Scaling with Angel Money Only in Canada: Joel Lessem, CEO of Firmex (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Is this the company that we are talking about right now? Joel Lessem: Yes, I wrote the business plan 10 years ago. There was no documentation of who owned this IP. Then I had to go to the client and say, “I want to sell this to all your competitors.” I had to structure

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Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: David Parker, Global Vice President, SAP (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What you mentioned is data in general. That’s not data generated by Internet of Things because they’re not rolling out Internet of Things yet. David Parker: You’re missing the point. What I’m saying is what’s preventing them from rolling out Internet of Things is the data security because they want to take that

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Scaling with Angel Money Only in Canada: Joel Lessem, CEO of Firmex (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Very quickly, how long did you work for this entrepreneur? Joel Lessem: That was a year and a half here and a year for another one. I worked for many of them. Sramana Mitra: When was the first startup that you did? Joel Lessem: The first startup I did was in 1999. Sramana

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Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: David Parker, Global Vice President, SAP (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Only if you can ensure that it is a secure process. Because if you look at all the breaches that we’ve seen like the Target breach, it’s opening up huge question marks on whether it’s a good idea to expose that much of surface area to security threats. David Parker: That’s one side

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Scaling with Angel Money Only in Canada: Joel Lessem, CEO of Firmex (Part 1)

Joel is scaling a profitable company in Toronto called Firmex, and has only spent $4 million in angel money to get to almost $10 million in revenue. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? Joel Lessem:

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Catching Up On Readings: Challenges for AI Apps

This feature from TechCrunch looks at the challenges facing startups building AI apps. It says that AI, predictive analytics, and data science-driven startups are only going to grow in size and in importance, and navigating how to build them is not straightforward. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: David Parker, Global Vice President, SAP (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How pervasive would you say is the adoption of Internet of Things? Do you have sensors’ use cases in each of these segments that you brought up? It sounds like manufacturing and industrial automation is one of the early adopters. Is that 100% penetrated? What are we talking here? David Parker: The irony

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Thought Leaders in Internet of Things: David Parker, Global Vice President, SAP (Part 4)

David Parker: Number two is, these industries like manufacturing, CPG, automotive, mining, oil & gas are the primary industries that we’re seeing a lot of traction from our customers across the globe, irrespective of the initiative that’s coming out of Germany. The main reason for that is that they envision that there must be a

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