Today Kevin and Laura speak with Chris Bradbury a serial entrepreneur with an amazing life story. We focus on how to fail as an entrepreneur and how to get back in the game. Chris takes us through his numerous ventures from cutting grass, to building a video game, to selling cars, to selling drugs, to doing computer repair, to running an energy site, even being a politician and then to real estate and finally to contracting with the US Postal Service. Chris explains that mindset about failure matters most for whether an entrepreneur gets back to it or gives up. Chris is the living embodiment of the Rocky Balboa speech on taking your lumps and moving forward. This is a pod you don't want to miss!

For our 200th episode, Laura and Kevin chat about the Microsoft patch/Crowdstrike outage, the AT&T data breach, Google's potential $23 Billion acquisition of Wiz and more! We also talk about Laura's new gym, the Drop in! This is a fun bonus pod.

Today Kevin and Laura chat with Carsten Brinkschulte about wildfire technology. Carsten is a telecoms tech veteran and serial entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of impact tech startup Dryad Networks, the firm’s large-scale IoT network for the ultra-early detection of wildfires will help to save the world's forests and fight climate change. We speak about impacts for profit. We learn about sensors that smell fire versus see it. We figure out who pays for this and much more!

Carsten Brinkschulte is CEO and co-founder of Dryad Networks. Dryad provides ultra-early detection of wildfires as well as health and growth-monitoring of forests using solar-powered gas sensors in a large-scale IoT sensor network. Dryad aims to reduce unwanted wildfires, which cause up to 20% of global CO2 emissions and have a devastating impact on biodiversity. By 2030, Dryad aims to prevent 3.9m hectares of forest from burning, preventing 1.7bn tonnes of CO2 emissions.

Today Laura and Kevin speak with Ray Rivard. We talk about legal and ethical considerations with Generative AI. We talk about the complaint against Adobe for selling AI-generated imitations Ansel Adams' work. We talk Sarah Silverman suing OpenAI and other IP claims and copyright issues with GenAI. We talk about replacing Al Michaels with an AI bot. We hear Ray's origin story and get his advise on being an IP lawyer in 2024. We also chat about who is liable when GenAI breaks the law. This pod has it all including going deep on accountability and the need for guardrails on GenAI. You don't want to miss this one!

Ray Rivard currently serves as Senior Director for the Federal Government Sector for Prevail.ai. In his role, he devises and promotes solutions for government agencies, government contractors, and law firms, utilizing Prevail's artificial intelligence (AI) tools and processes. Prior to his current role, Ray was the Senior Information Technology Specialist for the eDiscovery Group within the Legal Information Technology Unit for the FDIC’s Legal Division. His specialties included devising and integrating best practices in failed bank data collection, preservation, authentication, processing, review, analytics, and production. Ray has provided technical expert testimony in civil and criminal court hearings across the United States; filed declarations and affidavits as an expert in numerous federal courts; participated in meet & confer conferences with opposing parties in failed bank litigation matters; and revised and modified ESI protocols, protective orders, and joint discovery plans. Prior to joining the federal government, Ray spent nearly two decades handling large litigation matters for several D.C.-based law firms, including Jones Day, Wilmer, Mayer Brown, and DLA Piper.

Today Kevin and Laura chat with Ben Johnson, the CEO & Founder of Particle41. Ben is an experienced serial entrepreneur with $30 million raised across his 5 startups and has 20+ years of software development experience. We speak about establishing efficiency in technology teams, building technology companies from the ground up, the difference between a tech mindset and a CEO mindset, how to fix slow, and how to bring a new product to market.

Particle41 is a company focused on CTO advisory, app development, data science and DevOps.

Today Laura and Kevin speak with Francis Lacoste. Francis is an Engineering Leadership Coach who helps CTOs and VPs of Engineering at scaling tech startups nurture amazing work cultures and high-performance teams that build products and services that delight their customers.

Until early 2023, Francis was the Senior Director of Software Engineering, Culture, and Engagement at Salesforce, where he coached top engineering managers to be better leaders as they helped grow the company and build a culture of collaboration and innovation across the Salesforce Platform engineering division with 1200 people.

He has spent 25+ years working from home in the open-source and cloud developer tools industry and also previously worked at Heroku and Canonical, where he built successful high-performance remote engineering teams.

Today Kevin and Laura chat with Alex Rawitz and Yevgeny Khessin of DIMO. Alex Rawitz is the Co-Founder & COO. Yevgeny Khessin is the CTO & Co-Founder. We talk about cars, crypto, connected apps and cybersecurity. We learn about the origin of DIMO. We get into the types of cars they each drive (Yev's is cooler!) We discuss who drives a Rav4, 70's Land Cruisers, old Broncos, driving stick and even OJ. We also discuss meme stocks, meme coins and NFT scams. A lot going on in this one!

Alex Rawitz is the Co-Founder & COO at DIMO. Alex has worked in the world of cryptocurrency and IoT startups for the past ten years. He is always searching for ways to use these technologies to improve other people's lives. Before joining DIMO, Alex was an employee at Chainalysis, where he worked with several exchanges, DeFi protocols, and fintech. Before that, he held a position in sales at Servato, an Internet of Things company operating in the telecom space.

Yevgeny Khessin is the CTO & Co-Founder. Yevgeny spent a decade as an software engineer in the automotive world with a focus on distributed connected vehicle systems. He has worked across the largest vehicle OEMs, built dispatch and fleet management software for autonomous vehicles and helped connect millions of cars to the internet.

Founded in 2021, DIMO is building a global data connectivity platform for mobility. Not only does DIMO's technology allow users to connect their vehicle to a mobile app for amazing insights, but DIMO's platform is decentralized and open source.

Today Laura and Kevin talk about the 46th Annual NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference. Laura was onsite hearing from world-class experts in hospitality investment, global CEOs from prominent hotel brands, active investors, forward thinking operators and innovative developers all centered on the hospitality ecosystem.

The 46th annual NYU International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference (NYU IHIIC), is a leading information services and event company, in partnership with the NYU School of Professional Studies (NYU SPS) and its Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality which delivered unparalleled thought leadership through keynotes, general sessions, workshops and networking events. Top industry executives from CEOs of hotel brands to various investment and real estate executives discussed the latest trends, economic influences, and projections. The NYU IHIIC was held on June 2-4, 2024 at the Marriott Marquis in New York.