“If we march into that village and we start trying to persecute people for using poison, something that's very illegal, nobody's going to talk to us. We're not going to find out where the poison came from. We're not going to be able to shut anything down. We should take the approach that people are using poison because they're desperate, because they see no other alternative.” – Andrew Stein Andrew Stein is a wildlife ecologist who spent the past 25 years studying human carnivore conflict from African wild dogs and lions in Kenya and Botswana to leopards and hyenas in Namibia. His work has long focused on finding ways for people and predators to coexist. He is the founder of CLAWS , an organization based in Botswana that's working at the intersection of cutting-edge wildlife research and community driven conservation. Since its start in 2014 and official launch as an NGO in 2020, CLAWS has been pioneering science-based, tech-forward strategies to reduce conflict between people and carnivores. By collaborating closely with local communities, especially traditional cattle herders, CLAWS supports both species conservation and rural livelihoods—making coexistence not just possible, but sustainable.…
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Episode 28 Why You Should Consider Offshoring Your Development
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Inhoud geleverd door Altitude Accelerator. Alle podcastinhoud, inclusief afleveringen, afbeeldingen en podcastbeschrijvingen, wordt rechtstreeks geüpload en geleverd door Altitude Accelerator of hun podcastplatformpartner. Als u denkt dat iemand uw auteursrechtelijk beschermde werk zonder uw toestemming gebruikt, kunt u het hier beschreven proces https://nl.player.fm/legal volgen.
For founders who are in the early stages of their product concepts, they should begin the process of determining how to make their solution real. If you are bootstrapping founder who does not have a technical resource in-house, developing your MVP can be cost prohibitive if you choose to develop locally. Also, many non-technical founders, especially those who are part of under-represented groups or are immigrants may have great ideas but may not have the network and relationships to find a good technical cofounder.
Offshoring could be another option for you. Offshoring can help early stage, nontechnical founders turn their ideas into tangible and commercially viable products at a very low cost, compressing their time to market and improving their chances of getting early-stage investing.
But this doesn’t come without risks. You are exposing some critical parts of your company to a third party – your tech infrastructure, databases. How do you deal with the time differences and project delivery? What are the communication challenges when it comes to culture and language? What are the security risks that come into play? What are the ideal use cases for offshore development?
We spoke with Tauseef Riaz, Co-Founder and CTO of ConsidraCare, and Cofounder of Mashcraft, a digital transformation offshore services company. He is a serial entrepreneur, who is also all too familiar with the benefits and challenges with offshoring. Tauseef helped break down the benefits and showed how offshoring can reduce scaleup cash burns and lower the costs of any pivots around the business model or the tech stacks.
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Inhoud geleverd door Altitude Accelerator. Alle podcastinhoud, inclusief afleveringen, afbeeldingen en podcastbeschrijvingen, wordt rechtstreeks geüpload en geleverd door Altitude Accelerator of hun podcastplatformpartner. Als u denkt dat iemand uw auteursrechtelijk beschermde werk zonder uw toestemming gebruikt, kunt u het hier beschreven proces https://nl.player.fm/legal volgen.
For founders who are in the early stages of their product concepts, they should begin the process of determining how to make their solution real. If you are bootstrapping founder who does not have a technical resource in-house, developing your MVP can be cost prohibitive if you choose to develop locally. Also, many non-technical founders, especially those who are part of under-represented groups or are immigrants may have great ideas but may not have the network and relationships to find a good technical cofounder.
Offshoring could be another option for you. Offshoring can help early stage, nontechnical founders turn their ideas into tangible and commercially viable products at a very low cost, compressing their time to market and improving their chances of getting early-stage investing.
But this doesn’t come without risks. You are exposing some critical parts of your company to a third party – your tech infrastructure, databases. How do you deal with the time differences and project delivery? What are the communication challenges when it comes to culture and language? What are the security risks that come into play? What are the ideal use cases for offshore development?
We spoke with Tauseef Riaz, Co-Founder and CTO of ConsidraCare, and Cofounder of Mashcraft, a digital transformation offshore services company. He is a serial entrepreneur, who is also all too familiar with the benefits and challenges with offshoring. Tauseef helped break down the benefits and showed how offshoring can reduce scaleup cash burns and lower the costs of any pivots around the business model or the tech stacks.
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At Altitude we support the growth and commercialization of early stage startups. We want to celebrate one company, MyCoFutures, and its founders, Stephanie Lipp and Leo Gillis. MyCo Futures is a materials innovation startup now based in Montreal, Canada. Founded in 2021, MycoFutures specializes in developing a sustainable, mycelium-based leather alternative for the fashion industry. Stephanie and Leo transitioned from running a gourmet mushroom farm to leading this biotechnology venture. The company's product, Myco™, is a circular and organic material grown from the root system of fungi, offering a more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional leather and synthetic materials. Today the company has been operational for approximately five years and has realized increased visibility in the cleantech and sustainable materials sectors. We are excited to welcome Stephanie Lipp and Leo Gillis to talk about their journey from their roots to entrepreneurship, establishing a gourmet mushroom and their pivot to the clean tech space.…
In early February 2025, the United States, under Donald Trump, imposed significant tariffs on Canadian imports. Effective February 4, these tariffs included a 25% duty on general goods and a 10% duty on energy resources from Canada. The stated rationale was to pressure Canada to enhance border security and curb illegal drug flows into the U.S. This, we now know, is a red herring. The implementation of the proposed tariffs has been subject to multiple delays with threats of retaliations happening in the midst of negotiations between Canadian and US officials. On March 4, the U.S. tariffs were finally enforced, and simultaneously, Canada's first phase of retaliatory tariffs of 25% on $30 billion worth of American exports into Canada had taken effect. Just two days later, on March 6, Trump announced a delay in tariffs on goods compliant with the CANADA – US - MEXICO Agreement until April 2. This move was in response to the pressure from the CEOs of Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, who told the president of their grave concerns of tariffs on the auto sector. Throughout February and March, a continuous cycle of threats and counter-threats persisted between Canada and the US. On April 2, 2025, several significant events are set to occur in the ongoing trade dispute between Canada and the United States: 1) The U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods, which were partially paused on March 6, 2025, are expected to fully resume. This means that the 25% tariff on all goods from Canada and the 10% tariff on Canadian energy products will be fully implemented. 2) Canada's second wave of retaliatory tariffs is expected to take effect. This includes 25% tariffs on $125 billion worth of US-origin goods imported into Canada. 3) The temporary exemption for Canadian goods compliant with CUSMA (Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement), which began on March 7, 2025, is set to expire. This has already had reverberations across the Canadian business sector. We are witnessing increased costs, supply chain disruptions, businesses already experience immediate impacts on demand and the resulting loss in market share. Talks of cutting production capacity, reducing workforce and postponing planned business investments are adding to this increased uncertainty. There are many questions among Canadian small businesses on the revenue implications on their own operations in the short term and to what extent will this impact their survival in the long term. What should they know and what should they do to prepare. We are pleased to welcome Brigitte LeBlanc LaPointe, Partner specializing in cross-border M&A and venture capital financing, of Norton Rose Fullbright, a global law firm that specializes in key industries including financial institutions, energy, infrastructure, transport, and technology to name a few. We will be dissecting the legal implications for business when it comes to these US tariffs as Canadians await the arrival of April 2nd, 2025.…
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has decided to end its third-party fact-checking program. This move was announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a video titled “More speech and fewer mistakes.” According to Zuckerberg, the decision to remove fact-checking is driven by the belief that fact-checking organizations have been politically biased and have undermined trust. Instead of relying on third-party fact-checkers, Meta will implement a new system called “Community Notes.” This system, similar to the one used by X (formerly Twitter), will allow users to add context and corrections to posts that may contain misleading information. Fact-checking organizations have rejected accusations of liberal bias and emphasized that they never had the authority to remove content or censor posts, claiming Meta was always the ultimate arbiter of content moderation decisions. The shift to Community Notes has raised concerns among misinformation experts and digital rights groups, climate change activists who argue that this change could lead to an increase in misinformation on Meta’s platforms. Some researchers argue Community Notes are not effective. Meta’s decision to end fact-checking has been in response to a change in political landscape in the US, aligned with a trend towards less regulated and more freewheeling internet content. While opponents scream “free speech” over content moderation, there are grave implications on the three + billion active users on the platform. We are pleased to welcome: Eryk Salvaggio, author of the Cybernetic Forests newsletter. He is a researcher, writer and artist who examines the social and cultural impacts of technology. He is a visiting professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Humanities, Computers and Design as well as the emerging technologies research advisor for the Siegel Family Endowment and is a 2025 Fellow with Tech Policy Press. Maria Amelie is cofounder and CEO of Factiverse. Pioneering solutions for live fact-checking and news, video and audio due diligence. They help media, finance, and government to verify crucial content and mitigate legal and branding risks.…
There are numerous articles, opinions, and perspectives about how to effectively pitch to investors. What elements should be included? Content is just one side of the equation. However, when you pitch to investors, you only have a short window to create an impression. How you pitch is just as important as what you pitch. Delivering a compelling pitch is important for startups seeking investment, selling to prospective partners, and customers. A well-crafted pitch can make the difference in securing funding, winning an important contract, and not missing out on vital resources. However, many startups fall short in making an impact. Why is it important? A compelling pitch often is the first impression a startup makes on potential investors or partners. A strong pitch can spark interest, initiate meaningful conversations, and ultimately lead to the funding necessary for a startup's success. While you need to adapt your presentation based on your audience, your pitch style should be compelling regardless. In this episode, we focus on how founders can enhance their pitch presentations: Once you’ve created that presentation how do you frame ideas around the content to create interest? What strategies can you include to engage your audience? Can you exude the confidence and the same passion as when you started your venture? What is the difference between being overly prepared and relaxing into the material you already know? How you articulate, the tone of your voice, body language and gestures make all the difference. We will talk about what a perfect pitch style looks like. I am pleased to be joined this week by Jody Yvonne, he is Founder and Chief Strategy Consultant for SAY strategies, a boutique public affairs firm. Jody has experience in both the public and private sectors. He’s been a professor of Philosophy and Communications, he’s worked in the legal sector as a Communications Advisor and was Head of Public Affairs with a large Canadian nonprofit organization. Jody has been a speech writer and presentation consultant for a variety of clients from small startups and founders to large c-suite executives including the Honourable Doug Ford, premiere of Ontario, Toronto Mayor John Tory, and other speakers and dignitaries. He has provided media support to the office of the Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper as well as to Canada’s former privacy commissioner, Chantal Bernier. He is also part of our client advisory team at Altitude Accelerator.…
For startup founders, investment is often the key to accelerating growth. But decision to seek outside investment requires careful consideration and preparation. Once a founder decides it's time to pursue external funding, they must be prepared for the demands of the process and know that fundraising requires significant time and resources, outside of day-to-day operations. There are many things to think about once a founder decides to raise capital. Today we are talking about the building blocks of fundraising and structuring your organization. Is the founder personally ready for the increased pressure and expectations that funding brings? Are they prepared to relinquish some control and autonomy? Business readiness is paramount. Founders should have a clear vision for their organization and articulate how funding will capitalize on market opportunities. Understanding investor perspectives is essential. Founders will begin to understand how investors evaluate opportunities and what criteria they care about. Becoming investor-ready means being prepared to answer questions about your team and operations; your business model, traction; your vision and risks to your organization; and having the necessarily documents and pitch materials for investors to thoroughly review. Ensuring the company structure is suitable for investment is a critical preparatory step. We welcome Mujir Muneeruddin, Partner at Pallet Valo. He is a corporate & securities lawyer with a background as a C-suite technology executive. He’s also a real estate entrepreneur and has a track record in building, aiding and advising transformative organizations. Mujir will provide guidance on fundraising strategies, differentiate between debt and equity financing. We’ll also discuss investor expectations, founder preparations, to ensure founders structure their business effectively so they can make informed decisions that will shape their companies' future growth.…
1 Episode 72 Transfer Pricing Strategies for Canadian Startups Going Global 1:10:15
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Later Afspelen Later Afspelen Lijsten Vind ik leuk LeukWe’re diving into transfer pricing strategies for startups who want to expand their businesses globally. Transfer pricing refers to the prices charged for goods, services, between related entities within a multinational enterprise (MNE). A Canadian startup with subsidiaries or parent companies in other countries may set transfer prices when trading internally across borders. These prices affect where profits are reported and, consequently, how much tax the enterprise pays in each jurisdiction. For startups, understanding transfer pricing is essential for tax compliance, risk mitigation, and optimizing your global tax strategies. I have the pleasure of welcoming Melinda Nguyen-Raybould, a Transfer Pricing Partner with MNP’s International Tax Group in Toronto. Melinda works with public and private multinational enterprises, as well as with domestic enterprises interested in international expansion, to manage the complexities of their cross-border intercompany transactions. We will explore some key aspects of transfer pricing relevant to Canadian entrepreneurs, who are venturing into the US or internationally. What should they consider? How do they minimize the risk of tax penalties?…
2024 has been a hard year for startup companies. Access to investment has been lower compared to prior years and many companies have buckled down to try to preserve their cashflow in anticipation of further dry spells. The year began with massive layoffs in the larger tech organizations and in Canada we’ve been left with a glut of highly skilled tech workers with little employment opportunities. We are tackling the human state of the startup company – and the state of founders and employees in 2024. Here are some facts that summarize the events of this past year: The total net headcount across the startup ecosystem has remained flat, with only a few sectors, such as energy and medical devices, showing any significant employment growth. January 2024 saw a significant decline in new hires, down 29% from January 2023. This trend continued into the following months, with February through to April all recording lower hiring numbers compared to previous years. Inflation has compounded issues as business deal with higher business costs and reduced profit margins: The EDC came out with a report recently indicating that in Canada’s unemployment rate continues to rise, and with slumping global demand the global growth is expected to rise 3% in 2025. Canada’s anticipated growth is just 1.6%, which is constrained with one factor being weakened labour markets. Glenn Nishimura is a Startup HR & Workplace Culture Expert, and Chief People Strategist at Nishimura Consulting. According to Glenn, “overhiring is now dead.” First time or inexperienced founders have had a very difficult time navigating and communicating these headcount changes to their teams. Discussions about pay freezes, layoffs, the impact on equity, and the resulting cultural shifts have soured the experiences of many startup employees, grappling with a future startup. Glenn works with startups and employees from the brightest startups and scaleups across Canada, the U.S., Europe and Asia. Glenn counsels cofounders, and helps them build the right teams, and cultivate a resilient and scalable culture, which he coins a startup’s “immune system”. We will dive into the trials and tribulations this year for the startup employee, the implications on founder and their culture and discuss what is next on the horizon in the coming year.…
As Generative AI adoption soars, so do many opportunities to advance current systems. But we're also seeing is the soaring risks that are uniquely the result of these large language models. According to McKinsey's 2024 Global Survey on AI, overall, AI adoption in enterprise has jumped to 72%, up from 50% in previous years. Implementation Time: Most organizations report taking 1-4 months to put generative AI into production. By 2025, it's estimated that 50% of digital work will be automated through apps using language models, suggesting there will be 750 million apps using LLMs by 2025. It's important to note that while adoption is growing rapidly, there are still challenges. For insurance companies working with real business data, for example, LLM products show only 22% accuracy, dropping to zero for mid and expert-level requests. A more recent study from Gartner predicts 30% of Generative AI Projects Will Be Abandoned After Proof of Concept By End of 2025. Rita Sallam, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner said, “After last year's hype, executives are impatient to see returns on GenAI investments, yet organizations are struggling to prove and realize value. As the scope of initiatives widen, the financial burden of developing and deploying GenAI models is increasingly felt.” What does it cost organizations leveraging GenAI to transform their business models? From $5 million to $20 million. Many would argue this is still early day and effectiveness of these systems is eventual but the early debate about the future viability of Generative AI also points to new risks that come with trying to grasp this new form of artificial intelligence and why it should be treated differently than traditional AI/ML. When companies like JP Morgan roll out a red carpet to LLMs making AI assistants available to over 60,000 employees there is clearly a case to be made to realize cost savings within organizations. But is this the right time, given all the issues that have been playing out? I am pleased to welcome Zhuo Li, formerly Head of Privacy and Data Protection Office of TikTok and now CEO of Hydrox.AI, offering security and compliance for this new generation of AI. I am also pleased to welcome David Danks, Professor of Data Science, Philosophy, & Policy, University of California, San Diego, a member of the National AI Advisory Committee and advisor to HydroX.AI. Our discussion explores the paradigm shift in AI security to address the unique risks posed by Large Language Models; what is still unknown when it comes to evaluating the outcomes?; what are the new attack vectors that can be created by LLMs?; and finally with the increasing demand for data to make these LLMs become more effective what are the impacts when it comes to access to confidential or personal information, safety and society?…
Clean energy isn't just a dream, but it is a thriving reality. We’re standing at a threshold as the global community races against time to meet ambitious climate goals, and with the convergence of new policies, investments and incentives away from fossil fuels, the Canadian government estimates that up to $140 billion in annual investment is needed to reach net zero emissions. As we begin to see more clean tech innovations on the forefront of these investments, this creates an opportunity to promote clean tech solutions effectively. For cleantech founders this means, not only raising awareness for solutions, but also educating the mainstream and prospective investors on the complexities of these solutions and the opportunities they create to curb the effects of climate change. Clean tech founders face their own unique market challenges. As entrants in this emerging sector, they face regulatory hurdles, supply-side dependencies, and longer sales cycles as industry invests in transformations. Marketing strategies need to support these extended cycles, while also educating the end consumers. We are pleased to welcome Urs Villiger, a seasoned content strategist, copywriter and advisor to Altitude Accelerator, who has focused in cleantech and renewable energy companies. We will cover the current trends in renewable energy, the challenges and the opportunities and what this means for early stage cleantech founders as they build awareness for the changes in industry and for their unique technologies.…
The next generation of artificial intelligence is taking the world by storm. We’re seeing rampant innovation from the startup communities innovating from the emergence of large language models. Businesses in Canada, however are slower to hop on this band wagon. The adoption of generative AI in Canada varies significantly by industry. Sectors such as finance, healthcare, and technology have seen higher adoption rates, whereas manufacturing and retail sectors have been slower to adopt these technologies. Here are some recent insights: • According to a survey by McKinsey in 2023, about 23% of Canadian businesses reported incorporating generative AI technologies in their operations. This is lower compared to the United States, where the adoption rate was around 31%, and China, with a rate close to 35% . • Roughly 1 in 7 Canadian businesses (14%) are early Gen AI adopters •Larger businesses are nearly twice as likely to use Gen AI than small businesses. • Global IPSOS surveys reveal that Canadians are less knowledgeable and more nervous about AI than citizens of most other countries. • Gen AI could grow Canada’s productivity between 1% and 6% over the next decade. This year, the Canadian government announced that it plans to bolster AI infrastructure and support innovation by investing $2.4 billion in the AI Sector. We are pleased to welcome Shannon Katschilo, Country Manager of Snowflake, a cloud computing company here in Canada. We aim to unpack the challenges we face when it comes to leveraging and deploying advanced technologies in our businesses. And in light of the recent investment from our federal gov’t, what are the opportunities to ensure Canadian businesses within their sectors remain competitive.…
Brian Coleman is the visionary and Founder of Heart2Help. I met Brian at Collision 2024 in Toronto. Recently launched A Heart2 Help, Brian Coleman is the visionary and Founder of Heart2Help. I met Brian at Collision 2024 in Toronto. Recently launched A Heart 2 Help is a revolutionary app that facilitates real-time connections between individuals seeking assistance and those ready to offer support. In a world where the need for human connection and compassionate aid is ever-present, our platform serves as a bridge, fostering a community of empathy, kindness, and mutual assistance. The app addresses a wide array of challenges that individuals encounter in their daily lives, providing a versatile platform for users to seek and offer various forms of support. Whether it's practical help with everyday tasks, guidance through mentoring and tutoring, sharing career advice, or providing emotional and mental support, "A Heart 2 Help" endeavors to cater to diverse needs, ensuring that no one faces their struggles alone.…
Paulo Rosado is the Founder and CEO of low-code leader OutSystems. I met Paulo Rosado at Collision 2024 in Toronto. In our fireside chat we discuss how GenAI and low-code are converging to redefine software development, increase agility, and open new possibilities for innovation and efficiency. He'll share how organizations can use low-code to safely leverage the power of GenAI and drive the future goals of businesses and developers alike – without compromising governance, security, or control. We also tackle the question: Will AI replace the software developer's job? Check out the Forbes article with Paul Rosado…
As startups evolve from small, agile teams to growth-oriented organizations, the need for strategic human resources management becomes critical. While startups often focus on product development, market penetration, and financial viability, at the early stages, once they’ve established market viability, people strategy becomes equally important. While network connections and HR hacks may work as band-aid solutions to get the startup to where they need, the growth stage offers a greater mandate: to acquire and retain great talent and to effectively manage this expansion, to develop a culture where employees feel connected to the company’s mission and to scale responsibly under the law. Properly building the HR infrastructure for your organization as you grow, and scale reveals a level of sophistication and care for the business and the culture you are developing. Investing in HR pays off in improved employee satisfaction, retention, and overall organizational health. With Beth Nevins, founder of Developa.io and an experienced leader in People & Talent, we examine the transition from founder-led HR hacks to professional HR practices. We'll discuss how investing in HR can drive employee satisfaction, retention, and overall organizational health, while also ensuring legal compliance and supporting sustainable growth. For founders navigating the complex landscape of people management in high-growth environments, this session will help them build resilient, culture-driven organizations poised for long-term success. Beth Nevins is the founder of Developa.io and an accomplished leader in the people & talent space. Transitioning from a career in agency recruitment to leading in-house people and talent strategies in start-ups, Beth has gained a wealth of experience that equips her to understand start-up needs swiftly and offer specific guidance and advice.…
Enterprise companies face a myriad of critical challenges. Maintaining comprehensive visibility across distributed systems spanning multiple environments has become extremely difficult. The sheer volume of data generated by modern IT systems is overwhelming, with companies struggling to process and make sense of millions of data points and alerts daily. In a world where downtime can cost millions, quickly identifying and resolving issues before they impact business operations is crucial. Efficiently managing resources across hybrid environments to control costs while maintaining performance is a constant challenge. Ensuring data security and maintaining compliance across diverse, interconnected systems adds another layer of complexity. The rapid evolution of technology has created a shortage of skilled professionals who can effectively manage these complex environments. We met Christina Kosmowski, CEO of LogicMonitor, at Collision, and discussed the need for enterprise to scale faster while ensuring their IT operations across multiple environments are properly maintained. Improved visibility across the organization is critical to quickly identify issues and allow for better decision-making. LogicMonitor’s focus on practical AI applications in IT observability and its ability to handle complex hybrid environments provides the necessary data security in today’s dynamic and distributed infrastructure.…
1 Episode 63: Emily Reid, CEOAI4All: "AI Will Change the World. Who Will Change AI?" 1:00:08
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Later Afspelen Later Afspelen Lijsten Vind ik leuk LeukWe’ve all have seen the emergence of AI in the last 8 years, where in this sector, the male voice still dominates: A 2018 World Economic Forum report suggested that only 22% of AI professionals globally were female. A 2019 AI Index Report found that 18% of authors at leading AI conferences were women. LinkedIn data from 2018 indicated that 16% of AI professionals on the platform were women. Only 12% of AI researchers are women globally, and only 2.6% of tenure-track engineering faculty identify as African American or Black and only 3.6% identify as Hispanic. AI4ALL was co-founded by Fei-Fei Li, a distinguished computer scientist and professor at Stanford University, alongside her colleagues Olga Russakovsky and Rick Sommer. Fei-Fei Li is celebrated for her contributions to computer vision. Li led the development of ImageNet, a large-scale database of labeled images that has been crucial for advancing deep learning and computer vision technologies and served as Chief Scientist for Google Cloud. The inspiration for AI4ALL came from the founders' awareness of the substantial gender and racial gaps in AI and STEM fields. They recognized the necessity to create opportunities for underrepresented groups to engage with and contribute to the field of AI. If you go on their website – front and centre you will see, “AI will change the world”. Who will change AI?” We welcome Emily Reid, CEO of AI4ALL who address the current concerns as AI rapidly materializes across our personal and professional lives and how AI4ALL is seeking to influence a more inclusive future. A 2018 World Economic Forum report suggested that only 22% of AI professionals globally were female. A 2019 AI Index Report found that 18% of authors at leading AI conferences were women. LinkedIn data from 2018 indicated that 16% of AI professionals on the platform were women. only 12% of AI researchers are women globally, and only 2.6% of tenure-track engineering faculty identify as African American or Black and only 3.6% identify as Hispanic. AI4ALL was co-founded by Fei-Fei Li, a distinguished computer scientist and professor at Stanford University, alongside her colleagues Olga Russakovsky and Rick Sommer. Fei-Fei Li is celebrated for her contributions to computer vision. Li led the development of ImageNet, a large-scale database of labeled images that has been crucial for advancing deep learning and computer vision technologies and served as Chief Scientist for Google Cloud. The inspiration for AI4ALL came from the founders' awareness of the substantial gender and racial gaps in AI and STEM fields. They recognized the necessity to create opportunities for underrepresented groups to engage with and contribute to the field of AI. If you go on their website – front and centre you will see, “AI will change the world”. Who will change AI?” We welcome Emily Reid, CEO of AI4ALL who address the current concerns as AI rapidly materializes across our personal and professional lives and how AI4ALL is seeking to influence a more inclusive future…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
1 Episode 62: MATR Ventures' Giselle Melo's Pivot to Venture Capital 1:01:56
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Later Afspelen Later Afspelen Lijsten Vind ik leuk LeukGiselle Melo is a Managing Partner at Matr (matter) Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests in deep tech software companies specializing in applied artificial intelligence, automation, machine learning, and computer vision. She is a seasoned tech founder with proven track record in software systems design and engineering across various sectors, who also developed a career in capital markets. She is also an Entrepreneur in Residence at Altitude Accelerator, where she mentors and supports emerging startups. As a tech founder, Giselle co-founded NicheeLabs, an engineering and systems design corporation, where her team developed an advanced logistics system acquired before its market launch. This success led to a partnership with a prominent family office, which later became the anchor investor in Matr Ventures. Prior to founding Matr Ventures, Giselle was a Partner and Head of Investment Banking at a leading advisory firm in Toronto, overseeing more than $5 billion in buy/sell transactions. We discuss her journey as an entrepreneur-turned-venture capitalist.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
1 Episode 61: Bookkeeping Fundamentals for Startup Founders Developing Your Financial Foundation 43:39
We're shining a spotlight on a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of business: bookkeeping. While it may not be the most glamorous topic, its importance to your company's success can't be overstated. This often-overlooked practice is a secret weapon for thriving startups. Think of bookkeeping as the GPS for your business journey. Without it, you're essentially driving blindfolded, hoping you're on the right road and not about to careen off a cliff. And in the startup world, those cliffs are everywhere. Here's a sobering stat: 29% of startups fail because they run out of cash. Many of these cash crunches could be avoided with solid bookkeeping practices. But it's not just about avoiding failure. Good bookkeeping is about setting yourself up for success. It's about having the clarity to make smart decisions, the data to back up your hunches, and the financial foundation to weather unexpected storms. We're going to demystify bookkeeping for startup founders. We'll explore why bookkeeping matters, what it really involves and how you can approach it efficiently - whether you choose to handle it in-house or outsource it. Helping me dive into Bookkeping is Tanvi Gupta, Senior Manager within the Assurance Services team of MNP. She is a seasoned CPA with over 10 years' experience and specializes in clients across various sectors from small owned to larger private equity owned and funded companies.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
We met Kabir Barday, CEO of OneTrust, at Collision, Toronto where we discussed the evolving landscape of data privacy, responsible AI use, and regulatory compliance. OneTrust helps companies responsibly and securely use data and AI with its suite of security, privacy, governance, risk, ethics and compliance solutions. The company recently reported they expect to surpass $500M in ARR, as their solution is currently used by 14,000 customers, 75% of which are Fortune 100 companies. Companies are now shifting their approach to data privacy, moving from regulatory compliance to leveraging privacy as a competitive advantage. At the same time, new challenges are surfacing by Generative AI when it comes to data governance, pervasive data scraping, and the increasing importance of first-party data and consent management. Regulation was a key topic addressing DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) and the implications for financial institutions and their vendors, as well as GDPR, EU AI Act as data accountability and data protection become burning issues. Is data privacy the new competitive advantage?…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
This is one of the video interviews we conducted at Collision, Toronto June 17-20, 2024. Tripian was initially launched in 2016 as a consumer-facing travel app, equipped with trip planning tools available in only five cities. In mid-2018, the company pivoted to a B2B SaaS model, offering its services to the travel industry. Today, Tripian provides true personalization for travel brands, with content spanning over 300 cities worldwide. We met up with Jeff Kischuk, Founder of Tripian at Collision to learn more about how he’s disrupting travel.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
This is one of the video interviews we conducted at Collision, Toronto June 17-20, 2024. Resilience is not your traditional insurance provider. Dr. Ann Irvine is the company's Chief Data & Analytics Officer, and has spent her career sitting at the intersection of data science and cybersecurity. We spoke to Dr. Irvine about managing cyber risk in the changing cybersecurity landscape and the evolution of AI.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
A critical milestone in scaling a startup for growth involves building a high-performing and well-rounded team that can make or break a venture's success. The guiding hypothesis is that we tend to gravitate towards people with similar interests, and values. That is a foundation at the very early stages for moving the company the right direction. There is complexity in finding the right fit that involves considering not only individual strengths, complementary skill sets but also cultural fit and team dynamics. These days, human judgement can be augmented and we know that data is increasingly help companies do this. One approach that has gained traction in recent years is the use of structured assessment tools, such as the Gallup StrengthsFinder, to identify individual strengths and guide team formation. These tools aim to provide objective insights into each team member's natural talents and tendencies, enabling organizations to build teams with complementary strengths and minimize potential gaps or redundancies. Here is why building the right teams are so critical: 1. According to a report by CB Insights, team composition and lack of complementary skills are among the top 20 reasons for startup failure, accounting for 23% of the cases analyzed. 2. A study by the Kauffman Foundation found that startups with a balanced team of technical and business expertise are 30% more likely to succeed than those with a single founder or a homogeneous team. 3. Research by Gallup indicates that teams with complementary strengths and a focus on individual strengths development can achieve up to 72% higher engagement and 29% higher profitability. We were pleased to speak to Ernesto Guillermo Leal. Guillermo is an industrial engineer with intrapreneurial experience in consumer products and has worked for companies such as Procter & Gamble and Telefonica. For the past 10 years he has been a consultant helping companies accelerate the pace of innovation. We discuss the importance of methodologies such as Gallup Strength Finder in discovering talents within existing teams and in building more effective human capital.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Hessie Jones met Ryan Pannell over a decade ago when she first ventured into entrepreneurship. At that time, he was an executive producer and it was the film industry where he began his career, working his way up to be a writer, producer and director. He directed his first feature film, Dragon City, when he was 26 years old. In 2001 he moved into startup and pioneered cryptographic web-based messaging technology that made a significant impact in enterprise banking, and Big Tech including VISA, Microsoft and Bank of Scotland. He also developed traumatic brain injury software circa 2021 that has saved many lives in parts of the US. Ryan Pannell successfully navigated three major career pivots over his diverse professional journey. In the process he has gained prominence through his work and has advised enterprises like NVIDIA, Scotiabank, the U.S. DoD and Google. In 2013, Pannell pivoted again, shifting his focus to the world of finance. He now serves as the CEO and Global Chair of Kaiju Worldwide, a hedge fund management firm with operations that span across three continents. This is not a normal fund management company. It is a unique blend of quantitative analysis, behavioral finance, quantum mechanics, and artificial intelligence. Ryan’s also a philanthropist with a strong commitment to ocean conservation. He’s also donated his time and resources to local schools including providing tablets to underprivileged youth. Pannell has successfully pivoted across multiple industries, from film/TV production to tech startups, cryptography, and now finance and predictive AI. His journey is a testimony to his unique ability to entrench himself in a new vertical, identify problems and successfully execute.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as one of the most powerful and versatile artificial intelligence technologies of our time. By training massive neural networks on vast datasets of human-generated text, LLMs have developed an unprecedented ability to understand and generate human-like language with robust fluency and comprehension. This breakthrough has unlocked a wide range of innovative applications across industries, from content creation and language translation to conversational AI assistants and code generation. More recently Open AI released ChatGPT 4o that they say can reason across different modalities in real time. They trained a single new model end-to-end across text, vision, and audio, meaning that all inputs and outputs are processed by the same neural network. This is still early days but this idea of developing a multi-modal model has vast potential to create much more effective outputs that can help yield better decision making. The nascency of this technology has yet to be fully understood–language, image, audio understanding, the generation capabilities that can drive substantial productivity gains, and enable new forms of human-machine collaboration and even question which human jobs are replaceable– are still emerging. As well, LLM technology has limitations and risks including issues of factual inaccuracies, biases inherited from training data, lack of common-sense reasoning, and pervasive potential for misuse, and more recently the data privacy implications that we’ve seen from OpenAI’s unconsented use of Scarlett Johansson’s voice. Techniques like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) are highlighted as promising approaches to enhance LLMs' knowledge grounding, improve their accuracies over time. We welcomed Amir Feizpour, CEO and founder of AI.Science, a platform for expert-in-the-loop business workflow automation. In this episode of Tech Uncensored, we will delve into the transformative impacts of LLMs across sectors, the applications both present and future, the current challenges and risks and what does this mean to startups developing in this space.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
With the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the speed of adoption, how we communicate, how we research, how we improve our productivity has greatly transformed society. While these powerful tools offer remarkable capabilities in natural language understanding and generation of more accurate human-like language, they have also introduced new challenges and risks to the practice of cybersecurity and its adjacency into data privacy. Data breaches and attacks have been prevalent in narrow AI but with increased vulnerabilities introduced by LLMs, we’re now seeing more sophisticated phishing attacks, manipulation of online content, and exploitation of privacy controls. On April 22nd the Biden Administration signed Section 702 of FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) into law - that reauthorizes government, to spy on US Citizens without need for a warrant. I interviewed Christine Bannon, US Public Policy Manager at Proton and she said this: “LLMs will be used by governments to sort through large data sets for intelligence, making it easier to conduct mass surveillance.” We are honoured to welcome Saima Fancy, who has expertise in Data Privacy and its intersection with Cybersecurity and AI. We will discuss these new vulnerabilities introduced by LLMs and we’ll address new law that will now legally undermine individual’s data privacy and their civil liberties, and what are the implications of all this for emerging tech companies. Saima Fancy has two decades of professional experience in chemical engineering, privacy engineering, law, data privacy and security. She is a speaker, mentor and active member and volunteer with the IAPP, All Tech is Human, Leading Cyber Ladies, Women in AI Ethics and Governing Council of U of T Faculty of Engineering.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
By 2050, 70% of the world’s population is projected to live in cities. We will evolve into an increasingly urban economy. Urban centers will adapt and evolve to meet the needs of their growing populations. Urbanization can lead to 1) economic growth, 2) improved living standards, and 3) cultural diversity. Some key stats about the rise of the urban populations: The world’s urban population has been rising almost six-fold since 1950, from 751 million to 4.4 billion today. This trend is expected to continue, with the urban population more than doubling its current size by 20502. Now, More than 56% of the world’s population now lives in urban areas. Increased migration to urban centres can pose other challenges: accelerated demand for affordable housing with risks of overcrowding, pollution, rising conflicts and social inequality. This calls for sustainable development to build viable infrastructures, transport systems, basic services, job opportunities to ensure that cities are inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. Enter Intelligent City, based out of Vancouver, Canada, and founded in 2008 with a mission to empower people to live better urban lives. This is a company that aims to streamline construction processes and standardize housing, in an effort to create a commercializeable and sustainable alternative. We have the pleasure of speaking to Oliver Lang, Chief Executive Officer and Cofounder, and OD Krieg, Chief Technology Officer to discuss the future of increased urbanization and how Intelligent City is navigating this challenge as the world urgently moves towards more sustainable practices.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
David Peterson, known as the Optimization Coach, assists growth-stage companies in 2X their revenue growth to achieve their 10X goal. He helps them become more appealing to investors or (if they choose) achieve their status as a successful founder-owned businesses. At this juncture, early-stage founders are already generating revenue and may aim to raise a successful Series A round, therefore they will need to focus on revenue quality. They sell a vision of their future business emphasizing the key qualities that investors want to believe in. They must construct a compelling narrative that justifies whether their idea is sound. Understanding the network effects, the market receptivity and more importantly, how founders and their team react to these things are crucial. While founders are growing their business, they will also run into the challenges that come with scaling. They will incur costs to support their growth. Derisking these challenges as they grow lays a solid groundwork for the company’s future. Here are some questions that startups must ask themselves as they grow: Do founders truly understand the effort required to make an idea profitable? How motivated are they to get out of their own way to do what’s right for the business? What impact will their decisions have on the culture of the business as they grow or if they have to downsize their team? Are the goals they’ve articulated in 5 to 10 years achievable? Remember, early-stage success isn’t just about revenue; it’s about building a strong foundation for sustainable growth. David Peterson has experienced this in his own journey. Nurturing a company to create an enduring organization is David's sweet spot and where he offers some salient advice.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Product Market Fit is a make-or-break factor for startups. Even the best products can fail without market demand, while an average product can succeed if the demand exists. What does success look like once companies reach this critical milestone? The product resonates with the market means that: Customer actively buys, uses and recommends the product to others in sufficient numbers... Enough to sustain growth and profitability Investors often demand evidence of product-market fit before investing – demonstrating that your product has real demand and a viable market, especially at the earliest growth stages. Here are some examples of notable companies that have successfully pivoted to achieve product-market fit: Apple’s initial focus was on personal computers but their game-changing pivot to the iPhone, which combined a phone, music player, internet access revolutionized the mobile phone industry. Uber started as a luxury black car service, but realized that the real opportunity resided in ridesharing – a more accessible and convenient model that disrupted the traditional taxi industry. AirBNB initially aimed to provide air mattresses for travelers during conferences but soon focused on vacation rentals, connecting travelers with unique accommodations, they tapped into a market need that disrupted the hospitality industry to this day. Slack was initially a gaming company. They pivoted to create a team communications platform (an application they built for themselves initially) to improve collaboration, synced conversations and productivity. All these companies had these things in common: They all recognized market shifts, adapted to change and stayed attuned to customer needs. They all demonstrated the flexibility and strategic adjustments essential for achieving product market fit. I’d like to welcome Abhishek Mathur, VP of Product Management at Pyte, is a secure data collaboration solutions provider. He is also one of our advisors at Altitude Accelerator. Abhishek is seasoned in digital media, ICT, and financial services. From B2B and B2C strategies to business development and product management, he knows how to scale businesses and drive sustainable growth.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
1 Episode 50 Traditional Demand Generation is Broken. There is a better way to Improve Win Rates 39:51
Demand Generation is a broad marketing practice aimed at creating awareness and interest in a company’s products or services. It involves using various tactics across numerous channels, such as content marketing, social media ads, and more While the practice has been around for as long as brands have existed, it has undergone some significant changes and formalization over the past few decades. One of the catalysts for the changing sales landscape since the advent of digital has been: Decentralization of information. In the past, companies were primarily the holders of information about products, services and they used traditional marketing materials to promote them. The internet and digital technologies allowed information to become widely available and this shift gave rise to new platforms and channels of communication: communities, micro influencers, podcasts, closed Slack groups etc. Now companies had to adjust their marketing and demand generation --- instead of solely relying on one-way communication they had to engage with potential customers in a more interactive and personalized way. Digital technologies also led to the development of new tools and techniques like marketing automation, predictive analytics, customer intelligence to refine the process of demand generation to make things more targeted and efficient. Matthew Trotter says things NOW things are shifting again: The buyer journey is evolving – 80% of it is happening digitally, prior to engagement with the sales team Gartner Says 80% of B2B Sales Interactions Between Suppliers and Buyers Will Occur in Digital Channels by 2025 The traditional way of thinking about your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) also needs to change What is the new order for demand generation? What do sales teams need to do to improve their win rates to keep up with the evolving buyer journey? Matthew Trotter has 25 years of experience in technology sales & consulting, He is an expert in data, AI, and cloud solutions, with a proven track record of designing, positioning, selling, and delivering large-scale and complex IT programs and projects for the largest enterprises Matthew is a high-performance Sales Coach and is the co-founder of Signal Led Sales, a groundbreaking sales framework aimed to help GTM teams address selling challenges within the digital buyer journey.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Today we’re facing headwinds in this fast-paced tech economy. There is this global race to win in the advancement of Artificial Intelligence between the East and the West, however there are clear impediments that persist to drive change in current technologies that are hampering the speed to win. There is this realization of the how brittle our systems are because of the harms, the bias and the deep fakes, pervasive scraping of data that have permeated platforms and communication systems creates an increased risk that resulted in more regulatory attention, public awareness in lockstep with the pace at which the technology is advancing. Ethics, Safety are now synonymous with Diversity Equity and Inclusion and is now front in centre when it comes to AI, because it more pervasive across sectors, across culture and society because of its importance in ensuring that technology works for everyone. This Increasing awareness has bled into Venture Capital. What technologies get funded continues to be dominated by large VC institutions, that have historically not been diverse. Some stats of how DEI is evolving within Venture Capital: Female Representation: Women represented 26% of the VC workforce, vs. 15% in 2016. The percentage of firms that reported they do not have any female investment partners decreased to 57%, down from 68% in 2018. Black Professionals: Black employees represented 5% of investment professionals in 2023, up from 3% in 2018, while senior level positions held by Black professionals totaled 4%, a percentage increase from 2018. DEI Strategies: Nearly 50% of VC firms surveyed are incorporating DEI strategies (up significantly from 15% in 2016), with 60% of firms saying they have a staff person or a team responsible for DEI. These statistics highlight the ongoing efforts and challenges in improving DEI within the VC sector. Gayatri Sarkar is the owner of Advaita Capital, a series B fund and one of the only growth VC funds in the US, that is a women-led, POC-led Venture capital company in an already small industry. We welcome Gayatri to talk about the state of VC, especially when it comes to disproportionate investment for underrepresented founders. We will talk about DEI its evolution. Is it working? We’ll also address the exciting innovation they are investing in, where AI is headed. We also talk about her ventures: Advaita Capital, a series B fund; She-VC, an organization that seeks to level the playing field in curating women and diverse GP’s, LPs to drive change through diversity, equity and inclusion. We’ll also discuss her most recent appointment to the Princess Grace Foundation of Monaco.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
These days there has been this surge of people who are developing influence within their specific corner of the market. They are digital creators who specialize in a niche and begin to establish themselves as experts in their field. The rise of influence has been less about celebrity, but these days it’s a strategic advantage for many entrepreneurs who want to build relationships, and ultimately leverage their personal brand to build their businesses Here’s the scenario: You are building your business, building your product and getting some critical traction. You want to move faster and start finding more customers and get ready for potential investment. But you are a small team, have limited social media presence. One thing you are good at is understanding the real estate industry. You were a former broker and now realize that this sector needs some major disruption. You are passionate about solving this problem. But for the sake of your growth, you realize you need to make an impact by establishing yourself as a thought leader in the real estate space. How do you do it? Many startups don’t realize the value of establishing their own personal brands. With the rise of social media, that has closed the gap between promotion and community, there are endless opportunities to establish yourself as a tech leader that helps you and your company as you grow. We were happy to welcome two founders who are effectively building their tech brand on social media. Stephanie Lipp, Cofounder and CEO of MyCoFutures North Atlantic and Staci LaToison, founding Partner of Dream Big Ventures We’ll uncover their journey, why they decided to do it, understand the importance of authenticity, a critical ingredient in defining their presence. They will provide advice on how early stage founders can develop opportunities by building their personal brands and establishing themselves as tech leaders.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Growth Hackers ' determined that the greatest indicator of startup success is resilience: “You might feel that things are moving slow in your company – that is natural. You may make decisions, that, in retrospect may lead to undesired consequences, or perceived setbacks in your goal to reach critical milestones. If you are an entrepreneur building a brand new startup, you probably have trouble seeing any light at the end of the tunnel from time to time.” It’s how far startup success is defined by how far an entrepreneur is willing to go and wait to see its startup succeed. One often overlooked reality about startups is that launching and sustaining one is not as straightforward as successful entrepreneurs might lead you to believe. Even with the current resources available to aid the growth and development of startups, persistent challenges remain. As a budding startup entrepreneur, be prepared to navigate numerous obstacles and endure difficulties. Startups face many challenges in their journey to scale. An entrepreneur’s ability to effectively manage these issues as they surface is a sign of your character as you grow. Many of these challenges are dependent on the relationships you create and cultivate along the way. What stories never get told are the failures that transpire because of these relationships. They could come from opportunistic clients unwilling to pay for services rendered, or from toxic employees or cofounders. They could come from once-enthusiastic partners willing to drive more value through their own relationships, but ultimately default on this promise. For many founders, these failures are hard lessons they take to the new set of relationships they encounter. Developing the right team Finding the right partners and vendors Selecting the right VC Personally as a CEO, determining your limitations and making the decisions you think are right for the company, in those moments. We were excited to host Devin Ramphal, Sector Manager for Innovation and Technology at the City of Brampton’s Economic Development Office and formerly CEO/Cofounder of Clean AIR which was acquired in 2023 and Jennifer Cameron, Co-founder and CEO of INVRS and formerly the founder of hyperWALLET, which was acquired by Paypal in 2018 for $400Million. Both had important stories as founders who have navigated relationships in their startup journeys and provided some great insight from their own experiences to help founders build resilience.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Will 2024 will be another challenging year for startup founders? The world bank came out with the following prediction for 2024: “Global growth is projected to slow for the third year in a row—from 2.6% last year to 2.4% in 2024, almost three-quarters of a percentage point below the average of the 2010s. Developing economies are projected to grow just 3.9%, more than one percentage point below the average of the previous decade.” They are dubbing it the “Weakest Half-Decade Performance in 30 Years" This is a so-called recession that never really came (because of low unemployment, despite higher interest rates) there are indications similar to what we’ve seen at the start of the Ukraine/Russia war (2 years ago) that set off an economic fallout that saw the steep fall of Crypto and NFT and, in parallel massive investment pullout from overvalued startups that received millions in funding during the pandemic. This time while the global economy is in a better place, mounting geopolitical tensions. Innovation will take a hit as we’ve already witnessed at the end of 2023 with rising tech layoffs “Amazon saw the most workers laid off in 2023 (27,410 workers) followed by Meta (21,000), Google (12,115) and Microsoft (11,158).” This continued as we ventured into the new year with more layoffs from Big Tech In the fall of 2023 David Wright, Investment Analyst remarked, “Investor returns in the VC industry have not always paid up for the risks involved in private investments.” Wright noted that in the last 4 decades, VC fund performance had its ebbs and flows with the mid-to late nineties being the standout period. “The average returns from VC investments have consistently hovered around 9%, comparable to public markets,” but Wright highlights that the more telling metric is the “1.8% returns indicating that there is a disproportionate performance that favors a handful of VCs while the “majority have largely underperformed.” Will investors be more measured and discriminating in their search for promising ventures this year? For founders, what is in store for them as the year unfolds and how should they be managing their businesses to improve growth, increase their visibility to investors, and to essentially weather this uncertainty? We were pleased to host three seasoned startup advisors and investors: Bryan Duarte - Bryan Duarte is a Social Venturist, Serial Entrepreneur, a Professional Engineer and has over 30 years of experience in the Energy Industry. He is the Managing Partner at BlackTech Capital and our newest EIR at Altitude Accelerator. Glenn Nishimura - Glenn Nishimura is the Principal and Chief People Strategist at Nishimura Consulting, based in Toronto, Canada. As an experienced advisor, consultant, and mentor, he helps early and growth stage startups and scale-ups across North America, Asia, and Europe to build and optimize their teams, culture, and people operations. Olga Cruz is a Senior Associate at impact investing firm Good & Well. She leads the impact management practice and sources, analyzes, and invests in early-stage Canadian businesses. Her prior roles involved investing in healthcare and agricultural innovations. She also dedicated her efforts to supporting entrepreneurs in conflict-affected regions, guiding them towards investor readiness. Check out the full article on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hessiejones/2024/01/29/is-2024-the-year-of-investor-restraint-and-startup-resilience-eight-experts-weigh-in/?sh=65a49935678a…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
AI has consumed the tech space and mainstream business. What implications does generative AI have on cybersecurity? Will it change the threat landscape for better or worse? At Collision, Hessie Jones interviewed Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password to discuss the implications to personal information and how will passwordless technology help combat these threats.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
As of February 2023, 850 million people globally don’t have an ID: no birth certificate, national ID–a legal identification that enables access to basic services like setting up bank accounts, getting a job–a system we’ve taken for granted in the West. Solving the identity problem becomes more pronounced as societies become increasingly digital. This will further elevate the need for secure and convenient ways to verify a person’s identity as they transact and communicate online or remotely. This comes at a juncture as we face many problems with impersonations, deep fakes, AI generated media and content where safety and trust become just as crucial especially as generative AI accelerates. We welcome Riley Hughes, CEO of Trinsic, leading infrastructure for issuing and accepting reusable ID credentials from a network of providers. Riley has been early to the Self-Sovereign Identity space. He's worked with communities that have been evolving the technology and governance in this area and with his company, he is paving the future for how we manage our identities.…
Theodora Lau recently wrote a Linkedin post called "Where are the Women?" This was a timely post that responded to the slap in the face to many women, who have made incredible strides to affect substantive change in AI, who saw the NYT article that snubbed the work of prominent women like Fei Fei Li, Timnit Gebru, Kate Crawford, Joy Buolamwini, Meg Mitchell and others too numerous to mention. This article came off the week of drama that saw Sam Altman re-installed as the CEO of OpenAI, when 5 days before, he had been fired. What we’re witnessing is an increasing polarization within the industry where, despite the significant efforts of women engineers, data scientists, policy makers and professionals in AI, there continues to be a lack of recognition and respect for their work and their voices in industry, and in the media. This continues to be contentious and women across the AI world are rightfully angered at this perpetual lack of respect for the cumulation of work that has been done by women, and the non-binary community – the perpetual underrepresentation of these critical voices. This comes at a time when everyone– researchers and mainstream– are worried about the further development of AI technology and its implications for humanity: jobs, lack of access (knowledge, skills, economic, geography, income), where representation matters as these technologies are built. Theodora Lau is the founder of Unconventional Ventures, a public speaker, and an advisor. She is the co-author of The Metaverse Economy (2023) and Beyond Good (2021), and host of One Vision, a podcast on fintech and innovation. Through her work, she explores the intersection of financial services, tech, and humanity. Theo’s recent blog post had me nodding my head and questioning why this is happening? I reached out for a much-needed conversation.…
Will new emerging technologies assist engineers in enhancing their capabilities or will their jobs simply be done for them? At Collision, 2023, Hessie Jones met with Maxim Fateev, CEO of Temporal and Anand Kulkarni, CEO of Crowdbotics. Both organizations are making it increasingly easier for engineers in light of the advances in Generative AI. One school of thought: it's much easier to replace certain aspects of desktop jobs than replace labor skills like carpenters or construction workers. Everything that works well in AI is happening behind the screen currently, but not so much in the physical world and these may be the the jobs most vulnerable. How has automation impacted current engineering roles and practices? Have there been areas within this segment that have already been disrupted? How do both see the future role of the engineer?…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
1 Episode 41 Can the Metaverse Truly Unravel the Missteps of Web 2.0 and Create Web Solutions that We all Deserve? 33:20
The future of the internet is really all about building on the promise of Web3 is about a decentralized internet, that brings more powers to creators, where monetization dispels of current ad models, and where people become the owners/purveyors of their identity and the things they create. I met Julie Smithson at Decoding Tech in Toronto. Julie is CoFounder of MetaVRse & XR Women, host of the Polys Awards & Working and building in immersive technologies since 2010. Julie has been instrumental in educating about the metaverse and pioneering capabilities across different sectors. We will learn more about Web3 aka the Metaverse, where it is today and what is the promise of society tomorrow.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
1 Episode 40 The Rise and Fall... and Rise of Sam Altman has Grave Implications for AI Research and Humanity 39:35
From the sidelines, reading the media reports on the weekend of November 17 it was a series of irrepressible events that unfolded that weekend and the coming days. It was considered a tumultuous weekend, a series of uncontrolled outcomes, each with its own significance to the fallout of OpenAI and its employees. While the world watched this drama unfold online, no one would have guessed the outcome of events that transpired within the course of the coming days: the firing of Sam Altman… the quitting of OpenAI president, Greg Brockman and the threatened resignations from 700 employees of Open AI… to the requested resignation of the Board… to the hiring of Brockman and Altman as new MS employees… to the final decision to reinstate Altman as CEO of Open AI with new board members in tow – all in the course of 5 days. What these events with Open AI and Microsoft have signalled are some unprecedented implications for the AI community, its researchers and more importantly the more far reaching impacts to the society for which AI is built. So what does this all mean... - when a nonprofit side, with no financial incentives is unable to effectively oust an executive because of legitimate safety concerns - when a structure that was put in place to mitigate the risk of unilaterial control of advanced AI and was essentially was usurped by the same capitalistic forces - this structure were designed to prevent We welcome Christoph Schuhmann, Cofounder of LAION.AI, Large-scale Artificial Intelligence Open Network, a non profit organization, who has a large community of volunteers, data scientistis, researchers, practitioners developing applications in this field, to weigh in on the events of November 17-21, 2023 and what it means to the AI Community…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
We are currently living in a time of greater uncertainty. The Pandemic has created an environment that caused us to abandon the safety of what we once knew to be the tried and true, the way things have always been done and to trust in our instincts to create an environment that is safe, productive, effective without risking loss to the team or the culture. Some companies within the technology industry have led the way during the Pandemic: the first ones to be able to adapt to remote work, with ready infrastructure to easily morph while the traditional in-person organizations struggled. But now, everyone begins to see a new world and how it’s evolved; what are the expectations from employees? No longer is anyone expecting that we go back to status quo. Companies need to be different, think differently and adapt to the new world – we are not going back. Leadership needs to lead the way in navigating these new expectations and how things change or not. We will be talking about leadership for startup founders. We welcome Carlos Granda former Google VP Customer Success, advisor and mentor and someone who frequently talks about the role of leadership and creating a culture that can sustain a crazy or horrific event like the world lived through the pandemic.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
In 2020, when the Pandemic mandated the move to remote work, Turing raised $32million in Series B funding to define a future where companies could push a button to spin up their engineering team instantly. In 2021, Fast Company listed Turing as one of the most innovative workplace companies. In great company with the likes of Asana, Atlassian, Gitlab, Slack, and Zoom, Turing defines itself as an international hiring platform that brings together remote software developers and leverages their unique AI vetting process to match the right teams with projects. I met with Jonathan Siddharth, founder and CEO of Turing, to dive into his AI-powered tech services platform and his vision to unleash the world’s untapped human potential.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
The value of the distributed ledger is baked into the promise of Web3, where equity, access and accountability occur within a shared governance and self-organizing ecosystem; and where creators can truly own what they produce and enable and control new value creation. We’ve purposely left out the word, “Blockchain” in this title because it has become synonymous with Cryptocurrency. The value of the distributed ledger, in and of itself, creates an infrastructure that may not only increase access, but also mitigate some of the risks we see today. The growth of Internet of Things (IoT) and the connected devices, gadgets and systems will bring the full power of the internet to society and business. International Data Corp. (IDC) predicts that, in 2025, 75% of the 55.7 billion devices will link to an IoT platform of some sort. Though it’s ever-expanding and innovative, it’s not all-powerful. These billions of devices will need more security and efficiency. Today, Generative AI and the mounting bias, manipulation, ownership and data privacy issues add a whole other dimension to how we manage systems as IoT, including the increasing computational load created by these technologies. We are pleased to welcome Dr. Jacob Mendel, who is a seasoned veteran of Blockchain technology, having served as Managing Director of the Blockchain Institute, Tel Aviv University. He is currently Head of Digital Cryptography & Cybersecurity of State Street. We explore the importance of distributed ledgers and why this is critical to the future infrastructure. We will define decentralized technology, how it may solve the problems of central authority, and how emerging AI technologies will adapt to a future in a distributed infrastructure.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
2023 is a year that has been marked by technological leaps. It is not surprising to see the confluence of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics which promises to reshape industries and redefine labor. Today there are about 3,000,000 industrial robots around the globe, with roughly 400,000 new robots entering the market every year. And the global market is expected to reach almost $43.8 billion in revenue in 2023 with a 10% CAGAR growth through to 2029 in North America alone. Many startups developing robotic arms could help factories address labor shortages and mitigate future supply-chain disruptions. I had the privilege of speaking with Peter Chen, the Co-founder and CEO of Covariant. Peter and his co-founders have been at the forefront of AI advancement since they were research scientists at OpenAI. We discussed the implications of AI-infused robotics in manufacturing, the critical challenges in labor shortages and supply chain disruptions, the transformative journey that Chen and Covariant are pioneering and when AI Robotics will have its ChatGPT Moment.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
In a digital environment rampant with adoption of emerging artificial intelligence technologies, data continues to drive considerable value. The risk to confidential and personal information continues to be an ongoing threat. Enter decentralized identity, an emerging paradigm of digital identity that champions the principles such as individuals having control over their own information and being able to selectively share them with others as needed. Verifiable Credentials, a rising standard and enabler of decentralized identity, are gaining adoption by public and private sectors across the world, including the European Union. Verifiable credentials are a type of digital credential protected by modern cryptography. They contain digital representation of information or attributes about an individual, organization, or thing. These include educational degrees, digital driver’s licenses, employment records or certifications. These credentials can be shared across various services to streamline processes that require proof of identity or qualification while still maintaining the privacy and security of that information. Verifiable Credentials are designed to provide a secure and tamper-resistant way of verifying and sharing personal or organizational data. Together with other decentralized identity technology, Verifiable Credentials are enabling our systems to allow individual data control, and to increase trust by reducing reliance on central authorities. What does this mean to the future of data privacy? We welcomed Lucy Yang, Managing Partner of Identity Woman in Business. Lucy has been working in the decentralized identity space for 4 years and was also Community Director and Committee Chair of the Covid Credentials Initiative, which sought to address privacy issues and concerns of sharing COVID and health information through verifiable credentials. We discussed the principles of decentralized identity and how a community has evolved them into new infrastructures to solve today’s data privacy issues and how this will interplay with the rampant development of Generative AI.…
Great fundraising stories require robust financial models. Founders looking to raise capital need to be able to effectively articulate performance and future activities by defending their numbers. Investors want to understand your overall business strategy and the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ behind your performance and your projected financials. Your ability to answer questions at the macro and micro level of your business is crucial to obtaining stakeholders’ confidence as your business grows. A good financial strategy developed will be the key to making critical decisions over time and allows you to articulate your business strategy and growth plans. We spoke with Yanky Li, an advisor to technology start-ups who had previously co-founded an AI/real estate company and helped a fintech unicorn get to where it is today. He is a CPA in both Canada and Australia. By having a founder mindset, he has helped those who want to change the world in their own way. Yanky helped us break down the importance of not only building a robust financial model, but also how it interplays with all aspects of your business. We will delve into how it can be leveraged for resource allocation, strategic planning and for risk management. For startup founders, a comprehensive financial provides transparency, evidence of financial viability and a roadmap for a company's growth.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
The inspiration behind Superhuman struck CEO, Rahul Vohra during an Uber ride, an experience that reshaped his perspective on productivity, giving users the gift of time. As the CEO of Superhuman, Rahul Vohra has dedicated himself to solving one of the most pressing challenges of our digital age - email overload. I met with Rahul Vohra, who proudly shares Superhuman as the fastest email experience in the world, with platform users enjoying inbox speeds twice as fast as traditional email clients, empowering them to respond to crucial messages promptly. In this interview, we talked about the early years at Superhuman and his seemingly elusive goal of achieving product/market fit, how Generative AI is changing the game for productivity, and how he’s helping fuel growth for other startups.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Marketing ROI continues to be a budget black hole. The advent of digital has created mechanisms for marketing accountability. Before digital, it was difficult to validate the halo effect from television impressions or magazine or print reach. With the rise of digital came services within AdTech, the growth of SEO, SEM, attribution software. now more than ever Marketers have a wide range of opportunities and tools to develop sound ROI model that is trackable. But here’s the rub, companies are often frustrated by marketing spend by not understanding how to effectively track their return to the pipeline. In larger organizations this is typically a rift between marketing and finance. But even in highly technical startup organizations – they too miss the key step of establishing marketing operations early in their journey. We welcomed Samantha Lloyd to discuss this. Samantha Lloyd is the co-founder and Managing Director of Skeleton Krew, a marketing agency focused on achieving a strong, high-growth return on marketing activities for business-facing technology companies across US and Canada. Samantha offers over a decade of experience building organic growth, brand, and digital marketing channels for business-facing companies. Samantha acts as Marketing Director or Head of Marketing for various clients in the technology industry. We discussed how marketing has evolved and how startups should begin to see marketing as a tremendous opportunity to build awareness and brand strength even before they are ready to sell. Samantha believes that by understanding what is important to track and why -- for business growth and properly investing in the correct channels this can make a difference in the success of a business.…
This is the state of Generative AI Today. The stunning speed of adoption of ChatGPT since its release in November 2022 has been extraordinary ChatGPT currently has 1.16 billion users. It crossed 1 billion users in March 2023. These numbers depicted an increase of almost 55% from February 2023 to March 2023. It managed to cross 1 million users within 5 days of its launch and 100 million users within two months. By the end of 2024, it is expected to generate a revenue of $ 1 billion. Almost 88% of the traffic on ChatGPT is direct traffic Let’s compare this in context with other major technology adoption: It took 38 years for Radio to reach 50 million users It took TV 13 years to reach 50 million users When Ipod first launched, it took 3 years to reach 50 million users Facebook added 200 million years users in less than a year What users quickly found was that productivity went through the roof. ChatGPT could understand and answer questions beyond a normal search query. It could be a great source to brainstorm ideas. It could explain complex things. It could draft letters. It could summarize long documents. It could write and debug code. It could translate in multiple languages. It could also write long form content or essays. It is the one solution that’s being integrated into our everyday lives – to increase productivity, to access the right information much more quickly. While there is this growing dependence on it, right now we should be cautious about how we’re using it. It is not a panacea or replacement for human reasoning. There are areas where technology is still nascent and it’s not performing so well. We hosted Dr. Augustine Fou, a veteran of digital marketing with nearly 30 years of experience. We dove into questions about ChatGPT and why it’s been taking the world by storm, why you should still be cautious and interrogate its efficacy, and more importantly, how should you be leveraging the technology in a rational way.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Today, we are witnessing the price of progress. As generative AI swiftly evolves amidst a booming landscape of adoption, the marvels of artificial intelligence are met with astounding costs and challenges. The allure from the VC community and tech giants, who have invested billions of dollars into startups specializing in generative AI technologies have not considered the underlying reality of these high costs that threaten this current boom. As of June 2023, ChatGPT has received 60 million visits daily, with 10 million queries per day. As of April 2023, it was estimated that to run ChatGPT would cost $70,000 per day at an average cost of $0.36 per question. In June, however, “Tom Goldstein, an AI ML Professor at Maryland University, has estimated the daily cost of running ChatGPT to be approximately $100,000 and the monthly cost to be USD$3 million.” This recent article profiled one startup, Latitude, which found itself grappling with exorbitant bills as their AI-powered games, like AI Dungeon, gained popularity. Latitude's text-based role-playing game utilized OpenAI's GPT language technology, resulting in soaring costs proportional to the game's usage. Content marketers' unexpected usage of AI Dungeon for generating promotional copy further exacerbated the startup’s financial strain. One of the primary reasons for the high cost of generative AI is the substantial computing power required for “training and inference.” I met with Laurent Gil, former lead of Oracle’s Internet Intelligence Group and current Cofounder of CAST AI, which is an ML powered cloud optimization platform that analyzes millions of data points, looking for the optimal balance of high performance at the lowest cost. CAST AI determines how much you can save, then reallocates your cloud resources in real time to hit the target with no impact to performance.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
What investors want is not always aligned with what founders expect in how they appeal to investors. The gap between what investors expect and what founders believe when it comes to funding is often attributed to different goals and perspectives. Investors are primarily focused on maximizing return on their investments and managing risks while founders are emotionally attached to their ideas and prioritize growth and innovation. This gap can lead to misalignment in expectations. Founders may not have a complete understanding of the investors’ decision-making process and criteria, so regardless of their own confidence in developing unique value to a market, it may not necessarily conform to these elements for which they are being judged. In this time of inflation, uncertainty and rising interest rates, these conditions increase the cost of capital, which in turn, may result in downward rounds for startups, and ultimately influences the shift towards safer investments. While the environment plays a key role in determining whether a company is funded there are other factors at play. We were pleased to host two seasoned investors in the startup space: Karen Grant – has been involved in early stage investing since the 1990s, after a 12-year career at IBM. She has launched four angel-investor groups, operated a business incubator and a commercialization centre for the University of Toronto, and been a founder, investor and director of a number of technology companies. David Wright – has spent his career supporting technology-enhanced, high-growth companies. He provides capital markets, corporate finance and valuation advisory services through Capital Advisors. He's a mentor for a few of Ontario’s Regional Innovation Centres, and was an equity research analyst, investment banker, and an executive director of an Angel Network. Karen and David helped an understanding of what matters to investors and deconstruct the myths in startup investing especially in today’s climate.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
For founders who are in the early stages of their product concepts, they should begin the process of determining how to make their solution real. If you are bootstrapping founder who does not have a technical resource in-house, developing your MVP can be cost prohibitive if you choose to develop locally. Also, many non-technical founders, especially those who are part of under-represented groups or are immigrants may have great ideas but may not have the network and relationships to find a good technical cofounder. Offshoring could be another option for you. Offshoring can help early stage, nontechnical founders turn their ideas into tangible and commercially viable products at a very low cost, compressing their time to market and improving their chances of getting early-stage investing. But this doesn’t come without risks. You are exposing some critical parts of your company to a third party – your tech infrastructure, databases. How do you deal with the time differences and project delivery? What are the communication challenges when it comes to culture and language? What are the security risks that come into play? What are the ideal use cases for offshore development? We spoke with Tauseef Riaz, Co-Founder and CTO of ConsidraCare, and Cofounder of Mashcraft, a digital transformation offshore services company. He is a serial entrepreneur, who is also all too familiar with the benefits and challenges with offshoring. Tauseef helped break down the benefits and showed how offshoring can reduce scaleup cash burns and lower the costs of any pivots around the business model or the tech stacks.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
In an era that has given rise to e-commerce and digital transactions, fraud has become an ever-pressing challenge for retailers. Cybersecurity Ventures estimates cyber-crime cost organizations $1.9 million every minute, and with cybercrime costs predicted to grow by 15% to a staggering $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, businesses are grappling with the need to optimize their revenue streams while safeguarding against the downside risks of fraudulent activities. Some alarming statements from the report: “If it were measured as a country, then cybercrime ...would be the world’s third-largest economy after the U.S. and China.” “This represents the greatest transfer of economic wealth in history, risks the incentives for innovation and investment, is exponentially larger than the damage inflicted from natural disasters in a year, and will be more profitable than the global trade of all major illegal drugs combined.” Amid this complex landscape, Signifyd, a company driven by big data and machine learning, has emerged as a champion of “fearless” commerce, providing retailers with a powerful shield against fraud and chargebacks. I spoke with Raj Ramanand, Co-Founder and CEO of Signifyd to discuss how they are tackling this pervasive threat.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
You are ready to develop your Minimum Viable Product (MVP). You’ve done your research and you feel you have everything you need to move to the development phase. Have you truly considered who you are developing for? Have you tapped into the earliest users and their needs? What are the essential functions and features? Have you developed a test plan? Michael Siebel of YCombinator professes that your MVP shouldn’t be that special. It has extremely limited functionality based on what your initial users need from the highest order of problems. Did you know that AirBNB’s MVP was not that special? The first version had users exchanging payments with the host in real life. They also did not have a map feature to denote location. The YC ethos for any prelaunch startup is to launch quickly. And if you can, launch something “bad” quickly. This will save you much grief down the road. We hosted Stephen McCabe, Co-Founder of Northern Devs, a software development company with a goal to make building tech approachable, equitable, and efficient. They help many startup founders launch their MVPs. Stephen helped us dive deeper into defining processes and best practices that startups can use at the early stages of their product development.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
1 Episode 25 Preserving Privacy in the Surveillance Economy A Conversation with Andy Yen, CEO of Proton 14:42
Privacy has become a precious commodity. It is often at odds with the pervasive nature of surveillance. Tech giants and governments alike have harnessed the power of technology to gain unprecedented access to personal data, raising concerns about individual privacy and the health of democratic societies. To examine this complex issue, I sat down with Andy Yen, the Co-founder and CEO of Proton, a privacy-focused company behind Proton Mail, to discuss the implications of the surveillance society and the urgent need for safeguarding user privacy.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Today, TikTok is arguably one of the most engaging social networking platforms in the world. Available in over 150 countries, with over 1 billion users, with downloads over 210 million times in the United States alone, this app is used by about 130 million Americans and 3.2 million Canadians per month. It is the 4th largest social networking site behind FB, YouTube and Instagram. Its user base is more pervasive among Generation Z. In 2022, TikTok’s annual revenue from ads came in at $11.04 billion, a 200% increase from 2021. Recently lawmakers in Canada and US have continued to express concern that TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance maybe putting user sensitive data into the hands of the Chinese government. Recently, the US Federal government has banned TikTok on all government devices. The Canadian federal government including Ontario followed suit. India and Pakistan, had, already 2 years ago banned TikTok. Other countries on this bandwagon include France, Netherlands, UK, Belgium, Denmark, Taiwan, and Afghanistan. By all accounts, there is a real possibility that users and businesses in Canada may soon further restrict access to TikTok. This will have significant impacts on business, especially access to and engaging the coveted Generation Z. We invite Sergey. Ross, a video content creator, YouTuber with an in-depth background in marketing. He has worked with business from startup to enterprise on podcast production, demand generation, marketing and content strategy. He recently co-founded a new type of video production company called SWAY, bringing creator knowledge to B2B. Sergey’s experience makes him the ideal expert to delve into the best practices when it comes to effectively interacting and engaging with your customers. We’ll discuss best practices for these digital formats, as well as address the implications of the real possibility of TikTok’s permanent ban and what this will mean to founders.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
1 Episode 23 Admission Overseas Is Pioneering International Student Recruitment with Generative AI 8:38
The International Education Market is expected to soar to $433Billion by 2030. Admission Overseas has developed a solution to move at the speed of global demand. Across the globe, the demand to pursue education in North American post-secondary institutions has witnessed an extraordinary surge. Students are increasingly drawn to the exceptional academic standards, extensive program offerings, and career prospects available in Canada and the United States. The reputation of these institutions for providing high-quality education coupled with the multicultural experiences they offer has created an unparalleled appeal. As a result, the demand for admission to North American colleges and universities has reached unprecedented levels, creating both challenges and opportunities for students and recruitment agencies alike. This study by HolonIQ stipulates the International Education Market of $196 Billion is expected to soar to $433Billion by 2030. Currently 75% of demand is coming from Asia. With the rising middle-class populations, increasing disposable incomes, and a desire for global exposure and better educational opportunities, countries like China and India are taking advantage of post-secondary education opportunities abroad. One startup, Admission Overseas is emerging as a trailblazer through a solution that can move at the speed of the global demand. Led by founder Himanshu Barthwal, the company is at the forefront of leveraging generative AI to streamline the admission process, enhance success rates, and foster diversity in colleges and universities. I spoke to Himanshu Barthwal to find out how Admission Overseas is making a significant impact in this market.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
The resistance to change is emblematic in a sector that has idealized practices and the legacy systems that have been working for decades. One founder seeks to disrupt this. AI adoption continues to lag in the healthcare sector. The complexity and sensitivity of patient data, how they’re governed and communicated within systems and between institutions requires significant time and investment. The last decade saw health information data slowly becoming digitized however strict privacy regulations, security requirements, and liability concerns–have all made AI challenging to fully integrate into the industry. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare holds immense potential for transforming patient care and outcomes. Navigating the ethical landscape of healthcare data usage is a crucial consideration. I met with Devin Singh, the founder and CEO of Hero AI, an early-stage health tech company, to delve into the challenges surrounding healthcare data usage, the need for advocacy as he pushes for significant change within a highly regulated sector.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Chemical surfactants, ubiquitous in our everyday lives, serve as critical ingredients in an array of consumer products, ranging from cleaning agents, personal care products to cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. These compounds enable the effective dispersion of substances and are vital to enhancing the properties of the products we use today. Over time, this has come at a steep cost to the environment and human health. Derived primarily from palm and petroleum sources, the conventional surfactants have contributed to depletion of natural resources and the mounting concerns over the downstream impact of toxic chemical agents on the individual well-being as well as the adverse effects to our environmental ecosystems. The global surfactants market was valued at $41.3 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach $58.5 billion by 2027, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.3% during the forecast period from 2020 to 2027. Despite this surge in demand, the market faces its own challenges including stringent government regulations on synthetic or petrochemical-based surfactants. This has led to a shift towards bio-based and renewable surfactants. One company, Dispersa, emerges as a beacon of change, transforming food waste into eco-friendly biosurfactants. Recently, Dispersa closed $3 million in funding, led by Invest Nova Scotia, and included the participation of the Fonds Économie Circulaire (Circular Economy Fund), Fondaction, Dragonfly Ventures, Good & Well, and BoxOne Ventures. I met with Nivatha Balendra, Founder and CEO of Dispersa and with Olga Cruz, Investor of Good & Well at Collision. We examined Balendra’s personal journey, the imperative shift towards more sustainable solutions in the chemical industry and the need for more impactful innovation in clean tech.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
After an exhausting and exhilarating 3 days of Collision, we wrapped up the event with an interview with Paddy Cosgrave, Founder and CEO of Web Summit and Collision, two of the fastest growing tech events in the world. The event which was hosted in Toronto since 2019 drew attendance of 36,378 from 118 countries in Toronto. In addition, a record-breaking 30 percent of startups this year this year are • women-founded; 41 percent of attendees are women; 36 percent of speakers are women • 1,727 startups and partners from 76 countries and almost 30 industries exhibited • CA$188 million has been injected into the Toronto economy over the course of the three in-person Collision events since 2019 We spoke to Paddy about the impetus of WebSummit and the important initiatives to improve representation in tech: The Indigenous Attendee Program and Amplify representing more than 130 startups as part of the commitment to prioritize underrepresented communities. He shared his views on what makes this year different than previous years and why the decision to bring Collision back to Toronto in 2024. Stay tuned for amazing interviews from Collision incoming!…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Google continues to be the window to the internet. It is the intelligence that informs real time intentions, and what people are searching for. Great SEO continues for business to be the way to let search engines know that your business pages can answer people’s queries. The advent of Generative AI can uplevel the playing field and create avenues for content creation, images, code, video. The speed at which original content creation – loved by search engines – can be created will have significant effects on SEO effectiveness. The larger impact may be to the threat to Google and its bread and butter? Will this be the technology to finally unseat the search engine giant? And will it be the beginning to change the rules for building business awareness, traffic and ultimately revenue? We welcomed Steve Taylor, Instructor at Schulich School of Business, who had some significant roots in Search. He started working with Search in the 1990s and has been one of the leaders at Yahoo! Search Marketing as well as iProspect and has seen the evolution of search engine marketing, with the rise of social media, influencer marketing and the multibillion-dollar ad technology industry. Steve took us through the importance of SEO and where it could evolve in the next decade.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Sales is one of the toughest jobs in any industry. And it’s only going to get harder with evolving buyer behaviors towards digital engagement and self-directed research wreaking havoc on sales engagement strategies. Driving successful sales outcomes means the right composition of individuals and process. What does this look like? How do the two work together? We spoke to Robert Simon, VP of Strategic Sales at NOW Vertical Group. Robert is a dynamic, performance-driven sales executive who has been on the leading edge of selling digital disruption and transformation for twenty years. As a strategic sales leader, Robert has led sales, digital marketing, and e-commerce teams into growth engine powerhouses. For startups who are developing innovations that will disrupt current ways of doing things, it’s important to understand how much mindset and methodology are critical to sales. Robert shared his experiences in selling transformational technologies and the levers to pull in order to create an effective sales strategy and process that drives revenue outcomes.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
A business needs a leader, a builder, and a marketer. You may find that in one person, but often times, you will need to build a team with these complimentary skills in order to properly manage and scale a business. We welcomed David Peterson, who founded his own coaching company and was previously a regional manager for IT Operations for HSBC that covered 8 countries. David provides insight in how to develop the right team.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
“Collapse does not happen suddenly it is a result of an erosion over time until a breaking point arrives.” Andre Picard on the state of our healthcare system – Globe & Mail We were pleased to host Rishad Usmani, MD to discuss the state of healthcare system in Canada. From the ack of available nurses, long wait times, our doctor shortage and increasing calls to privatization of our long-coveted free-health-care for everyone is at risk. How did we get here? Do we turn to technology to help fix some of the gaps that exist today?…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Entrepreneurs have big ideas. They have a vision for how they want to change the world. They’ve validated their idea and want to get started in bringing this to fruition. They need someone who can, not only build this for them, but someone who is willing to become a significant member of the team to help in its growth and commit to the long term. Finding the right technical cofounder goes beyond the skills necessary to build a great product. There are many other soft-skills required; there are expectations to be managed. In this environment where demand for developers means developers, and especially CTOs can command higher compensation, finding the right person to help you lead in this endeavour can be a daunting process. As a founder, your job is not only to find ones that are skilled enough to do the task, but also being able to determine cultural fit, alignment on vision and growth and being able to sell these things as opportunities in absence of the higher compensation they are used to receiving. How do you go about doing this? What are the things you should consider in qualifying your cofounder? How do you engage with the right one and manage their expectations? What does this new cofounder marriage look like to ensure a sustainable relationship for the company? We were privileged to speak with Glenn Nishimura, Principal and Chief People Strategist at Nishimura Consulting, based in Toronto, Canada. As an experienced advisor, consultant, and mentor, he helps early and growth stage startups and scaleups across North America, Asia, and Europe to build and optimize their teams, culture, and people operations. Glenn provided clarity in finding the right technical cofounder to help a founder build a successful business.…
It’s been called the toughest jobs in industry. For startups who are building their business from the ground up, finding the right customer who is willing to buy your product can be daunting. This is where all companies start out. They have an idea. They go out to talk to people to validate the idea. They build it with all this feedback in mind. And they identify the ideal customer profile that would benefit the most from their product, put this target list together and they’re ready to go out and sell. For startups the first 100 days are probably the most difficult. Through all their cold calls or cold emails, they may get a few call backs. Some of those transpire into meetings. Many times, those meetings don’t convert into further meetings. What are they doing wrong? More importantly, How do they adjust? We were privileged to welcome our guest, Faheem Rauf of Rauf and Associates. He’s a seasoned sales professional and he’s taught his course on Customer Obsession to many of his clients including Ford Motor Company, Royal Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Scotland, HBO, Credit Suisse among many others. He argues these principles apply to early-stage companies.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
We are all familiar with the phrase “Fail Fast”. The “fail fast” philosophy values extensive testing and incremental development to determine whether the idea has value. The important goal of the philosophy is to cut losses when testing reveals something is not working and quickly try something else known as pivoting. The goal is not to perfect the concept but get it good enough to get it out to the market, then continuously improve it through market feedback. We spoke to Ralph Christian Delos Santos of Biofect Innovations; Pushkar Kumar and Chitral Angammana, of NanoRial Technologies Ltd – two companies who have pivoted and are here to tell their stories.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
We see it time and again. One of the last things companies invest in when they’re starting their company is marketing. The developer is hired before the marketer. The product is designed without consideration of who it’s for. The product is tweaked without talking to a customer. Marketing strategy takes a back seat to product strategy, and this is a fatal flaw. One of the most common marketing myths? Marketing is the same thing as Promotion. In fact, Promotion, which includes PR and advertising, is ONLY one subset of marketing. But this misunderstanding is the reason why companies dismiss the need for marketing. Perhaps you are not ready to talk publicly about your business or products, but this does not mean that you do not need marketing. This is the groundwork a founder needs to establish in order to determine if they have a viable business. The foundations of revenue and building a sustainable business begin here. We spoke to seasoned experts, Angela Bourne, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Altitude Accelerator and Kevin Smith, Founder of The Story Architect, and marketing instructor for Altitude’s Incubator Program, who broke down some of these myths and make the case for how a proper marketing strategy will help founders build better companies that will endure.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
For many start-ups developing a financial model is a daunting task. Why are they necessary? How do I build one? What should it include? Geoff Simonett, Investor, Advisor, Entrepreneur-in-Residence and formerly one of the founders of GreenSky Capital, and currently the President of Pinelands Capital, joins us to tackle this challenging topic for many startups: the importance of building a financial model; the fundamentals, and what it means as the foundation for their business.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Have we finally arrived? Has technology finally given us the ease and convenience that we’ve been striving for? From ChatGPT, Dall-E2, Lensa, Generative AI is all the rage... or is it just hype? ChatGPT has been known to generate emails or replies on any given prompt. It is now a threat to Google search by delivering relevant web results. It can generate text summaries from video and write your tweets and comments and replies. But the same technology has also been known to generate darker capabilities like creating malware, generating phishing emails, steal information and eerily make even the most discerning humans unable to differentiate what is human vs. computer generated outputs. Is Generative AI ready for mainstream? More importantly, are we ready to trust its eventuality? Have we finally acquiesced human creativity to the machines? If so, what is human purpose? We welcome Amir Feizpour, CEO and Cofounder of Aggregate Intellect and Patricia Thaine, CEO and Cofounder, of Private AI who will tackle questions about whether the world is ready for Generative AI and vice versa, and what will it mean to the future society?…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
In 2022, the state of global venture capital funding reached $74.5 B in Q3 of 2022, minus 34% quarter over quarter loss and the largest quarterly percentage drop in a decade according to CB Insights. This marked a 9.5% quarterly drop and 7 quarter low – with just under 8000 deals being done in Q3 2022. For many startups will 2023 follow the same trend from the last 2 quarters of 2022? There are pundits who say the recession, if it happens, will be shortlived because it is Fed Induced, in an economy that is growing. For startups, they need to consider funding options in light of this uncertainty. Whether it is short-lived or not, this will influence investor confidence. For early-stage startups, where VC funding is less likely in this climate, what are the funding alternatives? We spoke to Alexander Morsink, Managing Director of Equivesto, an equity crowdfunding platform. We discussed the state of the economy, debunked some myths about crowdfunding and discussed the benefits and challenges for startups considering raising in 2023.…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Ontario has mandated to go Carbon Neutral based on 1990 levels by 2040. The primary sources of emissions are homes and buildings (57%) mainly from heating and water by natural gas, transportation (36%) and waste (7%) landfills. We welcome James Sbrolla, Startup Advisor, President & CEO of Cleantech Capital, and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Altitude Accelerator to discuss the opportunities in cleantech and how government regulation can hasten innovation and maximize returns for Cleantech founders. Subscribe to Tech Uncensored on Youtube Subscribe to our Weekly Tech Uncensored, LinkedIn Live Newsletter Register and gain access to advisors, programs, and our extraordinary network Follow us: Connect with Altitude Accelerator on LinkedIn Follow Altitude Accelerator on Twitter Like Altitude Accelerator on Facebook Website: https://altitudeaccelerator.ca/podcast/…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
The failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) flooded our attention this past week. The Twitter Run on the 18th largest bank in the US followed with a weekend frenzy for regulators announcing they were willing to backstop all deposits over and above the initial FDIC threshold of $250K. To underscore the importance of this event, by the end of 2022, SVB had $209 billion in assets. It was a “lone source” of support for startups in Silicon Valley. The pace to remediate this potential contagion and calm the markets has been swift. The ripple effects continue to be felt, including here in Canada. What are the implications to startups in Canada – on their business, the economic outlook in the coming months? More importantly, is there a silver lining in all of this? We welcomed Steve Foerster, Finance Professor, Ivey Business School, Western University; Paul Barter, Entrepreneur in Residence, Altitude Accelerator; and Andrew Opala, Board Member, Altitude Accelerator and General Partner, Preference Capital, who tackle the questions to which startups have been seeking answers. Subscribe to Tech Uncensored on Youtube Subscribe to our Weekly Tech Uncensored, LinkedIn Live Newsletter Register and gain access to advisors, programs, and our extraordinary network Follow us: Connect with Altitude Accelerator on LinkedIn Follow Altitude Accelerator on Twitter Like Altitude Accelerator on Facebook Website: https://altitudeaccelerator.ca/podcast/…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
The problem: For women entrepreneurs, the #1 structural barrier is attracting investment. If you’ve been paying attention, the recent $350Million investment to Adam Neumann, a white male founder, well networked in the VC community, and former founder of failed IPO, WeWork, sent ripples across a startup community that has long been accustomed to disproportionate investment funding. These stats continue to be echoed time and time again: less than 3% of female led founders and less than 1% of female minority founders receive venture funding. Dominic Madori-Davis of TechCrunch encapsulated the plight of the underrepresented founders– the women, the visible minority founders who have journey through a relentless search for equity, and who have personally experienced this regression from being unable to break this glass ceiling – to now an impenetrable concrete one: “One cannot out-educate, out-network and out-assimilate the systemic barriers designed to discriminate against them.” In this episode we speak to 2 Underestimated founders, Stephanie Lipp, Founder of MyCoFutures NA (a company a next gen materials cleantech startup, developing a durable textile using mycelium, the root system of fungi) and Azar Azad, Founder of AI VALI, a startup developing AI-powered GI endoscopy video image analysis and speech recognition services for the clinical space. Both Azad and Lipp are passionate in their pursuit to disrupt the clinical space and the fashion industry. We will also speak to Bryan Duarte of Black Tech Capital and Giselle Melo, GP at MATR Ventures, who are building equity in a system that has done little to support emerging female founders. What keeps these founders up at night and how do they overcome their challenges? For emerging fund managers, is it possible to disrupt a system that has seemingly worked for years, and change the “hearts and minds” of the majority and make way for necessary change? Subscribe to Tech Uncensored on Youtube Subscribe to our Weekly Tech Uncensored, LinkedIn Live Newsletter Register and gain access to advisors, programs, and our extraordinary network Follow us: Connect with Altitude Accelerator on LinkedIn Follow Altitude Accelerator on Twitter Like Altitude Accelerator on Facebook Website: https://altitudeaccelerator.ca/podcast/…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
In this episode we invite Carmine Pizzuro, President of eCamion, Patrick Marion, VP of Product Development at inmotive and Arthur Kong, Director of Project Development at Ngen Canada join Samie Husain discuss the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure market: the challenges each of these companies faced as early startups; the opportunities as the industry transitions to EV and the issues with respect to infrastructure and supply chain. Subscribe to Tech Uncensored on Youtube Subscribe to our Weekly Tech Uncensored, LinkedIn Live Newsletter Register and gain access to advisors, programs, and our extraordinary network Follow us: Connect with Altitude Accelerator on LinkedIn Follow Altitude Accelerator on Twitter Like Altitude Accelerator on Facebook Website: https://altitudeaccelerator.ca/podcast/…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Funding from venture capital is a critical financial resource for tech startups. But do you know why venture capital companies pass on a company? How do they VCs evaluate startups? In this discussion, our host, Sam Husain, invited two VC partners, Matan Hazanov and David Harris Kolada, who have been working with startups for years. Watch the discussion and get the “myths” of VCs busted. Subscribe to Tech Uncensored on Youtube Subscribe to our Weekly Tech Uncensored, LinkedIn Live Newsletter Register and gain access to advisors, programs, and our extraordinary network Follow us: Connect with Altitude Accelerator on LinkedIn Follow Altitude Accelerator on Twitter Like Altitude Accelerator on Facebook Website: https://altitudeaccelerator.ca/podcast/…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
Since the prosperity of Web 2 and social media platforms, Twitter has become a place for people to connect with others and to build communities together. However, Elon Musk interfered the operation of Twitter significantly and impactfully, leading to the communities on Twitter being more fragile than ever. In this episode, our host, Hessie Jones, invited Mia Shah-Dand and Alaric Aloor to discuss what is the most critical challenge and how businesses rebuild. Subscribe to Tech Uncensored on Youtube Subscribe to our Weekly Tech Uncensored, LinkedIn Live Newsletter Register and gain access to advisors, programs, and our extraordinary network Follow us: Connect with Altitude Accelerator on LinkedIn Follow Altitude Accelerator on Twitter Like Altitude Accelerator on Facebook Website: https://altitudeaccelerator.ca/podcast/…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
In this episode, we invited Paul Barter, Entrepreneur in Residence, Strategist and Professor; Pam Banks, Executive Director and Samie Husain, Venture Services Manager – all of Altitude Accelerator to talk about the big things that are going on: recessions, technology space, cryptos, and startups. Meta laid off 11,000 employees and Elon Musk is planning to lay off 75% of Twitter’s employees. The news is reminding us of the recession. But how do we discover the hidden opportunities behind the news? What should startups do to weather the storm? Subscribe to Tech Uncensored on Youtube Subscribe to our Weekly Tech Uncensored, LinkedIn Live Newsletter Register and gain access to advisors, programs, and our extraordinary network Follow us: Connect with Altitude Accelerator on LinkedIn Follow Altitude Accelerator on Twitter Like Altitude Accelerator on Facebook Website: https://altitudeaccelerator.ca/podcast/…
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Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast
We are live from the Metaverse and 5G Conference in Toronto. This is our premiere episode of Tech Uncensored. We speak with disruptors in the Metaverse space: Lorne Sugarman , CEO of Metaverse Group , the first vertically integrated real estate company focused on the Metaverse economy in the world. We discuss the rise of Decentraland, the overvaluations in Crypto and the impending Metaverse winter and when it will realistically move into mainstream. Milton Toledo , CEO of 3DVR . With over two decades of architecture and interior design experience, Milton has a mission to disrupt the space of the convergence of 3D and VR worlds and help customers acquire property and build business in the Metaverse. We discuss how enabling people to design their space in a disruptive way changes the game for interior design. David Krauss , Packet Architect in the Office of the CTO, Ciena , which provides equipment and software services that provide bandwidth for network. In this interview, we define decentralization, ownership in the new web, what will this mean to individual identity and how the Metaverse will not necessarily be defined by web3 technologies. Subscribe to Tech Uncensored on Youtube Subscribe to our Weekly Tech Uncensored, LinkedIn Live Newsletter Register and gain access to advisors, programs, and our extraordinary network Follow us: Connect with Altitude Accelerator on LinkedIn Follow Altitude Accelerator on Twitter Like Altitude Accelerator on Facebook Website: https://altitudeaccelerator.ca/podcast/…
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