In this episode, we talk to Chris Clarke about his journey as the CTO and founder of EdTech company Talis. Having successfully scaled and sold the business, Chris now operates under the umbrella The Scale Up CTO - using his experience, success and mistakes to advise other businesses and startups on their scale up journey. Chris’s journey is one that’s rooted in the essence of technical leadership, and the turn from an individual contributor to becoming a catalyst for others. Key takeaways from t...
Nov 18, 2021•50 min
A fellow podcaster, Ryan Purvis, Chief Information Technology Officer at HiLo Maritime Risk Management, is one of those techies that simply had it in him to lead. From starting out in Johannesburg as a developer, he quickly climbed through the ranks, doing gigs in various industries, before ending up in HiLo. Here, you can hear all about his journey to becoming a tech leader, how he leads, and what it means to hold yourself responsible for your actions. Key Takeaways: • How to never be the bottl...
Nov 18, 2021•39 min
Welcome to the start of a special series – in this series, we’ll be talking to techies and tech leaders who have worked at Amazon – the Amazonians – and how it has shaped their futures in the world of IT. And the one hosting this series will be Charles Griffith, CTO at MileZero, a Capstone Company. Each of the individuals that will come on this series will bring their own unique brand of leadership and experience! In this one, you’ll have the honor to meet Charles, as a nice intro in what we’re ...
Nov 18, 2021•31 min
Sustainability – it's the thing we hear more than once every day, in regards to human relationships, the way we work, and how we interact with the world around us and consume products. It all began as we started looking for ways to lower our impact on nature. One of the tech leaders driving us towards a more sustainable future is Ali Bouhouch, CTO & Digital Strategy Executive at SZENTIA, a company looking to revolutionize the skincare industry. TC sat down with Ali to learn more about what drive...
Oct 27, 2021•42 min
Worldpay is a service that many of us have used, sometimes knowingly, sometimes through other vendors, but the truth is, it’s everywhere. But how does one company get to this level? We got Usman Bashir, Head of Engineering at Worldpay, down for a chat with our TC Gill, in which he got down to sharing his amazing journey to becoming a tech leader, as well as all the cool and amazing tech he’s into right now at Worldpay. After honing his skills as an engineer, Usman then had the chance to learn fr...
Oct 27, 2021•45 min
The open-source world is a wonderful democracy and meritocracy of innovation, software elements, and applications. Its creativity is incorporated into countless (if not all) major applications across the tech arena. But with it comes complexities. And in this podcast, we get to speak to Brian Fox, the CTO & Co-founder of Sonatype, about those complexities. In particular, the worrying world of security. Sonatype runs the central repository of Maven, where the world gets its open-source Java. A ki...
Oct 27, 2021•1 hr 18 min
Tech leaders are committed to solving problems that pester man on a daily basis while also focus on improving the livelihoods of people – but what about the ones that have no access to tech? To the internet? To the millions of gigabytes of content on the internet? Enter Andrew McCaughan, CTO at BuffaloGrid. This techie is hell-bent on bridging the gap between developed and emerging economies, by working on a tech solution that will allow people to connect and gain access to the amazing world of ...
Oct 27, 2021•45 min
Efficiency starts with leadership, and the best kind of leadership is the one built around the needs and capabilities of your teams. Meet Skyler Seamans and Shane Emmons, the two techies from TeamSnap – a company that provides spots management solutions. What got us really interested into these two and their company is their unique management method they invented, called Shape Up – a mixture of known Agile and Scrum methods which has made them a force to be reckoned. TC sat down with them to lea...
Oct 27, 2021•40 min
We have this idea of data that it’s a bulk of information that helps us make decisions in the virtual world, but can it be used for something like renovating buildings and improving the efficiency in the construction world? Enter Japjit Tulsi, the CTO at Matterport, a company which is dedicated to making spatial data a bit more likeable, and the world a bit better. Japjit’s journey is one that’s filled with many companies, both startups and large corporations, all which have helped him diversify...
Oct 27, 2021•39 min
There’s tons of payment methods and processors out there, but how many of them actually have their focus on transactions that are a make or break for users? Could be many, but one that really stands out is Flywire. And on the doings of this company, we have its CTO, David King, who sat down with our TC Gill to share the story of Flywire, and of course, his own journey in the world of tech. From his beginnings in academia, through his start in IT, all the way to him becoming a tech leader, there’...
Oct 27, 2021•40 min
Learning, we were taught, was all about having access to material, to content, to courses and all that – and while that’s true, with the ever-increasing availability of study materials now new questions arise – what about the process of learning? And one of the people looking to answer this question is Stepan Suvorov, CTO at Studytube, a company that offers courses to employees of companies, as well as offering services such as organizing learning activities, so everything one would need to get ...
Oct 27, 2021•37 min
End-of-life is a challenging time for loved ones. The bereavement process is difficult at the best of times, adding further challenges when the legal and financial questions arise from the event. Well, the guest we have on this podcast is working hard to make this smoother. John Catnach, the CTO of Exizent, is working hard with his team to create a smoother and more efficient process. It reduces time to find information, provides it to all the relevant parties, and eliminates duplication of info...
Oct 07, 2021•53 min
In business development and in particular startups, we talk about pivoting whenever the situation has changed or an even better idea has emerged. One that solves a real problem and pain point in the real world. Well, our guest in this episode of CTO Confessions, Eoin O'Brien, tells about a huge pivot that led to a big success. He is the CTO of Tracworx, a company that offers a cloud-hosted Wi-Fi-based patient flow management and asset tracking solution. This is all in the spirit of improving ope...
Oct 07, 2021•49 min
There are mountain ranges of it! There are oceans of it! Not only do we climb the mountains, but we also swim in it as well. Yes! We are talking about data. And yes, it's an understatement to say there is a bit of it about. To help us tech leaders get clarity on this bonkers situation, we have Arend-Jan Nijhuis, a data expert who joins us on CTO confessions, to share his experience and some tips about how to harness its potential. Also, some sharing of cases where the use of data went curly at t...
Oct 07, 2021•48 min
We are all served by them in these modern times. Those helpful men and women bringing our orders to our homesteads. The complexity of this last logistical mile becomes evident as one scales, and constraints become evident. Expected costs are being driven down, and time to deliver ever smaller. In this episode, we speak to the CTO of Stuart, a company in this space; Lachlan Laycok joins us to celebrate his lessons learnt and his team's efforts. Key takeaways from the podcast are: • Making your li...
Oct 07, 2021•58 min
A techie who started out as a system administrator, and slowly worked his way up the ladder, ending up as the Director of DevOps at TUI Travel Group, the world’s number one holiday business group – Christian Rudolph. We sat down with him in an episode, and he just let us pick his brain as we tried to see what’s really ‘techy’ that’s going on behind the scenes in a big corporation like TUI, as well as learn about his experience as a tech leader. From his humble beginnings, all the way to leading ...
Sep 15, 2021•43 min
Most tech leaders can be found plying their trade in the private sector, but there are those with big dreams and the willingness to make the world a better place by rolling up their sleeves, and getting down in the mud. Ian Gordon, Head of Data Architecture @ Highway England is just that. This starry-eyed young techie with big dreams and goals understood what it means to provide value for customers and users, and just set about doing that by working with a network bigger than the internet – the ...
Sep 15, 2021•51 min
What started out as a quest to develop a tool for management, tracking progress, and streamlining work processes, turned into a business which is helping other businesses deliver high quality products and improving workflow! The man behind this business? Gerry Sweeney, the Founder & CEO at Hornbill - a techie with a natural affinity for technology who loves automation and solving problems, and a tech leader with a vast experience in various IT fields. In this episode, we talk with Gerry about hi...
Sep 15, 2021•31 min
When we think of tech leaders, we usually think of people who knew where they wanted to be in the future, always with a clear picture of the destination, or position, that they were going after. And sometimes it’s like that, but it’s far from a straight line to the top – just ask Adam Leach, Chief Information Officer at Nominet. A techie who let the current drive him around the industry, but who knew how to take advantage of that and get to where he is now – a tech leader. In this episode, we ta...
Sep 15, 2021•42 min
Aside from proficiency in his or her field, a tech leader must also know how to treat people fairly to get the best out of them, but also empower them. As Mike Villalobos, Director of Engineering at Fair.com, shared with us in this episode, a leader must be able to see the furthest, but never forget the valuable input of those around him. “A high-performance team is not just about everyone delivering day-in day-out, they also need to feel they belong there, to see themselves doing it in that com...
Aug 26, 2021•54 min
"The intersection of machine learning and real estate - Bringing data science to land investment decisions" It's always interesting to hear from people who have traveled from one field and arrived at a very different one. Well, here is another great example of this. Marios Tsatsos, CTO of Honest AI, once was a scientist in the Quantum mechanics arena and had a doctorate in the field. He now transfers his algoristic and scientific mindset to a new field solving real business challenges. Key Takea...
Aug 25, 2021•37 min
We here at IT Labs love people who are bees. What we mean by that is people with varied careers bring opportunities for cross-pollination. Cross-pollination of ideas and new ways of doing things. Like bee's these individuals are the backbone of innovation and industry leaps. They play an important part in the industry landscape, buzzing around doing their thing. Simultaneously, creating bridges for all kinds of concepts to travel and blend with the organization at the other end of that bridge. O...
Aug 25, 2021•49 min
Some of the most dynamic and battle-scarred tech leaders are those that have journeyed through a startup journey. In this episode, we get to speak to a tech leader just like that. David Kell, our guest, describes how he left his university degree to start a successful series of startups. In this podcast, we talk about how Gyana's platform. A no-code, data science tool that is democratizing the art of using data that many companies have pooled up. Key takeaways from the podcast are: - Seeing a ga...
Aug 25, 2021•41 min
Erik Dasque joins us for another episode of CTO Confessions, where he shares his intriguing journey of becoming a geek, de-geeking, and geeking up again. He shares his thoughts on the absolute importance of actively designing teams on an ongoing basis. Also, retaining and developing one's skills in the technical space can hugely serve one's tech leadership. Key takeaways from the Podcast are: - How to hire for success - The importance of diversity in organizations - The power of being a compassi...
Aug 25, 2021•1 hr 9 min
Any techie will tell you that APIs revolutionized the way we go about developing software, but with all the regulations bestowed upon the IT world, it’s only the best ones that meet the light of day and make a change in our everyday lives. Meet Cedric Fabianski, Co-founder and CTO @ Bearer, a techie with a burning passion for entrepreneurship and leading teams – by striking the right balance. In our episode with Cedric, we listened carefully as he shared his experience in IT – from his beginning...
Aug 25, 2021•46 min
We all consume TV shows and movies to feed our entertainment-hungry minds. And it’s no wonder why - the TV and movie production industries vie for our hearts and minds through elegant storytelling, immersing us in worlds that capture our hearts and expand our minds. Well, now we get to look under the covers of the industry, shining a light on a particularly important and unsung hero of this industry - the art of editing. We speak to Stephen Tallamy, the CTO of EditShare, a company that works on ...
Aug 05, 2021•52 min
A mechanical engineer turned tech-wizz, Wayne Strydom is not your typical techie with roots set in coding or other IT discipline. He says it’s all about having the bigger picture in mind and understand systems and how they interact and function, and considering the success he’s had as the CTO & CIO @ Virtulab - we trust him. “Building teams based just on skill and talent is a recipe for failure! Surround yourself and your employees with characters, especially the kind that can stick it out when ...
Aug 05, 2021•42 min
Developing high-quality service or tools does not guarantee success - you need to deliver it in a proper manner. That’s exactly what our guest Adam Dille, Senior VP for Product and Engineering at Quantum Metric is focused on doing, as he helps companies deliver tech that has the potential to solve everyday problems, as well as make our lives easier! His focus on continued product/service development is what drives the company forward, all the while helping ambitious startups meet the light of da...
Aug 05, 2021•41 min
For start-ups and established companies, it's never just about crunching and creating and pushing a product or a service out - that's why tech leaders must consider the short and long-term ramifications of every decision they make at every stage. We sat down with Vijay Venkatesh, a CTO and Product Development leader on various projects, shared his journey, and gave advice on finding the right balance in every aspect and process while leading teams in the tech world. • Key takeaways from this epi...
Aug 05, 2021•53 min
In our episode with Brian Roche (Director of IT @ Belfast City Airport), you can hear about his amazing journey which began with a job as a system administrator, then moving on to various positions in development and sales teams, before making the jump to executive positions. His goal and passion? To bring some simplicity to a world that is riddled with acronyms and complex structures - the tech world - and bring it closer to the average businessperson. Key Takeaways from this episode: • How edu...
Aug 05, 2021•1 hr 3 min
