Entrepreneurs, what is your story, how do you define your professional identity? Deb Liu, grand keynote at TiEcon 2023

Among this year’s grand keynotes at TiEcon 2023 is Deb Liu, CEO of Ancestry.com, a $5 billion genealogy platform. Lest anyone assumes that her high profile job keeps her from being an activist and a role model for women, far from it. Liu is the renowned author of the book, “Take Back Your Power: 10 New Rules for Women at Work”. She has also shared her advice on how women can survive and thrive in stereotypically male dominant industries like the technology sector. She says, the real and most pernicious enemy is not the overt sexual harassment or discrimination, but covert discrimination and unconscious bias. Her advice to women is not just to look for mentors but find someone who would sponsor their careers when they believe in them or see the potential. 

In her talk at TiEcon, Liu will likely also share how Ancestry uses cutting-edge technologies to help families share their genealogical stories to each other and also to a wider community. “Every family has a story”, says their website. Families frequently survive through incredible odds and challenges and learn to turn them into triumphs and opportunities. Ancestry helps individuals and families discover their roots and understand their genealogy.  

Our family stories anchored in our unique history, in specific place and time, give us strength, a sense of purpose, pride and joy. Recently I visited my birth place, a small village in India and also visited our family deity in an even smaller village, after nearly 40 years. I savored a few memories of my mom telling me how she walked through the village, with eyes downcast and covered head, as a 15 year old new bride and then a new mother. Often she said, I used to be her eyes on the street. It was an emotional experience for me to visit these streets. In the little temple that houses the family deity, I found an ancestral tree that went back about 8 generations. Since the last two generations, the caretaker of the place has begun adding names of the female children and I found my name on the tree, among thousand other names. Next to the tree on a glass framed printout were the names of my more immediate family members, from my grand-father on down to his five sons and their children. Suddenly in that little temple, in the little village, I felt connected to something bigger; my identity had deeper roots now.

Like our personal identities, our professional journeys are also rooted in stories that become broader and more refined, with newer experiences that build on prior ones. TiEcon 2023 will take place in Santa Clara, May 3 to 5. Register for the conference at http://www.tiecon.org and avail of the opportunity to network and connect with other professionals and listen to stellar panels and speakers. Your professional identity may get broader, deeper and more meaningful.  

Will Patients be the Real Winners of Healthcare Innovation? Info on #TiEcon Healthcare Tracks

Will Patients be the Real Winners of Healthcare Innovation?

Health track at #TiEcon 2023 is truly exciting as is the innovation happening in health technology and healthcare. As I had summarized in my post https://bit.ly/3Zz1W5y on the themes that emerged during #BiotechShowcase, #JPM2023 and related events in San Francisco in January 2023, “real winners of the innovation happening in healthcare in the decades ahead, likely will be patients”.  Future innovation in the medical industry will be driven by automation and will be propelled with exciting technology advancements. For instance, generative AI is poised to leverage complex, messy torrents of medical data into usable data, giving new insights into patients, providers and payers. 

This new era of patient care will the focus in stellar panels and exciting tracks, at #TiEcon 2023.

Moving data sharing insights to new outcomes – Track 1

Data features prominently in several industries. In healthcare, quality data rendered useful with advancements in artificial intelligence and Generative AI is expected to lead to many actionable changes, helping people make better choices, enhance consumer engagement and provide insights, directly translating into enhanced patient care. 

In this panel, Trannum Guller, Chief Medical Officer at HCA and Shakthi Kumar, Global healthcare and life science leader at AWS will discuss the importance of data in the healthcare ecosystem; sources from where health data is obtained and effective policies and regulations around its use, sharing and security. Qualitative and secure health data can help us extract meaning in ways that are truly beneficial to patients. The panel will discuss how to forge and enhance partnerships among various stakeholders involved, in order to leverage the insights obtained from health data. 

Innovation in patient centered care – Track 2

Each patient visit to the healthcare provider is not only the time when most personal and private data of the patient is exchanged and discussed but more importantly, all health data builds on prior health data. Patient’s health history is of immense importance. Human body is an incredibly complex and amazingly inter-connected system where knowledge or prior history and knowledge of comorbidities helps the physician and the patient to make most logical health decisions.  And with millions of patient visits generating new data daily, and physicians and hospitals extracting new insights and constantly evolving to enhance diagnoses and treatment options, more than ever, data is and will be driving the business of healthcare. 

Who better than a team of esteemed physicians to discuss the impact of emerging technologies including Cognitive AI, Multimodal AI for Medicine, Edge, Blockchain and more on the status of health and healthcare? Can this panel shed some light on whether these technologies will help simplify our complicated healthcare experience, lower healthcare costs and deliver better patient outcomes, in the years to come? 

Marcus Zachry, Chief Clinical Officer at Babylon Health, Brigitte Piniewski, Physician author of “Wealthcare: Demystifying Web2 and the Rise of Personal Data Economies” and Reena Bhargava, Medical Director at Kaiser Permanente will discuss these issues in what promises to be a highly exciting conversation. Entrepreneurs can expect to get many insights on areas of opportunities and glaring gaps as well as learn about challenges and ways to mitigate them.  

Don’t miss the largest #entrereneurship conference @TiEcon 2023 happening in May at Santa Clara, CA. Register at www.tiecon.org .

Artificial Intelligence & Generative AI Tracks at TiEcon 2023

Generative AI: Advances, Challenges & Future Opportunities

In this exciting AI track at #TiEcon 2023, panelists Igor Joblokov, CEO and founder of Pryon AI and Ankit Jain, machine learning tech lead at Meta, will discuss advancements, challenges and future prospects of Generative AI. These seasoned panelists will share their experiences and insights in the state of the AI art and future directions in this fast evolving field. In the previous post, I briefly explained AI and Generative AI at link http://bit.ly/3Ur4TmI .

Joblokov was named “Industry Luminary” by Speech Technology Magazine, and previously founded industry pioneer Yap, one of the earliest high accuracy, fully automated cloud platform for voice recognition. Pryon’s sophisticated AI does not rely on prepped classification schemes but instead is able to create them as required, processing it for immediate use, as required. It has superior NLP skills and is able to make the content ready for use in chat bots, search and automation by breaking it into specific pieces and automatically attaches rich metadata to each piece of information. Data is automatically tuned through Pryon’s application of unsupervised learning and Pryon’s invention enables messy enterprise data to be fused into one seamless model.  

Anikt Jain at Meta is a highly experienced AI researcher and his works have been published in several top publications and AI conferences. Jain has won several awards including “AI professional of the year for 2022” by UK’s Incisive Media, currently “Outstanding Leadership Award” in 2022, in Dubai and more. 

MLOps: Bridging the gap between ML and Operations

In this session, filled with real world examples, the panel will focus on the machine learning lifecycle, from model development to deployment and monitoring and will share best practices for implementing MLOps to drive successful machine learning initiatives. 

Currently serving as CTO at Tech Mahindra, Dr. Pandian Angaiyan will moderate the session. He brings with him deep insights in image processing and high performance computing. Angaiyan will talk with Hagay Lupesko, VP of Engineering at MosaicML about best practices in leading machine learning efforts and deployment. 

It is an understatement to say that this is a complex undertaking. The process of developing, building and deploying vast machine learning projects involve working in tandem with an enormous number of systems and stakeholders. Trusting machines versus humans is the first point of challenge. Next the data pipeline has to be super smart and must be constantly monitored. Production and availability of the minimum amount of data required to train the machine is also a huge challenge in healthcare and medical research data. All incidents must be traced and changes must be made in a timely manner. The last mile of implementation involves the biggest challenge particularly in complex and messy data industries where the stakes are high, like healthcare and medical research.  

Angaiyan has vast experience in increasing efficiency in time to market and time to cash flow for large scale digital productions and Lupesko has enormous experience in deploying huge state of the art machine learning engineering efforts at massive scale.  With their joint breadth of experience, these two tech leaders will make this a highly exciting session, full of implementable insights. 

Register for TiEcon 2023, the largest entrepreneurship conference to take place at Santa Clara Convention Center in California, May 3-5, 2023 at www.tiecon.org .

Artificial Intelligence & Generative AI Opportunities & Challenges

Chat GPT has been all the rage lately and Artificial Intelligence track at #TiEcon 2023 will highlight the latest advances in AI.  In this post, I will share info on AI and Generative AI and in the next post, I will share some info on exciting AI tracks at TiEcon 2023. Please see both posts for complete details on the tracks at TiEcon.

Simply put, AI combines advances in computer science with robust datasets to enable problem-solving. Assigning repetitive cumbersome tasks to the machines enables for error free processing and enables research and development processes to be speedy and more efficient. However, traditional AI was not very creative and people complained that a lot of garbage-in frequently resulted in more garbage out.

Generative AI algorithms offer a superior way, enabling machines to generate new outputs based on the data they have been trained on. Whereas traditional AI systems recognize patterns and offer outputs, Generative AI systems can recognize patterns and can make new predictive content in the form of images, text, audio, and more.  

Generative AI technology is increasingly going to be used in all industries. For instance, in the field of drug discovery, it can be trained to sift through vast amounts of documents and data and  predict drug efficacy and side effects within a short time, saving enormous resources and time. This in turn could result in lower drug prices and speedier availability of effective drugs, thus saving lives. Generative AI has implications in diverse fields such as art, music, fashion, gaming, cybersecurity and more. By allowing teams to simulate products in virtual environments and for complex problems to be solved more quickly it can save resources, accelerate speed of innovation and improve accuracy. 

Please see next post on details on AI tracks at #TiEcon 2023, the largest entrepreneurship conference to take place in Santa Clara, CA in May, 2023 and register for the conference at http://www.tiecon.org .

Entrepreneurs, who are your co-travelers in your professional journey? Don’t miss the opportunity to hear Jeff Hoffman at TiEcon 2023

Jeff Hoffman’s talks are filled with inspirational gems and many consider him an outstanding role model. Hoffman will be speaking at TiEcon 2023 (the largest #entrepreneurship conference) in May in Santa Clara, CA.

Among many achievements that Hoffman is known for include his role as founder and CEO in the Priceline.com family of companies, Chairman of the Global Entrepreneurship Network, and founding board member of the Unreasonable Group whose 289 portfolio companies have raised $6.6 billion in funding.  In 2010, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award in Entrepreneurship and was inducted into the Hall of Fame. 

His advice to entrepreneurs is simple. You don’t set out to become an entrepreneur. “You follow your passion and get obsessed with solving a problem and then everything else is detail”. He says, “don’t chase money, chase excellence”.

Hoffman’s advice for companies is equally fascinating. He believes that most scalable companies don’t push their products, they get pulled. At a time when companies often get obsessed with competition, Hoffman advises, while companies must track their competitors, they must respond to their customers. Hoffman preaches, “hire the best talent and do everything to retain them including picking up their laundry” and he practices exactly what he preaches.

While we engage in political debate on whether a company is a person or not, Hoffman advices leaders to think of the company as a person and give it a personality that should then guide all external communication. He says, companies must focus on something that powerfully distinguishes them, that customers are likely going to remember and then build a brand around that asset. Hoffman says, “sales are linear, marketing creates growth, but brand creates scale”.

Entrepreneurs, don’t miss the opportunity to network with like-minded professionals, connect with VCs, listen to inspirational speakers and rekindle your passion at TiEcon 2023. Tickets are available at www.tiecon.org . Jeff Hoffman once famously said, “Life is not about the journey or the destination. It’s about the people you are traveling with”. Who are your co-travelers in your professional journey? Don’t miss the opportunity to connect with your co-travelers who may make this a memorable journey.

Should Tech Startups Optimize Marketplace strategies? – Keynote by John Chambers at TiEcon 2023.

John Chambers will be giving a keynote speech at TiEcon 2023 (largest entrepreneurship conference) and it is destined to create much excitement.  Chambers once famously said, “if you agree with everything I have said, then I have failed”. Not only his talks have been at times controversial but they have also been thought provoking. It is but a rare and effective leader who gets people to enlarge their perspectives and think differently on known issues. 

Under his leadership as CEO of Cisco, from 1995 to 2015, the company’s annual sales grew from $1.9 billion to $ 49.2 billion. After retiring from Cisco, Chambers has been leading JC2 Ventures as founder and CEO, in an effort to build a new model of the modern day VC firm. Central to this venture is the JC2 leadership team’s belief that startups will be the core driver of economic growth, job creation and innovation, in the coming decades. Experienced leadership team expects to be closely involved in selecting and coaching disruptive startups and helping them grow and scale.  JC2 is eyeing such digital technology startups that will be monumental in solving the world’s major challenges. 

Chambers often reiterated at Cisco that “market transitions wait for no one”. His credo has been to find a market transition and act on it before anyone else and get the leadership spot. Technology startups are well aware today that they must scale quickly and efficiently or they may die a slow, painful death. 

Chambers will be giving keynote address at #TiEcon2023 in May at Santa Clara Convention Center from may 3 to 5. Professionals in the audience will expect many insights and pearls of wisdom from an amazing lineup of speakers. For tickets, go to www.tiecon.org .

JP Morgan & #BiotechShowcase #Healthcare events 2023 – Major themes for the decade ahead

During JPM 2023 week, I attended #BiotechShowcase and observed and mingled at many receptions. I met incredible professionals in pharma, biotech, medtech, digital health and almost anyone working with anything to do with health or healthcare. I met VCs, CEOs, and others, witnessed all sorts of deal making conversations, sat in as attendee in investor panels and listened to media roundup. 

From these observations, panels and conversations, here is my assessment from very inexperienced eyes – (please take it with a spoonful of salt).

Looking at the decade ahead after the transformational, post-pandemic phase……

• There is capital available for serious players in the field. Easy seed money may have dried up somewhat but there are many sources of funding available to entrepreneurs who can protect their IP, tell a good story,  and back up their claims with data. There is still a great deal of hype and every entrepreneur claims to be working on the next company worth $4+ billion. But many investors want to see some serious revenue stream before putting down a check.

• I heard some discussions about the cost of healthcare. We spend a lot of money on healthcare and yet among developed nations, the USA lags behind. There will be continuing increased focus on providers to uplevel care. There was also discussion that we have had fewer curative solutions. My sense is that all these conversations means the industry is seriously focused on solutions that will elevate the quality of healthcare and indeed quality of life.

• Real winners in the decade ahead will be patients.  Interesting innovations are happening in challenging areas of oncology to chronic diseases. In oncology, previously the focus was mainly on prolonging life by a few months, there are now discussions for more curative solutions. From diagnostics to transformative therapeutics, quality of life will be better for patients and longevity with better quality of life looks very likely.

• The innovation that is happening is fast paced and on the cusp of several disciplines. The advantages in technology and participation of previously non traditional medtech players like artificial intelligence and machine learning is enabling biotech, medtech and healthcare and facilitating these slower disciplines to evolve rapidly. Remote work, collaborations via zoom and other technologies have broken down silos even further and have facilitated for people from diverse disciplines to come together with ease and without many hurdles.

• Mental health will be a serious aspect of overall healthcare. However, mental health offers an entirely different set of challenges. I will mention three challenges here – insurance reimbursement, objective markers of mental health, integrating service with solutions –  1) The insurers need to step up reimbursement for mental health. Advantages of good mental health in reducing overall costs are increasingly becoming clear and savvy entrepreneurs have been making that case. The payors have yet to step up to impact innovation, although VA is leading in innovation in the mental health arena. 2) Companies may need to come up with objective markers of good mental health – for instance, differences in behaviors, voice, routine maintenance etc. Markers for health are easy – a patient’s blood sugar or BP goes down or does not. However, objective markers of mental health are not yet clear and that clarity will enable more payors to step up for reimbursement. 3) There is also difference in therapeutic solutions. For instance, for a patient with diabetes, once a solution is provided, a patient can be counted upon for measuring blood sugar levels and taking necessary medication. Even then adherence is sometimes an issue. But among mental health patients, that can be much more challenging. Frequently, patients fall off the routine and then have epileptic seizures, repeat attacks of psychosis and during those times, they cannot be counted upon to administer the medications themselves. So companies working on drug therapies for instance, may increasingly need to integrate service with therapeutic solutions and bridge the gap.

• We may likely see foundational changes among regulatory agencies like FDA and in the regulatory framework. As mentioned above, increasingly innovation is happening on the cusp of various disciplines. Much of the regulatory framework has not kept up with these changes and in the years ahead we may likely see brand new, better, tech savvy regulatory agencies and frameworks. 

Time to fasten seat belts and get ready for some of the most exciting changes yet to impact quality of life for patients, increase longevity and offer better quality of life overall.

How Deception Technology is changing the rules of the game against cyber security attackers

Tushar Kothari, CEO of Attivo Networks will be speaking with moderator, Naveen Bisht, at TiE Silicon Valley’s #MyStory event on September 13 at 6:30 pm where Kothari will share his inspiring journey as an entrepreneur in the game changing world of Cyber Security and Identity Threat Deception technology. 

The term “game changing” is used frequently in the sometimes over hyped, entrepreneurship world. But as attacker become more creative, fast and increasingly malicious, cyber threats can cause unprecedented levels of damage and cyber deception technology literally changes the rules of the game, gaining an upper edge on the attackers. 

Deception technology actually entices attackers to interact with false IT assets and helps security teams to detect, analyze and defend against advanced threats. These technology solutions deceive attackers with traps and decoys and lures them in with an aim to collect information about their tactics. Until now, most solutions have aimed to minimize damage after the attack. However, deception technology helps improve preventative security controls in real time. 

Kothari says, at Attivo, “we are are a company focused on detecting threats in a network with particular focus on lateral movement and privilege escalation detection and prevention. We have the industry’s best deception fabric, end to end. We can project decoys throughout the network in a very effective way and we have added focus on credential and identity protection. 

Three key pillars of Attivo technology are, to provide visibility to their customers on all credentials and identity from endpoint and active directory throughout infrastructure, help customers reduce the attack surface, by eliminating exposures, and to help protect them  if someone goes after an identity threat. Attivo claims to have the most comprehensive and effective portfolio in this area.

This will undoubtedly be a fascinating discussion. Register free of cost at the link below https://hub.tie.org/e/my-story-featuring-tushar-kothari  and more see more information at http://www.tie.org .

Our universe may be about to transform – With Metavarse, NFT, Cryto, Web3

While many of us are still trying to wrap our heads around the new terms that have multiplied in the last few years like blockchain, data, IOT, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, our lexicon is about to expand much more significantly. With words that are rapidly gaining significance like Web 3, Metaverse, NFT and crypto, it is not just our lexicon that is changing but a huge transformation is looming on the horizon that can well impact every aspect of our lives. We can safely assume that in the coming couple of years, we could be laying some new foundations transforming how we buy, sell, trade and conduct every aspect of our business.

At TiEcon 2022, an entire track dedicated to Web 3, Crypto, and NFTs is guaranteed to give us fascinating insights into the industry in which Venture Capital has invested over $50B in 2021. 

The track at TiEcon will begin with fireside chat with Randi Zuckerberg, former director of market development and spokesperson for Facebook and as of 2014, founder and CEO of Zuckerberg Media. She is also editor-in-chief of Dot Complicated, a digital lifestyle website, and creator of Dot, an animated television show about a young girl who uses technology to enhance her education experiences as well as her recreational activities. At its simplest, Dot is an entertaining guide to understanding how technology and social media influences and informs our lives online and off. At its more complex level, we need to understand metaverse and NFTs. Broadly speaking, Metaverse is a graphically rich virtual space where people can work, play, shop and socialize and can interact through NFTs or non fungible tokens. Non-fungible meaning unique and can’t be replaced with something else. For instance, while bitcoin is fungible and one can be replaced with another, NFT is non fungible – kind of like a unique trading card. That is as much sense as I can make. Besides, I am not about to give my readers a headache. We will leave it to zuckerberg to demystify it further.

In another fireside chat, Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon will talk about “building a Web 3 decacorn”. Web 3 is an idea for a new iteration of World Wide Web based on blockchain technology. Arguments have been made in favor of Web 3 that it will provide increased data security, scalability and privacy. And on the other side, concerns have been raised about possible increase in proliferation of harmful content, in an environment of low moderation. Polygon tagline says, it’s for everyone who wants to contribute to a decentralized future! Let us hope he helps us further in coming up to speed on what may be a fast approaching future.

After attending Harvard and Stanford, serving in finance roles at the Federal Reserve and Goldman, managing P&Ls at two consumer startups, and founding two startups of her own, Mercedes Bent joined LIghtspeed Venture firm in 2019 and now scouts funds and invests in early stage companies that are “unlocking wealth creation for underserved individuals and regions through crypto, fintech, career mobility, or the creator economy”. She will share her insights as a track keynote.

Exciting panel with Lorien Gabel, co-founder and CEO of Figment, Shiva Rajaraman, VP of product at Open Sea, Raghu Yarlagadda, co-founder & CEO of FalconX and moderator Rashmi Gopinath, General Partner at B Capital Group will talk about the next era of Web 3. It sounds like the future of the future that we will get to learn about.  

“Gaming and the next billion Web 3 users” is the topic of another fireside chat where Justin Kan, co-founder of Fractal (formerly co-founded and sold Twitch) will share his insights on how Web 3 is poised to transform the gaming ecosystem.

Lastly, a panel will discuss funding and founding Web3 Startups. Moderated by Asha Jadeja, founder of Motwani Jadeja Foundation, the panelists Avichal Garg, Co-founder of Electric Capital, and Elena Nadolinski, founder/ CEO of Iron Fish will share insights, and discuss opportunities and challenges and tools one may need to navigate this fast-evolving decentralized world.

Register ASAP for #TiEcon2022 at www.tiecon.org and avail of the opportunity to listen to the entire conference virtually on zoom.

Sustainability & Profitability can co-exist with Entrepreneurial Creativity

Wendell Berry had said, “the earth is what we all have in common” and sustainability isn’t a debate anymore, it isn’t a choice either; increasingly, acting on it with urgency is an imperative. On this #EarthDay2022, it needs to be mentioned that if we act on it with urgency then that the future of our planet may look green in more ways than one. Sustainability is emerging as a big business opportunity, attracting hundreds of billions of dollars in startup and investment capital and in 2022, growth is likely to accelerate.   

The topic of climate crisis will be tackled head on at #TiEcon2022, the largest virtual #entrepreneurship conference to take place in May, 2022. Register ASAP to avail of free registration for the entire exciting conference. Opening keynote for sustainability track will be given by Dr. Ali Nouri. Dr. Nouri leads the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs as an Assistant Secretary in the U.S. Department of Energy. Following the previous climate crisis denying President, Nouri as part of Biden-Harris administration, will lead the charge on tackling the climate crisis and helping shape policies towards building a clean energy future. It will be exciting to hear his thoughts and to know what we can anticipate in terms of new climate policies.

After working as Climate Editor at Tech Crunch, Johnathan Shieber has joined FootPrint Coalition as chief editor and venture partner. In fireside chat, we hope to hear from him many creative ideas on the planet’s various challenges, including getting microplastics out of the ocean, reducing pollution and more. FootPrint Coalition backs a wide array of projects to promote the development and adoption of technologies and services aimed at solving some of these kinds of most pressing problems. With both its non-profit initiatives and for-profit arm, FootPrint seeks to change the trajectory of our society through creative storytelling. As companies are discovering that sustainable change towards the planet’s sustainability must consider the economy, society, and the environment, we will be required to think outside the box and tackle the challenges with creativity and resourcefulness and I can’t wait to hear his thoughts. 

Chief Product Officer at Turntide Technologies, Brad Surak will share his thoughts on how creative use of technology can not only help sustainability and do good for the world but can also help decrease the company’s carbon footprint and operating costs and can open up new revenue opportunities. 

Sustainability track’s closing keynote will be by Dr. Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of revolutionary carbon recycling company LanzaTech. The company’s process converts carbon waste from industrial smokestacks, agriculture and landfills into ethanol that is used by its partners to make a slew of products from packaging to perfume to dresses. Over its dozen years, LanzaTech has grown into a carbon recycling powerhouse and with its recent announcement to go public, the company is valued at around $2.2 billion.

Don’t miss this exciting track. Register at @TiEcon for #TiEcon2022 virtual conference. Some free registrations are available, thanks to the sponsors.