A Better Mousetrap

This interview was done in the Fall of last year. For various reasons including a global pandemic and pure laziness, this has been gathering digital dust on my digital shelf. But David Ryan Polgar and the team at All Tech Is Human are doing important work so late or not, this is a good introduction to their world.

Since this interview, David Ryan Polar and All Tech Is Human have been doing significant work to advance the movement of Responsible Tech. They’ve created a job board for Responsible Tech, issued an extensive report, Improving Social Media: The People, Organizations and Ideas for a Better Tech Future, launched a Slack channel, and are building a University Responsible Tech Pathways Program. 

If I were to sit down again with David, which I hope to do again in the future, I’d want to get his thoughts on 

• Google’s firing of two leaders of their AI ethics team 
• The January 6 insurgency and the role that social media played its planning and implementation 
• Law enforcement’s use of cell phone location tracking 

and so much more that has happened since this interview. That will have to wait until the next time we can talk.

To learn more about David Ryan Polgar go to https://www.davidpolgar.com/ And for All Tech Is Human, go to https://alltechishuman.org/

Enjoy!

How is FinTech being used in developing markets? Are the trends pointing towards incumbent players adopting digital strategies or are startups entering the consumer and business markets with services that will supplant the existing players?

And as these newer technologies are adopted, what mix of regulatory forces and market forces will determine the companies that end up on top? These and other questions are posed in this brief intro on FinTech in emerging markets.

InfraTech is a shortening or mashup of Infrastructure Technology. It covers physical infrastructure such as bridges, tunnels, energy tech, and airports. It also encompasses education, healthcare, and transportation. In this episode, David Halpert, founder of Prince Street Capital Management discusses what’s going on in emerging markets with respect to infrastructure in all its forms. Join us for insights on a world of business that many of us need to know more about.

Financial inclusion. What do people mean when they use that term? Is it a social movement or is it a business opportunity to address the needs of a vast market of people who have no bank accounts, credit, or access to eCommerce? The simple answer would be yes to being both a social movement and a business opportunity. Financial inclusion has been a hot topic in recent years, and social and technological forces are converging to make it a significant part of economies in emerging markets.

Once again, I had a chance to speak with David Halpert, founder of Prince Street Capital Management, to get his perspective on the meaning of financial inclusion. What it means to these economies, to people who are either, ‘unbanked’ or ‘under-banked’, and how these trends present an investment opportunity. And he contextualizes these trends as part of the larger DigDec, i.e. Digital Decolonization, trend being espoused by Prince Street Capital Management. This is another don’t-miss episode.

We continue our conversation with Prince Street Capital Management's founder, David Halpert. In this episode, we talk about trends in HealthTech in emerging markets where there are both significant opportunities as well as challenges. Where there is no firmly established system in place both new technologies and entire healthcare systems can take root and provide services at lower cost and with better outcomes. How do various developing countries meet their own countries' healthcare needs? Plug in and listen to this engrossing conversation to find out.

Transcript

More and more of the world economy is going digital. Whether it's buying plane tickets or applying for credit card loans or looking up healthcare prescriptions, the world is shifting toward a more data-driven and more digital economy.

Today, US & Chinese companies account for 90% of tech market cap. But there remains a huge question – will the rollout of digital services across the developing world be a “colonial” economy run by global multinationals from the US and China, or will it be more local?

We think it is likely to be increasingly less centralized and more distributed. Though we still believe that US and Chinese technology companies will benefit from the digitization of emerging and frontier markets, we think local companies will benefit too.

In daily headlines, we see momentum building for “digital economic nationalism” where local entrepreneurs and governments want greater control over their digital assets.

We define this concept as Digital Decolonization, or DigDec – a process by which entrepreneurs, companies, governments and consumers in developing markets reclaim their digital economies and ecosystems from global multinationals, and develop indigenous solutions for local problems.

We believe this is a global movement with ramifications for technology, for e-commerce, for financial services, for healthcare, for electric power, for infrastructure and for so many other sectors.

Homegrown champions, with help from regulators and political leaders, are helping to build value and wealth in their societies. Homegrown champions are improving local customer experience by creating products and services that appeal to local tastes and customs. And homegrown champions are leapfrogging multinationals by adapting and improving on business models pioneered in the developed world.

We believe DigDec is one of the most important developments in globalization at this point in history. Find out more by listening to David Halpert, the founder of Prince Street Capital Management and a champion of the DigDec thesis, on A Better Mousetrap podcast on Spotify.

Digital Decolonization is a term that will reshape how we think of businesses in, and investing in, emerging markets such as in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. And this is not a matter of semantics - of po-tay-to / po-tah-to.

How an idea is framed is important when it comes to gaining wider acceptance. ‘Pro-choice vs. Pro-life’ or ‘freedom fighters vs. revolutionaries’. These are linguistic framings. And they represent conscious efforts to define a worldview.

Join me in my talk with David Halpert, for an in-depth look at his investment company, Prince Street Capital Management. This is very much about Digital Decolonization and how it will affect people in a world that is now dominated by FAANG-BAT, i.e. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent. David knows this world intimately and offers insights gleaned from years of investing in emerging markets. This is a good one. Have a listen.

Do you know what a micro-influencer is? Regardless of what you think you know, you'll learn much more when you listen to Ismael El-Qudsi talk about the immense return of investment (ROI) that using micro-influencers can bring and how SocialPubli lets advertisers scale this potent tool in one market or across multiple markets in different countries. Listen now.

Join me in this thoroughly enjoyable conversation with Dan Meth, Founder of SitParker, a platform for restaurants, bars, and other venues to manage events more easily and realize more profit per event. About halfway into the interview Dan tells a great story about pitching his first investor.  This one made me laugh out loud a couple of times. Don’t miss that.

One more thing. I left in a post show moment of panic that you might enjoy. 

Benjamin Franklin said something like, "There are only two things certain in life, death and taxes" While perhaps a bit fatalistic, it has a ring of truth to it.

My recent conversation with TaxMap founder, F. Elusio Zafar Alcalde, tells me that cryptocurrencies are growing up and accepting at least one of life's certainties, taxes. What might seem like a dry topic is anything but when handled by Elusio. Join me in digging into this topic that all real businesses, and people not living off the grid, must contend with. An unexpected gem: Elusio's enthusiasm for creating a business in the U.S. and specifically in New York City. Sometimes it takes a fresh set of eyes to appreciate what's all around you. Here's a bit of what our import from the U.K., Elusio, had to say, 

"NYC - the energy of the city - the serendipity of the city as well is amazing. There’s nothing like it anywhere else around the world. You can meet anybody and share an idea, and build something… "

And from the looks and sound of things, Elusio Zafar Alcalde is doing just that.

When people hear the title Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) they typically think of someone employing the latest cutting edge tech to solve a big problem. Bob Bennett, is more creative than that. This former CIO of Kansas City, MO, founder of B Squared Civic Solutions and Chair of the Cities Today Institute solves problems with whatever tools fit the job. To borrow a metaphor he used, 'not every problem is a nail.'

The specifics: Bob oversaw a wildly creative solution to the problem of deer going onto airport runways - cattle. Yep. Moo-cows. How does that work? Apparently deer hate cows and won’t go anywhere near them so by leasing the land, surrounding the runways, to cattle farmers the city was both able to earn income while solving a serious safety issue at their airport. 

Hear the many remarkable things achieved during Bob Bennett's tenure as Chief Innovation Officer and hear about the one that got away. This is going to be one of my favorite interviews for a long time. I know you'll enjoy it.

This informative conversation with John Liu, Chief Product Officer of Fusion was great. The crypto-anarchist future where nation states are a thing of the past and we anonymously control every facet of our digital lives is probably at least a few more weeks away. In the meantime Fusion, a financial blockchain platform, is tackling issues relating to making all manner of transactions, cheaper, more transparent and faster. The scope and ambition of Fusion’s work is impressive. I invite you to partake and learn, as I did.

Finding myself at WeWork on W. 57 Street I bumped into Raz Choudhury, founder of SAM AI  who I've known for a few years. Of course that meant catching up had to be memorialized.

SAM AI is a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) platform. Their aim is to simplify CRM so more people can benefit from the advances in big data and artificial intelligence. How? One way is to make an interface that you can query with conversational speech. NLP (Natural Language Processing) makes this possible. The story of how this came to be and where they go from here can be heard in today’s podcast. Good stuff here!

In this episode of A Better Mousetrap podcast Rhonda Binda, co-founder of Venture Smarter is our guest. Venture Smarter is technology company focused on smart governance and creating connected, smart infrastructure across the U.S. and soon, globally.

Venture Smarter has created a match making platform, Intelliscope, that drives initiatives focused on standards in the Smart Cities and IoT (Internet of Things ( fields. They facilitate matches between governments and businesses, both large and small. We get into what all this means in this idea packed conversation. Plug in. Listen. Get informed.

And if you'd like to keep up with what's going on in the NYC tech and startup community you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter, A Better Mousetrap

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If you are building a business you had better understand finance and how to best position your company to raise money. Victoria Yampolsky has created a school, advisory practice and a growing repository of learning resources to put you on the track to financial competency. Listen as she describes what you'll need to know and what pitfalls to avoid.

Rebecca Lima is a serial founder and someone who I can honestly say has the entrepreneur’s itch. She has that indefinable character trait in the people I recognize as common to many company founders. (I’m not one of them, at least not by birth) 

I first met Rebecca when she was working on her earlier company, Ment, Meant is described as, “… a community based and data backed app that enhances the airport experience for travelers.”

Now Rebecca Lima is building Lieu, a company dedicated to supporting women in the workplace. They partner with corporations and events to provides inclusive beauty and self-care experiences. Listen to how she plans to serve working women in the workplace.