you know, AI develops further. I want I want to see what kind of milestones that a fall is actually making in the next in the coming years. 

Emily Reid 

Thanks. Thank you so much and I’ll just I’ll 11. Last note that I’ll, I’ll, I’ll leave our conversation on this has been wonderful. Thank you. Again, I know we went, I could keep going too. So we’ll we’ll just we’ll have to do it again another time. But what you just mentioned there, you know I I I had a conversation with. A colleague who works in one of the. The major generative AI companies, and he was making a, you know, an argument that there this is kind of potentially a great equalizer, creating A level playing field. And again, I would I think this is a good place to use that argument around the Internet or that comparison to the Internet is we that was a bit of an argument at the time. For the Internet as well, that it was going to be really a great equalizer, it was going. To kind of. Create actions today we still don’t there are still folks who don’t have Internet access. And the other thing that happened is, is that sort of early those early days of the Internet, it was much more of the Wild West. And there were. Those bulletin boards, and there was, you know, a really kind of different kind of environment. And then you have, you know, more companies getting into the space, economic consolidation happening. And now the Internet is really influenced by. Like 90% of it is influenced by four or five companies. So that to me, I think that what technologies like this do is they create the opportunity for that to be the case. But they are ultimately going to end up working within this. The other systems that we have, the other political systems, the social systems, all of those systems that we live in as human beings, it’s going to adapt to that unless we are thoughtful and strategic and. And and and really kind of active and hopeful about what we can change there and how we can use those the opportunity with these technologies to change some of those systems. So again, I think that there is a lot of hope for where we can have AI go, but so much of it is going to be dependent on what we choose to do. So thank you, Jesse. 

Hessie Jones 

I have hope for the next generation, so I I tell my kids this all the time. You guys are going to change the world and I hope and I hope it. It allows us all to live a happier life, right these days, it’s hard to question that. 

Emily Reid 

Thank you. 

Hessie Jones 

Anyway, thank you. Again. So for our audience, thank you for joining us today. If you have topics that you want us to cover, please e-mail us the communications with our accelerator tech uncensored is produced and powered by ultimate Accelerator. You can find it. My name is Hessie Jones, and until next time have fun. And stay safe. 

Giselle Melo 

I’m so excited to be here, Hessie. 

Hessie Jones 

Ohh good, I’m glad. To get here. I’m good because we’re gonna dissect your life if you don’t mind. 

Giselle Melo 

No, I I don’t mind. And I just wanted and just out of respect for some of uh, some of what you said earlier and because of the family office that that we were able to partner with, I just wanted to to correct one small piece of information. So you know and I and I do. Touch on this. Very likely because it was such an important piece of of matter ventures becoming matter ventures is the Family Office had actually he’s he’s a leading investor, one of Canada’s most prolific entrepreneurs leaders, phenomenal human being. He had hired our company and partnered with our company to build the logistics system. So. It’s that logistics system that exited. Now of course overtime, like any good relationship trust, you know, delivering on results, it strengthened our relationship and then he and his family office became an anchor investor matter. So I just wanted to kind of correct that and and get the information right? 

Hessie Jones 

OK, got it. 

Hessie Jones 

Got it. So. He obviously was already a fan before he became an investor, so. 

Giselle Melo 

Yeah, we want each other for more than 10 years. Now for more than. 

Hessie Jones 

Great. That’s great. OK, so let’s start off. When you’re a child, OK? Not not really a child. OK, so you say you’ve been on an entrepreneur since you were 12. And So what? What did inspired you at that age? Like, what did entrepreneurship look like at that time in your life? 

The information right? 

Yes. I didn’t even know what entrepreneurship was, but I’ll. I’ll give you a… Listen, entrepreneurship. When I grew up, there was nothing sexy about it, so I just. Want to say? That but anyhow. So listen, my family is Brazilian, my brother and I. Are Canadian and the only ones in across 4 generations that were born outside of Brazil? With my parents and I talk about this at length, like every time I’m telling a story about myself with, you know, my parents working, like many immigrants, my grandmother raised us, so I spent most of my after school hours either with her or with what. After school and weekends with. What I I referred to? As my extended family, which is. Just it’s it’s literally immediate and adjoining neighborhoods and blocks and blocks of of. I would say both indigenous Canadian kids and 1st generation immigrant kids from Africa, from South America, from West Indies or the Caribbean. If you were from South Asia. So it was just this huge melting pot of of kids all over the place and outside of my window. And this is what? I’m telling I did. I didn’t know what entrepreneurship was, but outside of my window, what I did observe were two worlds. One is where my. Parents left for work. Every day to ensure that my brother and I would experience a better life than they did. And then the other is what I call the streets. So that’s, you know, where the hustlers and the entertainers created and assembled around a super dope culture and sound known. As hip hop. And although I didn’t know how to articulate it at the time. I witnessed how my parents. And hip hop were so key. To fueling the growth of North America’s economic engine, but they weren’t accumulating asset value from their contributions. So a very early age, as you say, might need to understand how money moves ignited. That said, at the age of 12. I started my first what I would. Call real business. Again, not really knowing the details of business and not not at that. And I don’t think I even knew the word entrepreneurship. At the end of basically at the end of every winter and summer, I noticed how many, you know, toys and items in in in my complex or in my building. How many of those tenants were throwing out things in the garbage? So a few times a year I started making my rounds and knocking on the door of every unit in my 8 story building asking tenants for items that they no longer wanted. They gave. They gave me so many things and I’m not sure if they gave it to me because they thought I was cute and wanted to support my. Efforts or whether I was helping them clear garbage from their home, but I would run a few garage sales a year and I actually made some really good money as especially as a 12 year old kid. This is not lemonade stand money. This was like I made a lot of money and and it was selling used goods in my neighborhood. But the best part I’m going to say one of my favorite parts that I never forget. The feeling I got when overtime you’d have like some of the artists and like, you know, joining neighborhoods from around the block, they started bringing their art around to the areas where where we were selling things. And I remember how happy I felt that they they were able to sell some of their. Pieces of of work of. Artwork and never. And I never cared to take money from that. I just. I was just it was. It was almost like this communal experience. It was really, really, really cool. And I think because back home, many of my family members were artists. I think that’s why. It had the impact that it had on me once my parents moved us out of that neighborhood to to to a neighborhood that many would consider middle to upper class. 

Giselle Melo 

Uh. Better schools. I took this concept of St. team so this is my second company. I took this concept of a street team and if if you’re a hip hop header into hip hop, you’ll know what I mean by St. team and that was the first time that I built a marketing company. It was actually an event marketing or lifestyle marketing company. And then we started. Doing some digital but it was around that time. That I would learn about Steve Jobs. So I learned that he had dropped out of school. I had heard that he was. When I say heard is like learning right, it’s videos. It’s certain things. You you kind of follow somebody. And I’m like looking at this guy, I’m like, huh. Here’s a guy building this incredible technology company, and he’s not an engineer, and that’s stuck with me. And so although I naturally lean more to technical in numbers anyway. A light bulb went off and I remember the little words inside my head. And the question is like, well, if he can do it, why can’t I, right and so kind of the rest is? History, digital digital this marketing company event marketing digital led me to tech eventually tech led me to wealth management, wealth management into investment banking and eventually now into venture capital. And it’s in my eight years in wealth management that it really started providing me insight like real true. Hands on macro and micro insight into my need to understand how money moves. Like that’s when the answers became started, becoming really, really clear. And you asked about using a business and life views on businesses in life from. From all of that is that. UM. I think we’re all the result of our choices, right. Whether it’s the content we consume, how we wake up in the morning. How we educate ourselves, whether it’s through experiences in life or formal education, it’s what we eat. It’s our environment, our upbringing. These are all choices. And real result of all of those choices. But, and I will say, but, and I’m pausing on that. But because I do believe we have, I believe in accountability, I believe. In putting your best foot forward, I believe in leveling up right. I’m very much and we know each other enough to say I you know how I’m about a Mama mentality and I live and die by that. But. For Indigenous and African the the, the indigenous and African diaspora for people of color, for women. We’ve had additional speed bumps and layers to navigate towards those results, right. So some of those speed bumps. And I’ll call them speed bumps and layers. Are everywhere they’re they’re evident for everyone to see, but still. Most speed bumps and most layers exist in the fine print of contracts. They exist in institutional bylaws and they in and and and they exist in in software code, right? And no matter what all that’s said and done, I think this is the greatest time to be alive. And it’s the greatest time for us to to build a company and to unlock prosperity. So still, that’s my. 

Hessie Jones 

It’s I think we’re going to delve much more deeply into that because I think you and I share the same views when it comes to lot of the systemic stuff that’s happening society and how it’s limited access to resources and funding all that stuff for the people that we’re trying to support. So let’s let’s go back into something that you mentioned earlier. So you say tat tech and capital, they’re the vehicles for your life assignment through for economic empowerment was there, is there a specific moment where those two really, really came together together. I know you mentioned a little bit about it before, but I’m not sure if it was a moment or was it a a. Series of moments. 

Giselle Melo 

You mean when it became? When my mission became clear? When?  

Hessie Jones 

When the whole idea of economic empowerment through entrepreneurship is your intersection between tech and capital, right? And I I know the trade labs and what happened with there and what you had built that was. One thing, but also you you had talked about like when you when you were at the investment company, I mean that those ideas were probably shaping at the same time as you’re building all this amazing software. So like it, it seemed to almost. Pull less than to what mattered. Ventures is, but was there a moment in time when you said that even before that happened, were there other things that that said? Listen, just all you got to. Do something about this. 

Giselle Melo 

Yeah. So. It’s interesting because because I look how I look and we are investing in what I call inclusive teams or diverse teams or there’s all you know, there’s all sorts of ways to describe it. There’s often a focus on, you know, what are what are the challenges, what are the disparities, what are the speed bumps and you know earlier, like I said, I believe we. All have choices. To make, but you know, some of us have additional layers and speed bumps that we need to. Find a way. Over and through, in order to have the results that I believe a lot of us are looking to have, which are, you know, high performance. Returns impacts all of those things. But yes, I have alluded to those key moments and now I have so many moments. But in my early years, hip hop ignited the mission. I would say I’ll put it in three steps. Hip-hop ignited the mission towards economic empowerment. There’s a book that I read in my early teens which shifted my perspective on business models and investing. And then there was the uh. Literally, you know, through YouTube University watching following kind of what Steve Jobs was doing. So I would say Steve Jobs, that experience crystallized the mission. 

Speaker 

Quickly on the book, the book is is called McDonald’s behind the Arches by John F Love. It’s an old book. OK, but where I came to learn it was it was a big book, but it just kept me super, Super, super engaged. And in summary, I mean, a lot of people know the story now, but it really here’s a gentleman who went through all kinds of stuff later, later and later in in his later years. Ended up applying you know some non traditional and traditional methods of growing and scaling a business. But we you know, for those who do follow or have follow McDonald’s, you know it’s never about the burger or the restaurants, it’s about the real estate. So that entire is a very, very good book to just it opened my brain up to the possibilities of building businesses in so many different ways. The importance of contracts and distribution and a bunch of stuff. So. That was the. Book it’s called McDonald’s and the arches by John F Love. But we’ll focus maybe on the two points. So hip hop and Steve Jobs. My need to understand how many moves was ignited. Like I said, when watching my parents and watching hip-hop contribute. Literally contribute to the growth. Of a global economic engine. But in both cases, not realizing gains as they call it an investing and not not realizing and experiencing. Portfolio growth from real asset values, right from owning real assets that increase in value over time or you can sell them, which is what makes them an asset, right? There’s some intrinsic value in there that somebody else is willing to pay for. So in my early years, as I observed, Steve Jobs introduced, you know new tech products into the market, although I’m software and he’s hardware. So I’ve gotta plug in my computer cause it’s starting one second. As I’m watching him introduce new products into the market, I’m thinking to myself, wow, kind of like hip hop. He’s contributing tremendously to this economic engine. So in both cases, hip hop has built. Hip This the hip hop is built from nothing, right? It became this massive economic. Monster, but it was built from nothing. What I mean, nothing from the ground up with no capital. It’s just a number of. Elements that were brought together by the culture and hip hop came to be hip hop. Then you look at. Similar elements of what Steve did, which was. Building something from nothing but using tech. So I remember. You know, obviously in this case, Apple has a lot of hardware, but software is no more than zeros and ones. And the cost of entry to build software is 0 to low cost, at least the early stages of it where you can build it to a point where there’s you’re building something with some kind of some kind of value, not necessarily a full asset, but some kind of value. And so I’m seeing similarities in the way these two groups are moving, but what was exciting to learn. About observing Steve, was that the more he contributed to that economic engine, the greater his gains. And an increase in asset value he experienced and that was asset value from IP, from products, from distribution, from real estate, from, from R&D, from the brand itself and all these things individually and collectively have a tremendous amount of asset value which he was. 

Able to realize as well as. His shareholders and others. So similar to hip hop. Both of these are the center of influence right hip hop, being a center of influence. Let’s say Apple products or some kind of software being a center of influence. And then from there other sectors surface, right? Other areas, peripheral areas of those businesses come to be and they themselves. Under being this. These. Phenomenal organizations, large asset assets that originally just came from the center. This was one hip hop one, let’s say a a computer, OK, often times we don’t factor in that technology. So technology product being a center of influence, it gives rise to new sectors that are. Sometimes the most, most non glamorous, but the most valuable sectors, and those are the ones that shape our economy. So it’s like facilities, data centers, servers, networking hardware, even natural resources, right? That’s a whole other topic. Natural resources being required as an area and an asset. 

That that takes an entirely different form and shape. So for me, witnessing kind of the kind of. That’s why I told you. You know. You know, I. Love to talk. But so for me, witnessing so much of the asset value that was generated from both hip hop and a personal computer, both being centers of influence. Right. That’s what crystallized the mission of leveraging technology and capital to foster economic empowerment, specifically through entrepreneurship. 

So the result of gaining like first hand understanding of how money moves in the private capital markets. And first hand understanding of how to build technology, systems and infrastructure. That’s why now I partner with founders and Ioffer investors. This opportunity to say, hey, let’s build these, let’s invest in these companies that are building centers of influence, oftentimes building the infrastructure, some of those different assets and spaces and and. And companies that are coming off of that initial piece of of software or. Or right? So. Let’s just say that’s that’s where the mission came from. And because we’re talking about Mission, I want to do one thing, which is probably not exactly what you asked me for, but it’s something that I noticed I’ve never done when I’m talking to audiences or I’ve never talked on a podcast and and it’s. It’s on the note of I want to give a special shout out to what I call a few a few giants. OK, I’ll be quick with this, but it’s a shout out to. And in this case what I mean by Giants are leaders in the public eye who, maybe unlikely, unbeknownst to them, that they are unaware that I have stood on their shoulder. In times when I was the only one in the room, only one in the. Room of billionaires. Only one in the room standing, you know, amongst a bunch of family office, the only one in the room sitting and being a bunch amongst a bunch of Fortune 500 decision makers. The only one in the room, sometimes of incredible. And sometimes less incredible men. But to those giants, it’s been an. Honor to witness and learn from you. And I know it’s at one point it was Steve Jobs, but there are so many others. Watch them sacrifice and make certain decisions that sometimes we’re not the best only for shareholders, but took into consideration some other elements that I think we also take into consideration. And there’s no matter of. Ventures there’s no leashing labs. There’s, you know, something else that I’ve recently. Launched called the. Code there is none of these without. Somebody like a Jim Estell, right, CEO of Danby appliances. There’s not. There’s none of this with. I have great respect for Prime Minister of Barbados, Maya motley. Tremendous respect for CEO of Square, Jack Dorsey, artist and genius, Jay Cole, asset manager and global leader Melody Hobson. Philanthropist and brilliant mind Mackenzie Scott, head of investments at the Ford Foundation. Roy swan. I’m. I’m going to say investor entrepreneur. Thought leader Chamath Pahala Patia and President of Rwanda, which I’ve been following more more recently, talk Paul Kagame’s brilliant, brilliant in what he’s doing with, with with Rwanda right now, I cannot leave out the goat nazier Naz Jones, which is was in. 

Hessie Jones 

Wow. 

Giselle Melo 

This and more recently, Ice Cube, who’s building 3 on three basketball, by the way, if you ever see this or hear this interview, Ice Cube. I’m watching you. And to many, many others, may the force be with you and may you continue to be blessed on your journey as your journey continues.  

Hessie Jones 

I’m wondering if there is a thread of commonality among all of them that that turned your head that made that said that. That made you decide this is someone of significance in my life and I I. I honor them. Like what? What is it? I. 

Giselle Melo 

Well, I’ve learned so much from them because I I. The way that I grew up, I believe in maximizing profits. Right. So I mean I’m, I’m I’m a capitalist. At the same time. My attempt. At every turn, and when I say attempt, I don’t know these leaders that I just mentioned. I don’t know them intimately. To say I’m sitting here and vouch for every move they’ve made, but. What? But what I have noticed with them is. They appear to. Also, be focused on bottom line or the economics or the the economics of whatever organization that they’re leading, but. They also seem to have this thread. This common thread of trying to minimize collateral damage with the decisions that they make and try to improve areas that are follow outside of business as usual, which is purely bottom line and that’s why I mentioned them. It’s just, you know, there’s people that you follow and you kind of align with, I can’t like. And do I know them intimately? No. Do I look forward to? I’m probably gonna meet and work with a lot of the. 

Giselle Melo 

But that’s the reason why I’ve mentioned some of those names. 

Hessie Jones 

I gotta say something. It’s a little bit ironic because what you just said there they they try to minimize that their capital risk and. Yet. It if Steve Jobs had failed. If he decide it, if the IMAP if the iPhone, which he decided to create a market that never ever existed. If that failed, it was a if it was a catastrophic destruction that that that end up meaning that let’s say BlackBerry. And then their iPhone end up. End up superseding that market that. Would have changed the game forever. So if you think about it, he, he he was a catalyst for something that was amazing and yet he it could have all gone wrong for him. 

Giselle Melo 

That’s that’s that’s life in life. There’s always going to be times where things go all wrong and there’s going to be times when things go all right. It just, I think. And I think in many cases, when things go all wrong, it’s a matter of perspective. Because you know not to get too woo woo on you. But I I I’ve come to understand that when even when things look like they’re going wrong, oftentimes it’s the universe protecting you, propelling you or just asking you to switch directions to go in the direction you should supposed to be going in. So yeah, it could have been a, you know, could have gone, could have gone the wrong way. Was the guy perfect? Probably not. You know, you hear all kinds of stuff on how, you know, he was a tough leader. He was a smart leader sometimes. But at the end of the day, at least on this rock that we’re living in, we’re just human. So what we can do is just try to put our best foot forward and and attempt and that’s why I’m saying these leaders that I mentioned and there’s so many more I do not know them intimately, nor did I know Steve Jobs. But what I do know. Is. That there are things that they did. That inspired me and I stood on their their shoulders when I was in environment where. Again, you know, people talk about being the only one, oftentimes not having a network or sometimes just thinking so big that others in your immediate circle, you know, look at you differently or are not sure like why you’re talking that way. And so you literally there’s times where I literally created this environment of. Tapping into these people through video just so we can relate on a desire and a pursuit to build something bigger than ourselves. And for that I’m grateful. 

Hessie Jones 

So I want to. I want to take you a little bit back when you were actually running niche labs it it? Still exists today. 

Giselle Melo 

I’m just not operationally involved because of the fund, but yes, it exists. My cofounder is one of the most phenomenal human beings ever. Denner OK? And and we have a team. Both here in Canada and in Brazil that we we draw on whenever we have projects and contracts to work. 

Hessie Jones 

So you when you used to be when you operated more as a co-founder, what were, I would say, some of the challenges that you faced as a startup founder that you’re going to, that you take forward with you as an investor in the fund because you you understand? The hurdles that a lot of early stage founders face, was there anything there that you would take as a lesson? In in the way that I’d say you grew the the pitfalls, the the challenges in funding, whatever. Was there, anything there from your perspective that, that, that helped drive you to where you are today? 

Giselle Melo 

That’s an easy one and I think now I apply it to all areas of my life and I encourage. Whenever people. Can is applied to every area of their life. Is that great? Business is about relationships and I know we hear that. Every time they. Probably you know, shout it from the top of the. At every institution. But while matter Ventures is primarily an investment firm and with the fiduciary duty to its investors. We we really, really aim. Over the short and the long run to be known for having one of the most robust and valuable networks that our portfolio companies have access to, a very memorable moment for me has always been tied to how much the media industry focus on. Our founders ability to raise venture capital and build a Unicorn, and I just laugh because. And the reason I laugh is not to make fun of don’t get me wrong as a VC. I’m right. I’m right there with them, aiming to invest in unicorns too, but the but to the founders, I would say. You know, especially to the ones and this is very common that they’re out there thinking that the only way to success is a Unicorn or getting funding from a VC. Just to make it clear, I’ve never raised outside funding as a founder in my many, many years and many businesses that some did well, some just completely failed. Every dollar of revenue generated was reinvested in my venture, so I became my own bank. And I’m not saying that to like pat myself on the back, I’m saying because. Now I’m raising right raising to build this fund, but the fund itself, beyond being an investment vehicle and capital for founders, I’m really, really aiming it for it to. The. And become known as the VC firm. And I know every VC firm says we have this network. We are trying to do it in such a palatable way and be very make it so easy for our our founders to get access to that network. And I’ll say this, I’ll give you an example example of what I mean by the the power of relationships. Again, we’ve never raised outside capital from the founder side to my Co founder and I. Never raised outside capital. UM. Nishi Labs, for example. Nishi Labs, actually was was a pivot, and I call it a pivot, because that’s a sexy word. But. Before Nishi last was an issue, so it was a product company. We had built a decentralized software and system and marketplace for about 3 1/2 years. Totally bootstrapped, came out to the market with a great product, great revenue. We grew market, grew our team of engineers and designers entirely with whatever capital we have in bootstrap for 3 1/2 years went out. To raise funding. Hit every roadblock and that’s when I got a taste of VC as many talk about it or as I’m kind of describing to you today. UM. The turning point for us was that gentleman that I mentioned to you, Jim Estell, he ended up selecting our company to build a software product and partner with him to build a software. Product which is where we got our exit. By the way, that exit was not a Unicorn, it was not venture back. I may not be sitting here today sharing the story of my, you know, journey to VC, had it not been for that relationship point blank, one of the greatest benefits of that exit isn’t also that I can’t it it’s it’s also not that I can tell you the story about how we did it because those, you know, people love those stories. And I love telling the story. It’s a great story. But the greatest benefit has been building an even stronger relationship with one of. Canada’s leading entrepreneurs, operators, investors this this gentleman, Jim, he’s brilliant, OK. He he selected our firm, by the way he selected our firm to build this software over a much larger and much more robust engineering firm. So anyway, we get the exit. We have this relationship. Yes, we’ve delivered on value, but at its core. He’s a good human. And he, you know, I tell about the fun, the matter ventures. And I say here’s what he’s building. He’s just like, I’m in. And I’m like, what do you mean? You’re in? He’s like, I’m in. I didn’t ask him to invest. I was. Asking for some other. Things cause he had run a fund before this. He’s made more than 150 investments direct. And that’s what I was going to him for anyway. He ended up investing in being our anchor Investor, Family Office investor in the fund. But because we have a good relationship, of course I’ll never buy. I’ll never buy an appliance because that is an appliance. Probably I’ll never buy an appliance from another company. Let me make it clear and whoever is buying appliances, go buy dandy products. But the point is. 

Hessie Jones 

I have a freezer from danby listen. 

Giselle Melo 

If you’re if you’re in my network, or if you’re hearing this and you ever crossed my path and you’re walking with a fridge on your back, you better be a dandy fridge. OK, that’s all I’m saying. But the point? Is my message to founders is the power of relationships now granted this relationship took years? But with that was the development of trust. Risk the risks paid off and he let me be very clear. He wants a return and as most family offices they want to return. But it doesn’t change the fact that so much. Of why we’re. Having this conversation is based on a relationship. It’s not based on venture capital. It’s not based on the fact that we had a Unicorn. Exit. So that’s my thing to to the founders is really, really, really hone the like, hold the relationships that where you can see you align with somebody, hone that relationship. You never know what it’s going to lead to. And so that’s my biggest take away. 

Hessie Jones 

To them, I’m going to I’m going to segue that into the next question because. You’ve. You’ve often spoke about, you know, the untapped markets and the fact that there’s a lot of capital that you know, it’s just sitting on the table because companies, investment companies don’t realize that there are other alternatives to what they currently invest in. Tell me about. Tell me about that and how that has fed into your your investment thesis. 

Giselle Melo 

Sure. So. At matter, whenever somebody pitches us, we’re asking ourselves because there’s a committee of us. Now we’re asking ourselves what untapped and addressable opportunity has this founder identified? And it’s we’ve, you know, after hearing a lot of pitches, we’ve realized it’s it’s likely one. Of three things. That defines that untapped and the addressable opportunity. And I know you’re big on privacy, so I’ll give you the example. The first one is a solution with untapped value. What do I mean by that? I mean something like a a proton, right? Proton as you know, as we love identified. And untapped. And addressable opportunity merely from addressing and applying privacy to their products, right? So that’s what I mean by a solution with untapped value. There are so many e-mail providers and and and. Like communication tool providers out there, but they they they recognize there’s an entire population in the world that cares about privacy. So they took what is. A product that is nothing new to anybody. They identified an untapped value in that product which is applying privacy and. They’re one of the most prolific companies in the world, so that’s one which is a solution with untapped value. Second is a solution based in North America, meaning the founders are somewhere in North America, Canada, US, Mexico, et cetera. They’ve built it here, but it’s well positioned for expansion into untapped geographies. I mean, there’s so many examples of that, but essentially what we’re saying is, hey, you’ve built this thing. Awesome. The likelihood of you having competitors very likely, what makes your thing so special. So we’re listening for that founder who’s either generated some revenues here and generated revenue or or identified that there’s a market outside of North America. Who wants that thing. So that is number 2, which is a solution based in North America, well positioned for expansion. Into untapped geographic markets. So that’s untapped geographies. And then the third. Is what people often think of. When we talk about matter of ventures and I think it’s a, it’s unfortunately it’s a narrow approach because in no, in no case was proton being a diverse led company. They weren’t building for other diverse consumers, right? They were they they were building because they recognized and on to have value in the product. Then they built the product that was better for a certain geographic certain type. Of user. So in this third case, which is what people think, we only focus on, but it’s not, we do 123 is a solution that addresses untapped sectors and these sectors could be products and solutions that address women’s markets, cultural markets, veterans markets, disabled bodied communities. Right. So it’s, which is much more than half the globe now, by the way, it’s not even a minority anymore. It’s basically a solution that addresses. The majority right. And it’s weird to say that because of that, that addressable market or that untapped market has for so long been considered minority, but they’re actually the majority, but they are still highly untapped. We hear again and again how many sectors that focus on these communities haven’t addressed their needs. So that’s the third one for us and as an actual example, our first investment identified two of three of those untapped markets, so. Number two and three, which is. There are cyber solution with untapped value, right? So like the proton, I’m not saying privacy was their thing. I can’t tell you what their magic sauce was, cause they haven’t disclosed that, but we saw that in their product, which was an untapped they. They they figured out. Untapped value in their product and then two, they’ve positioned themselves for major expansion into untapped geographic markets. It’s already happening and I think there’s going to be a continued strong likelihood that their revenues and their growth come from international markets and that their revenue and growth will actually outpace what they’ve achieved so far in North America. So that’s how we define untapped, OK. 

Hessie jones 

So let’s talk about the fund itself, because I mean there there is the underlying motivation for you to even start this and you say matter does venture or VC differently and. How is? How is it doing it differently? Understanding exactly what’s out there and what’s wrong with BC right now? 

Giselle Melo 

It’s it’s. I don’t think my answer is going to be really any different than most of the things we’ve heard in the market. But I will say this ten years ago. UM. And this is more from an inspirational standpoint 10 years ago when I experienced immense challenges raising early stage funding. I knew that eventually I would find success in some way, shape or form. And build an investment firm. I I knew that. So for me it was not a matter of if it was a matter of when and more importantly, how would the investment firm need to be structured to solve for the problem of selecting. And supporting the growth success and maximum exit value of transformative organizations and companies, led by incredible diverse teams. That’s what it became to me. Now to give you an example of. Not only you know that’s what I experienced 10 years ago, but it’s interesting to see how that has and continues to exist in the VC space. And I’ll use deal flow as an example, so. To me it’s wild and I think wild is a nice word, but I’ll use that word. To me. It’s wild that we have. We’ve actually received a meaningful amount of deal for from other traditional, bigger VC’s. That’s good news. That’s a wonderful thing. I love the ecosystem approach that exists in VC. Keeping in mind we invest in deep tech software. This essentially means that. The IP or specific technology or science is key to the success of that company, so much so that if you were to remove that IP or technology or science that the founder has developed. Or the end of the market untapped opportunity, they’ve, they’ve, they’ve developed or discovered. The company itself would cease to have asset value. That’s the difference between deep tech software or deep tech. Anything and tech right? Is that technical science IP is so essential to the company doesn’t mean the founder in the market and all the other things are not essential. But if you remove that essential piece. That company would cease to have asset value. That’s how important. The the, the, the, the. IP is to to it, so one would think. That if an inclusive or diverse team pitched nearly any VC that’s investing in deep tech, that investor. Understanding deep tap could assess the viability and validity and value of that startup right just from a subject matter expertise standpoint. And because again, the company needs to have that thing to make it the thing right, it needs to have sign tech, right? It’s. But instead some big V season investors have actually sent us deep tech companies, where the founder or founders are black or Latin, or women or veterans, less so on the veteran’s side, I notice which makes sense. People of color will call it or women. And you know, initially, like, amazing. Thanks for sending me the deal. I’m like, super excited, especially when it comes from a bigger view here just. Like. Oh my God. Like people are getting to know matter ventures. They’re sending us deals. We’re building these relationships, but exactly 12 out of the 2027 cases that we’ve. Yeah, which to me is 12 too many when I’ve asked that DC A. You know, what are your thoughts about this deal? Like, what do you like about this deal? What are the concerns? You have this deal to hear a reply that they haven’t looked at. The deal is bonkers to me. That’s the piece that’s wild to me. So think about that for a moment. We’re not investing like, like I said, we have three ways that we identify untapped markets. Only the 3rd way. Is tied to, you know, cultural or women or, you know, visible minorities, disabled bodied folks. So we’re, you know, we’re not investing in women’s CPG products as an example. So this is not a case where a group of male investors don’t understand a niche market. This is for there’s a group of investors. Who understand deep tech but haven’t looked at the deal because the founders and I have to draw that conclusion. Because they’re sending it to us, which we’re we’re one of the only right investment firms who invest at that intersection. But you haven’t even looked at the deal. So, so. When we say we invest differently, there’s so many reasons why I like the network. We have almost 500 now advisors who specialized from PHD’s to deep tech experts to all kinds of folks that we reach out to to de risk our deals to do all the things that we need to do to de risk and provide the greatest returns to investors, but. One thing is we would never overlook a founder or forward a deal to another investor without reviewing it first. Who does that? So that’s when I, you know, still I see these and then people are like, well, that’s only 12. That’s twelve too many. 

However, however. Rather than saying, hey, this is a problem, I’m not saying it’s not. But the capitalist in me is like, keep keep them coming. Keep sending them can keep sending me all the women, people of color, black, Latino, indigenous founders building those companies. I it is my pleasure. To look. At what they’re building and look under the hood and understand what they’re building and may that be one of the May may, may it be one of the the companies that turns into a Unicorn. Yeah, that that want to return to our culture. So I’ll stop there. 

Hessie Jones 

Yeah, I think interesting it I I think that what like what you’re addressing is obviously something that even like let’s say 5-10 years ago, nobody really wanted to talk about and and whether or not the VC community wants to admit the fact that there are there exists some kind of unconscious bias or that they have. Establishment networks that they only look at deals from, from people within that network and that, you know, those are the ones that are trusted and that you know, anything else outside of that becomes, you know, you know, less likely to. The best, who knows but but. But I mean, this is the kind of thinking that actually stops emerging founders from from all those places that you talked about, like the indigenous, the women, you know, all all these, all these amazing founders. Not access to any of those resources just because of who they are and it stops them, no matter whether or not they will be like the future. Steve Jobs, yeah. 

Giselle Melo 

I mean, I’m. I’m I, I acknowledge that I, you know, people talk about that at at length. But I do want to emphasize 11 point, which is, you know, kind of and this is not watering down anything that you said or that I think all of us are fully aware of at least most of us are fully aware of. Yes, we have choices, right? Everybody has choices that will ultimately become the results of who they are. Unfortunately, yes, those those speed bumps and those layers exist at. The same time. And for as long as you and I have communicated, you know that I live and die by one thing, which is the Mama mentality. I don’t care what people put in terms of speed bumps and. Anything that’s going to it, to me, it’s just going to slow it down, reroute it, protect me. But I really hope that founders spend more of their time and energy focused on finding the solutions and finding the people like Jim and others who. Understand that there’s. Actually benefits to. Broadening and. Diversifying like you would any. Any investment in your portfolio, there’s a reason they they they they suggest portfolio diversification, it’s it’s not a it’s not just a cute word. There’s actually numbers and data which I told you I’m a numbers girl there’s value in in understanding from pure pure investment play there’s there’s value there but. People are going to be people. We cannot spend our time and energy focused on that. We can’t. We can’t. 

Hessie Jones 

Absolutely. And and there has been a lot it it’s been. In the news. So long the unfortunate part is we’re not moving the needle. OK, maybe optically. But when we talk about investment, we’re still OK 2023. 

Giselle Melo 

We are here. No, we are moving anyway. 

Hessie jones 

.48% of VC funding went to black founders 2%. Went to women in 2022. I saw those numbers for the last consecutively for the last 3-4 years. I’m going this is not significant. This is maybe it is it. Is it a percentage of the total of capital that’s been deployed in the market, maybe it’s the increase in capital had happened year over year. Fine, but. The the benefit is still not going to them. It’s going to the white male founder. So, you know, I’ve yet to see, like, significant movement in this industry. And I mean, there’s a reason why people continue to talk about it because it hasn’t happened yet. There hasn’t been significant enough movement to say that it’s working. So but you will persist. I know you will. I know you will. 

Giselle Melo 

It’s not even. I mean, it’s not even at this point. It’s not even persists, it’s, it’s thrive and there’s so many more of us that are thriving now and and we’re very clear and we recognize all of what you said. So I’m not diminishing that in any way shape or form. But stick around for the next 25 years. And you’re going to see some. I’m I’m a. I’m a long term kind of kind. Of kind of gal so. 

Hessie Jones 

Yes, I you’ll be on. I’ll. I’ll be watching Giselle. TV, believe me. 

Giselle Melo 

I don’t think about that. You know, you know, I’m not a big fan of interviews. I’m not sure about that, but you may, you see. A lot of our portfolio companies on on. On the in the lights and in the. 

Hessie Jones 

I can’t wait. OK, I I’m gonna I. Have two more. Questions because I think these are going to be significant because I I want to know what your OK we know your thesis. We know what you your company invests in but where do you see the market moving specifically when it comes to automation even if if machine learning? That’s actually considered past day these days. But where is? It moving in the next decade. Well. 

Giselle Melo 

There’s no denying that like data AI. I know Quantum is still in the. Corporate and research DoD levels, but it’ll find its way into consumer there is no denying that these technologies open up a world of possibilities for learning, for automation decision making. These are all technologies. That will come and go, meaning. They’re new now, but they will become commoditized over time. I see a future that is bright when we realize that technology itself only tells part of the story. Intuition. Critical thinking enable what I call non-linear problem solving. And it helps both companies and communities iterate on new opportunities or solutions. So I believe that adding critical thinking and creativity and intuition and you know some of those non tangibles to the mix will arguably unlock a different dimension of computing. Computing and intelligence and provide companies. Continued to provide companies with a competitive advantage, and I think humanity on a whole will be more aligned and sustainable in the types of solutions that we’re going to see. I also think our global economy will not experience, and I’ve said this before, 100 years of movement in the in the 21st century, this everything speeding up. It’ll be more like 20,000 years at today’s. Right. And some views, some I think I’ve heard this before, some view the innovation economy or this, you know emerging tech or edge tech economy is is very mature because everybody knows about AI now where it’s been around for 40 years. There’s this, there’s this view. That. The innovation economy is mature. It’s purely tech driven. And it’s resulting in a lot of consolidation with few companies remaining and few transformative new transformative, sometimes sustainable solutions entering the fold. I don’t, I don’t agree with that view. I think we’re meters down. A road many miles long and every time there’s significant innovations that reach the consumer level like AI has. It’s because there’s been demographic, demographic shifts, energy shifts, geopolitical shifts, climate, cultural shifts. I think it’s these these factors that drive technology and innovation and shape the world and not the other way around. So I think there’s so much focus on. The tech, when we should actually be. Taking the peak at the things that are driving and and shaping and causing the adoption of some of these technologies and I believe much of the world now realizes that our ancestors already did the hard work and handed down the wisdom necessary for us to innovate inclusively and and make a lot of money and thrive. So I don’t think we need to reach, it’s not about recreating the wheel anymore. We’re just more tech, more tech, more tech. I’m a techie, I love. The thing I. Love it. I love numbers. I love all of that, but we absolutely need to unify, and we have the opportunity, I think, to leverage technology. Regardless of whether it’s edge computing, computer vision will robotics all those things and build systems and infrastructure. That allow us to scale. Both our wealth and our freedom, and I like the way Jack Dorsey, which is again you had asked me before why I’m a fan, is how he largely describes technology. Is is I I view it similarly as is we get to design what we want to see in the world rather than doing what other people think we should be should be doing. That’s my view of technology. 

Speaker 

Hessie jones

So last question, I think you’ve already alluded to the to how important personal relationships are in in helping drive many things in your life in, in your, in your business, what personal values or principles have helped you guide? Yourself, like in, in, in what decisions you end up making and what Rd. you end up taking forward.

Giselle Melo 

I mean, that’s one sentence is I try my best not to manufacture alignment. That’s it. 

Hessie Jones 

That’s all. That’s awesome. OK. Can we break that down a little bit? OK. You know, I I want you to explain that to me as I try to digest this meaning. 

Giselle Melo 

I believe in pursuing whatever you want in life fully. Where you have to chase it attracted. But I think there comes a time. When? And it’s in any relationship business. Romantic family. Well, you know, you just **** heads. Whether you know and and people say in companies, but companies are made out of people, solutions are built by people. Technology is built by people. So for me, manufacturing alignment means when I meet somebody in any capacity, if we’re butting heads and we just don’t see eye to eye, I’m not going to go out of my way. To and and I. I hope they don’t either to try and make our conversation or our views fit right. We all have different ways. With the world. And I just. I believe there’s we actually, I believe we actually live in. Multiple worlds where. Your view is your view, your experience, your journey. Thrive in that, and if you if somebody else comes along and doesn’t doesn’t align with that view, OK. Keep it moving. Keep it moving because there’s a whole group of people out there, whether it’s two 2 billion that that align with that view, and so I would rather spend my my effort my capital and seek return on investments in areas where there’s an alignment and that’s you know that’s why you know many cases there’s certain family offices I like working. Yes. There is a view that family offices are actually a better solution for large pools of capital. Transformative solutions. Yeah, alignment. It’s just about and trying trying to force that over the long run. It never really work really works out. 

Hessie Jones 

Yeah, from an investment perspective, I think maybe the equivalent is get to a quick no. Because I find, I find that if you don’t like, let’s just not beat around the Bush. If it if it’s not your gut is saying something, then then actually just spell it out. And so I can move on, right? 

Giselle Melo 

Well, it’s, you know what? It’s funny you say gut because you know. 

Even data some people will pull up all the data in the world and the data doesn’t actually. Shift the other party’s perspective. They’re like, oh, but it’s in the data. It doesn’t matter. It’s in the data. There’s entire world has made-up their mind about a certain solution. And moving forward, you can put all the data you want in their in their face. It’s not going to change their perspective because they view things differently. So data, not data. 

Hessie Jones 

Absolutely. 

Giselle Melo 

Math, not math. I I love forget math. I love data, I love tech, but it’s that’s not what’s going to evolve somebody’s perspective when you realize somebody just doesn’t see eye to eye, you know what? Send them the blessings and thank thank the universe for that interaction. And and keep going. 

Hessie Jones

That was your last word, and I I appreciate that last sentiment, because I think it’s important. I think it’s important and we’re not going to please everybody. We just have to be true to ourselves at the end of. The. Day so we can get to sleep at night really nicely.

Giselle Melo 

I’m not going. Not to harp on Steve Jobs, but he did have a saying. He’s just like. If you want. To make everybody happy, sell ice cream. Don’t be a. Leader and I liked that a. Lot I was like, OK, OK, Mr. Jobs, you. Got you. Got my mind you. 

Sell ice cream, man. You make all you wanna. You wanna put a a smile at on the you know, your entire neighborhood and all your investors. Just give them some ice cream. But leadership requires sometimes some hard decisions and it’s OK to disagree. 

Hessie Jones 

Sell ice cream. 

There we go. 

There you go. Yeah, well, thank you. I I appreciate you joining me today. Giselle, you have a lot. Well, I mean it’s it’s amazing to me like the perspectives and insights that you have that help drive a lot of what’s going to go into matter ventures. In in the. Especially in the sector that that actually does require some change. So I wish you all the best and. You’re going to do. 

Giselle Melo 

One thing we’ll have we’ll have a call about the tactical components of matter ventures, how we make our investment decisions, our portfolio. 

Hessie jones 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. 

That other stuff. This investment as usual investment as you. 

There you go. Well, thank you again and for our audience. Thank you for joining us today. Tech Uncensored is powered and produced by altitude accelerator. We’re hosted on Spotify and you could find us wherever you get your podcast. Until next time my name is Hessie Jones. Have fun and stay safe. 

Kabir Barday 

Yeah, let’s do it. Thanks for having me. 

Hessie Jones 

Awesome. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about one trust and especially the milestones that you’ve recently Hit. 

Kabir Barday 

Yeah, at one trust, we’ve pioneered a new category of software around the responsible use of data in AI and everything it takes to do that, and that includes transparently collecting data, simplifying all the compliance automation of all the different regulations of that data. And then enforcing the policies when you’re using the data. And so we’ve built a platform around that. We’ve grown incredibly quickly over the last many years, first fueled by privacy regulations and now AI we have, we’re approaching 500 million of AR is the recent announcement we made 14,000 customers all over the world. Those are some of the. Recent milestones. 

Hessie Jones 

So it looks like privacy is good for your business, right? Yeah. So from your perspective? 

Kabir Barday 

Privacy is good for the world. 

Hessie Jones 

Privacy is good for the world, but for a long time, privacy flew under the radar, as you know, and a lot of companies were doing amazing things. They’re innovating. The privacy was a start, I would say a hurdle or a stopping block for many companies so. 

Kabir Barday, 

Yeah. 

Hessie Jones 

We are reaching a phase. It’s almost a dichotomy between. Speed of innovation and also responsible technology. Can you speak a little bit about how you’ve seen that shift over the number of years? 

Kabir Barday 

Yeah, it’s been interesting. When we work with companies, so our product helps companies manage risk and use data. And so you want to bridge those. Apps, but the challenge in the market is that there there are almost sometimes two sides to that equation. When I meet with companies, there are business teams, marketing data, people trying to use more data. Their jobs depend on innovating and using more data, and then you have all these risk teams, privacy, security, ethics, legal. It’s like 8 different risk teams now. Their job depends on supporting the business, but also minimizing risk. And all of these teams are under pressure now because of these new demands, and that pressure sometimes even puts those teams at odds. The good news is there is a common goal and a common question that is bringing these teams together and it’s how do we future proof our data. Across all these risk angles we care about at the speed and volume demanded by our data and AI initiatives, and we’re seeing those teams coming together but needing something new to help bridge that gap. And that’s the gap we solve with our software. 

Hessie Jones 

So we spoke earlier offline about the need for marketers. I wouldn’t say the need for marketers, but maybe marketers realizing that there is a need to to look at privacy in a different way because the industry advertising industry marketers have been known to target. And maybe they haven’t used it in the best way. I have to say that when they’re doing it, they’re doing it with the best intentions. They’re trying to find increased revenue, relevant customers, but sometimes the targeting that they’re using are using variables that are not necessarily. Stuff that should they should have access to. So what? What’s your perspective on the the common day marketer and why there is a need to be, I would say more responsible. 

Kabir Barday 

Yeah, I love the question and it and it’s so in tune to the moment because almost every company I meet with now 3-4 years ago, I’d show up and it would be the privacy and the legal team in the room. And now it’s the marketing and the data team in every meeting leading the privacy charge. And what we’re seeing is that every marketing team is really going through three phases. 1st, it’s regulatory compliance. Second, it’s first party data capture and 3rd it’s AI enablement. When you start in that first phase of regulatory compliance, these marketing teams are really thinking about Cookie and cookie compliance because that’s the first thing the regulators going to enforce. So great, that’s usually where they start, but but we know that’s just the tip of the iceberg and there’s still lots of of. Techniques that are being worked out in that world. But where companies shift to marketing, teams see reliance on 3rd party data is not their future. It’s gotta be first party data. Your ability to capture first party data is directly proportionate to the trust you have with your customers, and that trust is activated through privacy and choice and control and transparency. So companies are deploying these technologies around consent and preference management. We’re very well known and widely used for that as well. That’s kind of the second phase now, the third phase is new with AI and what marketing teams are realizing with AI is it’s driving a whole new urgency to your point. And that’s because there is no machine on learning. When you put data into a machine learning algorithm, the data loss has happened. The issues have happened. You can’t selectively remove it. That’s different from a previous CDP or personalization project where you can just delete the data from that environment. And regulators have found this out. When I meet with regulators now they’re shifting their tool of choice. From the. Line to a data deletion and now an algorithmic deletion order because the only repercussion. The only way to solve an issue in machine learning deleting the data doesn’t help the machine learning algorithm already learned it. You got to delete the algorithm and so marketing teams are seeing this existential issue to their marketing campaigns. And trying to lay the foundation up front and what’s happening is because global laws are everywhere now there’s a common playing field that everyone needs to comply and so now you can differentiate with privacy. In the past when it was only certain states or certain countries with laws and it wasn’t a level playing field, it was a. Problem. There’s a second interesting concept, which is This is why most companies that were lobbying for privacy laws not against it, because it’s not fair for a Microsoft if they got to comply with all these global laws and then some local company in the US doesn’t. It’s like Microsoft is loving for privacy law. And so it’s really driving this interesting trend where if you can’t beat them, you join them. 

Hessie Jones 

Well, I I want to address a couple of things. So first, First off, you mentioned consent and everybody would argue that in the age of advanced artificial intelligence, that consent has gone out the. Door. We are now seeing a prevalence of data scraping. There is no consent for data scraping. There is no consent for data brokerages, and there’s no provenance for when that data was actually received. So there are companies that are saying maybe we go out there and we become the proxy for the consent mechanism. So the. That the consumer doesn’t have to worry about where their data is and where they can control it. Because from their perspective there is no more control. So I want your perspective on that. 

Kabir Barday 

Yeah, there there’s, there’s a lot of different concepts here and I think this is an area we’re going to see a lot of interesting new business models in innovation. There been companies that have tried to innovate in this model where you have a almost a personal data vault for a consumer. They put all their data in it and then people, those have been around for 10 years and those businesses have gone nowhere. Now will that change with? AI, I think they’re fundamental issues with that model and they’re issues with how that that companies compete with each other. And if one company is, these problems are very in your face with child consent as well. It’s like if you consent to use a service for company A. Then Company B, their direct competitor, gets that consent for free and it’s not, you know, so they’re competitive issues and things that are preventing that market from from surfacing now more broadly. What companies are starting to realize is any data they have, whether it’s scraped, whether it’s collected first party, or whether it’s from a third party, there’s a new level of governance they need on that data and that new level of governance is a purpose specific attribute on the data. It used to be that the industry used to talk about what’s called data access. Governance, which just has to do with, is the data sensitive and who needs to access it? Now there’s a third dimension and it’s do you have permission to use it for that? This and this is really overhauling how companies are thinking about data governance to embed purpose specification in their data. So now if a company goes and scrapes a bunch of data online, the question for that company is what that data you collected? How was the consumers of that data able to give you? The purpose specification and what documentation do you have that proves you have the right legal basis to have that? This is something that companies are taking risks on today and if they get that. And. Look, all companies take risks. Whether that’s a smart risk to take or not, a smart risk to take is not for me to stay right in hell. But what I would say is if a company gets that wrong, the repercussions are dramatic and are going to be seen in the next few years because the repercussions of data deletion order. Imagine if open AI has an enforcement action on one small thing they scraped that violates a regulation. A tiny mistake that they make a regulator can do a data deletion order on their entire algorithm. That pretty much shuts down the entire general purpose. Lam. My prediction is that’s going to happen in the next few years and we’re going to see significant disruption now. I don’t think that’s going to slow down companies ability to use enterprise LM’s with their own proprietary data sets. I think that’s the future. It’s companies that have proprietary purpose specific consent based data sets are going to win and companies that are doing things that don’t really have the right. Intellectual property copyright consent. Permissions. You’re one data deletion and one algorithmic deletion. Order away from being shut down. It’s going to happen. 

Hessie Jones 

It seems like you’re saying companies like I would say cohere Claude anthropic open AI. That are creating a lot of these general models. They’re probably the ones more at risk than the ones that are. Then the companies that are actually using the the model to create sub models is that. 

Kabir Barday 

Right. You know, I I think I think so, right, because the differentiation in AI number one comes from proprietary. Data not not the model itself, right? These models are going to be everywhere available open source, so who has the most proprietary data? This is also interesting because. Privacy law and AI law is going to start overlapping with competition. Law. Because companies that have the most data set the the the companies that have the best relationships with the first party consumer are going to be able to collect purpose specific consent based data the best. And they’re the only ones that going to be collected. And when these enforcement actions happen and the people that are collecting it illegally versus not collecting it, you have the haves and the have nots. Well, who are the big companies that have the most first party data relationship? You could probably think of a few big platform companies that start to now have competition issues, so data is not just an ethical issue, a security issue, a fairness issue, and a consent issue. But it’s now a competition issue as well, and I don’t even think we’re scratching the surface yet on how hairy of a problem this is going to emerge. That gets back to the point of your your original question, which is what are companies doing today and companies are doing today are realizing and marketers are realizing today that proprietary first party data directly from their customers is the goal. And trust is the currency that allows you to exchange. And so yeah, marketing teams, data teams, everybody’s now upping their game and looking at privacy as a differentiator, not as a regulatory compliance issue. 

Hessie Jones 

That is so good to hear. I mean, I’ve seen ever since the evolution of the privacy Commissioner telling Facebook, yeah, they gotta change their their privacy system in order for Canadians to actually go on to that platform. I think that was circa 2000 and. 

8 or 2010 it’s it’s actually changed so much since then, so thank you for that. OK. So let’s shift gears a little bit. Let’s talk about Dora the digital Operational Resilience Act. Can you, I guess in layman’s terms, introduce what does that mean for financial institutions and their vendors 

Kabir Barday 

Yeah. So, so Dora is an act around digital operational resilience, I think originated out of out of Europe and applies to financial institutions, but. People interacting with financial institutions that end up getting in scope and directly. This is one of the biggest demands around. Ultimately third party management that we’re seeing with companies, a lot of the companies ability to be resilient operationally has to do with who are all your third parties who are all your suppliers and do you have. Some sort of do you have issues with that? If there are geopolitical issues in a certain region, if there are even climate change issues that put a data center at risk, but even just security and privacy issues in that supply chain, one of those entities goes down. What’s your ability to stay in business? I mean, we learned this in the pandemic when businesses were shut down. Dora takes it a step further, rightfully so. And saying it’s not just to direct vendors, but it’s the fourth parties as well. What starts to happen is you have a lot of vendors that, let’s say, a technology vendor that you’re using, maybe all of them are using the same back end cloud data. Or security provider you end up having a hidden concentration risk at a fourth party. Then now Dora is trying to bring forward. So those are some of the concepts in in Dora now more broadly. The How this relates back to our AI topic is also interesting because most of the companies AI exposure when I meet with companies today, they’ll say I have two or three. Yeah, really big, really important AI projects, but we have our arms around it. We haven’t gone live with them yet and so our exposure is limited. What they really start to realize is they have 1000 plus AI projects happening at their company. That they don’t realize is happening. It’s coming through your software supply chain. The difference with AI versus the Internet or mobile as a as a as a new technology trend is Internet and mobile took many years for technology companies to replate form on a new thing. AI is an API call. It took us a week to integrate AI into our application, so now you have A and it’s not a new vendor. I signed on. It’s just. It’s it’s, it’s the existing vendor for the company. So now you have thousands of vendors that just built an AI into their product and are pumped into the supply chain into all these companies. And the difference is those vendors are being used directly by line of business. It’s like shadow IT and those line of businesses are putting data into it. That is a completely new angle that companies have no control over. So third party management, not just Dora, but third party management in general, is a massive, massive trend right now. When it comes to responsible data in AI and this area we excel at. 

Hessie Jones 

I’m. Wondering because of that, to what extent to what extent is the are you liable the first party company to the breaches or the mishaps that happen at the end line? 

Kabir Barday 

Yeah. So so I’m a technologist, not not a lawyer, but I do. Study these issues pretty heavily now. It depends more broadly. This was one of the big shifts in GDPR, so GDPR holds the controller which is the company that’s collecting and and having that data that that responsible. So me as a company I am responsible for what my vendors. Do. Now if I want to shift that liability back to my vendors, I can try to do some of that in my contract with my vendor, but the regulation supersedes that and still holds me accountable. So I can try to say, hey, if I get in trouble, I’m going to try to put a $5,000,000 liability clause in my contract with my vendor and I’m gonna try to reclaim that from them. The regulator still coming after me. My name is still gonna be in the news. And if I want to drag my vendor through the mud, I can choose to do that or not. But the accountability is now on that, on that first party that’s driving a new level. You use the word accountability to start. That’s driving accountability and a lot of these regulations are really accountability based regulation and they’re trying to make the accountability clear. And they’re trying to say you don’t just need accountability, but you need to have the right people in your company accountable in the right org chart where they can be accountable and and GDPR and privacy even goes as far as being prescriptive in some of that. 

Hessie Jones 

I I would love to speak to you more. I’m. I’m getting the you got to get out of here. Absolutely. So I want to thank you so much for speaking to me. I think what we’re probably going to speak a little bit more offline because I want more information from you. So everyone thank you for joining us in this conversation. 

Kabir Barday 

We’re getting getting signals. Yeah. Yeah, she was fine. Yeah. 

Hessie Jones 

Everyone enjoyed the rest of Collision and this is Hesse Jones for Tech Uncensored.  

Jeff Kischuk 

Thank you. Nice to meet you. Hessie. Tripian is a B2B travel service. Where we. There are recommendation service that uses AI and data for services to give really good personalized and destination recommendations for travelers. We’re really helping travel companies fill the gap with personal recommendations and activities in the destination. 

Hessie Jones 

OK, so when I think personal. Because I came from the direct mail world, so everything was personalized. To what extent these days, especially with artificial intelligence. Does travel become personalize? 

Jeff Kischuk 

Well, it’s that’s a really interesting thing when we talk about personalized, I think we’ve all been chasing the definition of personas for years of how do we understand how do we create personas. And one of the challenges is I always use myself as a use case where when I travel, I’ve got 6 definite personas. When I travel, whether it’s business, personal, friends, family, and I behave differently when I’m in a destination. So what we do is we try to identify that persona, help you self identify, help you understand who you are, capture. What you’ve done to when you’re traveling in that persona, be able to make those decisions and do the kind of activities you want so you don’t get recommended to go to a water slide park when you’re traveling on business. And a lot of that persona, the recommendations come down to how we make the recommendations, whether it’s a close referral, whether it’s community based, whether it’s data from your machine learning and what you’ve done. Or whether it’s what I call a, you know, delightful discovery, where we’ll recommend you something that you otherwise wouldn’t do. But it’s because we think you’re in this destination and. And we have a good idea that you might like that type of restaurant, so we recommend it to. 

Hessie Jones 

You OK? So you said a lot of. Stuff there, yeah. So I’m looking at things from a little bit different, different perspective because it’s about making a relevant recommendation to the person who wants a certain experience. But you’re also predicting the likelihood of them actually liking something so how much and maybe this is more of an IP question. So how much of the recommendation comes based on? Predictive the predictive side of the model versus what they’ve already experienced. 

Jeff Kischuk 

That’s a very good question and it’s it’s an area we struggle with, not struggle with, but it’s a challenge because if I break it down to, I’ll take it down to data first of all. So either side of that equation, whether it’s highly predictive or being able to search out a specific activity requires. Very accurate. Data. Being able to have the attribution of those points and of those places in order to even do a match, what we find is over the years and even with AI is is the way we use the algorithms. It’s trying to understand that balance and I wish I had that we do it this way and it’s always prescriptive. But the reality is is we allow users to find their own journey. And find out if they want to be more open to recommendations or if they want to be very pro. Creative and it’s a blend of making sure the technology can support how the user wants to interact because one of the challenges we find with some of the AI tools coming out there is they’re too general, too prescriptive, trying to put everybody in the same bucket where we kind of like that balance of humanity and technology. In order to help you make those decisions and make sure our algorithms can steer you. 

Hessie Jones 

OK, so when yeah, that’s a lot of information.  I’m looking at things more from an algorithmic perspective and maybe before I get deeper into the actual algorithm stuff I want you and I’m going to hand you the mic because my arm is getting really tired, but I want. You to talk a little bit about how it and if you’re using a lot of the generative AI technology today to actually either improve experience scale, the technology, what are you using to? Hi. 

Jeff Kischuk 

So when it comes to the current Gen. AI tools, is again I always refer to them as tools because what we look for is how to use the Gen. AI to enhance that recommendation and user a good example of how we’re using Gen. AI is if somebody likes a place, then you’ve gone to a place and you like and you want to be able to capture your own descriptions. You can use Gen. AI to write a review of that place and the language and style that resonates with you, and then take that Gen. AI will put into our algorithm to do a matching. If you say you have a local pub in Toronto. Really like and you’re going to Istanbul. We can use that Gen. AI description against our POI database to do an accurate match and help you find someplace that’s relevant on your emotions and the way you interact with the location. 

Hessie Jones 

OK, so I’m going to ask you about and maybe this is going to touch on the next question about monetization. So when you you talked to a little bit about discovery. In the beginning. So how do you make serendipity type? I guess. Recommendations to the user and how much of that can be potentially sponsor content and how do you how do you make sure that there isn’t like an over indexing on sponsored type content when it when you’re serving that up to your users. 

Jeff Kischuk 

Thank you. And that’s that’s a really good question because that’s something we have dealt with right from the beginning and the way our algorithms are structured is we make those sponsored, those sponsored POI’s configurable. And the reason it’s configurable because as a B2B, if we’re working with the loyalty company that has a point conversion and participating partners is they have a commercial reason to increase the relevance and the recommendation. And again that is in their ecosystem where their users are expecting recommendations from certain trusted points in their ecosystem. So will allow the client to increase the weighting of those points. To allow them to drive conversion to their business ecosystem for customers who don’t want that sort of weighting, then we use our general weighting where it’s all algorithm based and the algorithm takes into account time of day, whether where you are and just what else you’re doing. So it’s not just about recommending a single point, it’s actually how do you orchestrate multiple points in a smart way. That makes sense. So we’re not sending you to a cafe 5 blocks away and asking you to zigzag back. So the algorithm takes more into account than just what we think you’d like. We also have to balance it with your day. 

Hessie Jones 

OK, so how about ratings and reviews? Because that has been, I guess from my perspective influential in driving a lot of consumer activity. How much of that gets baked into the model and how much of that becomes part of the model after a user’s experience on your plan? 

Jeff Kischuk 

So you must have kind of examined our road map from years. Ratings and reviews is something I think everybody’s trying to crack. Back in 2019, we were working with an AI company that was doing sentiment analysis on reviews to and understand accuracy, which ones were human generated and it it’s it’s. You know that’s an area where as a collaborative partner where we like to be part of an ecosystem is we want to work and find that other startup, that other company who’s cracking ratings and reviews for that authenticity. And allow me to be able to input what kind of ratings reviews I like and what resonates with me. So I think that’s an area that’s still evolving and our technology and our platform is built to take that in. But to answer your question, how we currently deal with it, we do a general weighting of it. We we try to not use it as a driving real critical factor, but what we do is we throw out. Some high and low scores. We also look at the trendings in the scores to understand if a place is trending up or trending down because there was so much inertia in these scoring, it’s really hard to trust. So we we do some things in our algorithm to filter it out to make sure we’re at least having some semblance of a place that is legitimate, authentic. And matches your interests. 

Hessie Jones 

So. I’m looking at a different type of traveler. There are my sister and I are very different people. She likes to go on trips that actually have a scheduled time to wake up, go to this place, take a rest, go to the next place, go to the next place. Everything is time. I like to kind of explore on a day-to-day basis what we’re going to do. Today. So. So from that perspective, when you make recommendations, do you take into consideration things like fatigue, pacing of activities like downtime rather than just maximizing the booking experiences? 

Jeff Kischuk 

Yeah, that that’s correct. So we take into account even the accessibility and the pace, even if you’re traveling with children and how old the children are. So our algorithm takes into account walking pace and. Distance between paces. We also have the option for accessibility to choose which methods of transportation you want to go, whether you want to walk, whether you want to take drive, whether you want public transit, ride shares E scooters, we have a system that calculates the different transfer times between it. Getting back to your first question about that spontaneous. Versus Pre planned is we have a new feature that we’ve released this year that we call instant algo and the instant algorithm is for when you do just want to spontaneously go off and try something new and break your plan or you’ve you’ve gone down an alleyway and you went off your plane cuz that’s how people travel, they’re spontaneous and then will allow you to. Reset and get a whole new set of recommendations based on what you’re changing interests or where you are. 

Hessie Jones 

So from a privacy perspective, you’re curating these experiences based on the collection of data, what specific data? Do you collect and which ones? I guess from your perspective are prioritized that will provide the most optimized model for your users. 

Jeff Kischuk 

Yeah. So with that trip in, the fact that we’ve been working with large B2B companies, we’ve been certified GDPR compliant. We’ve been certified PII with places like Visa North America, we believe, and of course we follow a high degree of privacy and personalization. So when we do not like to track any personal information as a B2B, we like to get a unique identifier. From our customer. And then what we’ll do is we’ll work with them or the client to get their profile and get their interest and get from our client if they have a personal profile on. That user or allow the user to generate some attributes, so we have it tagged to an obscured ID, so we don’t know your e-mail. We don’t know your name. We have you in our system as an ID along with as many tags and preferences which cannot be construed as personal information. So it’s a combination. That’s one of the. Fun challenge. As we have working with enterprise companies, is balancing the degree of third party and 1st party client data they have what they know about their customers and then helping them with getting a mechanism to learn more about their customers? Because what we do is by gathering that information of how they behave and what they’re interested in, we are able to contribute that information back into their BI tools so they. 

Hessie Jones 

Cool. 

Jeff Kischuk 

They can then learn more about their guests and how they travel in destination. 

Hessie Jones 

1. So one last question, it seems like you’re already creating, I’d say, an experience where you know the future of travel isn’t really about the individual. Looking and doing all the research beforehand, what does? How does the experience change from from your perspective like? How do you want it to change? Maybe that’s the better question.

Jeff Kischuk 

That’s actually a very timely and brilliant question is. We’ve always been a technology company. We chase the technology solutions, we embrace technology. But what we keep learning and feedback is there’s a very much human elements. And I mentioned earlier about human ingenuity is we believe and when we travel and when we get feedback from travel. 

It’s we believe it’s going to be a blended experience. It’s taking the human contact of the community, the ability to still get recommendations from your friends and family and being able to put them into a tool and a platform that you can manage and get recommendations and make those decisions or take the decisions that are made for you. So our personal belief is again about using technology to advance. Human interaction, especially when people travel, there’s, you know, people are always going to travel. We believe when people travel together. One of my concerns about some of the AI travel planners is they’re purely A1 to one experience that you’ll get an AI tour guide and the earbuds in your ear, and you’re not interacting with anybody. You’re not with your sister, you know, discovering and learning places. So we believe that, you know, the future of travel is going to be much like the way humanity has progressed. It’s always going to be social. And needs to be interactive, but again, we all chase optimization and we want to help with that. 

Hessie Jones 

Actually I have one more question. You are raising money. Can you tell us a little bit? About that. 

Jeff Kischuk 

We’re at a really interesting point we’ve, you know, been around for five years. So we’re well funded. We’ve had really good, you know, Angel investors and seed through the point. But where we are now, we’re at. A. Scale up and it’s getting to that point where we have. Customers, we have a proven mature product and we’re looking for that strategic partner to help us get to that next step to do more expansion of of enterprise level and make sure that our organization can scale both in port sales and customer service to support those enterprise. Customers, again on a mature platform. So we’re at a really exciting opportunity of a proven company with a mature product ready for that next scale. 

Hessie Jones 

Well, thank you so much and I wish you luck. I’m sure you’re going to disrupt travel the way the way it’s meant to be in a privacy preserving way, right. Thank you. And for everyone out there that we are tech uncensored and we’re going to be a collision all week. So in the meantime it take. Have fun and take care. Tech uncensored and Altitude Accelerator Podcast does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It is produced and distributed by Altitude Accelerator for more tech concepts through content. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or visit us at altitude accelerator dot com.

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Great. Thank you. Great to be here. Yeah. So I’ll just give you a brief overview of what we’re doing at resilience. So resilience, we are providing our customers with really a comprehensive risk management solution that includes insurance as well as additional products and services that help our customers better manage their cyber risk comprehensively. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

We believe really strongly that insurance and the transfer of cyber risk to an insurance. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Carrier is a big part of managing any risk to include cyber risk, but there you know there are a few ways you can invest your dollars when you’re when you’re thinking about managing your cyber risk. You can buy insurance. You can also invest in cyber controls to reduce your exposure to risk. We work with companies to help them understand how they can. They can strike that balance. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Where their investment dollars should go, whether that’s investing in particular controls, investing in their security team or investing more in insurance. But we provide a comprehensive solution. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

And to customers to help them make those decisions, those trade-offs and and offer the insurance coverage itself directly. 

Hessie Jones 

OK, so I’m gonna throw a couple of things at you because I. 

Hessie Jones 

Hessie Jones 

Was doing a little bit of research on the number of breaches that have happened in the last couple of years. So between 2022 and 23, there was a 20% increase in data breaches. 

Hessie Jones 

Publicly reported data compromises rose 70% year over year. The average cost of a breach was about four and a half million dollars, and globally, the number of victims actually doubled year over year. So from your perspective, you are probably aware of some of these stats. It’s probably the. 

Hessie Jones 

The reason why companies like yours exist, what are you seeing on your end when it comes to these kinds of risks? 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Yeah, so data breaches were sort of, you know, the major headline data breaches that happened maybe 10 years ago really took the cyber insurance market to the next level because they cost organizations so much money and data breaches continue to be a risk to organizations. I think some of these statistics honestly are driven by increased amounts of disclosure. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Of data breaches, you know it’s no longer the case that there is an enormous amount of reputational harm when a data breach occurs in an organization because they’re more common and we’re sort of used to them as consumers. And there’s more regulation and more sort of guidelines around what’s disclosed and when and to and to whom. So some of those numbers are going up because of regulation. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

And actually the reduced reputational risk, you know, as data breaches have become, I don’t know, almost steady state and sort of understood as a risk. Ransomware attacks have really skyrocketed in the last few years and that that tends to be the the sort of biggest unknown when we work with organizations in terms of you know, am I going to suffer from a ransomware attack? 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

How is it going to happen? How much is it going to cost? How am I going to deal with it? That’s that’s a bit a bit more of an unknown space for our customers than you know, the data breaches, which are relatively well regulated. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

And understood. 

Hessie Jones 

So let’s talk a little bit about what your new approach is and why and why it’s different than what we’ve seen before. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Yeah. So to to sort of distinguish ourselves, well, we distinguish ourselves from both the traditional insurance carriers as well as others in the sort of technology space that are that are attempting to address the cyber risk management. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Problem that our customers have in contrast to incumbent insurers, we’re moving really quickly. Threats are evolving, threat actors are using new techniques to launch ransomware attacks and to sort of negotiate with customers to try to incentivize them to pay ransoms after the attack. These things are constantly evolving their new threat. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Doctors, their approaches, you know, are changing very rapidly and we’re responding to those changes really in. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Very, very real time in a way that traditional insurance incumbents just can’t move so quickly. So when we’re working with customers through a claim, I mean, we very quickly understand how did this attack happen and how is it handled and how can we spread that information and and create a sort of positive feedback loop of information sharing and use those learnings. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

To to help our the other customers in our portfolio and we are also learning how much how much these cost. So in contrast to others in the sort of technology space that are trying to address this same customer need of understanding how to protect themselves and manage. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Cyber risk we are seeing how these attacks happen and how much they cost because we’re working with companies as their insurance provider. So we know how they play out and and and really the dollars and cents that are at stake in a way that puts us in a really good position to talk about things like ROI on different investments into security controls as well as insurance. 

Hessie Jones 

I guess from a defensive perspective, then you’re gonna try to help a lot of these companies be a little bit more proactive identifying them before you know they it’s too late to do anything about them. So from your perspective, we’ve seen the rise of a lot of these. 

Hessie Jones 

Large language models, which have probably been the cause of some of these. You know these kinds of risks that that we’re seeing in the marketplace. 

Hessie Jones 

Can you point to some? I don’t know learnings or statistics from your perspective that have correlated with the rise of LMS. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

You know the the sort of classic example that everyone points to and I will as well is that phishing attacks will become more personalized, more tailored, much harder to spot. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

When you receive an e-mail that says, hey, you know, this says, hey, Anne, great job on the collision panel I heard. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Talk about XYZ and you know I’d love if you took a look at, you know why click this link to, you know, to connect with me. You know that that information about me being at the Collision conference and speaking on a particular topic is on the web and that’s available for customization of really spear phishing attacks. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

You know, I I think it’s too early. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

To to tell you know how how quickly technology users are or not keeping up with these new attacks and to what extent really threat actors are really leveraging these to do this, this custom personalization, I I you know I I think it’s a little a little early to tell. I think the fact is it’s pretty easy to be a cyber criminal. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

The barrier to entry is pretty low and you know the the attacks that are really meant that that are incentivized by financial gain. You know, the threat actors that are out there attack. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

As they want to make a quick buck, those attacks are opportunistic. You know, there’s a lot of sort of just sort of spraying sort of going for anyone. The lowest hanging fruit and really custom bespoke personalized. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Spear phishing emails are not necessary to have success, so for most types of types of attacks, they’re more sophisticated actors doing other things that that may leverage these technologies at A at a faster tick. But that’s not most of the cyber attacks that are that are out there in the wild. 

Hessie Jones 

So. 

Hessie Jones 

You deal mainly with enterprise clients. OK, so do you have any visibility into? 

Hessie Jones 

What something like this could cost a medium or a smaller sized company because I don’t, I would doubt that they don’t have the wherewithal or the infrastructure to properly defend themselves either. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Yeah, that’s a that’s a great point. I think you know my my advice to a smaller, particularly a very small company would be to outsource their security to to companies that that are really experts, not try to. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Build things in house and and completely manage their security on their own. It’s really important to get the expertise of of someone that’s that’s really focused on on cybersecurity as a risk because yeah, as you said, they’re they’re just not going to have the resources to to do that on their own. But there are, you know, there are tools and companies and services out there to help. 

Hessie Jones 

OK, so I want to talk about. 

Hessie Jones 

Fighting AI with AI and if it’s even possible to be able to leverage some of the LMS to to fight the speed and scale of what we’re seeing today, can you speak to? 

Hessie Jones 

That a little bit. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Yeah, I think that’s a common phrase. I’ve heard around this conference today and I think. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

I’ve been working in the AI space for for 20 years. I I you know, I’m I’m more. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

More of a sort of natural skeptic, I think in in this this hype cycle where we are. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

I think that’s fine. You know, there are ways to fight against new technologies with new technologies. I mean, we’ve seen this in the cybersecurity industry in general for a very long time there. There’s always new technology to to to, you know, to to fight the new stuff. I think I would, I do worry about. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

There’s always going to be a need for a human that really understands what. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

On to manage the application of technology and this is true on the on the attacker side as well as the defensive side. By the way, I think. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

You know, in some ways I think about attackers that see new technology as really making it easier for them to launch their first attack and to get into cyber crime and and to make some money. But you know, I I I hope and believe that our law enforcement agencies internationally are are on top of that too, right. And and they will be able to. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

You know, the less sophisticated the threat actors get, the easier time we will have identifying them and. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

You know, bringing them bringing justice to them. So on the, on the defensive side though, I mean the same is the same is true. We still need humans at the at keyboards doing the hard work, understanding how the attacks are happening and understanding how to most effectively use technologies to to defend. You know, it’s just it’s not just a matter of turning on a knob and saying OK now AI is fighting AI. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Right, there’s, there’s a lot of sophistication that has to go into sort of thinking through what, what does that even mean, you know? 

Hessie Jones 

But but I mean as you say, it’s going to become easier to be to to have this threat attack that can happen in more creative and more frequent ways. 

Hessie Jones 

Will it ever, will we ever get to the point where we could stop it before it hits our servers? You know what I mean? Like, I mean, I’m finding that we’re playing whack a mole. And the minute we identify something we create, we create a system that can stop future attacks of that kind. But then you have new ones that come up on the horizon. 

Hessie Jones 

That nobody even thought about. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Yeah, totally. I think at resilience, we have an entire team of security researchers that are really trying to deeply understand again we’re. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Not. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

They’re human. The the attackers on the other side of these incidents are are they’re just people that are sitting in front of a screen somewhere out in the world doing these things and it it is, it is. 

I know. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Having fun, making money, buying Lamborghinis, some of them you know, they, but they’re just people and they work a certain way. They think a certain way. A lot of these criminals threat actor groups. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Have complex politics. Even, you know, within the. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Sort. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Of market space, where they they partner, you know their partnerships as a whole business sort of ecosystem the the these threat actor groups are in and so we have to understand what are they doing really deeply to be able to disrupt that. It’s not just about Oh well, we’ve seen an attack from this IP address. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

So now we’re going to very quickly block all traffic from that IP address. You know that’s sort of a. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Security response but but you know again these are people and we need to understand how to disrupt the entire ecosystem that they’re working in. 

Hessie Jones 

And like from an incentive perspective, we’re not talking. Do you remember war? 

Hessie Jones 

Games. 

Hessie Jones 

Years ago, Matthew Broderick and he was just playing a game and then he didn’t realize that he actually, when he was playing the game. 

Hessie Jones 

He actually disrupted a security security console. 

Hessie Jones 

From the Department of Defense or something like that. So he didn’t even realize that what he was doing. But he was doing it for fun, to see if he could do it. And a lot of times, that’s what it is. When you say they’re just people. It could be kids. It could be people who are just trying to challenge themselves and trying to figure out whether or not they could do it. 

Hessie Jones 

And that’s it, right? They don’t want anything out of it, but I think the ones that actually capitalize on that where they ask for Bitcoin, where they ask for. 

Hessie Jones 

Stuff in exchange. That’s where we’re starting to see that. 

Hessie Jones 

You know more of a threat because now there’s an incentive to get things right. Are you? Are you actually seeing that level of threat at the enterprise level, even at the insurance level? 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Oh, absolutely. I mean the the, the sophisticated threat actors that that do have financial motives that are. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

You know, demanding ransom payments in exchange for decryption keys to let businesses get back to business, I mean. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

You know, a recent top of mind example, the two casinos in Las Vegas, MGM and Caesar’s both suffered ransomware attacks last September or so maybe and disrupted casino operations. They lost a lot of money. You know those were. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Actually, the speculation is that those were young. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Male Americans that were just trying to make a quick buck that were that were behind those attacks and you know, I I I believe deeply resilience was was founded by veterans of the US. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Military that believe really deeply, that again, this is a human problem and we’ve got to, we’ve got to punish these humans. I mean this is major criminal activity and and the sort of public private partnerships involved in taking down these threat actors. We’re excited to be a part of as. 

Hessie Jones 

Well, so one last question, where do you think the the landscape is going? So we’re moving into an era where. 

Hessie Jones 

If some of these things are going to become a lot easier to create and to be able to develop manipulations at far greater speed and scale. 

Hessie Jones 

Where do you think the industry needs to go and and at what point does it need to shift to more proactive stance as opposed to defensive? 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Yeah, I do predict that the cybersecurity industry is going to be disrupted pretty severely because I think we’re going to start to see through some of the noise. There’s a lot of if you go to the big cyber security conferences, RSA and these things, they’re, you know, there are a lot of vendors. It’s a very crowded sort of markets marketplace and there is a lot of smoke and mirrors. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

And a lot of it’s just very hard to tell what’s actually having. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Impact and what’s not and what tools do I actually need? What’s helpful and what’s not? I think that is going to start to change as we start to think about cybersecurity more as a risk and we start to put more data and more dollars and cents sort of around some of these analysis. So that’s that’s that’s one trend that I that I that I I predict will change. 

Hessie Jones 

I mean it’s in line with. 

Hessie Jones 

You know, the emergence of data privacy and the laws that are becoming a lot more stringent because. 

Hessie Jones 

Cyber security and data privacy go hand in hand. You can’t really have one without the other, and that’s that’s my belief as well. And so as we become a lot more sophisticated in automation and all these technologies, data will not. I don’t think it’s it’s it will cease to exist. 

Hessie Jones 

Was something that people don’t want the demand for it will continue to happen, right? 

Hessie Jones 

So any last words? 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Last words I do. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Uh. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

I I worry a bit in both in cybersecurity and more generally about. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

AI and LLMC’s taking over, taking over jobs. I mean, there will be automation and we’re going to need to upskill individuals both for their sake, but also for the sake of us solving some of these really hard problems. So, you know, it’s just sort of a a challenge to all of us to to figure out how. 

Dr. Ann Irvine 

Do that you know cyber security for sure. We we need people and we need smart, thoughtful people. Again, these are all people problems. These are human, human driven risks and human driven responses. And we need really smart, motivated people behind the good guys side of the keyboard to to help help stop these attacks. 

Hessie Jones 

Thank you so much Anne, for for joining me today and for educating us on on everything that you’re doing and what we need to do to actually move this conversation forward. 

Hessie Jones 

For humanity, right for humanity. OK, so for everyone out there. Thank you very much. This is day one of collision hessie Jones. We’re at tech uncensored and we’ll be back for the rest of the week. Take care.