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.

Today Kevin and Laura talk with Jonathan Gillham, the Founder and CEO of Originality.AI, a trailblazing venture in the realm of artificial intelligence and content originality. We talk about Jon's journey from building content marketing agencies to founding Originality.AI. We find out how Originality.AI detects AI-generated content and we talk about the trustworthiness of online reviews in the era of generative AI. We hear about the long-term vision for Originality.AI and get some advice for entrepreneurs looking to enter the AI tech space. Lastly we talk about how funny the reviews of Haribo Sugar-free gummies are. Such a fun pod!

Jon founded Originality.AI after successfully building and later selling two content marketing agencies. His entrepreneurial spirit didn't stop there, Jonathan recognized the immense potential of artificial intelligence in transforming content creation and verification, so in November 2022, Originality.AI was born, driven by the vision to detect GPT-3 generated content (before the launch of ChatGPT).

Having been one of the earliest adopters of generative AI content for SEO purposes at scale through his agency he understood the wave that was coming which ChatGPT and GPT-4 have fully unleashed. He also recognized the need for a modern plagiarism-checking solution that delivered advanced features such as scan history, detection scores, shareable results, and team access, all of which are now integral parts of Originality.AI.

Jonathan leads a team of experienced Machine Learning Engineers, Researchers, Developers, and Marketers, all on a mission to try and provide transparency regarding the true originality of any written content.

That Tech Pod is off for Memorial Day weekend so we are reposting one of our all time favorite pods. We'll be back next week!

This pod originally aired as Bonus pod on Thursday, May 19, 2022.

Laura and Gabi speak with Dr. Avi Loeb, theoretical physicist who works on astrophysics and cosmology and the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University. Dr. Loeb is author of Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth which can be purchased here and recently wrote about the congressional hearings regarding UAPs which you can read here.

Laura and Gabi discuss all things UFOs, how the government is finally recognizing these unexplained sightings, and his research with the Galileo Project, an organization whose goal is to bring the search for extraterrestrial technological signatures of Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations (ETCs) from accidental or anecdotal observations and legends to the mainstream of transparent, validated and systematic scientific research. This project is complementary to traditional SETI, in that it searches for physical objects, and not electromagnetic signals, associated with extraterrestrial technological equipment.

Today Laura and Kevin speak with Andrea Baur, the cofounder of Effective Energy Invest out of Munich, Germany.

Ms. Baur has over 20 years of experience advising and working directly with clients in the renewable energy sector, based in Germany—serving Europe, United Kingdom, and Asia. Ms. Baur has been an entrepreneur within this sector since 2002 with the establishment of the Kyoto Protocols; and brings an extensive track record (almost 1M MW’s in solar, wind, waste-to-energy) in sourcing, structuring, and executing transactions in the renewables space. Ms. Baur co-founded 2EINVEST Gmbh in 2012. Prior to that, she worked for four years with an Australian Fund, Castle Pines Global Equities, as it’s General Manager for Western Europe. Ms. Baur has longstanding experience in advising clients in the renewable energy sector on the global stage. Ms. Baur is a German citizen, born in Hungary, who is fluent in five languages.

Today Laura chats one-on-one with Relativity CEO Phil Saunders. They chat about Phil's origin story and his journey to Relativity including a desire to work with Andrew Sieja, the Godfather of many things eDiscovery. They discuss if eDiscovery is boring and what keeps Phil up at night. Laura gets Phil's take on Relativity being either the 800 lbs. gorilla in the room, Bruce Lee or even Wayne Gretzky. They talk about Relativity's view on AI, the Say-Do Ratio, the innovator's dilemma and Winston Churchill's cabinet position designed to get to the truth. They also chat about a new approach and framework started by a group of industry leaders, Legal Data Intelligence. Finally, they debate if pickle juice is gross (it is).

Phil Saunders joined Relativity as Chief Executive Officer in December 2022. He has more than three decades of operating experience in the technology industry. Phil has significant expertise in sectors germane to Relativity including enterprise SaaS, as CEO of both Cornerstone OnDemand and Saba Software; infrastructure technology, in roles at Oracle and Motorola; and cybersecurity, as an executive at SafeNet and Thales (formerly Gemalto). He received his bachelor’s degree from University at Albany, SUNY and his MBA from Seton Hall University.