Tech for Non-Techies

Some problems that annoy you daily could be solved by AI, but most business teams don't know that because they’ve never discussed them with a technologist. Listen to this episode with Dr Catherine Br…

To become SMART MONEY as an investor, founder or corporate innovator, you have to know what questions to ask about a product. This helps you spot signs of early success or early warning. 

Listen to t…

Even the smartest professionals who don’t have backgrounds in digital businesses make the same mistakes when it comes to tech start-ups.

They often want vanity metrics, as opposed to what truly matte…

Listen to what happened when Apple forgot a key market and how to avoid the same mistake. When product teams consist of entirely white males, they make products for white males. When non-technical pr…

"One of the most common types of advice we give at Y Combinator is to do things that don't scale," says Paul Graham, Y Combinator founder. Recruiting users manually and getting feedback is what lets …

“There are things that are much more important about investing in technology companies than technology,” says Colin Beirne, Founder of Two Sigma Ventures. TSV has invested in around 100 start-ups ove…

Real estate marketplace Zillow took $500 million in write downs and fired 25% of its workforce in late 2021, largely because a pricing algorithm made a mistake. Learn what went wrong and how to avoid…

AI is a great tool to help you make decisions, but it's often not sophisticated enough to make good decisions by itself. This is why companies often rely on AI to do  most of the task, but leave the …

Today, I’m doing something a bit different. As our smart community grows, I know that some of you might not know much about me, my story or how I got into this tech thing.

That’s why today, I’m shari…

Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen famously wrote that “software is eating the world.”

While digital transformation is everywhere, and even your coffee shop has an app, this doesn't mean we all need …

When an app has too many features and pop ups, most users get confused and frustrated. This is feature creep: when the product’s core functionality becomes hidden in too many options and things to do…

Would you leave a high flying career in advertising to set up an adult content site? Most people wouldn't, but Cindy Gallop is not most people.

After leading one of the world's top advertising agenci…

Every company wants to be innovative, but how do you balance the risk of innovation with the need to keep the lights on? Listen to this interview with Kapil Kane, Head of Innovation at Intel China, t…

Design is often at the core for why products go viral or flop. But, how can you tell good design from bad right at the start? How do you hire the right people and avoid costly mistakes?

That’s what y…

You've probably heard about network effects, but they aren't the only thing you need. Learning effects build the ultimate moat against your competition.

Learning notes from this episode:

• You get bet…

How do you get to the top of a tech company as a non-technical professional? How can you drive innovation, when you’re not building the technology yourself?

That’s what you’ll learn from this intervi…

On Airbnb, people stay at strangers' homes. On Twitter, people get trolled. Both are global tech platforms, but why do people treat strangers well on one, and badly on the other?

The answer lies in p…

How do you launch a dating app, if you have no men and no women on it? Or, how do you launch a market place with niether buyers nor sellers?

This is the chicken and egg problem that all platforms hav…

Facebook disrupted the media market forever. The Apple App Store created the app economy, valued at $6.3 trillion today. What makes platforms like these SO successful?

In this episode, you will learn…

Does having $2 billion in the bank account and celebrity backing guarantee success for a consumer app? Not necessarily.

Listen to how one company burned through almost $2 billion and had to shut down…