As we close out our focus on how the venture capital industry identifies and decides which future companies to fund, it might be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the latest methods for discovering future unicorns are ubiquitous among all VCs. However, many VCs still work ‘the old way,’ using data to back up human assumptions. But what happens when a data engineer pivots to VC? What does a data-driven, data-first approach look like, and how does it compare to the incumbent processes? D...
May 16, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast In almost every industry, the rate of innovation is increasing, and this is great for consumers around the globe. However, with constant innovation and continual disruption of the status quo, where to innovate next becomes much harder to identify. If your industry hasn’t been disrupted yet, it’s next on the list. So, in order to deal with uncertainty, a new culture is needed, and there’s a clear group of companies that constantly deal with uncertainty and innovation—VC’s. Ilya A. Strebulae...
May 13, 2024•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Speedily adopting new technologies can give your business a competitive advantage, but with so much happening in the world of generative AI, it's difficult to know what to adopt. In this episode, Richie chats to two venture capitalists to get their view on the global AI landscape, where we are in the AI hype cycle, and how to adopt AI tech. Beyond this, we explore Rocketship.vc's use of data and algorithms to make investment decisions in early-stage startups. If our previous episode’s deep dive ...
May 09, 2024•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rapid change seems to be the new norm within the data and AI space, and due to the ecosystem constantly changing, it can be tricky to keep up. Fortunately, any self-respecting venture capitalist looking into data and AI will stay on top of what’s changing and where the next big breakthroughs are likely to come from. We all want to know which important trends are emerging and how we can take advantage of them, so why not learn from a leading VC. Tomasz Tunguz is a General Partner at Theory ...
May 06, 2024•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast With seemingly every organization wanting to enhance their AI capabilities, questions arise about who should be in charge of these initiatives. At the moment, it’s likely a CTO, CIO, or CDO, or a mixture of the three. The gold standard is to have someone in the C-suite whose sole focus is their AI projects: the Chief AI Officer. This role is so new that it's not yet widely understood. In this episode, we explore what the CAIO job entails. Philipp Herzig is the Chief AI Officer at SAP. He’s held ...
May 02, 2024•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Countless companies invest in their data quality, but often, the effort from their investment is not fully realized in the output. It seems like, despite the critical importance of data quality, data governance might be suffering from a branding issue. Data governance is sometimes looked at as the data police, but this is far from the truth. So, how can we change perspectives and introduce fun into data governance? Tiankai Feng is a Principal Data Consultant and Data Strategy & Data Governan...
Apr 29, 2024•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Databases are ubiquitous, and you don’t need to be a data practitioner to know that all data everywhere is stored in a database—or is it? While the majority of data around the world lives in a database, the data that helps run the heart of our operating systems—the core functions of our computers— is not stored in the same place as everywhere else. This is due to database storage sitting ‘above’ the operating system, requiring the OS to run before the databases can be used. But what if the OS wa...
Apr 25, 2024•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast Over the past 199 episodes of DataFramed, we’ve heard from people at the forefront of data and AI, and over the past year we’ve constantly looked ahead to the future AI might bring. But all of the technologies and ways of working we’ve witnessed have been built on foundations that were laid decades ago. For our 200th episode, we’re bringing you a special guest and taking a walk down memory lane—to the creation and development of one of the most popular programming languages in the world. Don Cha...
Apr 22, 2024•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Last year saw the proliferation of countless AI tools and initiatives, many companies looked to find ways where AI could be leveraged to reduce operational costs and pressure wherever possible. 2023 was a year of experimentation for anyone trying to harness AI, but we can’t walk forever. To keep up with the rapidly changing landscape in business, last year’s experiments with AI need to find their feet and allow us to run. But how do we know which initiatives are worth fully investing in? Will yo...
Apr 18, 2024•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast There aren’t many retail giants like Walmart. In fact, there are none. The multinational generates 650bn in revenue, (including 50bn in eCommerce)—the highest revenue of any retailer globally. With over 10,000 stores worldwide and a constantly evolving product line, Walmart’s data & AI function has a lot to contend with when it comes to customer experience, demand forecasting, supply chain optimization and where to use AI effectively. So how do they do it? What can we learn from one of the m...
Apr 16, 2024•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Generative AI has had a wide range of uses, but some of its strongest use cases are in coding and programming. One of the companies that has been leading the way in AI-assisted programming has been GitHub with GitHub CoPilot. Many software engineering teams now have tools like CoPilot embedded into their workflows, but what does this mean for the future of programming? Kyle Daigle is the COO of GitHub, leading the strategic initiatives, operations, and innovation of the world's largest platform ...
Apr 11, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Since the launch of ChatGPT, one of the trending terms outside of ChatGPT itself has been prompt engineering. This act of carefully crafting your instructions is treated as alchemy by some and science by others. So what makes an effective prompt? Alex Banks has been building and scaling AI products since 2021. He writes Sunday Signal, a newsletter offering a blend of AI advancements and broader thought-provoking insights. His expertise extends to social media platforms on X/Twitter and LinkedIn,...
Apr 08, 2024•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Driving impact with analytics goes beyond numbers and graphs; it's about telling a story that resonates. In this session, Brent Dykes, author of "Effective Data Storytelling" & the Founder & Chief Data Storyteller at AnalyticsHero, Lea Pica, author of "Present Beyond Measure" & the Founder at Story-driven by Data, and Andy Cotgreave, co-author of "The Big Book of Dashboards" and Senior Data Evangelist at Tableau, will unveil how to transform data into compelling narratives. The...
Apr 05, 2024•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast You've just invested in licenses for your favorite analytics tool, but now what? In this session, Laura Gent Felker, GTM Analytics Lead at MongoDB, Tiffany Perkins-Munn, Managing Director & Head of Data & Analytics at JPMC and Omar Khawaja, CDAO & Global Head Data & Analytics at Givaudan will explore best practices when it comes to scaling analytics adoption within the wider organization. They will discuss how to approach change management when it comes to driving analytics adopt...
Apr 04, 2024•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Driving trust with data is essential to succeeding with analytics. However, time and time again, data quality remains an issue for most organizations today. In this session, Esther Munyi, Chief Data Officer at Sasfin, Amy Grace, Director, Military Engines Digital Strategy at Pratt & Whitney, Stefaan Verhulst, Chief Research & Development Officer, Director of Data Program at NYU Governance Lab, and Malarvizhi Veerappan, Program Manager and Senior Data Scientist at the World Bank will focu...
Apr 03, 2024•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Creating a culture of continuous learning within analytics functions isn't just beneficial; it's essential. In the session, Russell Johnson, Chief Data Scientist at Marks & Spencer, Denisse Groenendaal-Lopez, Learning & Development Business Partner at Booking Group, and Mark Stern, VP of Business Intelligence & Analytics at BetMGM will address the importance of fostering a learning environment for driving success with analytics. They will provide insights on developing a culture wher...
Apr 02, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Everyone has seen the reach and impact of generative AI, and with countless use-cases across a variety of fields, the question is often not "can we do things with AI?", but rather "what should we do with AI?". What are the key areas where generative AI has had a profound impact already? Which economies, industries, and businesses have taken full advantage of the abilities of GenAI already? It takes a lot of wisdom and experience within the data & AI space to distill high-level insights from ...
Mar 25, 2024•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast There is a concept in software engineering which is called ‘shifting left’, this focuses on testing software a lot earlier in the development lifecycle than you would normally expect it to. This helps teams building the software create better rituals and processes, while also ensuring quality and usability are key aspects to evaluate as the software is being built. We know this works in software development, but what happens when these practices are used when building AI tools? Saurabh Gupta is ...
Mar 22, 2024•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Generative AI has made a mark everywhere, including BI platforms, but how can you combine AI and BI together? What effects can this have across organizations? With constituent aspects such as data quality, your AI strategy, and the specific use-case you’re trying to solve, it’s important to get the full picture and tread with intent. What are the subtleties that we need to get right in order for this marriage to work to its full potential? Nick Magnuson is the Head of AI at Qlik, executing the o...
Mar 20, 2024•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Despite the critical role of analytics in guiding business decisions, organizations continue to face significant challenges in harnessing its full potential. As data sets expand and deadlines shrink, the urgency to scale analytics processes becomes paramount. What data leaders now need to focus on are essential strategies for analytics at scale, including fostering a culture of continuous learning, prioritizing data governance, and leveraging generative AI. Libby Duane Adams is the Chief Advocac...
Mar 18, 2024•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Generative AI is fantastic but has a major problem: sometimes it "hallucinates", meaning it makes things up. In a business product like a chatbot, this can be disastrous. Vector databases like Pinecone are one of the solutions to mitigating the problem. Vector databases are a key component to any AI application, as well as things like enterprise search and document search. They have become an essential tool for every business, and with the rise in interest in AI in the last couple of years, the ...
Mar 11, 2024•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast One of the most immediate needs to come out of the generative AI boom has been the need for guardrails and governmental regulation of AI technologies. Most of the work already completed in the AI space has been industry-led, with large organizations pushing AI forward to improve their efficiency as businesses and to create new avenues for revenue. This focus on industry and revenue can potentially create more inequality in the world, with companies not interested in the negative effects of AI be...
Mar 04, 2024•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Remarkable people walk among us. Some of us may be remarkable ourselves. But none of us start out remarkable. The journey to becoming a person that makes a difference in the world is never easy, as with any story that includes a hero, there are struggles, tests and moments of self-doubt. Remarkable people overcome these feats, and when they are in a position to, they give back. But what kind of mindset do these people have, how do they make decisions? What keeps them on their path towards becomi...
Feb 26, 2024•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast We’ve heard so much about the value and capabilities of generative AI over the past year, and we’ve all become accustomed to the chat interfaces of our preferred models. One of the main concerns many of us have had has been privacy. Is OpenAI keeping the data and information I give to ChatGPT secure? One of the touted solutions to this problem is running LLMs locally on your own machine, but with the hardware cost that comes with it, running LLMs locally has not been possible for many of us. Tha...
Feb 22, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Snowflake has been foundational in the data space for years. In the mid-2010s, the platform was a major driver of moving data to the cloud. More recently, it's become apparent that combining data and AI in the cloud is key to accelerating innovation. Snowflake has been rapidly adding AI features to provide value to the modern data stack, but what’s really been going on under the hood? At the time of recording, Sridhar Ramaswamy was the SVP of AI at Snowflake, being appointed CEO at Snowflake in ...
Feb 21, 2024•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Databricks started out as a platform for using Spark, a big data analytics engine, but it's grown a lot since then. Databricks now allows users to leverage their data and AI projects in the same place, ensuring ease of use and consistency across operations. The Databricks platform is converging on the idea of data intelligence, but what does this mean, how will it help data teams and organizations, and where does AI fit in the picture? Ari is Databricks’ Head of Evangelism and "The Real Moneybal...
Feb 20, 2024•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast One of the biggest surprises of the generative AI revolution over the past 2 years lies in the counter-intuitiveness of its most successful use cases. Counter to most predictions made about AI years ago, AI-assisted coding, specifically AI-assisted data work, has been surprisingly one of the biggest killer apps of generative AI tools and copilots. However, what happens when we take this notion even further? How will analytics workflows look like when generative AI tools can also assist us in pro...
Feb 19, 2024•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Just as many of us have been using generative AI tools to make us more productive at work, so have bad actors. Generative AI makes it much easier to create fake yet convincing text and images that can be used to deceive and harm. We’ve already seen lots of high-profile attempts to leverage AI in phishing campaigns, and this is putting more pressure on cybersecurity teams to get ahead of the curve and combat these new forms of threats. However, AI is also helping those that work in cybersec to be...
Feb 12, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast We are in a Generative AI hype cycle. Every executive looking at the potential generative AI today is probably thinking about how they can allocate their department's budget to building some AI use cases. However, many of these use cases won't make it into production. In a similar vein, the hype around machine learning in the early 2010s led to lots of hype around the technology, but a lot of the value did not pan out. Four years ago, VentureBeat showed that 87% of data science projects did not ...
Feb 05, 2024•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast We don’t think about every decision we make. Some decisions are easy and intuitive, others can be riddled with doubt. In a business setting, decision-making is often crucial, and with that comes pressure to ensure we’re making the right decisions in the best way possible. We can often accompany decision-making with context, providing a narrative for how we might approach a decision, citing what data and insights have had significant input into our choices. But how do we approach storytelling and...
Feb 01, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
