Securing Mobile Work Without Putting Data on the Device With Hypori
Tech Talks Daily
What if employees could access sensitive business applications from personal phones without storing company data on those devices? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Jared Shepard, CEO of Hypori, about virtual mobile infrastructure, BYOD security, employee privacy, zero trust, and the growing mobile threat created by AI. Jared’s personal story deserves attention in its own right. He describes himself as a former homeless high school dropout who joined the Army, discovered an aptitude for IT, and applied what he learned to difficult technology problems in Iraq and Afghanistan....
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Turning Payment Terms Into Strategic Working Capital With Calculum
Tech Talks Daily
Could your company be paying suppliers earlier than its competitors and unintentionally financing their advantage? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome back Oliver Belin, co-founder and CEO of Calculum. Our previous conversation took place around ten years ago when Oliver was working with the Marco Polo Network and blockchain was attracting attention across trade finance. His latest venture concentrates on working capital, payment terms, and the role of AI in supplier negotiations. Oliver explains why working capital has moved higher on the agenda for procurement, treasury, and...
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Could Disease Chemistry Help Treat the Brain With Enabled Therapeutics
Tech Talks Daily
What if the chemistry created by neurological disease could help activate medicine precisely where it is needed? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Sara Isbell, neuroscientist and co-founder of Enabled Therapeutics, about a proposed approach to one of medicine’s most stubborn problems: delivering effective drugs to diseased brain tissue without exposing healthy areas to the same activity. Sara explains how the blood-brain barrier prevents many promising compounds from reaching the brain. When drugs do enter, they may spread across healthy and diseased regions alike, creating a...
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Preparing Unstructured Data for Enterprise AI With CTERA
Tech Talks Daily
Could the real reason enterprise AI projects remain stuck in pilot mode be hidden inside the company’s unstructured data? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome back Oded Nagel, CEO of CTERA. We discuss why enterprise AI success depends on the condition, location, permissions, and business value of the data sitting underneath models and agents. Oded defines AI-ready data as information that is searchable, classified, and permission-aware. Many enterprises have petabytes of files distributed across offices, edge locations, legacy network-attached storage, and cloud platforms. Before...
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Quillbot on How Is AI Changing the Way People Think at Work
Tech Talks Daily
What happens to the value of human judgment when AI makes execution faster, cheaper, and available to almost everyone? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Eric Wang, Vice President of Product and AI at QuillBot. Eric has worked in artificial intelligence since 2006, with previous leadership roles at Turnitin and Chegg. He now works on AI products used by millions of people to develop ideas, improve their writing, conduct research, and create new forms of content. Eric argues that AI’s workplace impact extends far beyond automation. These tools are changing how people develop an...
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Industrializing AI: How Enterprises Turn AI Into Measurable Business Value
Tech Talks Daily
Has enterprise AI finally reached the point where impressive demonstrations are no longer enough? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Bruce McMahon, Chief Product Officer at CallMiner, about what he describes as the industrialization of AI: the move from experimentation and excitement toward repeatable processes, measurable ROI, better customer experiences, and technology that can operate reliably at enterprise scale. Bruce explains why business leaders are increasingly asking a much simpler question about AI: how is this going to create value? Drawing on CallMiner's experience...
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AI Agent Security: Why Identity and Access Control Matter More Than Guardrails
Tech Talks Daily
What happens when an AI agent is compromised, manipulated, or simply does something nobody expected, but already has permission to access your most sensitive systems? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Geoffrey Mattson, CEO of SecureAuth, about why securing enterprise AI requires businesses to think beyond protecting models and start paying much closer attention to identity, authorization, access control, and what AI agents are actually allowed to do. Geoffrey argues that AI agents present a different security challenge from traditional software. Conventional applications can be...
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Is Your Network Holding Back Your AI? Kentik CEO Avi Freedman on AI Infrastructure
Tech Talks Daily
Companies are spending billions on GPUs, data centers, foundation models, and AI infrastructure. But what happens when the network connecting all of it cannot keep up? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome back Avi Freedman, co-founder and CEO of Kentik, five years after our previous conversation. Avi has been operating large-scale networks since the 1990s, including more than a decade at Akamai, and brings a rare combination of founder experience and hands-on knowledge of how the internet actually works. We discuss why network performance is becoming an important factor in...
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What Clarecast Data Reveals About AI and Quiet Restructuring
Tech Talks Daily
Is AI really causing widespread job losses, or are a small number of announcements creating a much larger narrative? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Marvin Pohl, chief data scientist and cofounder of Clarecast, about AI layoffs, quiet restructuring, predictive workforce intelligence, and the responsibility that comes with forecasting company growth. Marvin’s career began in physics and physical chemistry. After completing his PhD in Germany, he worked at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley before moving into data science at BASF. He describes how his role changed as generative AI...
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Creating a Coordination Layer for AI Agents With Blue Language Labs
Tech Talks Daily
What happens when an AI agent is authorized to make a payment, but nobody can verify the wider agreement behind it? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Zor Gorelov of Blue Language Labs about the infrastructure businesses may need as AI agents move from answering questions to negotiating, approving, purchasing, coordinating, and settling commercial activity. Many current business processes depend on human coordination. People reconcile spreadsheets, chase signatures, confirm deliveries, review exceptions, and resolve disagreements between systems. This work often remains...
info_outlineWhat happens when a consulting company decides that adding AI to existing workflows isn't enough?
In this episode, Mal Vivek, CEO and co-founder of zeb, joins me to discuss the launch of Substrate, an AI-native operating architecture that challenges many assumptions about enterprise consulting, software delivery, and AI adoption.
Rather than layering AI onto legacy processes, zeb made the bold decision to scrap its own operating model and rebuild the company from the ground up with AI at its core. The result is Substrate, a system designed to learn from every project it completes, continuously improving through a Plan, Execute, Evaluate operating loop while helping organizations move from experimentation to measurable business outcomes.
Our conversation goes far beyond another AI product announcement. Mal explains why so many organizations remain trapped in what she calls "pilot purgatory," investing heavily in AI without producing measurable returns. We discuss why treating AI as an assistant often limits its potential, and why businesses may need to rethink their organizational structures, workflows, and even leadership models if they want AI to become part of their operational foundation.
We also explore one of the most talked-about aspects of zeb's business model: a 100 percent outcome guarantee. Instead of charging for time or software licenses, zeb only gets paid when agreed business outcomes have been delivered. That raises interesting questions about accountability, risk, and whether the traditional consulting model still makes sense in an era where AI can dramatically compress delivery timelines.
Mal also shares why zeb gives customers ownership of their own version of the Substrate engine instead of locking them into a traditional SaaS subscription, how AI changes the relationship between technology vendors and their customers, and why she believes future organizations will become flatter, faster, and increasingly focused on builders rather than management layers.
If you're a technology leader trying to move beyond AI proofs of concept, or a business executive searching for a practical path to measurable AI value, this conversation offers plenty of fresh thinking on what AI-native organizations could look like over the next few years.
Can businesses continue adapting yesterday's operating models for tomorrow's technology, or is it time to rebuild from the ground up? I'd love to hear where you stand after listening to this episode.