Sam Talks Technology

Sam Sethi talked with Daniel Snell about the many things we have in common. We have our love for rugby, wine, running marathons and Taekwondo (both being black belts).We also have numerous mutual friends and estranged acquaintances but oddly we had never met before.We talked about Daniel's work on diversity and inclusion over the past 15 years which was truly inspirational.We also discussed why companies need to focus on the "diversity dividend" to remain competitive.We didn’t talk about our difference in height!

James Cridland is a radio futurologist and the publisher of podnews.net, a website along with a free daily news source about podcasting and on-demand audio. James is an internationally recognised thought leader in this space and he is regularly asked to speak at conferences and attend strategy planning events. He has been interviewed many times about radio's future by broadcasters like the BBC, CBC, NPR, and several UK commercial radio stations. James is passionate about great radio and is driven by radio's excellence as a medium and the need to retain radio's relevance in a modern media landscape.

Nick Coleman, who describes himself as the ‘Duke of Pork’, is the wonderfully exuberant founder & CEO of Snaffling Pig, a pork scratching company that is taking on the £3.2 billion pork market, with an innovative, strategic and engaging brand with wit and purpose. We’re not ones for big, gushy value statements, but we’ve got our three simple rules that we live each day by. Do great things. Have some fun. Don’t be a dick. - Nick Coleman Today Snaffling Pig has sales in the millions and now produces gammon steaks, sauces and even beer - but all began in 2014 with a £500 bet. Nick Coleman was working on a medical business when his co-founder Udhi Silva bet him he couldn't start a company from scratch with just £500. Two years after launch, Nick and his team decided that they needed to boost the funding and awareness of Snaffling Pig. So they took part in the 14th Season of BBC2 Dragons Den. It went well, with the firm attracting a £70,000 investment from Moonpig founder Nick Jenkins. In 2017 he won The Virg

Sam Sethi talked with Julien Genestoux about some of the current unhealthy business models that exist today, especially those that rely on advertising for monetisation i.e Facebook or act as gatekeepers for data distribution. i.e AppleJulien talked about how Web 3.0 needs to evolve towards 'Decentralised Autonomous Organisations' and how blockchain, ethereum wallets, smart contracts and the unlock protocol can make this new business model a reality.This was a great interview about the future of the web from a true pioneer. As Alvin Toffler said "The only way you can predict the future is to build it. ... " well that is exactly what Julien is doing.All I can say is listen and learn because this is how the web will be built and function in less than a decade and forewarned is forearmed.

Stewart Townsend is my good friend and was often my partner in crime for many fun startup events which we organised together. A chance meeting with Stewart, 15 years ago at one of the Open Coffee Club mornings I had organised in Waterstones, led to the start of a great friendship. This podcast takes you through those early days of the London startup scene. From Stewart's work with Sun Microsystems and working with Twitter developers. Through to events we did together such as Flowery Tweetups and Flowery Cinema; the one where we hired a Leicester Square cinema to watch the new Facebook film The Social Network and invited 250 of our Facebook friends to join us. Find out how we had drinks with Henry 'The Fonz' Winkler and Mark Zuckerberg as well as a private dinner with Scott McNealy, then CEO of Sun Microsystems at Blenheim Palace, to name but a few events. Together with Manoj Ranaweera, we helped start the first Techcelerate: The Original Tech Ecosystem in Manchester and we even attended its 11th-

Tom Holder, co-founder & CTO Tap. They have built a wonderfully simple app on the blockchain called TapMyData which allows you to quickly and easily request companies (SAR*) to provide you with all the data they are holding on you. Technology has driven a data explosion and vast fortunes have been made monetising your data. Respect for people’s privacy has been lost, and it’s time for a reckoning. Ask questions, take back your data, don’t sell yourself short! - Tom Holder Get the Tap app and discover what personal data organisations hold about you. Tap provides secure storage and instant access to a master record of your personal data. If you are a company you can register in their growing directory and automate these growing requests in a standardised format saving your organisation time and money whilst delivering a great consumer experience. *Note: A Subject Access Request, (known as a SAR or DSAR), is a request to a company or organisation asking for access to the personal data they may hold about y

Sam Sethi talked with Hannah Power about what is personal branding and do we all need it?How do we go about achieving it using the 6 step process to build a personal brand?ClarityCustomerCommunicationContentChannelsConnectCollateral

Sam Sethi talked with Charles Cadbury about the development of their Alexa skill but also we talked about other Alexa features such In-Skill Purchasing (ISP), Alexa Presentation Language (APL) and name skill intent along with the challenges of internationalisation, privacy, voice SEO and developer skill monetisation.The Skill'Book it Now' allows users to search for and book recommended local services using only their voice.Our vision is to enable thousands of local businesses to be bookable via Alexa, which will be available for people to use wherever they are. - Charlie CadburyAlexa cup:Launched by Amazon in 2019 the annual Alexa Cup is a global competition designed to encourage the development of Alexa Skills (voice apps) that solve real-world problems in a way that enhances customer experience while also being commercially viable.

Sam Sethi talked with Jamie Riddell about some of his recent investments in startups and his personal goals, as well as how he sees the future of technology evolving from online advertising through to new digital currencies like Facebook's Libra.

Sam Sethi talked with Alan Watkins about the future of work, the future of leadership, the future of economics & politics as well as the future of democracy.We also talked about Alan’s next three books, his three degrees and his work with the Olympic teams.

Sam Sethi talked with Tiffany St James about digital transformation, open data in government and her new side project the Consultancy Club.

Sam Sethi talked with James Poulter about: Voice Commerce, Voice SEO, Internationalisation and Creating & Branding Alexa Voice Skills.

Sam Sethi talked with Katie King about her role as a member of the UK Government All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) task force for the enterprise adoption of AI.We further discussed the role of the UK's Office for AI which was headed up by Digital Secretary Jeremy Wright but is now run by Baroness Nicky Morgan the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.We then talked about Katie's on-going work in schools and universities trying to get them to adopt AI courses.Finally we talked about the potential future role of AI and algorithms to create a UK social score similar to the one being rolled out in China. Was it a good or bad thing? We already have a financial score so what's to stop us having a social score to nudge and correct our bad behaviours and to encourage good behaviour.

Sam Sethi talked with Sam Liang about his entrepreneurial journey, from his beginnings as a computer student at Peking University through to a software engineer at Google where he was responsible for developing the blue dot on Google Maps.Sam sold his first startup, a location platform called Alohar Mobile to Alibaba, before finally starting Otter, the 30-person startup team that hails from Google, Facebook, Nuance, Yahoo, as well as Stanford, Duke, MIT and Cambridge.Otter was founded, just over three years ago and has raised $13 million in funding from the who’s who of Silicon Valley. e.g Horizons Ventures – a backer of Viv, DeepMind, Siri, Slack and others – who led the $10 million Series A. Also participating were Bridgewater Associates, i-Hatch Ventures, MetaLab, Jay Markley, and Boston investors Jim Pallotta and Stu Porter.Seed investors included Tim Draper through Draper Associates and Draper Dragon; Dave Morin through Slow Ventures; David Cheriton "The billionaire Professor and 1st investor in Google";

Sam Sethi talked with David Terrar about the changes in the IT industry over the last 40 years and how his first job offer from IBM was delivered by an old-fashioned telegram! Yes there was no email in 1978.We talked about the many changes he has seen from his early days at IBM with mainframes and learning programming languages such as Fortran through to today's newer technologies such as blockchain.Dave talked about why he believes 2007 was a significant milestone year for technology with the combined introduction/adoption of cloud computing, social media and mobile phones.We ended up talking about how 2020 will be the next critical key technology year with the introduction/adoption of 5G, AI, Blockchain, IPFS & Smart Contracts aka it's the dawn of the Web 3.0 era.

Hermione Way is a new media journalist, Reality TV personality and entrepreneur. She co-founded Vibease the world's first remote control smart vibrator "bringing fantasies to life with an immersive pleasure experience." She was until recently the Head of Communications at Tinder She has worked for CNBC, The Next Web and Techcrunch as well as running several of her own media companies. - Startup World, Newspepper, TechFluff, Hollywood meets Silicon Valley, TechDrive and she even had her own TV Series in America on Bravo TV. She famously kite surf's with Richard Branson and was infamously photographed in a hot tub with Harry Styles after his breakup from Taylor Swift. It seems Hermione knows everyone, she is one of those verified people that have 5,000 friends on Facebook and could easily have 5,000 more if allowed. Her personal friends are the who's who of the Web 2.0 London & Silicon Valley tech scenes. Alex Tew, Michael Acton Smith (Calm), Oli Barrett, Stewart Townsend, Paul Walsh, Steve Karmeinsky

Sam Sethi talked with Andy Evsans about the start of his entrepreneurial career in 1985 at the age of 15, selling concert tickets and trips and learning about business from the school of life.We then talked through the challenges Andy faced in building two online publishing and advertising companies.In 1999 he founded one of the UK's first digital publishing businesses & first vertical ad-network in the UK, Net Communities, and in 2015 sold it to Future plc.Frustrated with ad quality, transparency and brand safety online, he co-founded award-winning viewability technology provider OnScroll in 2013, which after tremendous growth, he sold to Sovrn Holdings, Inc. in April 2016, where he worked until May 2019.We also talked about the future of print publishing, advertising and especially podcasting as Andy started the UK's first Podcast production company in 2005.

Sam Sethi talked with Dave Isbitski about v-commerce, Alexa auto, privacy, skills payments, new devices, localisation and much more.Dave's quote below pretty much sums up my thinking about voicefirst development for the next generation of the web."I feel like voice is the new HTML" - Dave Isbitski

Sam Sethi talked with Richard Edwards about the rollercoaster high's and low's of being an entrepreneur as well as his previous corporate life where he was the 'Man from Del Monte' traveling the world as a supermarket buyer.Today Richard is starting a new stealth ‘AI focused’ startup in the fintech space. We also briefly talked about how machine learning on large volumes of data can help with trading.

Sam Sethi talked with Marcus Cauchi about why getting your prospect to say no quickly can lead to faster/shorter sales cycles and 90%+ closure rates.Most salespeople have a wishbone, not a backbone. And they qualify in sales by being given a business card and a phone and told you are one.Professional selling is like any other profession, you need to work at it. You need to train constantly. So most sales training, frankly, is a total waste of money, you would be better at buying a bunch of lottery tickets. - Marcus CauchiHe also has a new book 'MAKING CHANNEL SALES WORK': Ten Tools to Create a World-Class Third-Party Selling Program.