In today’s interview, we had the opportunity to speak with Rich Bialek – Chief Executive Officer at Global Technology Partners

Richard has a tremendous wealth of expertise in the payment card sector with a focus on prepaid which hr led at Visa. Rich is a visionary who has a pulse on the financial services industry and on emerging technology. He thinks very strategically, has the stamina and power to implement his ideas well.

Q1. Hey Mr. Rich Bialek, Tell Us About Your Role and Journey as a Chief Executive Officer at Global Technology Partners. What Made You Choose This Profession?

I have been interested in finance since my college days. I majored in Economics at Harvard College and then went on to concentrate in Finance at Harvard Business School. My admission to Harvard Business School was predicated on working for two years prior to starting the MBA program.

That was a very fateful and positive requirement for me. I gained a position at Citibank in their fast-growing credit card business. That initial job launched a 40 plus year career in payments and financial technology.

I love the combination of finance and technology and the rapid pace of change in the industry, which offers a constant set of challenging problems and opportunities to solve.

I also enjoy the global scale of the industry and the many countries I have lived in and traveled to as part of this career choice.

Q2. Would you like to tell your Unique Skill that you think you have as a Financial Services Leader?

The ability to take a new, disruptive business model and successfully bring it to market and grow it to profitability.

Q3. Would you like to Highlight, some of the Focus points on how to solve today’s Financial Business Challenges?

Surround yourself with a set of smart people who have an appetite to learn and achieve, give them clear goals and the tools they need to work towards achieving those goals. Be there for your team when they need help, whether it is more resources or a decision, or a sounding board.

Also Read: Influencers Interview With Rado Kotorov – CEO at Trendalyze

Q4. What are some of the strategies that you’ve often Followed Throughout the Years?

Rally your team around a common goal and then execute, execute in an iterative fashion so that you learn from mistakes and adjust quickly. You need a combination of speed with a shared goal.

Speed in an organization without a shared goal only leads to fast collisions. The speed with a clear shared goal leads to success.

Q5. What is Next for you?

Take my current company to the next level by supporting its evolution from a prepaid processing company to pay as a service enterprise. This change will enable GTP to reposition itself and take full advantage of the disruption and growth created by digital payment technology.

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The post Influencers Interview With Rich Bialek – CEO at Global Technology Partners appeared first on Tech Research Online.

Introduction

In today’s interview, we had the opportunity to speak with Jonathan Epstein – CEO of Brewco

Jonathan Epstein has 25+ years of leadership experience as a CEO, CRO, CMO, head of channel, and head of international. Jonathan is an entrepreneur at heart and a strong operator in media, gaming, and technology organizations. He helps companies to build their value and revenues through better sales, positioning, and evangelization of their products.

Q1. Hey Mr. Jonathan Epstein, Tell Us About Your Role and Journey as a Chief Executive Officer at Brewco. What Made You Choose This Profession?

I have always gravitated towards roles that allow me to bring quantum leap technology-based changes in an interesting domain. Sometimes these are CEO roles, and I’ve also held other C-level roles overseeing sales, marketing, strategy, or operations.  Another key element I look for is the opportunity to play in a global field.

The industries I’ve worked in and helped transform make up a pretty wide array. In my younger days, I was publisher of IDG’s Multimedia World magazine, which brought the at-that-time breakthrough benefits of CD-ROM and sound on the PC to both business and consumer users.

At GameSpot (sold to CNET), where I was the founding CEO, we transformed the way in which information was consumed about video games. Double Fusion was a leader in creating the new field of in-game advertising.

Hawkes Remotes (sold to Bluefin) pioneered a new type of remotely operated underwater vehicle for the oil and gas industries. Evolv.ai brought AI into the world of conversion rate optimization for the first time.

Brewco is a new company I formed with Market Brew (the developer of our technology) and some Australian business colleagues (and friends) of mine that run an AI marketing consultancy.

The opportunity was quite compelling — to build the worldwide market for a proven but under-marketed SaaS platform that uses AI to completely transform the speed at which enterprises and their agencies can benefit from SEO. The product is amazing and highly differentiated, the SEO industry is booming, and I get to work at the ground-floor stage with people I know, respect, and trust.

Q2. Would you like to tell your Unique Skill that you think you have as an Entrepreneur?

I’m not sure anyone has a unique skill! But I think what I’m most proud of is my ability to quickly immerse myself and become a key player in a new field. Whether that field was gesture recognition (Omek), computer vision (platform.ai), marine robotics (Hawkes and SmartCatch), or AI marketing technology (Evolv.ai and Brewco) I’ve been able to master the key concepts, learn how to tell the story, meet the movers and shakers, and develop the expertise and authority to become a keynote speaker within 3-6 months.

People also say I have a good sense of humor. And I have a high tolerance for long business travel in an economy which (at least before) was a key requirement for the international startup!

Q3. Would you like to Highlight, some of the Focus Points on how SEO can be Transformed using AI?

SEO has gotten progressively more difficult to master as Google continues to layer more algorithms into their rankings calculations, using AI of their own. For most SEOs, this has meant the best approach was to follow what is considered “best practices” — a checklist approach that you would apply to most sites to improve their rankings.

The problem is that this approach, while it works overtime, wastes a lot of time and cost on actions that, in fact, have no impact on rankings at all. Our platform uses AI to solve this problem, utilizing a form of genetic algorithms — particle swarm optimization — to machine learn multiple parameters in our built-in search engine until our SERP matches the real world SERP for a given keyword.

Also Read: Interview With Mitch Ratcliffe – Partner Entrepreneur Technologist at Metaforce

The resultant simulation when combined with data from a sophisticated crawling process that scores your website vs. ranking competitors can then point the way to those exact areas you should focus on, and by extension where you should not spend time or effort. The result is much faster rankings gain.

Market Brew also uses AI to better understand the semantic meanings and contexts of each page, which can be super helpful in making sure the intent of your page is exactly aligned with the intents of the searchers.

AI-built search engine models also have the benefit of letting you see into the future. Once you’ve made a set of changes to your site (whether for SEO, or perhaps for a site redesign) you can run the changed site against the model and get an accurate prediction of the impact your changes will make on your rankings for your top keywords.

This ability saves a lot of redesign grief and makes SEO much more data-driven and predictable, which CEOs and CFOs love. Also, this lens into the future works not just for your site but for your competitors as well, providing key warnings of future movements 2 months before you’d otherwise have them.

Finally, when you have a search engine model such as Market Brew creates, you can understand how close or far away you are from your competitors. You know where you are in the SERP, but are you close to leapfrogging the next guy, or are they very far away statistically? And, for that matter, how close is that site behind yours? This is really critical information for keyword strategy and understanding the work ahead.

Q4. What are some of the Top Search Engine Strategies that you’ve often followed throughout the years? Can you tell us what is Particle Swarm Optimization?

There really is no substitute for high-quality content, both for SEO and for your sales funnel in general. We’re working on modeling the E-A-T algorithms to augment our existing semantic analysis, as, like with any factor, sometimes it will matter more than others. But why not just do this right the first time?

And, if you’re just starting out, you’re going to need to establish domain authority through getting backlinks, whichever white hat way you choose to get these.

If you’re not optimizing your Internal link structuring to avoid “flat” websites and emphasize your key search landing pages then you are likely losing rank. Our clients have had tremendous results implementing his “old school” technique when indicated by the AI models. Market Brew provides a depth of analysis and recommended fixes for this area that’s not just available anywhere else.

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a branch of genetic algorithms (one of the major families of AI algorithms) that can rapidly develop optimal multivariate solutions to a given problem, without needing to be trained, as neural network algorithms do.

Conceptually, PSO is based around bird flocking behavior — how the individual birds and the flock as a whole reach a desired destination through awareness of both the global gradient (how the flock as a whole is moving) and the local gradient (how the nearest birds are moving).

Market Brew uses PSO to find that optimal mix of weights for the critical ranking factors — link flow, semantic factors, domain rank, and CWV, to name a few — which adapt the platform’s built-in search engine model so that the Market Brew SERP correlates with the real-world SERP.

This patented modeling approach is what drives the platform’s abilities to understand what matters — and what doesn’t — for winning for any keyword on any search engine.

Q5. A few Takeaways on the top Factors that every SEO Leader should keep in mind when they plan to Achieve Unattainable Organic Traffic.

It’s all statistics — everything that represents best practice in site design, content generation, backlinking, and the like are all inputs to the AI that is Google’s search engine. So, while following best practices when creating sites and site content is a good idea, the best way to optimize pages for ranking is, similarly, a statistical process.

It’s still a long game — Market Brew can compress the optimization cycles through greater efficiency (work only on what matters) and time-shifting (predict outcomes 2 months before they happen). These benefits give you a huge advantage over competitors without these capabilities. But that said, SEO is still an ongoing, iterative process.

AI needs to be part of your SEO toolkit — whether it’s through search engine modelings such as Market Brew provides, or schema modeling and content writing guidelines that other systems can offer — to beat Google’s AI, you’ll need to move down this path…or risk being justified behind.

Every search is different, and the same search is different between countries — what drives rankings in one market can be completely different than what drives rankings in another, and what drives rankings for one keyword can be completely different from your other keyword. That’s why best practices don’t yield the best results — you need to customize your approach to each search….which is impossible without AI (see the previous point!)

Q6. What is Next for you?

As a platform, we’re continually enhancing our capabilities across multiple areas. We continue to improve our AI modeling to provide even tighter correlations. We’re adding new types of semantic modeling including working on the algorithmic underpinnings of E-A-T.

We’ve just added CWV measurements as a ranking factor so as organic rankings start to reflect page- and site-level CWV measurements, we should be the first to understand exactly how CWV impacts different types of sites and markets. And, we’re always looking at better ways to visualize and present the huge body of information and recommendations our analyses generate.

As a business, we’re very focused on expanding the footprint of the platform through partnerships with key agencies and resellers across the world.

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The post Influencers Interview With Jonathan Epstein – CEO at Brewco appeared first on Tech Research Online.

Introduction

In today’s interview, we had the opportunity to speak with Rado Kotorov – CEO at Trendalyze

Rado Kotorov has a passion for new ideas and innovation, He is a proven leader in developing vision, strategies, and data-driven business models for the digital economy and a dedicated innovator who has co-created numerous software products and patented technologies. He is an author of two books “Organizational Intelligence” and “Data-Driven Business Models for the Digital Economy” and the Recipient of the 2019 NJ Digi-Tech Innovators Award.

1. Hey Mr. Rado Kotorov, Tell Us About Your Role and Journey as a Chief Executive Officer at Trendalyze. What Made You Choose This Profession?

Like many things in life, the profession chose me in a strange and serendipitous way. In 1994 Edward McClennen (one of the top scholars in Game Theory) offered me to join his Ph.D. program in Decision and Game Theory. He had read an article I had written and thought that I should continue with my research.

Funny enough, I did not know what Decision and Game Theory was.  It turned out to be the science of how people make decisions and so I joined. It also so happened that all my jobs required me to work with data, build systems for data, and do the analysis. During my Ph.D. studies, I became CFO of a small company in Ohio and had to build the accounting systems, the point-of-sale system, all the reporting, and much more.

Then in 2000, I moved to NYC to work for one of the first web portal startups and we built the first massive-scale marketing automation systems that processed unimaginable amounts of consumer data for content personalization. Then I joined Information Builders where I was lucky to work closely with Gerry Cohen (a legend in the software industry) with whom I collaborated closely on many products and even a book.

In 2014, I saw the emergence of sensors collecting granular time series data and I realized that this is like the invention of the microscope. You can put any process or activity under the microscope and understand the root causes of everything. The granular data contained golden nuggets, but it required a new type of analytics that did not exist at the time. So, I rolled up the sleeves and started building Trendalyze.

2. Would you like to tell your Unique Skill that you think you have as a Technology Innovator and Digital Transformation Leader?

What is unique is the diverse collection of education and experiences that I accumulated over time. My CV is nonlinear – it is not a steady progression from one job title to the next in the same field or business domain. Instead, it is like a patchwork – jumping from one job or opportunity to another, from one field to another.

People, and especially corporate recruiters, look down on such nonlinear career paths. People do not choose such meandering paths; more often it happens because of life circumstances. But there is a value in it as it creates a tremendous interdisciplinary outlook on everything you do, which in turn allows you to put more things into perspective while also seeing details that others may miss.

It also makes people wiser and humbler as they are more aware of what it takes to learn new things. In our fast-changing world, we need more interdisciplinary training which today is not provided in universities nor can be acquired in a linear career path. To illustrate the benefits, on many occasions I have been acting as the ‘translator’ who can listen to business and express their thoughts in a language that IT can understand, then take that and translate it for the marketers, the accountants, the board members, etc.

Today, I find that it is extremely hard for one profession to understand the language of another. There is also a growing misconception about what makes interdisciplinary experiences valuable.

The interdisciplinary experiences that I describe are only valuable if one becomes a master of what they do every time they change jobs. Learning fast and deep is essential. If the gain from experience is shallow knowledge, then such an interdisciplinary guru is more dangerous than helpful.

Also Read: Interview With Anthony J James – Group CEO of Innovation and Growth

3. Would you like to Highlight, Some of the Focus Points on How to Solve Today’s Business Challenges by Using BI, Analytics, and AI 2.0, and 3.0 Technologies?

There is a perception that BI and Analytics can be automated, and users can just feed the data and magically get the results. We talk about autoML, automated insights, and other magical tricks. But people forget that analytics is reasoning. Do we have any AI that does reasoning? No. Does anyone think that we can anytime soon replicate with machines human reasoning? No. So how do we expect to get magical analytics?

We still need to train people in analysis and reasoning. I think the analogies between human intelligence and learning and “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning” are wrong. Machines are neither intelligent nor learn.

You may argue that a machine can play chess better than a human and that is true but is it intelligence? No. Chess is what game theorists call a finite game. The number of steps in the game may be huge but is finite. If you can compute fast and remember all the possible steps, you can instantly play all possible chess games. That is what the modern calculators do – compute and remember all steps. I think a better description of what AI is today is an analogy with search.

Machine algorithms build maps of patterns and remember them. As new data comes in the algorithms search and find known patterns. Where we are focused on is making this paradigm less complex and confusing so that ordinary people can do AI. We invented a Logical Neural Network that works on small data sets, is completely explainable, and can be done by business professionals. We took the magic out of the current art and made it humanly understandable and usable.

4. As you have Written the Book on “Data-Driven Business Models for the Digital Economy,” Please Share a Few Takeaways.

Well, you hear everywhere that data is the new crude oil. The gist of the book is about (1) how companies can ensure that they do not miss on opportunities related to data, and (2) how businesspeople should approach data monetization in a methodical way. The first question came from a conversation I had with a logistic operator. The company had all the technologies to track cars and connect clients with drivers using dispatchers.

As someone explained the company had the technology before UBER but never even thought about using it to create a new business model. Shareholders are right to be angry for missing out on such an opportunity. Yet, making money with data is very new.

There is no MBA program that teaches how to do it like they teach factory management, assets management, etc. Thus, people do not even know how to approach data monetization. Hence, we provided a framework. Different data requires different approaches. Putting an app does not guarantee success. One must carefully understand the data and what types of needs it may satisfy, but then also think about how it can be monetized because data monetization is not as direct as renting out a building.

5. Can you Throw some Light on Trendalyze’s Motif Discovery Algorithms, How this Works, and How this Helps to Deliver Fast Results Quickly and Lower Human Resources Cost?

Rather than talking about math, I prefer to explain its logic. Very often I hear people saying that they use this or that algorithm, but they cannot explain how the algorithms work on a logical level. Neural networks are black boxes, but this should not be the case. On a logical level, we should be able to explain their entire operations because they just extract correlations from the data. Today people simply expect that the algorithmic results are magically right.

That is bad because unless a person understands the logical operation of an algorithm, they may be doing the wrong thing. Trendalyze works like Google but instead of searching for words, it searches for patterns. Granular time series patterns have meaning to professionals.

Each pattern signals the need for some action. When cardiologists review ECG recordings and see certain patterns, they instantly realize what the diagnosis and the treatment should be. Signals like these can be used not just in healthcare but also in manufacturing to prevent defects, for detecting financial crimes and anti-money laundering activities, cybersecurity intrusion detection, environmental monitoring, and much more.

6. What is Next for you?

This field is evolving, and we still have plenty to do. So, I expect to be doing what I do now for the foreseeable future. But currently, my most important goal and task are to apply our logical neural networks to cardio patient monitoring. 80% of sudden deaths are cardio-related. The need for simple and more accurate automatic detection of cardio pathologies is huge.

And what we are working on is developing LNNs that can be configured with small data for each patient by medical practitioners. We are driving the personalization of algorithms, while everyone else is looking at the generalization of algorithms.

We flipped that upside down. And it will have a profound effect on data privacy because algorithmic personalization implies that the models can be protected in the same way as lab tests are protected today. The need to give all medical data for all patients to a single company to build a generalized algorithm disappears.

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The post Influencers Interview With Rado Kotorov – CEO at Trendalyze appeared first on Tech Research Online.