April 29, 2025 • 49 mins
Funding the future: How do new ideas get to market?
So, you’ve got a visionary idea—one that’s going to change the lives in Canada for the better. What’s more important…You’ve got the commitment to follow it through. How do you get an idea like that off the ground? Navigating the intricacies of the private and public sector relationships, building trust with impacted communities, making sure you got the right boxes ticked on the right forms…Balancing it all is no easy feat. But if Canada is going to move forward, we need to invest our imaginative capital in the right places.
Guest: Martin Kon, COO & President, Cohere
Co-hosts: Anthony Viel, CEO, Deloitte Canada and Chile, and Talia Abramowitz, Managing Partner, Deloitte Ventures
A French transcript of this episode can be read here: https://deloi.tt/4lTkE30
***
Financement de l’avenir : comment les nouvelles idées peuvent-elles être mises en marché?
Vous avez une idée visionnaire qui améliorera la vie au Canada. Le plus important : vous vous engagez à la suivre jusqu’au bout. Comment concrétiser cette idée? Naviguer dans les complexités des relations entre le secteur privé et le secteur public, établir un lien de confiance avec les collectivités touchées, s’assurer que les bonnes cases sont cochées sur les bons formulaires... Il n’est pas facile de trouver un équilibre. Mais si le Canada veut aller de l’avant, nous devons investir notre capital imaginatif aux bons endroits.
Personne invitée : Martin Kon, chef de l’exploitation et président, Cohere AI
Coanimateurs : Anthony Viel, leader de la direction, Deloitte Canada et Chili, et Talia Abramowitz, associée directrice, Deloitte Ventures
Vous pouvez lire la transcription française de cet épisode ici : https://deloi.tt/4lTkE30
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
There are some CEOs here who say we want to be
(00:03):
top in the world in AI,not just amongst our competitors here.
And that's exciting.
Welcome to this episode of Full Circle,
a show where we confront Canada'spressing challenges and societal issues.
I'm your co-host, Anthony Viel,CEO of Deloitte Canada and Chile.
On this episode,we're asking the question,
(00:23):
how do new ideas get to market?
In this episode,we discuss the current state of innovation
and investment in Canadaand the complexities, challenges,
and costs faced by visionariesin bringing their ideas
to life in the Canadian ecosystem.
I had the pleasure of sitting downwith Martin Kon.
Martin is the president and CEO of cohere,
(00:45):
a company building AI for enterprises.
Previously, he servedas the CFO of Google's YouTube division.
Talia Abramowitz co-hosted with me.
Talia is the managing partnerof Deloitte Ventures Canada.
Our corporate venture capital fund
that invests in innovative,disruptive technology companies.
(01:05):
Please enjoy this episode of Full Circle.
Gidday everyone,and I'm thrilled to be here with you
both today, Talia and Martin.
And, we wanted to start things off
by talking a little bit about Cohere’s journeyand all the success you've had.
The company has made significant stridesin the field of AI.
(01:27):
This summer, you've been able to raisean impressive $500 million in funding.
Martin, can you tell us a bit
more about Cohere’s unique story,and how it all started?
Of course. Well, first of all,thank you for having me.
I wish I could be there with youin person.
I'm a native Torontonian,so I should be able to be there.
I'm calling in from our New York Cityoffice.
Cohere is the leading independent,
(01:51):
data privacy focused enterpriseAI company.
I could share a little bitabout the Genesis,
which is really somethingthat drew me to the company.
Our, CEO and co-founder,Aidan Gomez, is one of the inventors
of the transformer,which is the T in ChatGPT.
When he was at GoogleBrain in Mountain View,
he and his co-founder, Nick Frost,who was Professor Geoff Hinton's
(02:13):
first hire at his lab at Google Brain,and Ivan Zhang,
a fellow U of T student,studying under Geoff Hinton.
They were blown awayby what the transformer
enabled, when they saw what it could do.
And that was 2019.
And we're still very much,set on our mission
(02:33):
of being solely enterprise AI focused.
We do not have a cashburning consumer chat bot.
Very independent.
We have not taken a massive cheque
from our cloud providerin exchange for being exclusive to them.
So we're available in every cloud.
We're available on, through VPCor even all the way to On-Prem,
which is the highest,you know, data protection, data privacy
(02:57):
that enterprises, banks, oil and gas
utilities, governments,really anyone who really cares
about keeping their datainside their environment.
It's the highest dataprivacy that one can have.
And so that's what we're focused on.
And, and we count some of the world'smost respected,
(03:17):
strategic and financial investorsamongst our, our cap table.
So we're we're very excited
to be a global companythat happens to be, rooted in Canada.
Maybe much like our inspiration, Shopify,which we would love to emulate.
It's really been an amazing journey,
and in many ways,just the the early innings of it.
You guys are really on the bleedingedge of, technology innovation, but
(03:40):
maybe I want to step backand look at innovation a bit more broadly.
There's really been an increasing focusfrom governments and corporates
on innovation, in large partbecause of the data that suggests that
there's strong financial and strategicreasons associated with doing that.
But I'm curious about your viewand what you believe
the value of innovationis to individuals,
(04:03):
citizens, businesses, societyand really just economies at large?
Yeah.
It, it's a great question.
And, I believe firmly thatwhat we're seeing here with generative
AI is the biggest disruptiontransformation
in how humans and computers interactsince the Mosaic browser came out in 1993.
(04:26):
Everything changed.
And of course, we now we look backand see trillions of dollars of value
were created, millions of jobs,everyone's jobs were upgraded.
We got rid of doing the most of the stuffwe didn't like about our jobs, and got
to focus on the higher order elementsof of what the human brain can do.
And, I see the same thing happening now.
(04:48):
But what we believe is this unlockin, productivity.
We're not going to be able to do that.
And being able to enable employees,
but also customers, citizens
to access this lost knowledgewithin their service providers.
You just talked a little bit about thatunlock and the massive potential.
(05:09):
I've heard that organizations,might be using 4
to 10% of the data that they actually haveit, their, disposal.
I think that speaks tothe potential of the unlock, but this is a
this is an area where you think Coherecan really unlock, some opportunity.
Yeah.
And obviouslywe'd like to play a role in that.
I think there will be manythat can help unlock.
(05:31):
But we're very focused on that.
I hadn't heard that stat,but that makes a lot of sense
if you think about just
the enormous amount of dataand information inside organizations.
Much of it is very sensitiveand and thus valuable
that they would never want to expose itexternally.
They would never want tojust throw it out through an API.
Which is why some of these consumer chatbots are going to be very limited
(05:55):
in terms of what they can door why a Google search is limited.
It searches external public dataand not internal data.
And so if it's possible to find
information, to say semantically,
I'm looking for our perspectiveas a, as a,
but as an organizationon the future of Bolivian
(06:15):
bauxite mining, I have no ideaif there's bauxite, but whatever
it could have been that there was a Slackexchange between two Japanese colleagues
six months ago talking about this.
It could be that there was a videoconference with a bunch of experts,
in Italy, in Italian, that has somevery interesting perspectives.
(06:36):
It could be any number of things that arelocked away in this lost knowledge.
A bit like needles in a haystack.
And so if if you could help enterprisesfind these needles in a haystack,
every year the haystacks get bigger,the needles get more valuable,
but the unlock is enormous.
And, I think the analogy I might useis, is imagine today
(06:58):
if if one company had accessto Google search and the other didn't.
Yeah.
What a disadvantage that would be.
We couldn't even imagine it today.
Many of usremember what it was like before then.
Going to the research library,looking at microfiche,
you know, going pouring over,you know, (inaudible) things.
But but that is really exciting.
(07:20):
And, and that's also for things like,
doctors, medical professionals
spend 3.5 hours a day doing admin, doingpatient discharge notes.
Imagine if you could reduce that as,as Larry Ellison is passionate
about enabling, to to 20 minutes.
But that doesn't mean you're goingto let go of one third of your doctors.
(07:43):
It means that you will free upan enormous amount of time
for them to spend on diagnosing patients,you know, learning new techniques,
sleeping before the brain, surgerythe next day, whatever the case may be.
So we're very excited by that.
Yeah.
And, you make, several good pointsthat I want to jump on.
And given it's our show,I'm going to jump on a Martin.
(08:03):
But the, in terms of,like, it's not all about just efficiency.
It's about doing morefor the current capability.
And my goodness, NorthAmerica and Canada could not
and could not have enough of thatat this particular point in time,
given the demographic shiftthat's coming up.
So I see that as a real opportunityas a data scientist, or at least
I was one, we're unlocking that extrainformation, that breadth of information,
(08:28):
that's what I say to CEOs, createssustainable competitive advantage.
So, you know,if you can move that 10% to 20% or 30%,
you know that that's informationthat's proprietary to you
as an organization,and that's going to put you in good stead
when you go and compete,with your competition,
who doesn't have accessto that information?
(08:50):
My experience in data scienceis you win every day
when you when you have that information.
So that's very exciting.You're absolutely right.
And I think the,
you know,
the way we think about it a bit,
just picking up on and riffing a biton what you're saying is it's a big
when when people ask or companiesask executives, well, you know,
how are you going to beat OpenAIor isn't Google just going to do that?
(09:13):
My answer is sure.
We see things as a hierarchy of needs.
And that and the broadest part of that,the foundational part,
are all the mass market, generic.
Not in the bad way,generic generic, functionality
that billions of uswill use dozens of times an hour.
And these will be very well servedby Google.
(09:36):
You know, who knows, maybe by Appleand their phones or Samsung,
just like right now, autocomplete
and spellcheck are builtinto all of the things we use.
No one's using a separate app for thator investing in companies
that are doing that.
And likewise, the basic functionalityto quickly generate email drafts or,
have a quick speech, suggestionfor your assistants retirement party.
(10:01):
It'll be built in a Google.
Google Docsor Microsoft Word or Gmail, etc.
and it'll be great.
Well, I'll pay a bit more.
Those companies will do incredibly well.
There's no need for a company,
to go and designthose kind of capabilities themselves.
The next layer upare all the SaaS applications and software
that are embedded in every workflowand every company in the world,
(10:22):
and they're not going anywhere.
So think Oracle, Fusion or.
NetSuite, think SAP, Bloomberg,Experian, ServiceNow, etc.
and likewise, those companies are justintegrating these kind of capabilities
into their, SaaS products and workflowto make them better.
We're very excited to partnervery closely with Oracle.
And there are now, I believe,over 100, 105, if I'm not mistaken.
(10:45):
AI powered featuresbuilt into their fusion and NetSuite
suite of apps that are betteralready deployed in 25,000 enterprises.
And you just quietly get access to thatas you want to, you know, auto generate
job descriptions or, you know,be able to sift through 10,000 CDs,
without taking seven hours to do it.
(11:05):
And but the top is a little bitwhat you're talking about, right?
The top of that is thethose are the mission
critical core capabilities,of of enterprises
that give give them strategic advantage,give them alpha against their competitors.
And that's where you don't want to usea generic chat bot or,
you know, the same, appthat everyone has access to,
(11:27):
the same models everyone has access to,because that won't give you alpha.
You know, if you use Gmail, that's great.
So does your competitor. Fine.
And so while everyone might have accessto, you know, the very good models
that everyone has from Cohere or OpenAIor Anthropic or Google, they can say,
that's nice, but we have our proprietaryone that's better than all of them.
(11:47):
And so we want to work with companiesto create those unique capabilities
that, as you say, give them alpha,against their competitors.
And we think that's what's going to happenmore and more.
It's not going to be thethe standard generic models
that are available to everyone or chatbots.
It's going to be customizing to make them,unique based on the in-house
(12:09):
capabilities and allow them to,to beat their competition.
And Martin, you it remind me of,
prominent, prominent,
professor here, Roger Martin
here at the University of Toronto,where he talks about you either
compete on and, differentiationor you compete on cost.
(12:32):
And whenever you're using generic,I can't see how you can compete
on differentiation. So, you know my words.
The CEO,
if youif you're going to put a dollar anywhere,
make sure that it's directed in an areawhere you’ve got some proprietary data,
whether it's breadthor depth or otherwise.
So what you're saying is really resonatingfor me, moving beyond the organization,
perhaps, and shifting gears a little bitbecause I'd love to, you know,
(12:55):
get into some other things
that you raised, as well,but we'll do it in the normal course here.
As a nation,
We, understanding the importanceand the impact
that innovation has on people,which we just discussed, organizations
which we discussed in society at large,which is where I'd like to get to.
How do you think Canada.
How do you think we do when it comesto adopting new technologies?
(13:19):
And innovating in general?
And I'm, I'm a very proud Canadian, very excited to,
work hard to, to build
a generational company,with, with with Canadian roots.
I think Canada often times can be
a little bit slowerto adopt new technologies.
(13:39):
I, I saw stat recentlythat Canadian companies are adopting
AI at about half the rate of the US.
And I think oftentimes Canadianslike to see, okay,
where is it working elsewherenow we feel good about adopting it.
And I think secondly,
I'll be a little bit provocative here,but I think many have found this,
(14:00):
that as a Canadian company,the hardest companies to sell to
are other Canadian companiesbecause we, I'll put myself in that boat,
We have a little bitof an inferiority complex,
but I do think there's incredibleopportunity for us.
And you mentioned productivity.
And I think the, the, the, the potentialfor productivity gains here are enormous.
You look at the U.S.
(14:21):
and a lot of the growth in GDP since the,the 90s has been from tech.
And, you know, I think somethinglike 35% of, of, I don't know
if it's GDP or market capitalizationor whatever is the tech industry.
I think Canada, you know,maybe hasn't quite had that same wave.
And of course, our, our GDP per person
(14:42):
is, is going down, which is, which is troubling.
I think we have an opportunityhere, to, to really turn that around
and have Canada be a leader in AI.
We have great professors.
We have great institutionslike U of T, like
the vector Institute, like Mila, etc..
(15:03):
But that's only part of the equation.
I think we need to be carefulabout patting ourselves in the back,
that we have great researchers
and students, because if they all leaveto commercialize elsewhere, that's
maybe even worse, because we educated themand then they go elsewhere.
And that's unfortunatelywhat seems to have been happening.
That's one of the reasonswhy our co-founders really wanted to, to
to create this, this, a company in Canada to allow,
(15:27):
these researchers and professionalsto commercialize here.
That's the real gap.
It's in between the sort of seedfunding of an idea
and maybe when the pensionsjump in an IPO, it's the it's that,
you know, Raquel Urtasun of Waabi says thatsort of chasm of how you how you scale up.
And I think there are some thingsthat that we really can do as a nation.
(15:48):
I do believe the government has,has, has been very,
forward thinking in the compute subsidies,for example,
that that have been recently announcedto make sure
that there is super compute capacitythat is available in Canada,
and potentially at an advantaged priceto Canadian startups and scale ups.
I believe one of the biggest
(16:08):
unlockswould be having Canadian companies and
Canadian, governmental institutions
be lead users and,and actually adopt this technology,
show how we can develop better servicesfor, our citizens.
That's something for example, the MiddleEast is absolute on the front foot.
If you look at what
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is doing,you look what you UAE’s doing.
(16:31):
I think 98,97% of all the government services in
Saudi you could do on your phone,including renewing your passport.
You know,renewing your driver's license.
And now I see the next wave,
having our, our, our,our big enterprises,
really become lead usershere, and ideally
(16:52):
giving a fair shot to local companieswhom I believe are the best in the world.
It's not like you're doing itout of charity.
And one of the things I love, mymy parents and my sister
and her family live in Vancouvernow, and I went to the Olympics in 2010,
and I loved how un Canadian we werewhere rather than say, let's just be good
with silver, which is all we gotin Calgary, in Montreal
(17:14):
in ‘88 and ‘76,we said, we're going to own the podium.
You know, effort, so to speak.
We're going to win more gold at anyone.And what happened?
We did we won 14 gold medals
because we just said we're going to winand we're going to
we're going to figure out where we can winand we're going to pour resources
behind those thingsrather than peanut buttering everywhere.
And that was a, you know,I think until Norway, tied it,
(17:38):
that was literally the record for the mostgold medals at a winter games.
And I think we had the opportunityto do the same here, to own the podium,
you know? Yes.
We got talent.
Yes, we got research.
We need to have VC funding.
We need to get the pension funds to maybe,
you know, not wait
until there's 400 million of ARR,but actually come a little bit further
(17:58):
back to support, like the sovereignsand other countries are doing.
We need to have, usage,to actually that, or companies
and organizations become usersand then reference users.
If you're working for a large Canadianbank or you're working for a respected,
you know, governmental organization,I think that is
(18:19):
a, you know, a stamp of approval for,for others, globally.
So I think there's a chance for usreally to be leaders,
but it's going to take a concertedeffort to own the podium.
It's an interesting challenge.
Like I, I often reflect with Talia and,and, and other partners
of our organization to sort of say,what else could we be doing that
you spec around,we got all the ingredients
(18:40):
to make the cake, to own the podium,as you put it.
And, that,that point that you make around, you know,
we fast adopters of Canadian tech,
we, we supporting this Canadian techgo from scale
up to, start up to scale up, if you will.
Can we be doing better there?
And I think you sort of hitthe nail on the head for me.
(19:02):
Somebody is a newcomer of 10 yearsand proud Canadian.
It's that's that'swhat's missing here, I think.
Well, one of the critical gaps I don'tentirely if you a point on that or Martin.
Definitely a lot of opinions on that.
I mean, we've done a study recentlyon the state of corporate Canada
which showed that only 6%of Canadian corporates with over $1
(19:24):
billion in annual revenue participated
in a direct VC investment in 2023.
And that's compared with 40% in the U.S.
That's a huge gap.
And I mean, there's obviouslya critical role that corporates
have to play in this equation, not only indirecting VC dollars, but, as you
mentioned, as becoming reference sitesand early adopters of this technology.
(19:47):
From your perspective, likewhat do you think are the the primary gaps
and real barriers really preventingCanadian corporates from moving
just beyond this performative actionand actually truly embracing
these new technologiesthat were born in Canada?
Yeah, it's it's a great question.
I mean, first of all,let me back up a little bit.
(20:08):
I think, I think there are some really,
forward thinking
VCs in the, in the country, Radical Ventures is our seed funder.
And I would say they're objectively thebest, VC sorry, AI focused VC on the planet.
I think they've met with 8500 companies.
(20:30):
That number's probably out of date by now.
Invested in 44 or something.
And they're based right here in Toronto,
where I think it's really about whetherleadership, you know, starts with the CEO
but permeates down has the ambitionand the aspiration to be the winner.
Right.
Or a global leader as opposed tohow do I beat my Canadian competitors?
(20:52):
And that's really what it's about.
That's why I think a lot of,
a lot of the top talent, they don't,don't want to work for a branch,
a branch plantor a branch office of some big company.
They want to work at HQ. These days
Post-CovidHQ doesn't necessarily mean the same place
that it's always physically been.
You can actually, you know, drive thingsif you're in the right
(21:12):
organization,even if you maybe live in Toronto.
I was able to, you know, do my job duringCovid from, you know, not not San Bruno.
I was a CFO of YouTube.
And that's very different to what,you know, what it was like before.
And so I think, CEOs and their teams
who say we want to differentiate,we want to be a global winner.
(21:35):
That's why we like citing Shopify, because
I don't think anyone outside of Canadamaybe even knows they're Canadian.
They're just Shopify and competingincredibly well with Amazon.
Who would have who would have thoughtthat's even possible?
But they're doing a great joband could happen to be very proudly
in the Canadian ecosystem.
So I think that's the, you know,
Again, it comes back a little bitto this chutzpah maybe of own the podium.
(21:59):
You know, we aspire to workwith the most demanding, sophisticated,
respected enterprises on the planet.
And I think there aremany of those in Canada
and having a an aspirationto compete on the global stage.
For example, it'svery exciting to see the
I forget the organization, but there's anAI maturity index for banks.
(22:20):
Number one is JP Morgan Chase.
Number two is Capital One,number three RBC.
And that's not in Canada.
It's not even in North America.That's globally.
And so,
you know, that kind of ambition andaspiration and I think is what we need
to, you know, be global leadersin a way that I think we have
in some sectors, in a way that we have,you know, in some in some eras.
(22:44):
But that's, yeah, I think, I think
just getting businessleadership, government leadership,
you know, academic leadership togetherto say we're going to own the podium.
We have all the ingredients.Let's let's do that.
For example, in data centers,we need less cooling
In Canada,there's lots of nice clean power.
Your power grid is not like it ismaybe in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.
(23:06):
or down in Texas.
It's stable.
We don't have you know, we don't havehurricanes that shut the grid down.
There's all sorts of reasons whywe could be a real leader in data centers.
Data annotation,which will become a new profession.
You know, creating synthetic data.
You need doctorsto say what a good patient summary is.
You don't just find that on the internet.
You need someone to definethat to train the models.
(23:28):
There's
all sorts of different thingsthat Canada can lead at,
in what is, as we said,the biggest thing to happen since the
browser came out and the internetrevolution, you know, change the world.
Man, you touch on an interesting thing.
You've said global leaders.
Not every Canadian organization competesglobally per se,
but setting a benchmark to be a globalleader is in our best interest.
(23:50):
I think, it plays into going higher,
stronger, faster,if you will, at the community level,
at the provincial level,at the country level.
And that plays into a lot of those,
that unlockthat you're talking about in my mind,
that unlock, you're talkingabout adopting this technology or helping,
these organizations, these startups,that are as good as any in the world,
(24:14):
in my experience.
And you've said the same, and I'm thinkingmore broadly about the system
level impacts of your courageto adopt that technology.
Not take on any undue risk.
But by definition, new technologydoes take some risk with it.
But collectively as a system,as a province, as a community,
(24:34):
as a country, if we can elevate,you know, all boats should rise.
And so your pointthere is, resonating with me.
Just shifting gears a little bit,you know, Canada's
built, on immigration, on immigrants.
And not only, the top, the best talent.
If you said the same at the top here, best talent is flocking here
(24:57):
to go to our institutions for AI,education,
research and otherwise.
There's another element
for mineis, that is coming with that as well,
is that we're bringing perspectives and,from all parts of the world.
So it's the AI education, but also theperspectives from all parts of the world.
Maybe you got to comment or around
(25:18):
Do you think that createsdifferentiation as well?
I think there is somethingabout immigrants
going to a new place and really being,
you know, motivatedto try and do something there.
And I think you're right.
I think Canada has a real opportunityto to leverage that.
It's a very attractive placeto come for for many, many reasons,
as we all know,because we did or our parents did.
(25:38):
And and and I think
there's an opportunity to,you know, potentially
with some of the different thingsgoing on in the world and,
you know, where
if you're coming from Indiaor Argentina or,
you know, wherever it isyou may prefer to come to Canada
than other optionsout there, quality of life,
(25:59):
you know, political institutions,social institutions and so on.
I think we need to make surethat there's opportunity there.
And at the end of the day, smart peoplewant to work with other smart people.
And yes,you can say, you know, this is, you know,
somewhere is a great placeto, to to move to Vancouver or whatever.
But if you uproot a family, to,to move there because, you know, the,
(26:24):
the incredible machinelearning engineer gets a great job offer,
she and her family and her husbanduproot themselves and move to Vancouver.
And that doesn't work out,which oftentimes happens.
And then she thinks, well,then what do I do?
Because what other jobs are here?
That's that's that's a tough thing to do.
That's why Silicon Valleyand now New York
(26:44):
are relatively de-risk,because if you go there, you know, that,
you know,there are a bunch of other things
you can do after.I think that virtuous circle
we have to build,we have to build that in Toronto.
New York did a nice job.
Or just build that more broadly in Canada.
Where there is that virtuous circleof success, there's a virtuous circle of
then early success is fundingthe next one's, hiring the next people.
(27:06):
You know, the junior marketing peoplegoing to be the head of marketing
at the next startup and so on.
And I think we have anopportunity to make Canada,
not just a good
destination for students to go,
but a good destinationfor graduates to stay
because they want to found their companieshere.
They want to grow them.
They want to join companies,not just startups, but
(27:29):
established companieswho are doing innovative things,
and and then scale,
you know, scale them over timeand or the early to adopt.
You may want to go to a bank or a telcoand help them adopt AI.
And so I think the key ishow do we commercialize, how do we quickly
how do we make sure thatthat the smartest people are working on
(27:51):
the gnarliest problemsfor the best companies in the world,
with other smart people
and make Canada the place to do it?
And, and so,I, I can't say what the panacea is,
but I do believe there it really comesdown to this commercialization,
building a business, adopting,taking some risks.
(28:15):
It's not about some government program.
Snap your fingers.
It's done.
Or, you know, about,
you know, some subsidy that happens.
It's a lot coming togetherand including and especially around
adoption being customers,and taking some risks.
And of course, then you've got the capitalbehind it and those kind of things.
(28:36):
Yeah. Capitaldoesn't seem to be a problem these days.
And I think that importance of what you'retalking about with ecosystems,
and if it's a strong ecosystem,it's almost like a bit of a backstop.
We see this playing out in otherindustries here in Canada in particular,
where you might be drawn to a particularcity for a particular opportunity.
But the questions get lessand less about the opportunity.
(28:58):
The pay, the benefits, etc..
And then they start to turn to, well,I have children, I have other needs
What's this system provide me?
And in the context of what
you just described to me, it'sresonating to sort of say,
hey, if this doesn't work outand most of them don't,
and I'll turn to Talia in a minutewith some stats.
But if it doesn't turn out,I can bounce to something else.
(29:19):
And I don't have to uproot, and then go and start all over again.
It's just there.
And I think your Silicon Valley, New Yorkexample is something that we can follow.
Yeah.
I agree, I, I justwant to pick up on on what you're saying
there, Martin, and how,you know, you talk about this big unlock.
We talk about innovation in generaland how it has the ability to unlock
(29:40):
human potential.
Then we talked about Canadaand there's some really great shining
moments of Canada. Great researchers.
You know, maybe not so greatculturally in terms of taking risks
and so a bit spotty there.
And we talked about bringing itall together and commercialization. Right.
So it doesn'tjust take a visionary founders.
It doesn't just take a corporate.
(30:00):
It doesn't just take the governmentcreating a new policy as you
just take that.
It takes all of uskind of singing in unison.
And so, you know,getting really tactical here, trying
to solve the world'sproblems on this one podcast.
How how do you think we actually do that?
Like, how do we movethe needle in each of those groups?
If you had to tell governments,
(30:21):
if you had to tell corporate Canada,if you had to tell citizen,
what do you have to do in orderto make this, you know, on the scale
of Silicon Valley or, you know, bea global powerhouse, take the podium?
Like, how how would we do that?
Oh, gosh, I wish I hada I wish I had the perfect answer there.
This should bethe most valuable podcast ever.
(30:44):
I was gonna say. Yeah, it's. Come on Martn.
So I think, I mean, look,these things take time.
The reason why Silicon Valley is whatit is, is ultimately because of Stanford
and then HPE and then everythingthat kind of came after that.
But I do thinkthere are some things to do.
When I was, when I was in New York,I, I'm a partial reform consultant.
(31:06):
But when I was in consulting,
we worked closely with the Bloombergadministration in 2009,
after the big crash,obviously FI was very badly hit.
The number two industry in New York Citywas media.
And, but it was really traditionalold sort of old media, right?
Newspapers, magazines,broadcast news, etc..
And the mayor wanted to.and his administration wanted
(31:27):
To, understand how to maintainNew York City as a media hub.
But very quickly,it was digital media hub.
And so 60 to 70 CEOs got together.
You know,when when Mike calls, they answer,
and really,you know, convene this group to say,
how do we you know, make New York,
a place that that's new media,
(31:50):
and digital, and it wasn't likethere was one magic thing,
but there was a lot of thingsthat that group together, I
it didn't use these words, butthe idea was, we want to own the podium.
We we, we care about New Yorkso deeply as CEOs, as government leaders,
as, you know, the the, you know,president of the universities, etc.,
that we're going to work together on this.It went on for four years.
(32:12):
And there are a bunch of little thingsthat were done.
They opened the, the city's, databases
through APIs, and they had somethingcalled New York City Big Apps.
It was a big, you know, app competition.
The prize giving was held at IACwith Barry Diller.
You know, Jeff Bewkes came from TimeWarner and, you know, the mayor and so on.
So it was really aroundjust shining a light.
(32:32):
And then around the world when they sawthat the cheque being handed to a,
you know, a few Indian kidswho built the app that won
everyone in India was like,what do you mean, New York City?
Like, we thought everythingwent to San Francisco.
And so it really was this kind ofcollaborative effort with some patience.
I think a lot of it, too,was that these CEOs were then saying, hey,
we want to support the local companiesthat are building stuff.
(32:55):
They talk about somethingcalled the velvet rope syndrome.
You know, in Silicon Valley,you go to Starbucks
and you could be standing nextto Eric Schmidt, and he sees a business
plan and asks to sit down over a coffeeand, you know, hear about it.
In New York, you'll have the velvet ropewhere the
the CEOs and execs are having lunch,having breakfast at Michael's.
And, you know,everyone else is in Brooklyn or, you know,
(33:18):
south of 14th Street.
And so it was like, well, how do we breakthat, that velvet rope syndrome?
How do we get the business executivestogether with some of the innovators?
And so I do think one of the things thatI used to say about New York, I still do,
San Francisco, is a little bit of a oneindustry town, pure tech.
And it's amazingyou're never going to out of pure tech.
(33:41):
San Francisco.
But I say that'swhere things are invented.
New York City is where you figurehow to make money with them.
Yeah, because you got every singleindustry in the world in New York City.
The same is true of Toronto.
You know, it's
the number two banking centerin, in North America.
It's got, you know, aeronautical,you know, aerospace, it's got fashion.
(34:02):
It's got, film, it's got, insurance.
It's got, you know, mining companieswho have, you know,
basis they're manufacturing, food.
You know, you could go on and onand on health, healthcare,
all the different,you know, the hospital networks.
And so it's that it's that combinationof people trying to invent technology.
(34:24):
They have to then work with them,
you know, with the ecosystemthat's actually going to take this and,
and create value with it for themselves,for the customers.
And the proximity in Toronto is,
I'd say, fairly unparalleled, maybewith the exception of a New York City
where it's an incredible,you know, you know,
(34:44):
incredible opportunityto bring those elements together.
You know, Montreal.I don't want to sort of,
ignore my my alma mater of McGill.
You know, Montreal, I think also hasa lot of different industries there.
So I do think all the ingredientsare there structurally- immigration,
education,you know, standard of living safety.
(35:06):
There's a lot of capital. All of thesedifferent industries just literally
walk down the road and see huge banks,which you can't do that
if you're, in LA.
So, yeah,I don't have a panacea in any way.
I think the ingredients are thereand it's sort of,
I think an effort just to bring,
(35:27):
you know, bring folks togetherand say we are going to own the podium
because we want to wincollectively in this space.
Each of us needs to,you know, contribute something.
And it takes the absolute top leadership.
I mean, this is like, you know, asI said before, six it was only CEOs.
You could not go in the roomunless you were a CEO.
You could not send any proxy.
And it was, you know, at the time,
(35:49):
you know, Mike Bloomberg's a bit of a,you know,
a very good convener, let's say that,so the top levels of government as well.
Yeah, that was a total non-answer, butcertainly excitement that the ingredients
are there for the cake baking,as you were saying before.
Martin, I'd pick that up a little bit.
Like I often wonder, I haven't hada startup myself, so full transparency,
(36:13):
But the if you're pitchingjust your idea or your technology
and you come from a citylike New York or Toronto or even Montreal,
like you, like you say, and you don't havea reference site in your city
Using your technology, it's sort of likeit feels to me like a missed opportunity
and begs the questionfor the next buyer of that technology.
(36:36):
Well, why hasn't anyone in your hometownactually adopted that?
And, to me, I think that's, you know,don't want to play too strong
a card on that front there.
But that's one areathat I find here in Canada that,
you know, we’ve got to get betteranswers to that question.
And if we if we can then,I think it could be the unlock
(36:56):
that we're looking forto create that ecosystem
and getting a reputation to sort of say,hey, we're we're a city
that's going to adopt the newthe new technology we're going to take.
We're going to bet on you, so to speak.
And your startup, because that ideais going to not only help
me and my company become a global leader,but it's going to feed into that,
(37:17):
that ecosystem, that it'salmost like an, an ecosystem that that
that innovates, grows, issuccessful, is going to beget,
a bigger ecosystemthat, that grows and is successful.
And that's the way I look at it. Anyway.
I sat down with, with Harley Finkelsteinthe other the other day
and he talked about, the president of Shopify,and he talked about,
(37:40):
how you leverage the strength of Canadato actually propel your company.
He talked about his abilityto get in a meeting with the CEO of Air
Canada or any large Canadian corporate,Because he’s Shopify he uses that to his advantage.
And so if you can't navigateyour own city, I mean, what does that say
that you're into navigating the globe?
(38:02):
I agree,I think it's a real interesting point.
Obviously, Shopify is Shopify.
It would be interesting to say, you know,10 years ago could have got that meeting
because I think what I thinkwhat you're saying is
early on to get those meetings,that's where the unlock is.
Certainly, you know, if you're, Google Sundar can go get a meeting
with whomever he wants,but maybe Larry and Sergey back in
(38:23):
1998 would have been a bitof a different matter. Or,
Or maybe not, because in the Bay area youcan't go and get those kind of meetings.
So I think it'sa very good point. I think,
Canadian company startups
maybeunfortunately, generally will focus on
getting the reference customerin the States because that's actually
the unlock to get Canadian companiesto then want to work with you.
(38:48):
And maybe that's changing.
I would like to think, certainly inAI that there's a recognition
that maybe these these folks, you know,are the leaders, not, you know,
but it's certainly an advantageif you can say, you know,
you're going to go talk to an airlineand you can you already have Air Canada.
Yes. It's going to be very helpfulif you're going to go talk to,
you know, the IRS
(39:10):
and you're already working with the CRA,of course, it's going to be helpful.
And so I think I think you're very right.
If there's, you know, the ability to,to show that you've got these,
reference customers, especiallyif you're able to just walk up and down
four blocks between you to, to get it doneand then take, you know, take that
successful applicationand, and show elsewhere
(39:33):
how you've actually done thingsin production and created value.
I think it's a huge opportunity.
I think itthen also shows that those companies,
you know, at Air Canada or at RBC
or, you know, Loblaws,you pick whomever you want
are themselves innovators,you know, and trying things to stay,
you know,just stay on the on the front foot.
(39:54):
So again, again, that's much less possiblein most cities in the world.
I think in a place like Torontoor Montreal,
there is the ability to have,you know, those very,
very symbioticor very mutually beneficial,
you know, collaborations to differentiate
both the sort of tech company,the startup and the more established,
(40:19):
corporation as, as innovators.
So, Martin, I'm a leader,of the Canadian organization.
If you think of other leaders acrossCanada listening to this podcast,
and you could wave your magic wandor give strong encouragement to them,
what would you and what would you sayto them to to move forward,
(40:40):
leveraging the the technologiesthat we're talking about today.
I would say
be very wary of death by a thousand POCs
or as someone else said to me, POC prison,
POC meaning proof of concept
Of course, I've been doing demos and POCsbecause the board wants to see something.
(41:01):
The CEO says, what are you doing?
And they'll do a little proof of concept,
but very little is deployed in production.
And so, what what
what we see leaders doing is not doing
masses of analysis and studies on
what the ROI is of all these use casesand so on,
and just picking something probably notthe most high return or high risk thing,
(41:28):
but just focusing on deployingthat in production at scale
and in the process
being forced
to go through the list of all the reasonswhy your risk department will say no,
while your compliance department will sayno, while your chief legal officer
will say no, and while your head of itsays, we can't do that.
Yeah, we can't do this,and you know, your CFO and just go through
(41:50):
because at some pointyou're gonna have to do that.
And that's the real unlock.
The unlock is not we have the best POCyou've ever seen, or we got a list of
the top 27 use cases on five year ROI.
It's going to be on deployingsomething in production at scale.
It could be something as simpleas your employee onboarding process,
or the government to offer informationto new immigrants in different languages
(42:15):
on, you know, how they navigate the,you know, CRA
and getting a driver's licensein the provincial government or whatever.
But it's it's really not out of scale,not just for five users
or 10 board members, but, you know,
five, 10, 20,000 or even 100,000,you know, even a million,
(42:35):
because that forces the enterpriseor the government to figure out
how to actually make this work at scale,which means that the next and the more
advanced and more high returnand high risk
applications, use cases, etc.
become that much easier to executeor even to, to play around
with safely in that sandbox.
(42:55):
And at the same time,and this is probably important for Canada.
But I think any country it creates trust.
And so if you as a company have a lotof people using the employee onboarding,
you're not going to be in the front page
of the Globe and Mail if it gives thewrong password to the Wi-Fi.
But it's going to build trust.
Like, wow, this makes my life easier.
(43:16):
I just saved a week of pouringthrough manuals
that, you know, to find the thingI needed.
As a, you know,whatever a baker in in in a, in a,
you know, in the bakery departmentof a big grocery store or whatever.
If you're a citizen and you're findingthat you just saved five hours
trying to figure outhow to get your all hit card, you know,
you're like, this is great.This is not going to put me out of a job.
(43:38):
This is just making lifebetter and easier.
So I think that is something to, toto to focus on.
There is an element, of course, of costand everyone focuses on near-term ROI.
But if you think back to the mid 90s,I don't know whether the investments
that companies made, who just werea little bit ahead of the curve,
were paid off in the near term.
(43:59):
But if you look five years out,10 years out, those
who did thrive, those that didn'tprobably don't exist anymore.
So I think that would be very pragmaticapproach is
it is just get on with deploying somethingat scale because that's the,
that forces you to
do the things that maybe our
front page newspaper articles about,you know, writing poetry
(44:22):
about your parakeet or whatevercool things that these models do.
But but really gets throughactually deploying it at scale.
And I'm sure, you know, you alland your colleagues
do a lot of that to say let's,you know, actually make something
that works as opposed to just,you know, doing workshops and so on,
but actually get on to build thingsand deploy, at scale.
(44:44):
That resonates with me.
And the, the advice I give is ais this thing going to move the needle
either at scale is at material, etc..
And then the second question,which I think is most impertinent
question, maybe this is wherethe proof of concept is.
Can you convince yourselfyou're going to change?
(45:04):
Are you going to change your processes?
Are you going to re-engineer
the way you do things? Which were designedfor a completely different age.
And if you satisfy those two questions,don't worry about the tech.
Don't worry about the data, don'tworry about the algorithm, because that's
becoming the easy partto a lot of what you've said here today.
So, Martin,that's all we have time for today.
(45:26):
And, Talia, thank you for joining us.
And, listeners,stay tuned for our wrap up.
Thank you again, Martin. Thank you.
AV, that was fun.
Yes it was. What did you learn today?
A lot.
My my, mindis racing in multiple directions, which,
(45:49):
you know me, that's not unusual, but,
having a spark or a catalystlike Martin here was unbelievable.
But what really stuck with meis that you're getting, again,
external validation of the giftsthat we have here in this country.
And in Toronto as it pertainsto the latest and greatest technologies.
(46:09):
And we talked about a lot todaythat is changing the world.
So it's,you know, how they sort of say, never
take anything for grantedthat's right in front of us.
We got another international successstory, sort of saying,
look what you've got here.
So I'm wondering,are we holding ourselves back?
Probably we are.
And so my learningis to walk away from this and say, stop
(46:30):
holding ourselves back,you know, individually as an organization,
as a citizen,if you will, and community members.
So that's what I took away.How about yourself?
Yeah, it's it's similar for me.
I mean, I,I like how we opened up and talked about,
you know, the,the unlock in human potential,
which obviously he was going to saybecause,
I mean, he's the president of a massiveAI company, but,
(46:52):
I mean, that's really topicalin today's environment.
And then I think about, you know, makingit real for citizens, for corporates
and how you actually it's it's really easyto say no.
We talked about the CLO and the CROand whoever to say no because of this
and no because of that.
But, you know,you really trying to create alpha,
You got to step outside the box.
And so there are little thingsthat a citizen can do.
(47:12):
They can download the app,they can use the app.
They can tell their neighbor about the appand continue to promote that adoption
rate.
And move from that sort of cultural,
I guess, barrierthat we're holding ourselves back from.
So I think there's a lot of promise.
I walked away really optimistic and,enjoyed the conversation.
(47:32):
It's amazing.
Like thinking back.
And Martin mentionsquite a few stories, success stories.
Those founders behind the success stories.
How many nos did they hear
during the courseof getting it up off the ground?
I mean, innovation’s about wherever you hearno, keep going that direction.
I think where youwhere you hear a yes, you're
probably not stretchingas much as you need to.
(47:54):
You're probably not,you know, unlocking, to use your word,
the potential that sits there right infront of you today and not tomorrow.
Today. Yeah, we don't talk about failureas Canadians.
We just,
had a software conference in Ottawathat happens every year called SAAS NORTH,
And, one of the founders,took a lot of courage
to get up on stage and actuallytalk about her story about how she failed.
(48:16):
They don't do that, right.
BetaKit doesn't report those articles.
They talk about,
you know, the massive funding roundsand the amazing, you know, job
and the commercial contractand this and that.
And they don't talk about the failuresthat happen
between there's lots to learn from that.
And they're probably aren't doing thatbecause of our culture of risk aversion.
So if they continued sharing the failures,
then maybe you wouldn'thave as much innovation to begin with.
So I guess I understand it to some degree.
(48:38):
Yeah. Excellent. Well, thank you again.
What a wonderfulconversation to have. And,
thank you for listening.
There are some CEOs here who say we want to be
(00:03):
top in the world in AI,not just amongst our competitors here.
And that's exciting.
Welcome to this episode of Full Circle,
a show where we confront Canada'spressing challenges and societal issues.
I'm your co-host, Anthony Viel,CEO of Deloitte Canada and Chile.
On this episode,we're asking the question,
(00:23):
how do new ideas get to market?
In this episode,we discuss the current state of innovation
and investment in Canadaand the complexities, challenges,
and costs faced by visionariesin bringing their ideas
to life in the Canadian ecosystem.
I had the pleasure of sitting downwith Martin Kon.
Martin is the president and CEO of cohere,
(00:45):
a company building AI for enterprises.
Previously, he servedas the CFO of Google's YouTube division.
Talia Abramowitz co-hosted with me.
Talia is the managing partnerof Deloitte Ventures Canada.
Our corporate venture capital fund
that invests in innovative,disruptive technology companies.
(01:05):
Please enjoy this episode of Full Circle.
Gidday everyone,and I'm thrilled to be here with you
both today, Talia and Martin.
And, we wanted to start things off
by talking a little bit about Cohere’s journeyand all the success you've had.
The company has made significant stridesin the field of AI.
(01:27):
This summer, you've been able to raisean impressive $500 million in funding.
Martin, can you tell us a bit
more about Cohere’s unique story,and how it all started?
Of course. Well, first of all,thank you for having me.
I wish I could be there with youin person.
I'm a native Torontonian,so I should be able to be there.
I'm calling in from our New York Cityoffice.
Cohere is the leading independent,
(01:51):
data privacy focused enterpriseAI company.
I could share a little bitabout the Genesis,
which is really somethingthat drew me to the company.
Our, CEO and co-founder,Aidan Gomez, is one of the inventors
of the transformer,which is the T in ChatGPT.
When he was at GoogleBrain in Mountain View,
he and his co-founder, Nick Frost,who was Professor Geoff Hinton's
(02:13):
first hire at his lab at Google Brain,and Ivan Zhang,
a fellow U of T student,studying under Geoff Hinton.
They were blown awayby what the transformer
enabled, when they saw what it could do.
And that was 2019.
And we're still very much,set on our mission
(02:33):
of being solely enterprise AI focused.
We do not have a cashburning consumer chat bot.
Very independent.
We have not taken a massive cheque
from our cloud providerin exchange for being exclusive to them.
So we're available in every cloud.
We're available on, through VPCor even all the way to On-Prem,
which is the highest,you know, data protection, data privacy
(02:57):
that enterprises, banks, oil and gas
utilities, governments,really anyone who really cares
about keeping their datainside their environment.
It's the highest dataprivacy that one can have.
And so that's what we're focused on.
And, and we count some of the world'smost respected,
(03:17):
strategic and financial investorsamongst our, our cap table.
So we're we're very excited
to be a global companythat happens to be, rooted in Canada.
Maybe much like our inspiration, Shopify,which we would love to emulate.
It's really been an amazing journey,
and in many ways,just the the early innings of it.
You guys are really on the bleedingedge of, technology innovation, but
(03:40):
maybe I want to step backand look at innovation a bit more broadly.
There's really been an increasing focusfrom governments and corporates
on innovation, in large partbecause of the data that suggests that
there's strong financial and strategicreasons associated with doing that.
But I'm curious about your viewand what you believe
the value of innovationis to individuals,
(04:03):
citizens, businesses, societyand really just economies at large?
Yeah.
It, it's a great question.
And, I believe firmly thatwhat we're seeing here with generative
AI is the biggest disruptiontransformation
in how humans and computers interactsince the Mosaic browser came out in 1993.
(04:26):
Everything changed.
And of course, we now we look backand see trillions of dollars of value
were created, millions of jobs,everyone's jobs were upgraded.
We got rid of doing the most of the stuffwe didn't like about our jobs, and got
to focus on the higher order elementsof of what the human brain can do.
And, I see the same thing happening now.
(04:48):
But what we believe is this unlockin, productivity.
We're not going to be able to do that.
And being able to enable employees,
but also customers, citizens
to access this lost knowledgewithin their service providers.
You just talked a little bit about thatunlock and the massive potential.
(05:09):
I've heard that organizations,might be using 4
to 10% of the data that they actually haveit, their, disposal.
I think that speaks tothe potential of the unlock, but this is a
this is an area where you think Coherecan really unlock, some opportunity.
Yeah.
And obviouslywe'd like to play a role in that.
I think there will be manythat can help unlock.
(05:31):
But we're very focused on that.
I hadn't heard that stat,but that makes a lot of sense
if you think about just
the enormous amount of dataand information inside organizations.
Much of it is very sensitiveand and thus valuable
that they would never want to expose itexternally.
They would never want tojust throw it out through an API.
Which is why some of these consumer chatbots are going to be very limited
(05:55):
in terms of what they can door why a Google search is limited.
It searches external public dataand not internal data.
And so if it's possible to find
information, to say semantically,
I'm looking for our perspectiveas a, as a,
but as an organizationon the future of Bolivian
(06:15):
bauxite mining, I have no ideaif there's bauxite, but whatever
it could have been that there was a Slackexchange between two Japanese colleagues
six months ago talking about this.
It could be that there was a videoconference with a bunch of experts,
in Italy, in Italian, that has somevery interesting perspectives.
(06:36):
It could be any number of things that arelocked away in this lost knowledge.
A bit like needles in a haystack.
And so if if you could help enterprisesfind these needles in a haystack,
every year the haystacks get bigger,the needles get more valuable,
but the unlock is enormous.
And, I think the analogy I might useis, is imagine today
(06:58):
if if one company had accessto Google search and the other didn't.
Yeah.
What a disadvantage that would be.
We couldn't even imagine it today.
Many of usremember what it was like before then.
Going to the research library,looking at microfiche,
you know, going pouring over,you know, (inaudible) things.
But but that is really exciting.
(07:20):
And, and that's also for things like,
doctors, medical professionals
spend 3.5 hours a day doing admin, doingpatient discharge notes.
Imagine if you could reduce that as,as Larry Ellison is passionate
about enabling, to to 20 minutes.
But that doesn't mean you're goingto let go of one third of your doctors.
(07:43):
It means that you will free upan enormous amount of time
for them to spend on diagnosing patients,you know, learning new techniques,
sleeping before the brain, surgerythe next day, whatever the case may be.
So we're very excited by that.
Yeah.
And, you make, several good pointsthat I want to jump on.
And given it's our show,I'm going to jump on a Martin.
(08:03):
But the, in terms of,like, it's not all about just efficiency.
It's about doing morefor the current capability.
And my goodness, NorthAmerica and Canada could not
and could not have enough of thatat this particular point in time,
given the demographic shiftthat's coming up.
So I see that as a real opportunityas a data scientist, or at least
I was one, we're unlocking that extrainformation, that breadth of information,
(08:28):
that's what I say to CEOs, createssustainable competitive advantage.
So, you know,if you can move that 10% to 20% or 30%,
you know that that's informationthat's proprietary to you
as an organization,and that's going to put you in good stead
when you go and compete,with your competition,
who doesn't have accessto that information?
(08:50):
My experience in data scienceis you win every day
when you when you have that information.
So that's very exciting.You're absolutely right.
And I think the,
you know,
the way we think about it a bit,
just picking up on and riffing a biton what you're saying is it's a big
when when people ask or companiesask executives, well, you know,
how are you going to beat OpenAIor isn't Google just going to do that?
(09:13):
My answer is sure.
We see things as a hierarchy of needs.
And that and the broadest part of that,the foundational part,
are all the mass market, generic.
Not in the bad way,generic generic, functionality
that billions of uswill use dozens of times an hour.
And these will be very well servedby Google.
(09:36):
You know, who knows, maybe by Appleand their phones or Samsung,
just like right now, autocomplete
and spellcheck are builtinto all of the things we use.
No one's using a separate app for thator investing in companies
that are doing that.
And likewise, the basic functionalityto quickly generate email drafts or,
have a quick speech, suggestionfor your assistants retirement party.
(10:01):
It'll be built in a Google.
Google Docsor Microsoft Word or Gmail, etc.
and it'll be great.
Well, I'll pay a bit more.
Those companies will do incredibly well.
There's no need for a company,
to go and designthose kind of capabilities themselves.
The next layer upare all the SaaS applications and software
that are embedded in every workflowand every company in the world,
(10:22):
and they're not going anywhere.
So think Oracle, Fusion or.
NetSuite, think SAP, Bloomberg,Experian, ServiceNow, etc.
and likewise, those companies are justintegrating these kind of capabilities
into their, SaaS products and workflowto make them better.
We're very excited to partnervery closely with Oracle.
And there are now, I believe,over 100, 105, if I'm not mistaken.
(10:45):
AI powered featuresbuilt into their fusion and NetSuite
suite of apps that are betteralready deployed in 25,000 enterprises.
And you just quietly get access to thatas you want to, you know, auto generate
job descriptions or, you know,be able to sift through 10,000 CDs,
without taking seven hours to do it.
(11:05):
And but the top is a little bitwhat you're talking about, right?
The top of that is thethose are the mission
critical core capabilities,of of enterprises
that give give them strategic advantage,give them alpha against their competitors.
And that's where you don't want to usea generic chat bot or,
you know, the same, appthat everyone has access to,
(11:27):
the same models everyone has access to,because that won't give you alpha.
You know, if you use Gmail, that's great.
So does your competitor. Fine.
And so while everyone might have accessto, you know, the very good models
that everyone has from Cohere or OpenAIor Anthropic or Google, they can say,
that's nice, but we have our proprietaryone that's better than all of them.
(11:47):
And so we want to work with companiesto create those unique capabilities
that, as you say, give them alpha,against their competitors.
And we think that's what's going to happenmore and more.
It's not going to be thethe standard generic models
that are available to everyone or chatbots.
It's going to be customizing to make them,unique based on the in-house
(12:09):
capabilities and allow them to,to beat their competition.
And Martin, you it remind me of,
prominent, prominent,
professor here, Roger Martin
here at the University of Toronto,where he talks about you either
compete on and, differentiationor you compete on cost.
(12:32):
And whenever you're using generic,I can't see how you can compete
on differentiation. So, you know my words.
The CEO,
if youif you're going to put a dollar anywhere,
make sure that it's directed in an areawhere you’ve got some proprietary data,
whether it's breadthor depth or otherwise.
So what you're saying is really resonatingfor me, moving beyond the organization,
perhaps, and shifting gears a little bitbecause I'd love to, you know,
(12:55):
get into some other things
that you raised, as well,but we'll do it in the normal course here.
As a nation,
We, understanding the importanceand the impact
that innovation has on people,which we just discussed, organizations
which we discussed in society at large,which is where I'd like to get to.
How do you think Canada.
How do you think we do when it comesto adopting new technologies?
(13:19):
And innovating in general?
And I'm, I'm a very proud Canadian, very excited to,
work hard to, to build
a generational company,with, with with Canadian roots.
I think Canada often times can be
a little bit slowerto adopt new technologies.
(13:39):
I, I saw stat recentlythat Canadian companies are adopting
AI at about half the rate of the US.
And I think oftentimes Canadianslike to see, okay,
where is it working elsewherenow we feel good about adopting it.
And I think secondly,
I'll be a little bit provocative here,but I think many have found this,
(14:00):
that as a Canadian company,the hardest companies to sell to
are other Canadian companiesbecause we, I'll put myself in that boat,
We have a little bitof an inferiority complex,
but I do think there's incredibleopportunity for us.
And you mentioned productivity.
And I think the, the, the, the potentialfor productivity gains here are enormous.
You look at the U.S.
(14:21):
and a lot of the growth in GDP since the,the 90s has been from tech.
And, you know, I think somethinglike 35% of, of, I don't know
if it's GDP or market capitalizationor whatever is the tech industry.
I think Canada, you know,maybe hasn't quite had that same wave.
And of course, our, our GDP per person
(14:42):
is, is going down, which is, which is troubling.
I think we have an opportunityhere, to, to really turn that around
and have Canada be a leader in AI.
We have great professors.
We have great institutionslike U of T, like
the vector Institute, like Mila, etc..
(15:03):
But that's only part of the equation.
I think we need to be carefulabout patting ourselves in the back,
that we have great researchers
and students, because if they all leaveto commercialize elsewhere, that's
maybe even worse, because we educated themand then they go elsewhere.
And that's unfortunatelywhat seems to have been happening.
That's one of the reasonswhy our co-founders really wanted to, to
to create this, this, a company in Canada to allow,
(15:27):
these researchers and professionalsto commercialize here.
That's the real gap.
It's in between the sort of seedfunding of an idea
and maybe when the pensionsjump in an IPO, it's the it's that,
you know, Raquel Urtasun of Waabi says thatsort of chasm of how you how you scale up.
And I think there are some thingsthat that we really can do as a nation.
(15:48):
I do believe the government has,has, has been very,
forward thinking in the compute subsidies,for example,
that that have been recently announcedto make sure
that there is super compute capacitythat is available in Canada,
and potentially at an advantaged priceto Canadian startups and scale ups.
I believe one of the biggest
(16:08):
unlockswould be having Canadian companies and
Canadian, governmental institutions
be lead users and,and actually adopt this technology,
show how we can develop better servicesfor, our citizens.
That's something for example, the MiddleEast is absolute on the front foot.
If you look at what
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is doing,you look what you UAE’s doing.
(16:31):
I think 98,97% of all the government services in
Saudi you could do on your phone,including renewing your passport.
You know,renewing your driver's license.
And now I see the next wave,
having our, our, our,our big enterprises,
really become lead usershere, and ideally
(16:52):
giving a fair shot to local companieswhom I believe are the best in the world.
It's not like you're doing itout of charity.
And one of the things I love, mymy parents and my sister
and her family live in Vancouvernow, and I went to the Olympics in 2010,
and I loved how un Canadian we werewhere rather than say, let's just be good
with silver, which is all we gotin Calgary, in Montreal
(17:14):
in ‘88 and ‘76,we said, we're going to own the podium.
You know, effort, so to speak.
We're going to win more gold at anyone.And what happened?
We did we won 14 gold medals
because we just said we're going to winand we're going to
we're going to figure out where we can winand we're going to pour resources
behind those thingsrather than peanut buttering everywhere.
And that was a, you know,I think until Norway, tied it,
(17:38):
that was literally the record for the mostgold medals at a winter games.
And I think we had the opportunityto do the same here, to own the podium,
you know? Yes.
We got talent.
Yes, we got research.
We need to have VC funding.
We need to get the pension funds to maybe,
you know, not wait
until there's 400 million of ARR,but actually come a little bit further
(17:58):
back to support, like the sovereignsand other countries are doing.
We need to have, usage,to actually that, or companies
and organizations become usersand then reference users.
If you're working for a large Canadianbank or you're working for a respected,
you know, governmental organization,I think that is
(18:19):
a, you know, a stamp of approval for,for others, globally.
So I think there's a chance for usreally to be leaders,
but it's going to take a concertedeffort to own the podium.
It's an interesting challenge.
Like I, I often reflect with Talia and,and, and other partners
of our organization to sort of say,what else could we be doing that
you spec around,we got all the ingredients
(18:40):
to make the cake, to own the podium,as you put it.
And, that,that point that you make around, you know,
we fast adopters of Canadian tech,
we, we supporting this Canadian techgo from scale
up to, start up to scale up, if you will.
Can we be doing better there?
And I think you sort of hitthe nail on the head for me.
(19:02):
Somebody is a newcomer of 10 yearsand proud Canadian.
It's that's that'swhat's missing here, I think.
Well, one of the critical gaps I don'tentirely if you a point on that or Martin.
Definitely a lot of opinions on that.
I mean, we've done a study recentlyon the state of corporate Canada
which showed that only 6%of Canadian corporates with over $1
(19:24):
billion in annual revenue participated
in a direct VC investment in 2023.
And that's compared with 40% in the U.S.
That's a huge gap.
And I mean, there's obviouslya critical role that corporates
have to play in this equation, not only indirecting VC dollars, but, as you
mentioned, as becoming reference sitesand early adopters of this technology.
(19:47):
From your perspective, likewhat do you think are the the primary gaps
and real barriers really preventingCanadian corporates from moving
just beyond this performative actionand actually truly embracing
these new technologiesthat were born in Canada?
Yeah, it's it's a great question.
I mean, first of all,let me back up a little bit.
(20:08):
I think, I think there are some really,
forward thinking
VCs in the, in the country, Radical Ventures is our seed funder.
And I would say they're objectively thebest, VC sorry, AI focused VC on the planet.
I think they've met with 8500 companies.
(20:30):
That number's probably out of date by now.
Invested in 44 or something.
And they're based right here in Toronto,
where I think it's really about whetherleadership, you know, starts with the CEO
but permeates down has the ambitionand the aspiration to be the winner.
Right.
Or a global leader as opposed tohow do I beat my Canadian competitors?
(20:52):
And that's really what it's about.
That's why I think a lot of,
a lot of the top talent, they don't,don't want to work for a branch,
a branch plantor a branch office of some big company.
They want to work at HQ. These days
Post-CovidHQ doesn't necessarily mean the same place
that it's always physically been.
You can actually, you know, drive thingsif you're in the right
(21:12):
organization,even if you maybe live in Toronto.
I was able to, you know, do my job duringCovid from, you know, not not San Bruno.
I was a CFO of YouTube.
And that's very different to what,you know, what it was like before.
And so I think, CEOs and their teams
who say we want to differentiate,we want to be a global winner.
(21:35):
That's why we like citing Shopify, because
I don't think anyone outside of Canadamaybe even knows they're Canadian.
They're just Shopify and competingincredibly well with Amazon.
Who would have who would have thoughtthat's even possible?
But they're doing a great joband could happen to be very proudly
in the Canadian ecosystem.
So I think that's the, you know,
Again, it comes back a little bitto this chutzpah maybe of own the podium.
(21:59):
You know, we aspire to workwith the most demanding, sophisticated,
respected enterprises on the planet.
And I think there aremany of those in Canada
and having a an aspirationto compete on the global stage.
For example, it'svery exciting to see the
I forget the organization, but there's anAI maturity index for banks.
(22:20):
Number one is JP Morgan Chase.
Number two is Capital One,number three RBC.
And that's not in Canada.
It's not even in North America.That's globally.
And so,
you know, that kind of ambition andaspiration and I think is what we need
to, you know, be global leadersin a way that I think we have
in some sectors, in a way that we have,you know, in some in some eras.
(22:44):
But that's, yeah, I think, I think
just getting businessleadership, government leadership,
you know, academic leadership togetherto say we're going to own the podium.
We have all the ingredients.Let's let's do that.
For example, in data centers,we need less cooling
In Canada,there's lots of nice clean power.
Your power grid is not like it ismaybe in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.
(23:06):
or down in Texas.
It's stable.
We don't have you know, we don't havehurricanes that shut the grid down.
There's all sorts of reasons whywe could be a real leader in data centers.
Data annotation,which will become a new profession.
You know, creating synthetic data.
You need doctorsto say what a good patient summary is.
You don't just find that on the internet.
You need someone to definethat to train the models.
(23:28):
There's
all sorts of different thingsthat Canada can lead at,
in what is, as we said,the biggest thing to happen since the
browser came out and the internetrevolution, you know, change the world.
Man, you touch on an interesting thing.
You've said global leaders.
Not every Canadian organization competesglobally per se,
but setting a benchmark to be a globalleader is in our best interest.
(23:50):
I think, it plays into going higher,
stronger, faster,if you will, at the community level,
at the provincial level,at the country level.
And that plays into a lot of those,
that unlockthat you're talking about in my mind,
that unlock, you're talkingabout adopting this technology or helping,
these organizations, these startups,that are as good as any in the world,
(24:14):
in my experience.
And you've said the same, and I'm thinkingmore broadly about the system
level impacts of your courageto adopt that technology.
Not take on any undue risk.
But by definition, new technologydoes take some risk with it.
But collectively as a system,as a province, as a community,
(24:34):
as a country, if we can elevate,you know, all boats should rise.
And so your pointthere is, resonating with me.
Just shifting gears a little bit,you know, Canada's
built, on immigration, on immigrants.
And not only, the top, the best talent.
If you said the same at the top here, best talent is flocking here
(24:57):
to go to our institutions for AI,education,
research and otherwise.
There's another element
for mineis, that is coming with that as well,
is that we're bringing perspectives and,from all parts of the world.
So it's the AI education, but also theperspectives from all parts of the world.
Maybe you got to comment or around
(25:18):
Do you think that createsdifferentiation as well?
I think there is somethingabout immigrants
going to a new place and really being,
you know, motivatedto try and do something there.
And I think you're right.
I think Canada has a real opportunityto to leverage that.
It's a very attractive placeto come for for many, many reasons,
as we all know,because we did or our parents did.
(25:38):
And and and I think
there's an opportunity to,you know, potentially
with some of the different thingsgoing on in the world and,
you know, where
if you're coming from Indiaor Argentina or,
you know, wherever it isyou may prefer to come to Canada
than other optionsout there, quality of life,
(25:59):
you know, political institutions,social institutions and so on.
I think we need to make surethat there's opportunity there.
And at the end of the day, smart peoplewant to work with other smart people.
And yes,you can say, you know, this is, you know,
somewhere is a great placeto, to to move to Vancouver or whatever.
But if you uproot a family, to,to move there because, you know, the,
(26:24):
the incredible machinelearning engineer gets a great job offer,
she and her family and her husbanduproot themselves and move to Vancouver.
And that doesn't work out,which oftentimes happens.
And then she thinks, well,then what do I do?
Because what other jobs are here?
That's that's that's a tough thing to do.
That's why Silicon Valleyand now New York
(26:44):
are relatively de-risk,because if you go there, you know, that,
you know,there are a bunch of other things
you can do after.I think that virtuous circle
we have to build,we have to build that in Toronto.
New York did a nice job.
Or just build that more broadly in Canada.
Where there is that virtuous circleof success, there's a virtuous circle of
then early success is fundingthe next one's, hiring the next people.
(27:06):
You know, the junior marketing peoplegoing to be the head of marketing
at the next startup and so on.
And I think we have anopportunity to make Canada,
not just a good
destination for students to go,
but a good destinationfor graduates to stay
because they want to found their companieshere.
They want to grow them.
They want to join companies,not just startups, but
(27:29):
established companieswho are doing innovative things,
and and then scale,
you know, scale them over timeand or the early to adopt.
You may want to go to a bank or a telcoand help them adopt AI.
And so I think the key ishow do we commercialize, how do we quickly
how do we make sure thatthat the smartest people are working on
(27:51):
the gnarliest problemsfor the best companies in the world,
with other smart people
and make Canada the place to do it?
And, and so,I, I can't say what the panacea is,
but I do believe there it really comesdown to this commercialization,
building a business, adopting,taking some risks.
(28:15):
It's not about some government program.
Snap your fingers.
It's done.
Or, you know, about,
you know, some subsidy that happens.
It's a lot coming togetherand including and especially around
adoption being customers,and taking some risks.
And of course, then you've got the capitalbehind it and those kind of things.
(28:36):
Yeah. Capitaldoesn't seem to be a problem these days.
And I think that importance of what you'retalking about with ecosystems,
and if it's a strong ecosystem,it's almost like a bit of a backstop.
We see this playing out in otherindustries here in Canada in particular,
where you might be drawn to a particularcity for a particular opportunity.
But the questions get lessand less about the opportunity.
(28:58):
The pay, the benefits, etc..
And then they start to turn to, well,I have children, I have other needs
What's this system provide me?
And in the context of what
you just described to me, it'sresonating to sort of say,
hey, if this doesn't work outand most of them don't,
and I'll turn to Talia in a minutewith some stats.
But if it doesn't turn out,I can bounce to something else.
(29:19):
And I don't have to uproot, and then go and start all over again.
It's just there.
And I think your Silicon Valley, New Yorkexample is something that we can follow.
Yeah.
I agree, I, I justwant to pick up on on what you're saying
there, Martin, and how,you know, you talk about this big unlock.
We talk about innovation in generaland how it has the ability to unlock
(29:40):
human potential.
Then we talked about Canadaand there's some really great shining
moments of Canada. Great researchers.
You know, maybe not so greatculturally in terms of taking risks
and so a bit spotty there.
And we talked about bringing itall together and commercialization. Right.
So it doesn'tjust take a visionary founders.
It doesn't just take a corporate.
(30:00):
It doesn't just take the governmentcreating a new policy as you
just take that.
It takes all of uskind of singing in unison.
And so, you know,getting really tactical here, trying
to solve the world'sproblems on this one podcast.
How how do you think we actually do that?
Like, how do we movethe needle in each of those groups?
If you had to tell governments,
(30:21):
if you had to tell corporate Canada,if you had to tell citizen,
what do you have to do in orderto make this, you know, on the scale
of Silicon Valley or, you know, bea global powerhouse, take the podium?
Like, how how would we do that?
Oh, gosh, I wish I hada I wish I had the perfect answer there.
This should bethe most valuable podcast ever.
(30:44):
I was gonna say. Yeah, it's. Come on Martn.
So I think, I mean, look,these things take time.
The reason why Silicon Valley is whatit is, is ultimately because of Stanford
and then HPE and then everythingthat kind of came after that.
But I do thinkthere are some things to do.
When I was, when I was in New York,I, I'm a partial reform consultant.
(31:06):
But when I was in consulting,
we worked closely with the Bloombergadministration in 2009,
after the big crash,obviously FI was very badly hit.
The number two industry in New York Citywas media.
And, but it was really traditionalold sort of old media, right?
Newspapers, magazines,broadcast news, etc..
And the mayor wanted to.and his administration wanted
(31:27):
To, understand how to maintainNew York City as a media hub.
But very quickly,it was digital media hub.
And so 60 to 70 CEOs got together.
You know,when when Mike calls, they answer,
and really,you know, convene this group to say,
how do we you know, make New York,
a place that that's new media,
(31:50):
and digital, and it wasn't likethere was one magic thing,
but there was a lot of thingsthat that group together, I
it didn't use these words, butthe idea was, we want to own the podium.
We we, we care about New Yorkso deeply as CEOs, as government leaders,
as, you know, the the, you know,president of the universities, etc.,
that we're going to work together on this.It went on for four years.
(32:12):
And there are a bunch of little thingsthat were done.
They opened the, the city's, databases
through APIs, and they had somethingcalled New York City Big Apps.
It was a big, you know, app competition.
The prize giving was held at IACwith Barry Diller.
You know, Jeff Bewkes came from TimeWarner and, you know, the mayor and so on.
So it was really aroundjust shining a light.
(32:32):
And then around the world when they sawthat the cheque being handed to a,
you know, a few Indian kidswho built the app that won
everyone in India was like,what do you mean, New York City?
Like, we thought everythingwent to San Francisco.
And so it really was this kind ofcollaborative effort with some patience.
I think a lot of it, too,was that these CEOs were then saying, hey,
we want to support the local companiesthat are building stuff.
(32:55):
They talk about somethingcalled the velvet rope syndrome.
You know, in Silicon Valley,you go to Starbucks
and you could be standing nextto Eric Schmidt, and he sees a business
plan and asks to sit down over a coffeeand, you know, hear about it.
In New York, you'll have the velvet ropewhere the
the CEOs and execs are having lunch,having breakfast at Michael's.
And, you know,everyone else is in Brooklyn or, you know,
(33:18):
south of 14th Street.
And so it was like, well, how do we breakthat, that velvet rope syndrome?
How do we get the business executivestogether with some of the innovators?
And so I do think one of the things thatI used to say about New York, I still do,
San Francisco, is a little bit of a oneindustry town, pure tech.
And it's amazingyou're never going to out of pure tech.
(33:41):
San Francisco.
But I say that'swhere things are invented.
New York City is where you figurehow to make money with them.
Yeah, because you got every singleindustry in the world in New York City.
The same is true of Toronto.
You know, it's
the number two banking centerin, in North America.
It's got, you know, aeronautical,you know, aerospace, it's got fashion.
(34:02):
It's got, film, it's got, insurance.
It's got, you know, mining companieswho have, you know,
basis they're manufacturing, food.
You know, you could go on and onand on health, healthcare,
all the different,you know, the hospital networks.
And so it's that it's that combinationof people trying to invent technology.
(34:24):
They have to then work with them,
you know, with the ecosystemthat's actually going to take this and,
and create value with it for themselves,for the customers.
And the proximity in Toronto is,
I'd say, fairly unparalleled, maybewith the exception of a New York City
where it's an incredible,you know, you know,
(34:44):
incredible opportunityto bring those elements together.
You know, Montreal.I don't want to sort of,
ignore my my alma mater of McGill.
You know, Montreal, I think also hasa lot of different industries there.
So I do think all the ingredientsare there structurally- immigration,
education,you know, standard of living safety.
(35:06):
There's a lot of capital. All of thesedifferent industries just literally
walk down the road and see huge banks,which you can't do that
if you're, in LA.
So, yeah,I don't have a panacea in any way.
I think the ingredients are thereand it's sort of,
I think an effort just to bring,
(35:27):
you know, bring folks togetherand say we are going to own the podium
because we want to wincollectively in this space.
Each of us needs to,you know, contribute something.
And it takes the absolute top leadership.
I mean, this is like, you know, asI said before, six it was only CEOs.
You could not go in the roomunless you were a CEO.
You could not send any proxy.
And it was, you know, at the time,
(35:49):
you know, Mike Bloomberg's a bit of a,you know,
a very good convener, let's say that,so the top levels of government as well.
Yeah, that was a total non-answer, butcertainly excitement that the ingredients
are there for the cake baking,as you were saying before.
Martin, I'd pick that up a little bit.
Like I often wonder, I haven't hada startup myself, so full transparency,
(36:13):
But the if you're pitchingjust your idea or your technology
and you come from a citylike New York or Toronto or even Montreal,
like you, like you say, and you don't havea reference site in your city
Using your technology, it's sort of likeit feels to me like a missed opportunity
and begs the questionfor the next buyer of that technology.
(36:36):
Well, why hasn't anyone in your hometownactually adopted that?
And, to me, I think that's, you know,don't want to play too strong
a card on that front there.
But that's one areathat I find here in Canada that,
you know, we’ve got to get betteranswers to that question.
And if we if we can then,I think it could be the unlock
(36:56):
that we're looking forto create that ecosystem
and getting a reputation to sort of say,hey, we're we're a city
that's going to adopt the newthe new technology we're going to take.
We're going to bet on you, so to speak.
And your startup, because that ideais going to not only help
me and my company become a global leader,but it's going to feed into that,
(37:17):
that ecosystem, that it'salmost like an, an ecosystem that that
that innovates, grows, issuccessful, is going to beget,
a bigger ecosystemthat, that grows and is successful.
And that's the way I look at it. Anyway.
I sat down with, with Harley Finkelsteinthe other the other day
and he talked about, the president of Shopify,and he talked about,
(37:40):
how you leverage the strength of Canadato actually propel your company.
He talked about his abilityto get in a meeting with the CEO of Air
Canada or any large Canadian corporate,Because he’s Shopify he uses that to his advantage.
And so if you can't navigateyour own city, I mean, what does that say
that you're into navigating the globe?
(38:02):
I agree,I think it's a real interesting point.
Obviously, Shopify is Shopify.
It would be interesting to say, you know,10 years ago could have got that meeting
because I think what I thinkwhat you're saying is
early on to get those meetings,that's where the unlock is.
Certainly, you know, if you're, Google Sundar can go get a meeting
with whomever he wants,but maybe Larry and Sergey back in
(38:23):
1998 would have been a bitof a different matter. Or,
Or maybe not, because in the Bay area youcan't go and get those kind of meetings.
So I think it'sa very good point. I think,
Canadian company startups
maybeunfortunately, generally will focus on
getting the reference customerin the States because that's actually
the unlock to get Canadian companiesto then want to work with you.
(38:48):
And maybe that's changing.
I would like to think, certainly inAI that there's a recognition
that maybe these these folks, you know,are the leaders, not, you know,
but it's certainly an advantageif you can say, you know,
you're going to go talk to an airlineand you can you already have Air Canada.
Yes. It's going to be very helpfulif you're going to go talk to,
you know, the IRS
(39:10):
and you're already working with the CRA,of course, it's going to be helpful.
And so I think I think you're very right.
If there's, you know, the ability to,to show that you've got these,
reference customers, especiallyif you're able to just walk up and down
four blocks between you to, to get it doneand then take, you know, take that
successful applicationand, and show elsewhere
(39:33):
how you've actually done thingsin production and created value.
I think it's a huge opportunity.
I think itthen also shows that those companies,
you know, at Air Canada or at RBC
or, you know, Loblaws,you pick whomever you want
are themselves innovators,you know, and trying things to stay,
you know,just stay on the on the front foot.
(39:54):
So again, again, that's much less possiblein most cities in the world.
I think in a place like Torontoor Montreal,
there is the ability to have,you know, those very,
very symbioticor very mutually beneficial,
you know, collaborations to differentiate
both the sort of tech company,the startup and the more established,
(40:19):
corporation as, as innovators.
So, Martin, I'm a leader,of the Canadian organization.
If you think of other leaders acrossCanada listening to this podcast,
and you could wave your magic wandor give strong encouragement to them,
what would you and what would you sayto them to to move forward,
(40:40):
leveraging the the technologiesthat we're talking about today.
I would say
be very wary of death by a thousand POCs
or as someone else said to me, POC prison,
POC meaning proof of concept
Of course, I've been doing demos and POCsbecause the board wants to see something.
(41:01):
The CEO says, what are you doing?
And they'll do a little proof of concept,
but very little is deployed in production.
And so, what what
what we see leaders doing is not doing
masses of analysis and studies on
what the ROI is of all these use casesand so on,
and just picking something probably notthe most high return or high risk thing,
(41:28):
but just focusing on deployingthat in production at scale
and in the process
being forced
to go through the list of all the reasonswhy your risk department will say no,
while your compliance department will sayno, while your chief legal officer
will say no, and while your head of itsays, we can't do that.
Yeah, we can't do this,and you know, your CFO and just go through
(41:50):
because at some pointyou're gonna have to do that.
And that's the real unlock.
The unlock is not we have the best POCyou've ever seen, or we got a list of
the top 27 use cases on five year ROI.
It's going to be on deployingsomething in production at scale.
It could be something as simpleas your employee onboarding process,
or the government to offer informationto new immigrants in different languages
(42:15):
on, you know, how they navigate the,you know, CRA
and getting a driver's licensein the provincial government or whatever.
But it's it's really not out of scale,not just for five users
or 10 board members, but, you know,
five, 10, 20,000 or even 100,000,you know, even a million,
(42:35):
because that forces the enterpriseor the government to figure out
how to actually make this work at scale,which means that the next and the more
advanced and more high returnand high risk
applications, use cases, etc.
become that much easier to executeor even to, to play around
with safely in that sandbox.
(42:55):
And at the same time,and this is probably important for Canada.
But I think any country it creates trust.
And so if you as a company have a lotof people using the employee onboarding,
you're not going to be in the front page
of the Globe and Mail if it gives thewrong password to the Wi-Fi.
But it's going to build trust.
Like, wow, this makes my life easier.
(43:16):
I just saved a week of pouringthrough manuals
that, you know, to find the thingI needed.
As a, you know,whatever a baker in in in a, in a,
you know, in the bakery departmentof a big grocery store or whatever.
If you're a citizen and you're findingthat you just saved five hours
trying to figure outhow to get your all hit card, you know,
you're like, this is great.This is not going to put me out of a job.
(43:38):
This is just making lifebetter and easier.
So I think that is something to, toto to focus on.
There is an element, of course, of costand everyone focuses on near-term ROI.
But if you think back to the mid 90s,I don't know whether the investments
that companies made, who just werea little bit ahead of the curve,
were paid off in the near term.
(43:59):
But if you look five years out,10 years out, those
who did thrive, those that didn'tprobably don't exist anymore.
So I think that would be very pragmaticapproach is
it is just get on with deploying somethingat scale because that's the,
that forces you to
do the things that maybe our
front page newspaper articles about,you know, writing poetry
(44:22):
about your parakeet or whatevercool things that these models do.
But but really gets throughactually deploying it at scale.
And I'm sure, you know, you alland your colleagues
do a lot of that to say let's,you know, actually make something
that works as opposed to just,you know, doing workshops and so on,
but actually get on to build thingsand deploy, at scale.
(44:44):
That resonates with me.
And the, the advice I give is ais this thing going to move the needle
either at scale is at material, etc..
And then the second question,which I think is most impertinent
question, maybe this is wherethe proof of concept is.
Can you convince yourselfyou're going to change?
(45:04):
Are you going to change your processes?
Are you going to re-engineer
the way you do things? Which were designedfor a completely different age.
And if you satisfy those two questions,don't worry about the tech.
Don't worry about the data, don'tworry about the algorithm, because that's
becoming the easy partto a lot of what you've said here today.
So, Martin,that's all we have time for today.
(45:26):
And, Talia, thank you for joining us.
And, listeners,stay tuned for our wrap up.
Thank you again, Martin. Thank you.
AV, that was fun.
Yes it was. What did you learn today?
A lot.
My my, mindis racing in multiple directions, which,
(45:49):
you know me, that's not unusual, but,
having a spark or a catalystlike Martin here was unbelievable.
But what really stuck with meis that you're getting, again,
external validation of the giftsthat we have here in this country.
And in Toronto as it pertainsto the latest and greatest technologies.
(46:09):
And we talked about a lot todaythat is changing the world.
So it's,you know, how they sort of say, never
take anything for grantedthat's right in front of us.
We got another international successstory, sort of saying,
look what you've got here.
So I'm wondering,are we holding ourselves back?
Probably we are.
And so my learningis to walk away from this and say, stop
(46:30):
holding ourselves back,you know, individually as an organization,
as a citizen,if you will, and community members.
So that's what I took away.How about yourself?
Yeah, it's it's similar for me.
I mean, I,I like how we opened up and talked about,
you know, the,the unlock in human potential,
which obviously he was going to saybecause,
I mean, he's the president of a massiveAI company, but,
(46:52):
I mean, that's really topicalin today's environment.
And then I think about, you know, makingit real for citizens, for corporates
and how you actually it's it's really easyto say no.
We talked about the CLO and the CROand whoever to say no because of this
and no because of that.
But, you know,you really trying to create alpha,
You got to step outside the box.
And so there are little thingsthat a citizen can do.
(47:12):
They can download the app,they can use the app.
They can tell their neighbor about the appand continue to promote that adoption
rate.
And move from that sort of cultural,
I guess, barrierthat we're holding ourselves back from.
So I think there's a lot of promise.
I walked away really optimistic and,enjoyed the conversation.
(47:32):
It's amazing.
Like thinking back.
And Martin mentionsquite a few stories, success stories.
Those founders behind the success stories.
How many nos did they hear
during the courseof getting it up off the ground?
I mean, innovation’s about wherever you hearno, keep going that direction.
I think where youwhere you hear a yes, you're
probably not stretchingas much as you need to.
(47:54):
You're probably not,you know, unlocking, to use your word,
the potential that sits there right infront of you today and not tomorrow.
Today. Yeah, we don't talk about failureas Canadians.
We just,
had a software conference in Ottawathat happens every year called SAAS NORTH,
And, one of the founders,took a lot of courage
to get up on stage and actuallytalk about her story about how she failed.
(48:16):
They don't do that, right.
BetaKit doesn't report those articles.
They talk about,
you know, the massive funding roundsand the amazing, you know, job
and the commercial contractand this and that.
And they don't talk about the failuresthat happen
between there's lots to learn from that.
And they're probably aren't doing thatbecause of our culture of risk aversion.
So if they continued sharing the failures,
then maybe you wouldn'thave as much innovation to begin with.
So I guess I understand it to some degree.
(48:38):
Yeah. Excellent. Well, thank you again.
What a wonderfulconversation to have. And,
thank you for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.