Entrepreneurship Archives - Page 5 of 7

Among other topics, Peter discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

Peter’s interest in space and technology innovation, and how these common themes run through his various companies and initiatives
How Peter divides his time and delegates responsibilities across his organizations
The accelerating pace of technological change and the challenges and opportunities this presents for companies
Best practices for corporate innovation, including scaling at the edges, experimentation, and more
How companies can anticipate the disruptive forces in their industries and respond accordingly
Peter’s views on artificial intelligence, and why he believes the opportunities outweigh the risks of the technology
Where Peter sees the greatest innovation taking place over the next one to three years
Peter’s thoughts on radical health and life extension

Peter Diamandis Biography

Peter is a serial entrepreneur and an international pioneer in the fields of innovation, incentive competitions and commercial space. Some of the companies that Peter has founded or co-founded include XPRIZE, Singularity University, Human Longevity Inc and Planetary Resources. He is also a prolific speaker, author of two New York Times Best Selling books, investor, and advisor to business leaders and startups.

Peter has been a lifelong entrepreneur, founding his first organization while he was still an undergraduate. He has founded well over a dozen companies, with many of his earlier ones focused on opening the space frontier for humanity. These earlier organizations include International Space University, Zero-G, Space Adventures LTD, BlastOff! Corporation, the Rocket Racing League, and several others. Diamandis sits on the boards of several companies, including Hyperloop One, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including The Economist’s Innovator of the Year, the Arthur C. Clark Award for Innovation, the Lindbergh Award, and many others.

Peter hold an undergraduate degree in Molecular Genetics, as well as a graduate degree in AerospaceEngineering, both from MIT. He received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School.

I recently caught up with Peter over the phone and our conversation covered World Class IT Principle One, People, as we discussed how he chooses his business partners and the roles they play in his organization, and Principle Three, Project and Portfolio Management, as we discussed the importance of diversified product portfolios and the need to disrupt one’s own offering. We also covered Peter’s interest in space and technology innovation, and how these common themes run through his various companies and initiatives, how Peter divides his time and delegates responsibilities across his organizations, the accelerating pace of technological change and the challenges and opportunities this presents for companies, best practices for corporate innovation, including scaling at the edges, experimentation, and more.

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Among other topics, Rob discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

Rob’s path from entrepreneur to CEO, and the growth he has led at Singularity University
The accelerating pace of technology progress, and the importance of thoughtful and creative futures thinking
How the lack of long-term thinking has contributed to economic instability and political class and social unrest in the US and across the world
The natural tendency for people to be pessimistic, and why the world needs rational optimists and storytellers
Why current frameworks are insufficient for keeping pace with change, and how leaders can begin to change their mindset
Best practices for corporations to experiment with new technologies and leverage innovation ecosystems
Intrapreneurship, innovation and scaling at the edges
Best practices from Lowe’s innovation lab Biography

Rob Nail’s Biography

Rob is the Chief Executive Officer and Associate founder ofSingularity University. Since assuming that role in 2011, Rob has overseen the growth of theorganization’s individual and organization-focused programs, its conference series, and itsglobal community, as well as championed SU Labs, a creative space that is part startupaccelerator, part corporate innovation lab, and part think tank.Prior to leading at Singularity University, Rob co-founded Velocity11, a robotics company forcancer research and drug discovery, which he led until its acquisition by Agilent Technologies.After its acquisition, Rob worked as a General Manager at Agilent. He is a Director at Harmanand Light & Motion, and co-founder and Director at Alite Design. He is also an active angelinvestor and advisor.

Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in Mechanical & Materials Sciences from the University of California, Davis and a master’s degree inManufacturing Systems from Stanford University. I recently caught up with Rob over the phone from his office in Silicon Valley, and ourconversation covered World Class IT Principle One, People, as we discussed the role of intrapreneurs and the importance of creative and forward thinkers in developing innovativecompanies and products, Principle Four, IT & Business Partnerships, as we discussedinnovation processes and strategy setting, Principle Five, External Partnerships, as wediscussed the challenges and rewards of partnering with startups and of developing innovationecosystems, as well as a variety of other topics.

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Among other topics, Scott discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

The genesis of Atlassian
Using the IT team as a point of entry
The timing of venture capital funding and taking the company public
Fostering a culture of innovation at Atlassian
Serving multiple functions across a company
Prospects for future growth

Scott Farquhar’s Biography

Scott Farquhar is the co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian, a collaboration software company that helps teams organize, discuss and complete shared work. Founded in Sydney, Australia in 2002, Atlassian is well-known for its issue tracking application, Jira, as well as its team collaboration product, Confluence.

Scott was awarded the ‘Australian IT Professional of the Year’ in 2004, and in 2006 was the youngest person ever to be awarded the ‘Australian Entrepreneur of the Year’ by Ernst & Young alongside co-founder and co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes.

Scott holds a Bachelor of Science in business information technology from the University of New South Wales, Australia.

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Among other topics, Stewart discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

The genesis of Slack
How Slack was scaled to an enterprise level application
What metrics are used to gauge the health of the business
External inputs into Slack and the value they add
Developers and partners in the Slack ecosystem
The Slack Fund and its role in driving innovative ideas
Stewart’s mentors and lessons learned from his entrepreneurial ventures
How culture can drive productivity
How talent management develops in a rapidly growing company

Stewart Butterfield’s Biography

Stewart is the founder and CEO of Slack, the fastest growing business app ever. It is a messaging and file sharing application heralded as the “Email Killer” of the workplace with over $100 million in annual revenue. As CEO, Stewart is responsible for all operations throughout the company as well as defining the future vision for Slack.

Prior to Slack, Stewart co-founded the picture sharing site Flickr, which was acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. He continued as the General Manager of Flickr at Yahoo! until mid-2008.

Stewart received his Bachelor of Philosophy degree from the University of Victoria and went on to earn a Master of Philosophy degree from the University of Cambridge.

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Among other topics, Craig discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

How Craigslist grew from a simple “cc” list
The rationale for Craigslist’s simple design
Why he avoided investments from venture capitalists and bankers
How Craigslist attracted employees
The utilization of social media to connect people for mutual good
Individuals of personal influence
How the Bay Area has grown to attract so many talented people

Craig Newmark’s Biography

Welcome to Metis Strategy’s Forum on World Class IT. I’m Peter High and I’m pleased to welcome Craig Newmark to the broadcast. Craig is best known as the Craig in “craigslist” and “craigconnects.” He is a self described nerd, Web pioneer, speaker, philanthropist, and advocate of technology for the public good. Craig founded craigslist in 1995 as an email distribution list to friends, featuring local events in the San Francisco Bay Area. It became the almost completely free online classified advertising site that has seen more than 5 billion ads posted. While no longer part of management, Craig continues to work with craigslist as a customer service representative (CSR) in what he calls a “lightweight” capacity.

Today, Craig’s primary focus is craigconnects, which he launched in March 2011. The mission of craigconnects in the short term is to promote and enhance the use of technology and social media to benefit philanthropy and public service. Craig serves on the board of directors of the Poynter Foundation, Center for Public Integrity, Sunlight Foundation, Consumers Union/Consumer Reports, Blue Star Families, and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. He also serves on the Board of Overseers of the Columbia Journalism Review and on the advisory boards of nearly twenty other renowned non-profit organizations (see the full list at craigconnects.org/organizations). He is a member of the Sierra Club’s Arts and Entertainment.

Craig received his bachelor and master’s degrees in computer science from Case Western Reserve University.

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Among other topics, Scott discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

The inspiration behind Wayin, his digital marketing software company
The disadvantages of locating a company in the San Francisco Bay Area
The tremendous growth of Wayin and EngageSciences
The sophistication and evolution of executives who have worked with Wayin’s offering
How Wayin uses insights and real-time campaign tweaking to change the decisions it makes
How his work at multiple times of the Internet’s growth will fuel his activities around new trends including cloud, mobile, and social
The resources he uses to remain abreast of innovation and technology
The future of the Chief Information Officer role
Eye on the Trends: Big Data, and the intersection of new and old industries

Scott McNealy’s Biography

Scott McNealy was one of the chief architects of the first wave of the internet, as he co-founded and served as Chief Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems from 1982 through 2006. The company was sold to Oracle in 2010. More recently, Scott co-founded and has served as CEO of Wayin, a social intelligence company that integrates social content into new experiences for consumers and delivers greater value and control for brands.

Scott received his bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University and he received an MBA from Stanford University.

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Among other topics, Greg discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

The great potential for artificial intelligence to positively impact humanity
Greg’s experience as CTO of stripe, and the transition from high-growth startup to mission driven non-profit
How Greg thinks about staffing, and how OpenAI’s bold mission and unique structure acts as a magnet for top talent
How AI may replace more jobs than it creates, the economic disruption it could cause, and the role of government in easing the societal shift
The risks of AI, and the pressures of AI development versus AI safety
The role investor-founders Elon Musk and Sam Altman play in OpenAI, and where Greg draws inspiration from
The trend of open sourcing AI development

Greg Brockman’s Biography

Greg Brockman is the co-founder and CTO at OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence research company that also includes Elon Musk, Sam Altman and other Silicon Valley luminaries as co-founders. OpenAI was founded to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits humanity as a whole.

Prior to OpenAI, Greg was the CTO of Stripe, a FinTech company that builds tools enabling web commerce. Greg was the fourth employee at Stripe, a company that now has a valuation of over $5 billion.

Greg studied mathematics and computer science at Harvard University and computer science at MIT, though he left to work on Stripe before graduating from either institution.

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Among other topics, Scott discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

The Artificial General Intelligence differs from Artificial Narrow Intelligence
How Vicarious is applying cognitive science to build next generation general intelligence algorithms
How AI may replace more jobs than it creates, and new economic and social constructs that could ease the societal shift
Vicarious’s decision to prioritize social good over investor returns, and why more companies should do the same
How Vicarious assembled an all-star group of investors including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and more
Education and if entrepreneurship can be taught in the classroom
The balance between the promise and peril of AI
World’s Fair style demonstrations of AI, including the recent AlphaGo win and Vicarious’s 2013 cracking of CAPTCHA
How Scott thinks about staffing, and how Vicarious’s bold mission acts as a magnet for top talent

Scott Phoenix’s Biography

Scott Phoenix is a co-founder at Vicarious, a high-profile artificial intelligence company focused on solving artificial general intelligence.

Scott founded Vicarious with Dileep George in 2010. Prior to Vicarious, Scott was the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Founders Fund, and the co-founder and CEO of touchscreen analytics company Frogmetrics (a Y Combinator company). He also served as an executive at OnlySecure and Marching Order. His design work has been featured in 16 magazines and 3 museums, including the Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

Scott earned his BAS in Computer Science and Entrepreneurship from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Among other topics, Tom discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

His organization, Cloudera, where it stands now, and the current priorities at Cloudera
The path to success for older organizations with large antiquated infrastructures and for Digital-native organizations
Industries that Cloudera is working with the most
How Cloudera maintains its competitive advantages
How he came to be at Cloudera after the founding of the organization
The way in which he has forged a strong relationship with the founders of the organization
How the organization thinks about remaining a private company compared to going public
The team at Cloudera and the methods he uses to build and retain the team
How he thinks about strategic planning and how the organization continues to pivot
The relationships that have been built with several MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses)
Some industry-specific use cases

Tom Reilly’s Biography

Tom is the Chief Executive Officer of Cloudera, a fast-growing software company that provides Apache Hadoop-based software, support and service, and training to businesses. Tom has been the CEO since July of 2013.

Prior to Cloudera, Tom served as the CEO of ArcSight, an enterprise security company. Tom led the initial public offering of Arcsight and led the company in the subsequent sale to HP. He also served as CEO of Trigo Technologies, a master data management software company, which was later acquired by IBM.

Tom serves on multiple boards, including Jive Software, Ombud Inc, ThreatStream, and Cloudera.

Tom received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley.

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Among other topics, Marina discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

Her career path from CIO to Venture Capital
Advice on utilizing the VC community and building relationships within Silicon Valley
Her recent board positions and how she turned her CIO position into board level participation
Advice on how to become more board-ready as a CIO
Eye on the Trends: Cloud, Virtualization, Security, Big Data and Mobile Analytics

Marina Levinson’s Biography

Marina is a partner at Benhamou Global Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. She is also the founder and CEO of CIO Advisory Group, LLC which provides technology advice to CEOs, private equity firms, and startups. In addition to that work, Marina also serves on boards for several companies including Ellie Mae (a mortgage software provider). She also chairs CIO advisory boards at Aruba Networks (HP’s networking arm) and SnapLogic (a cloud services provider).

Before her current positions, Marina served as SVP and CIO of NetApp, where she was responsible for the global IT functions of the organization. Prior to that, she served as the CIO of Palm, Inc., the maker of the Palm Pilot, which was later sold to HP.

Marina is a highly awarded executive, who received the CIO 100 Award in 2001, 2004, and 2009-2011, as well as a Computerworld Premier 100 award in 2004. Marina received her Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from the St. Petersburg Institute of Precision Mechanics and Optics in Russia in 1979.

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