On this episode of The Small Business Radio Show…
We first talk about what it is really like to succeed as a woman in the toughest business environment in the world – Silicon Valley. We dive into stories of women in Silicon Valley navigating interactions with their predominately male colleagues and the choices they made that paved their way to success.
Then, big data has been a buzz word that small business owners have heard about for a long time. But can small business owners actually use it? Our next guest says yes. We show you how small businesses can use machine learning and advanced analytics to help their company.
Finally, just about everyone has had an idea for a new product. But how do you go from having an idea to having an actual product that consumers want to buy? We talk to the founder of a product development company about what you need to know to bring your invention to life.
Listen to The Small Business Radio Show
Segment 1: Julian Guthrie spent twenty years at the San Francisco Chronicle, where she won numerous awards and had her writing nominated multiple times for the Pulitzer Prize. She is the author of “ALPHA GIRLS: The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon Valley’s Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime”. ALPHA GIRLS is being adapted for television by Academy Award-winning producer Cathy Schulman.
1:00 – What was your inspiration for writing a book about the women in Silicon Valley?
3:15 – What is it like to be a woman in Silicon Valley – the good, the bad, and the ugly?
5:15 – Stories of women in Silicon Valley navigating interactions with their predominately male colleagues.
8:45 – How men and women can create commonalities in the workplace so we can all feel comfortable and be successful.
11:00 – Is progress being made in Silicon Valley having diverse voices and perspectives in venture capital investment?
13:30 – Why do the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs we admire seem like they’re not very nice people?
Segment 2: Alex Bordei is the VP of Product and Engineering at Lentiq, a Chicago-based company offering a multi-cloud, production-scale data lake as a service platform. He has over ten years of experience in building cloud products as Head of Product Management at Lentiq.
18:45 – What is machine learning in a business context? How is machine learning different than artificial intelligence?
20:00 – Inside the world of Big Data, what is a data lake?
21:30 – How do machine learning and advanced analytics apply to a small business?
25:30 – Who would help a small business set up and operate a data lake?
28:30 – What does it cost to build a machine learning pipeline as a small business? What is the ROI?
31:00 – Example of how businesses can be using machine learning in their companies.
Segment 3: Kevin Mako is the founder of Mako Design and Invent, a product development firm that helps inventors and startups bring their invention ideas to life. Kevin’s strong sense of community building enabled him to collaborate with Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec, Cobie Smulders, PepsiCo and Frito Lay to develop a nationwide competition called Dreamvention for young inventors.
37:00 – What was it like working with famous entrepreneur and actors like Robert Herjavec and Cobie Smulders on your Dreamvention initiative?
38:45 – How do you actually bring your ideas to life? Where do you start if you think you have an idea for an invention that people would want to buy?
41:15 – As an aspiring inventor or entrepreneur, how do you decide if you should invest money in your idea?
43:30 – What should you do if someone is already working on your idea? How can that actually be a good thing?
45:00 – How do you demonstrate that people want to buy your product?
48:00 – Here’s how you should think about the first version of your product and how to sell it.
50:45 – What you should know about working with a design company on your invention.
Sponsored by Nextiva, Corporate Direct, MAKO and Web.com
