Building the New Growth Workforce with AI/Jim Kaskade - Use Cases, Playbooks, Transparency ~ Spark of Ages Ep. 5 - Spark of Ages

Episode Transcript
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Rajiv Parikh (00:15):
Hello and welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast,
where we're going to talk tofounders, innovators, ceos,
investors, designers and artists.
I'm talking game changers abouttheir big world shaping ideas
and what sparked them.
I'm your host, rajiv Parikh,and I'm the CEO and founder of
Position Squared, a growthmarketing agency based in Palo

(00:36):
Alto.
So, yes, I'm a Silicon Valleyentrepreneur, but I'm also a
business news junkie and ahistory nerd.
Whether it's how World War Itanks were cleverly designed to
defeat trench warfare or howtoday's digital health devices
may help us defeat mortality,I'm fascinated by how big, world
changing movements go from thespark of an idea to an

(00:58):
innovation that reshapes ourlives.
In every episode, we're goingto do a deep dive with our
guests about what led them totheir own Eureka moments and how
they're going about executingit.
And, perhaps most importantly,how do they get other people to
believe in them so that theiridea could also someday become a
spark for the ages.

(01:19):
In addition to myself, we haveour producer, sandeep, who will
occasionally chime in to makesure we don't get too in the
weeds with Tech Jargon.
He's a comedian, writer andactor based on LA who's been on
some really cool shows like TheGuild, Community, and Glitch
Techs, but his most importantcredit is he's my little bro.

(01:41):
Say hi Sandeep, hi Sandeep.
This is the Spark of Agespodcast.
For our interview today, we haveJim Kaskade.
Jim is currently the CEO of theprivate equity backed rocket
ship Conversica.

(02:02):
Founded in 2007, conversica isthe pioneer and leading provider
of conversational AI solutions.
Consisting of a suite of AIassistants, aka digital team
members, it's dedicated tohelping revenue-centric
organizations attract, acquireand grow customers at scale.
Jim is the CEO of over 21 years.

(02:23):
He's been part of 11 startups,seven of which he helped found,
four of which he was invitedinto and five of which were sold
.
His startup experience involvesin building high tech
businesses ranging fromartificial intelligence,
security, cloud computing,enterprise software, software as
a service or SaaS, online andmobile digital media, online and

(02:44):
mobile advertising andsemiconductors.
He has another 10 years of bigenterprise experience in data
warehousing, analyticalapplications and business
intelligence services designedto maximize the intrinsic value
of data, servicing Fortune 1000companies in telecom, retail and
financial markets.
Jim is a close friend.
He's a brilliant guy.

(03:05):
He's a leading mind when itcomes to the thing that's on
everyone's minds today, which isartificial intelligence.
We're going to dig into that aswell as his journey as an
entrepreneur, an executive and afather.
We want to see what makes himtick.
I knew Jim would be the perfectguest for this show, because I
would sit with him many timesand see him literally take over
a room, especially when he runsworkshops.

(03:26):
He has this uncanny ability tojust brighten up the room in
real time, and so that's whatI'm really excited about In
having him come here and sharewith you how he draws these
beautiful pictures in his mindand how he brings that out for
his team, his customers, hisfriends and his circle.

Sandeep Parikh (03:46):
Here's what I'm excited about.
Real quick, Rajiv is learningwhat a SaaS company is.
So it's like a very sassycompany.
Is that what you're trying tosay?
It's got like attitude, right,that's what that means?

Very sassy very sexy.

It struts, is that?

what SaaS is.
When you buy from a SaaScompany, that's exactly what
you're doing.
Isn't that what you do, Jim?

Jim Kaskade (04:05):
Well, I know I don't strut, but yeah, it's
everything as a service, right?
What's the S stand for Software?

Software as a service, not as strut as a
service.
It's software as a service.
It's not sexy as a service,fair enough.

What is more accurate?
Will AI unleash humanproductivity unlike any other
technology before?
Or AI will end up puttingeveryone out of work?
Well, I'll be like in Wally andit'll be overtaking humans as
the dominant entity on earth.
So it's not only Wally, butit's Wally and Terminator.

Yeah, so it's going to unleash, right?
So I mean, every time there wasa transformative breakthrough
in technology, whether you wantto go as far back as the light
bulb with electricity, or youwant to look at self-driving
cars today, you know You're in asituation you're like what's
going to happen.

(05:05):
Self-driving cars, it's meanyou're not going to need anybody
driving a taxi or an Uber orLyft and there's always this
initial response that you'regoing to replace people, and I
think, at the end of the day,what you end up doing is you may
be displacing particular rolesor functions, but you're

(05:28):
definitely not displacing people.
You're unlocking them to becomeeven more high value, so they
need to reskill and actually dothings that are actually more
meaningful to them as employees,let alone the businesses and
customers that they serve.
So I think the quick answer isunlocks.
I mean we are all going tobenefit.

So let me challenge that a little bit, Jim
.
So like, okay, you go back toelectricity, right, it took 40,
50 years, right?
There's this really interestinggraph that will show.
I think it was put out bySingularitycom, it was an HB in
Harvard Business Review and itshows how long did it take for
something to penetrate 25% of UShouseholds, right?

(06:11):
So if you look at electricity,it may take 50 years.
If you look at radio, it'lltake.
It took 31 years.
If you take the PC, it was 16years.
If it was the mobile phone, 13years, the web seven years.
But AI, I mean kids are usingit.

Kids are using it.

Adults are using it.
I even got my uncle to give aspeech.
He's like Rajiv.
He was like Rajiv, can you?
I'm going to be speaking infront of this insurance group of
professionals in Washington DC.
I'm going to be giving a speech.
I don't like to speak a lot, soI only have about three minutes

(07:00):
.
What should I say?
So I just jumped in the chatwith GPD and said construct a
lightly humorous speech to agroup of personal finance
professionals in the DC,virginia area, ensure it's only
two or three minutes and makesure it ends in a positive note.

(07:23):
And it wrote this brilliant twoto three minute speech and then
I asked for five versions of itand sent it off to my uncle.
This is something that's liketoday and now.
So on the positive side, thatseems amazing, but on the side
of fear, all those othertechnologies took quite a long

(07:43):
time to permeate themselves, soyou have time to catch your
breath, like we had time toteach our parents how to work
with their iPhone or Androiddevice.
Are we going to meet asituation where companies just
start letting tons of people gobecause they can do this so much
faster with AI or generative AI?

Well, I think you know.
First, to comment on the timeit takes for adoption of 25%
population in the US, of course,if you use television, you know
the PC, mobile phone, that justmeant you had to buy a TV and
install it and get cable andthen the phone.
You had to have enough money tobuy it.

(08:22):
You know, and all these thingsrequired infrastructure, whereas
these technologies, with AI,all the infrastructure is there.
You just you know.
Log in, establish your Barrettaccount.
You know with.
You know with Google or yourchat GPT account.

It's basically free and available today.
It's basically free.

And I don't have to .
You know, not to them Exactly.
I don't have to buy a radio andplug it in, I don't have to,
you know, pipe electricity intothe house.
You know those previousbreakthroughs required a lot of
plumbing.
The plumbing's there, the cloudis there, so you know.
So, of course, it took a veryshort time for this type of AI

(09:04):
and the use case being a kind ofchatty interface.
It's almost like a new way ofsearch, right, you're
discovering things through anexchange that feels like a
conversation, which is just themost normal than typing in you
know a phrase and then seeing alist.
It almost feels like search is1.0.
And now this, now breakthroughwith AI is search 5.0.

(09:27):
So I think adoption makes sense.
And then you know what happensnow that everybody's using it
everywhere and you're insertingit into every use case.
Again, I think just the level ofproductivity for every human
out there just goes through theroof and a coder doesn't have to
code the basic, you knowfunctions, it just uses AI to

(09:53):
generate and that coder can nowthink about kind of the actual
use cases and what they want todo for the, you know, for the
business and for the endconsumer.
And so, at the end of the day,people are going to benefit and
us as end consumers of theseproduct and services are going
to benefit.
I just think it's going to.
It's going to cause more jobopportunities and clearly now

(10:15):
there's a class of promptengineers, more you know,
scientists that are thinkingabout how to apply the AI and
various applications, and so youhave a whole new workforce of
humans springing up, you know,filling in where you know.
I think those old job functionsyou know are now being replaced

(10:36):
.

Right.
So I think this is where youcan, maybe.
So what you're saying is heylook, people may be afraid, and
fear is a natural thing whenthere's tremendous change.
The game is to actually go andplay with these tools because
they're free.
Actually, you've been using alot of these tools anyways, but

(10:58):
you just haven't seen it to thelevel that we see when you type
into this new interfacesomething very conversational,
right, the new code is English.
Right, it may not be runningPython, or it certainly isn't
C++.
It's like English is the newcode I could write something in,
and it could generate code forme or give me directions on

(11:19):
where to go, or tell me what Ican do for 10 days in Barcelona,
right?
All kinds of cool things that Icould do that I never could
before, and so maybe I get moreproductive, and I get more
productive than others.
Let's go back a little bit likeso this is all about interface,
right?
So from your point of view, isthere something about AI, or
even conversational AI, thatreally no one's asking about?

Most people just can't be mindful of all the use
cases that this could be appliedto.
But I think if you go Into anyvertical and you just give
yourself an opportunity to thinkabout the processes that just
don't work Whether it'shealthcare and getting access to
information you need, you know,helping you diagnose, you know

(12:03):
something To?
You know just understandingwhere you want to put your money
and invest, you know in banking.
So you just go through everyvertical and there's there's
things that cause friction, andif we could apply AI to automate
tasks, to gain Moreefficiencies, access to

(12:23):
information, insights, fasterActions that serve you more
quickly, more effectively, boom,you know.
And so I think there's notreally Anything that you can't
apply AI to at this point andnow.
It's just a function of whatmakes most sense, how much

(12:44):
businesses are going to supportit, and obviously you need to
make sure that you're managingpeople's data privacy
Regulations so that we don't getin, you know, into trouble.
We have lots of issuesPerceived around the use of AI
that, where it, you know it maycome with inherent biases and

(13:04):
not serve you properly, and sothere's still some scariness
around the security data privacy.
You know, and I think you know.
Yeah and some terminator itmight take over and take control
kind of worries.
You know that people start tothink about because you know
they've seen all the shows.
But you know we could dive intoany one of those.

(13:27):
But I think it's really there'sso much that you just won't
appreciate until you do see it.

We then switch gears to talk a bit about Jim's
journey as an entrepreneur.
His path could have gone somany ways in technology, given
his background and experiences.
Right now he finds himself inthe hottest space in technology,
and it's something a lot ofpeople are looking to break into
.
I asked Jim about what led himinto the AI space and how he
ended up taking the reins atConversica.

Well, you know, I'd like to think that you control
your destiny, right, but I dofeel like I bump into things
that just feel like you're inthe flow right, and I think some
of that has to do with, youknow, just being open-minded and
you know, kind of doing thewalkabout in technology until it
just feels right.
In this case, I bumped intoConversica and it wasn't

(14:18):
something that I was literallysearching for.
It found me.
But you know, I did do a lot ofthings to to kind of maximize
my odds of falling intosomething so fantastic.
And obviously, you know, intech, we can all probably
appreciate that AI is thefastest growing tech segment in
the history of tech today, whichis amazing.

(14:39):
So my, my long story short isyeah, I think I was invited into
my last company, which I had somuch fun and Literally dancing
out of that transaction, Iimmediately began to talk with
private equity groups who I knewand who knew me, and the whole

(14:59):
purpose of that was to to reallyjust understand what investors
were looking at and Somewhatdirecting it in terms of I have
a natural passion for healthcare technology, etc.
So I was doing some research andone of the private equity
groups said hey, since you havea little time off, jim, why

(15:20):
don't you, you know, take a lookat this one portfolio company
it's the jewel in our portfolioand Provide the CEO some advice?
And I was like, yeah, sure, I'dlove to and Note to CEOs out
there.
You know, if another CEO getsinvited in to give you advice,
you know you might lose your job.
Now it's not what I wasintending to do, but when I

(15:44):
looked at Converseca, Iabsolutely fell in love with it,
and the reason why I fell inlove with it was because I was
looking through kind of threelenses one Operational, you know
I thought there were a lot ofthings the business had matured
to but had so much morepotential in terms of just

(16:05):
playbooks around how to run thebusiness, and those seem to be
very low hanging fruit, thingslike Leveraging offshore, you
know, talent, for example.
They had a hundred percentonshore things like that.
The second lens I was lookingthrough was one that I just had
previous experience in and thatwas Big data analytics.

(16:26):
You know I had run a group ofpeople who were, you know, I had
run a group of a thousand datascientists, which sounds like a
very large group, but it was asmall segment of a larger
business and we did about 800big data projects a year and I
remember from that experience somany great applications of

(16:46):
machine learning and deeplearning, which I have a lot of
history in.
With this experience I saw someamazing big customers doing,
you know, trying to solve hard,hard problems.
But what?
What would always happen inthat experience is we would
apply these algorithms, we woulddo some segmentation and some
really neat analysis and wewould say, hey, here's what you

(17:07):
should do.
And then when the customer saysthat's a great idea, how the
hell do we operationalize that?
We'd always kind of bump intothe wall.
And how we take sophisticatedanalytics and incorporate it
into your business day to day.
So that to me was always a bigissue.
And so this business.
At Converseica they took andhave we have been taking really

(17:30):
sophisticated algorithms and andand applying them.
It's applied AI and soOperationalizing it, making an
application and easilydigestible, something that
people can actually consume as abusiness, was very interesting
to me.
And then the third lens that Iwas looking through I ran a
business of digitaltransformation and that was

(17:52):
about 7,000 people, which justsounds crazy given that I'm a
startup CEO.
Neat thing about that was wedid a lot of work with big
customers to help them digitizeright to make more applications
that engage people digitally andevery time you you were able to
Make somebody connect withtheir end customers through

(18:13):
digital better the rest of thebusiness would tip over because
it just didn't know how to fieldit.
Simple, silly example would beyou go put a chatbot on, you
know a healthcare Site of ahundred products and a hundred
different websites and thathealthcare company, all of a
sudden the call center tips overbecause they can't Respond to

(18:35):
the chat for live agent.
You know demand very simpleapplications Threaded digitally
connect, tipping over becauseyou don't have the people power.
And I thought, oh my god, whatif you could automate the kind
of digital touch to yourinternal teams you know business
and in human infrastructure andMake that experience scale.

So when I was looking at yes, you see all
those three coming together,right, you saw, wow, I could
take the collection of myexperiences, all that I've done
with Big data, and I couldactually big data and automation
, and I could put it togetherinto this capability for people

(19:22):
who are driving revenue forcompanies and Revenue is the
last key, the thing thateverybody listening should just
think about for a minute.

Most automation is for teams, internal, to try to
operational, try to reduce cost,right, to be more efficient,
and this was like a use casewhere AI was applied to Making
money growth and we all knowgrowth is hard, right and so and
the idea of applying thisAutomation to revenue teams was

(19:53):
very new in my mind.
I was like this doesn't exist.
This is impossible, right?
You can't.
You can't put your biggest andmost important asset, your
customer, in the hands ofsomething like you know,
whatever AI, however you defineit, you have to put in the hands
of a human right.
That's the big question mark.
You know, this is the.
This is the thing that wasreally novel.

(20:14):
That really piqued my interest.

So I mean, you have this, this concept.
Now what you're saying hey, Iwant to apply all these great
computing techniques, but I wantto apply it to the Area of
getting new revenue into acompany was new, maybe current
revenue.
Now, how would you that?
So how did that apply toConverse?
Because Converse goes actuallyaround for a little while?

(20:39):
Prior to you joining this,people have been talking about
AI since Hell.
I even started a company backin 2004 on AI, and that was one
of the ones that didn't go sowell because I was way too early
.
Did you see this as?
Wow, I'm just gonna have abunch of bots talk instead of my

(21:00):
salespeople talking toprospects.
Is that what your thought was?

Well, the first thing that did come to mind was
this marketing use case, becauserevenue to me could be anywhere
, right, it could be at the topof the funnel where you're just
trying to get early interest,maybe even get an unknown person
that's on your website to sharetheir information who are they,
what's their email address andthat's probably where most minds

(21:28):
go right the chatbot experience.
But there's so much more thatyou can automate as a customer
prospect has their journey,their revenue life cycle journey
, right, so you can get all theway to the point where a
salesperson's talking to you andthen after you consume, after
you buy something, then you havethe whole customer success,

(21:51):
account management kind of toadvocacy on the other end of the
revenue life cycle.
So where do you apply AI inthat journey?
And most people, they justthink, yeah, it's a chatbot,
must be a better chatbot.
And then there are those thatnaturally gravitate towards the

(22:12):
use case that I believe AI wasborn into for enterprises, and
that's customer support.
So when you're an existingcustomer and you got to
frequently ask questions, it's avery simple way of just
automating well, ask it a fewquestions and it'll give you a
few answers, and it doesn't haveto be totally accurate and it
doesn't have to be human-like.
It's just an automated way toget access to information.

(22:33):
Those two use cases are solet's just call it generation
one of AI, in the sense thatmost people are frustrated they
don't get what they want.
Many of them will escape thatexperience and probably leave
your website unhappy and you'velost that customer prospect.
That's most people's experience.

It's like a thing on the phone.
I can't even go, Representative, you press nine.

You're screaming you're like zero zero, rep, rep.

Get me out of this hell.
Yes, I bought from you and nowyou're gonna screw me over by
walking me through your freakingmenu.

Well, the person will reach out to them and say
what is it that you wanted?
And then you got to repeateverything that you already
provided.
Right?
How many times have you gotthrough five handoffs and you
had to start from scratch?
Yeah, it's a horrificexperience, I think-.

Just pulling it back.
You sort of taking the 30,000foot view, like, of what
conversing is for those who arejust not familiar, like, can you
give us?
So I'm kind of piecing ittogether based on your
conversation that like, okay,it's essentially that's what
you're solving for.
You're solving for the problemof getting on the phone and
screaming at the you know,screaming for operator using AI

(23:45):
chatbots.
Is that a fair way of sayingwhat the Conversika and its
mission is, or can you give uswhat that is from the top down?

So there's a chance that everybody listening to
this has engaged with theConversika digital assistant and
you didn't know.
Yes, absolutely.
We have so many big brands thatuse us and every interaction is
so powerfully human right.
So what you're experiencing asan end user is you'll go to

(24:17):
somebody's web property and youmight, you know, want to get a
white paper that's on thatwebsite.
So you fill out a form and youdownload it Immediately.
You know Alyssa reaches out toyou and says hey, reggie, you've
noticed, you've downloaded thiswhite paper.
Is there anything else that youwould like to have or anybody

(24:39):
you would like to speak to?
Do you have all the informationthat you need?
Can I help?
And Alyssa is a digitalassistant.
Now she's able to interpretReggie's response, anything he
says, she'll interpret it 98 outof 100 times, she's accurately
interpreting you, and thenshe'll take the right, next,

(24:59):
best action, which is to respondback to you and say, yeah, sure
, reggie, I'll connect you withyou know, a salesperson, or I'll
give you a new piece ofinformation.
And so this digital assistantexperience it's a persona that
our clients have established invarious business functions and
in marketing.
As Reggie said, it's early inyour kind of brand awareness and

(25:21):
you're just kind of doingdiscovery.
So you just need moreinformation.
Later on in your life cycle youmight be ready to get some
pricing information.
So we have digital assistantsthat act like salespeople.
They're like inside sales,sales development reps, business
development reps, you know,lead development reps they all
have different titles indifferent industries, but

(25:42):
they're basically people tryingto qualify you and get you
further to the point where yoursales ready, right, you're
literally ready to buy, andthat's when you engage the human
.
But all the way through thatprocess you may be engaging one
of our digital assistants.
I mean we sell cars, we sellairplanes, we sell boats, we
sell software.

(26:03):
I mean we give you bankingservices, insurance services.
I mean there's every verticalyou can think of.
We have a client and numbers ofclients using our digital
assistants to essentiallyautomate these mundane tasks
that revenue teams have to doevery day.
And instead of doing the highvalue tasks, like actually

(26:27):
having a deep conversation aboutthe problems they're trying to
solve, of maybe fine tuning theproduct offering that they wanna
buy, they're down just doingthe grungy work and doing very
little of that high value work.
So we just shift people's youknow, the human capital to that
high value work, unlock them,and we call that building a new

(26:47):
growth workforce.
I mean our term growthworkforce is the combination of
AI and human for growth rightand optimizing that combination
so that you have this beautifulharmony of mundane tasks that
are repetitive and you need towork them at scale done by the
AI, high value tasks done by thehuman.

Okay, so then, if you were to sum it up, so
Converseka provides these whenyou guys not chatbots, these are
digital assistants that helptake care of people from the
earliest, from the earlieststages, all the way through to a
point where the conversation isgetting more sophisticated and
you need a human, and it does itin a super seamless way, and I

(27:33):
think you guys have, is it?
A couple thousand customersacross a whole variety of
industries.

We have a couple of thousand customers and we have
thousands of digital assistantsspeaking many different
languages all over the globe,and it's just crazy.

If you were to put a number to it, like in terms
of revenue generated forcompanies, what would that be?

Oh, we're over 20 billion, easily over 20 billion,
and I just wanna add, are alltheir names Erica and Alyssa?

Like do you have any?
You know parvathis?
Or like I'm Indian, I mean, I'mjust I wanna make sure there's
representation for my people.

Well, we do focus on, you know, diversity when
we're sitting down and naming,so you know every country has
the appropriate, you know,cultural fit, you know.
So, whether it's gender or raceor what have you, I think it is
important because you do wannafeel like you're engaged with a
digital assistant that you knowyou can actually have a good

(28:34):
conversation with, and these arelike dynamic two-way exchanges.
You would not know thedifference between human
exchange and digital assistantexchange.
We even have humans prospectcustomers or existing customers
asking our digital assistantsout on dates.
Okay, and then I continue toget in my employees that say I

(28:56):
think I just fell into this.
I went to buy a new car and Iwas having a conversation with
the employee and then I had to.
I looked it up back in thesystem and it was one of our
digital assistants and I'm likephew, didn't even realize it.

I'm sorry.
Some people are asking thesedigital assistants out on dates,
that's how they accepted thesedates.

It's very ex machina.

Yes, they're very proud of the fact that they're
over there.

Ex machina.
Is that the right one?
Yeah, that's it.

That's it.
Now we have like posters of thenumber one salesperson, ashley
Garcia, for the Sun's you knowbasketball team number one
seller.
I probably should have saidthat because now if you engage
with Ashley, probably, you know,might be somewhat biased, but
you know that's another goodtopic.
We have a lot of you knowyounger generation that has

(29:51):
large wallet share.
Right, we're moving into themillennials with the majority of
the wallet share these days,and millennials and younger
generation in general, they justdon't want to talk to human
that you know.
They're on WhatsApp andInstagram and Snapchat, and so
the idea of you know getting onthe phone, forget it.

(30:12):
And even if you discloseethically that Ashley Garcia is
an AI, I think the youngergeneration goes.
Cool, now I feel even more atease to engage.
Right, it's a completedifferent mind shift versus the
older generation that won't everknow if you don't disclose and
if you did, might go.
Eh, I don't know if I liketalking to an AI, but, younger,

(30:34):
I love talking to an AI.
So I think we're moving into anAI era, right, so let's get
started.

Jim has been a CEO for over two decades and has a
ton of experience and wisdom todraw from to help lead his teams
.
I wanted him to share some ofthat with us, and I also wanted
him to tell us about the earlypart of his journey, when his
path was more uncertain aboutwhich direction to go, and how
he made those choices, to findout what his spark was that got

(31:07):
him to where he is today.

You know, if I take it up to the highest level, I
basically have three mainpillars to how I approach
business.
The number one is I focus onthe culture piece first and
people.
You know culture is prettybroad term, right, it's like the
ping pong table and the snacksin the lobby and you know

(31:30):
there's a bunch of things thatmy peers think equate to culture
, which is a longer story for me.
And then number two you know Iobviously like to start with
strategy.
I like to think about five yearplans and things that are
broader, the vision, mission.
You know the purpose of thebusiness and kind of what are we

(31:51):
trying to accomplish?
You know, in the five year,three year, next year time
frames and then last isexecution.
You know, clearly, I think, ifI just keep it in those three
buckets but you know, the keything is you lead with the
people.
First part you know it's peopleover profits.
Whatever kind of example youread that you've consumed that

(32:13):
really does emphasize that, thefact that now every business has
access to amazing amount ofcapital, there's a lot of
investors with a lot of money,billions, invested every year
and there's the same access toinfrastructure.
Everybody can get on the cloud.
You know you have the same assaccess to the problems that

(32:35):
exist that customers want you tosolve.
And so how do you reallydifferentiate?
Well, you differentiate basedon the people that you put into
that, you know, into thatbusiness.
So I lead with that.
You know there's a wholemanagement system kind of
approach to taking and makingsure you create change.
But you have a framework thatputs structure to the chaos.

(33:00):
I like using that term becauseI do embrace business, chaos or
constant change.
So if there's anybody who comesto work with me and you don't
like change, you're not gonnafeel at home.

So this is something that's interesting.
Like usually, when you start torise as an executive or you
start to pick a profession,there's a methodology that's
taught to you as the generalmethodology.
Right A lot of us who go tobusiness school.
They give us differentframeworks of methodology, and

(33:37):
I've read many books aboutbecoming a CEO and being an
entrepreneur, but I've neverseen this playbook version like
you have.
What got you to do it?

Well.
So where I really kind ofmatured and packaged my idea of
systematizing, you knowapproaches to creating change
within a business, was thecompany before Converseca, my
last business.
We launched 170 playbooks in 11quarters and the business was

(34:15):
completely rearchitected andthen successfully sold in that
time frame and there was neverany dust that settled and the
culture was amazing.
I mean, if you looked at theglass door ratings it was like a
five, you know the CEO, fiveand all the you know employees
were skipping into work and theacquisition was seamless and the

(34:37):
integration was beautiful andthe whole journey just felt like
11 quarters with nothing.
I mean that 11 quarters a longtime, right, but it just felt
like it was so fast because wewere constantly, constantly
changing.
170 playbooks, you know, wasjust in retrospect.

Well, I'll say this, I think, when I see your,
when you and I have had a chance.
So Jim loves to hike, by theway, so maybe he learned it from
Steve Jobs, or I think he justhe just loves hiking, he likes
being outside, and then he'lltake you on these five mile

(35:17):
hikes at Wonderlick, over in inWoodside.
It's beautiful, it's the oldFolgers farm and you just go out
there and you sit amongstRedwoods.

If you're in good shape, you're enjoying it.

Yeah, I took one of my friends from Jersey that
ate a lot of steak and cheeseand he had a really rough time.
So, but, anyways, if you're indecent shape, you're going to
love a hike with Jim, and sowhat I what I love about the way
you think about things is theis the level of transparency you

(35:50):
bring about and the change thatyou're open to.
So when Jim sets about puttingtogether his, his framework of
multiple years, it's not set instone, it's a thought piece,
right.
And then you encourage folkswho join your management team or
you recruit eventually, whenyou take over a company
recruited your management teamto think extremely openly.

(36:10):
So maybe just talk about that,because I think there's a level
of radical transparency that isnot that we talk about, but
that's not typical.
Yeah.

There's a, you know there was a.
There was a book that I pickedup back in 1999.
When I first became a CEO,written by a management
consultant that put this, thisstory you know, into a, or his
framework, into a story about astartup in Silicon Valley, and

(36:45):
the whole book was written fromthe perspective of the new CEO
that came in and how thiscompany was so well funded and
it was the number one in itsspace and, you know, had this
pedigree executive team, but yetit was failing.
It started to lose its itscompetitive position, you know,

(37:08):
became the number two, wasstarting to see decrease in
decline and the board couldn'tfigure out why.
And so they brought in this newCEO and she basically
identified a really bigdysfunction that you normally
see in companies, in each personon the executive team.
And so as you read this fable,you realize that what the writer

(37:32):
, the author, is trying to getacross is these massive, you
know very common, dysfunctional,you know acts that people you
know repeat over and over day today in businesses, and she
systematically kind of extractedthat and changed it and made
the team totally high performing.

(37:54):
The authors Patrick Lecceoni,the books, five dysfunctions of
a team.
When I read that it was sosimple that it was such an aha
that I kind of applied the samebusiness framework to my teams
moving forward and I've beendoing it now for decades when
you, you know, the basic,fundamental layer of high

(38:16):
functioning teams is having justan amazing amount of trust, to
the point where you've you, youshare as much with each other as
you would with a close familymember like your spouse.
And to get to that level oftrust you have to have kind of
the cone of silence.
What you say here stays hereand it's always about that team.

(38:37):
You know that.
You know it's not like I don'twant to call it team one, but
this team first and theneverybody else afterwards, so
that you feel like you've got aplace where you can cover the
real issues.

One of the most interesting parts of how you
manage groups is your 360process.
Every company's heard aboutthis amazing way 360, you hear
from not only your boss, yourpeers, the people who report to
you, but the way you do it is,I'd say, like the extreme X
games version of it.
Maybe you can give me a quicksense of how that is different

(39:16):
than what you've seen withothers and why you employ that
methodology.

Yeah, I think it's definitely not for the week,
right, and I think I've beenchallenged on even taking this
approach by you know folksoutside of my businesses, but at
the end of the day, I haven'thad a company and an executive

(39:41):
team that hasn't appreciated theexperience afterward.
I think where I would start isyou know, when, when any team is
operating, whether as anindividual or as a team, they're
looking at generally two axesfrom their peers, two factors

(40:04):
very basically, that kind ofdrives their perception of
whether somebody on the team isdoing what everybody would hope
they would do for the team, andone of it is clearly just
performance, right, Just, areyou?
Are you delivering on thethings you promised?
And then the second is do youhave the potential?

(40:25):
You know, are there thefundamental capabilities in your
DNA that you can play the rolethat you're playing?
And so a good example of thatwould be I'm a first time member
of a team.
I haven't even had a chance tohit the ground.
So obviously, my potential.
I got hired because I'm an Aplayer, right, and I everybody

(40:46):
thinks they got an A player whenthey hire them at the beginning
.
So the potential is super highoff the scale, but the
performance isn't there becausethey haven't had a chance to
perform Well, no matter whereyou are in that performance and
potential range.
There are nine cells that welook at as an executive team.
That kind of puts you in theplaces of where you are in that

(41:09):
performance versus potentialscale, and I call it the purple
unicorn.
But the far right, right, whenthe potential is off the scale,
you can always overachievebecause you're just aggressively
trying to learn new things andreally challenge yourself, as
well as your peers and the teamas a whole, and then you're
delivering.
You're over delivering onpeople's expectations.

(41:31):
You're in the purple unicorn inthe cell nine.
We call it Well.
My teams get together once aquarter and they rank each other
including myself, on the scaleof one to nine.
It's a nine cell matrix.
It's well defined.
Each of the cells gives adescription and it gives you
kind of a directionally accurateview of how people think about

(41:55):
you.
Now, I don't care if it'sperfectly accurate or not, it's
just a way of getting people totell you how they feel about how
you're engaging as a teammember.
And so you get this anonymouslist of ranks from one to nine,
next to your name.
You're also asked to rankyourself and again you don't

(42:19):
know who gave you what score.
You just come into this 360 andyou may have all these ones, or
you may have a bunch of fives,you may be a bunch of nines.
You're killing it, Regardlessof what somebody puts there, if
your ranking of yourself is somuch different than your peers.
Think of the use case or theexample where you ranked

(42:43):
yourself a nine and all yourpeers ranked you a five.
Oh my God, big difference.
Right, that's usually game over, right, Game over.
Your awareness is so far off.
I'm sorry, this is gonna be ahard one.

You've got your head so far up your.

So I haven't had that experience but once.
But yeah, but you're astral,but you know, there's this now
there's this tense roomenvironment.
Everybody's sitting down andthey're like what's gonna happen
next?
I got these rankings and so on,and so I'll tally people's
rankings over or, I'm sorry,under a number.

(43:23):
So let's say, five is thenumber, how many people in five
and below ranked you?
You know five and below, youknow.
So you tally that and whoeverhad the most number of those
five and below would start withfirst, and then we'd go to the
next one and go to the next one,and maybe a bunch of others are
like no problem, they're likeclear.
I'll always start open first,and so I'll start by.

(43:48):
Basically, the rules ofengagement are I have to tell
you why I think my peers rankedme the way they did.
So let's say you're one ofthose executives that got lower
rankings.
You've got to break the ice bytelling everybody why you think
they ranked you low.
And it's such a great way tokick it off, because if you

(44:11):
actually acknowledge and youtell everybody exactly what
they're thinking, you've justtotally chipped at the ice,
right, you've melted it, you'vediffused, because what happens
next is I asked them, the folksthat ranked you, to add, you
know, to why they ranked you theway.
But they have to do one otherthing.

(44:31):
They got to give some ideas ofhow they're gonna help you
increase that ranking.
So they can't just say I rankedyou five because you really blow
at doing this.
They got to go.
You know what?
You had a lot of challenges.
I didn't contribute much tohelping you.
This is how I'm gonna help you,so you get constructive support
.
Now, while everybody's givingyou this feedback, you can't say

(44:54):
anything.
You just can say thank you.
Now, how many times have youbeen presented with something
that you disagree with?
That you might just go, but youdidn't understand.
It's this context of this.
You know, my car had a flattire and I couldn't get into
work and that's why I wasimmediately able to meet with
that CEO and we lost thataccount.
You know you just got all theseexcuses right.

So you meet every conversation with my wife.

So you don't have to.
You don't get to have thatconversation with your spouse.
Experience You're, because thewhole function of it is to for
you to listen.
Perceptions, reality.
Whether you've got some goodexcuse doesn't matter.
Your peers think this way.
You need to listen.
And so at the end of the wholeexchange, all you can say is

(45:40):
thank you.
It's super hard for people, butthat's the rule.
And then the ones giving youthe feedback have to say, well,
I think this, but this is howI'm gonna help you.
It's not just criticizing, butif you know, if you're really
really good and you're selfaware and you tell everybody
what they're gonna tell you, howfast does that conversation go?

(46:00):
They're like, yeah, you nailedit.
Now here's how I'm gonna helpyou.
It's so much simpler.
So you go around the room andyou break you've broken all this
ice down.
And if the team's highfunctioning, they're hungry for
this feedback, right, everyquarter we kind of reset by
basically putting it on thetable.
There's no longer this hidden.

(46:21):
You know, understanding thatsomebody's struggling that you
don't talk about in theworkplace.
So, yeah, they're really notdoing their job well here.
Don't talk about it.
Let's just hope Jim fixes it,the CEO fixes it.

Now, this is an environment Because the boss
knows everything, Because theboss knows everything and the
boss is perfectly able, isomniscient and can just solve
the problem.
And the amazing thing is thateverybody now yeah, most people
deeper in the company are likethe boss is an idiot, right?
So it just depends where youare in that spectrum.

Well, I can't say.
You know that I'm alwaysachieving the nines, but I do
feel like everybody is nowcoming out of this with the axes
buried right and there is thehomework after the exercises.
If now, if you want to go havea debate, go do it with your
peers in a one-to-one,constructively.
But you've now got the entiregroup to kind of give you some

(47:21):
perspective.
And if you haven't beenlistening to this already,
you're going to listen to it inthis exercise.
And if you're not capable ofcreating change from it, you're
just not going to be a teamplayer, it's you're not, you
know, they'll self-select out,probably right.
They always self-select out.
I've never had to make anexecutive team change with this

(47:42):
process.
They've made the change for me,so it's obvious that they're
not a good fit and they're souncomfortable with it they're
gone, and so I think you knowthat's why it's kind of harsh.
But then for high performers,you love it.
You know you just like this istransparency at its core, right,

(48:02):
and then you're going to hireother people like them.
Then you've hired more goodpeople.

You're going to have them go through the same
thing and you won't, and even ifyou come in as more guarded
because you come from adifferent environment, where the
.
Cya was rewarded or blamingother people was rewarded.
You will learn that you'll haveto change and you'll probably

(48:27):
have to give them some time tomake that change, but they'll
eventually work themselves intoit or self-select out, or be
self-selected out or be helpedout.

Exactly, exactly, and it's a process that takes
one to two quarters.
It's amazing, we still do itevery quarter and even with the
team that I have now which isjust amazing I've never had a
team as amazing as I have todaywe still go through this process
, because now, we're hungry forit.

You can always get better, jim.
I'm curious what's your lastrating on yourself?
Where are you at right now?

Let's see I got Cascade.
I put myself at an eight out ofnine and I had one two, three,
four eights and three sevens.

Ok, so there you go, you're.
Right on par, ok, great.

You got room to improve Jim.
Now, if someone gave you theone.

you're having a talking to that person, right?
If there's one out loud, I'llgive you the one I did something
wrong.

I did something wrong, that person's gone.
Absolutely the seven questionswhat's your hometown, birthplace
, where you spent the majorityof your childhood?
Second question familybackground what's your parents,
siblings, significant otherchildren, pets?
So now you've got the baseline.
Now the third questionchildhood challenge Like really

(49:55):
truly impacted you Like deep.
Bring it on and you'll get oneswhere, yeah, I lost my brother.
That was huge and no one aroundthe table knows this because
you're not asking these hardquestions, right.
Or, yeah, my dad was analcoholic.
He used to hit me.
You know you just get realanswers right.

(50:18):
Number four favorite hobbiesoutside of work.
Now, you get a little bit ofthat.
You know I love surfing bigwaves.
First job, first professionaljob, not throwing pizza.
And then worst job, and why.
And then, lastly, you knowwhat's your greatest strength,

(50:41):
your superpower and yourgreatest weakness, or your
kryptonite.
But that childhood challengewon.
So I lead it right and I kindof give the example and
hopefully folks somewhere in themiddle of that conversation
will just give a big share,right, and so one and I've had

(51:03):
several crying.
So the one that comes to mindright now was a VP of alliances
who shared with the team that helost one of his kids out of
three and no one knew that andhe literally just started
tearing out right down rightthere.

(51:24):
Then, you know, and it was hugeand everybody was like holy shit
.
So you get these personalmoments if People are willing to
share, and the beauty of thatis that, and so this is it.

This is a.
This isn't a group togetherthat you're doing it, or is?

this a group session.

Everyone's bonding everyone's kind of
getting closer together.
What when you reveal thosesecrets to each other?
It's that kind of stuff.

It's contagious, totally contagious and they, if
someone will allow the team toknow something personal out of
the childhood, because that'swhere most of the shit happens.
Then, when they get into firstjob, worst job, then you start,
they start to open up and say,yeah, this is the shit that I
really hate.
You know, this is the stuffthat's always.
Yeah, they can be authentic andthen finally they'll close with

(52:13):
.
Here are the things that Ireally suck at.
Just so you know.
You know I'm a sales guy but Idon't know how to keep track of
the numbers.
You know, as an example, I'mjust so they feel safe.
They feel safe actually sharingthat.

They feel safe because they felt the empathy
from the folks in the room aboutwhat was what's really, you
know, deep down, that totallymakes sense.
We actually do something reallysimilar in our stand-up classes
.
We go around and share, shareour deepest, darkest stuff, and
that's actually where all thecomedy comes from is from our
being able to examine that stuffand Empower ourselves to go

(52:47):
like oh, here's the comedicpoint of view on that.
I mean, I've had people yeah.
People, people do.
Is people doing sets on howthey have herpes and how they
feel outcast?
Seriously, just like gettinginto or, or, or sexual assault
or whatever, and then they endup doing the most Unbelievable
vulnerable comedy comes out ofthat.

That actually connect for sure, for sure.
Well, that's the best way to doit, because you got to, you
have to emotionally connect.
I think you know the same thinggoes with executive teams.
If you can emotionally connectand you're just so much more
high-performing, right.
And then then I do aMyers-Briggs for everybody.
I'm Certified, you knowPractitioners, so I'll help
analyze and I'll use that as away to baseline people's

(53:29):
personality types and then getthe team to understand yeah,
this person actually likes to doeverything last minute because
that's their personality type.
So don't judge them, just knowhow to work with it you know,
they're the ones that stay upENT.
ENTJ.
Yeah, ENTJ.

Same as I am.
Yeah, classic seat yeah for thelast part of our interview with
Jim.
We wanted to explore what ledhim to his own personal Eureka
moment.
I asked him about what was thespark that lit things up for him
.

So you know, everybody has their origin story
, I think, in terms of whatdrives them into a particular
career direction.
You know, obviously, as you'reraised as a kid, your parents
have a huge influence on who youare.
There were two main things thatyou know, events in my life
that Clearly, in reflection, seehis inflection points for me.

(54:31):
One was the one that drove meinto tech as an engineer.
So I started off as a doubleECS, you know, engineer and I
loved engineering.
The second inflection event waswhat drove me into business.
So the first one was Parents.
Not a lot of money, christmastree, one gift under the under

(54:53):
the tree for me, which was great.
And so one year I'm the age offive and I open up the, the
Christmas present from myparents, and in it is one of
these remote control transams.
If you remember well what wasthe month, the move, the movie
that had the transam in it, Iforget, but anyway it was.

(55:14):
I Thought remote control car,this is awesome.
So I ran off in the garage andmy parents were just envisioning
me playing with it, you know,in the garage, and when they
came out they saw me.
I had taken it apart because Ineeded to figure out what made
this thing work.
I wasn't actually Using it.
I was inspecting the pieces ofit and what made it work, and I

(55:37):
knew the electronics were gonnabe an important part of my life,
because I was so intrigued bythat.

That's what you like.
So it wasn't enough that youyou got this really cool trans
transam.
You were trying to turn it intoKit from Knight Rider the David
.

I needed to advance it to AI driven cars.
I just didn't know it at thetime, but I was so enamored by
technology and I still am likejust I just can't help it.
You know, I'm kind of one ofthese CEOs that just can't keep
their fingers off the tech, sothat's what's driven me to be a
tech CEO.
The second main inflection waswas what caused me to become an

(56:15):
entrepreneur, and that was inthe same era.
My dad was an army ranger andhe was, you know, came out of
the army after you married mymom and had me and didn't have a
lot of money and they boughttheir first house, you know,
here in San Jose, california,and I was.
I can still visualize themwalking up the cement, you know

(56:35):
walkway to the front door it's asingle story and my dad opens
the door and the first thing Ican notice is the smell Of dogs
and cats.
The previous owners had had somany animals in the house.
It was just horrific right Woodpaneling, it was dark, the
carpets were thrashed and Ilooked at my dad like, dad, this

(56:58):
place is a wreck.
And he's like, yeah, we'regonna fix this up.
He was very hands hands onright, ripped up the carpets, we
pulled the paneling off thewalls While I was helping my dad
.
I was asking him, dad, whydidn't we buy a house that was
kind of ready for us, you know,instead of having to do all this
work?
And he said, son, this is all Ican afford and I go, well, why

(57:20):
can't you afford more?
He goes, well, my job, itdoesn't pay as much, you know,
as I, you know, would need tobuy a more expensive house.
I'm like, well, what jobs dopay more?
And he rattled off, you know hecould become a lawyer or
airline pilot, and he goes.
You know you could start yourown company.
I'm like, what does that mean?
Starting my own company?

(57:40):
Goes.
Yeah, you know a lot of peopleto start their own companies.
They're the boss and they, youknow, kind of set the pace and
you know many of them are reallysuccessful.
I'm like that's what I want todo.
I want to be able to run my owncompany, be able to have a
culture that fits me, and then Ican buy a house where I don't
have to rip up the carpets whenI first Walk into it.

(58:01):
So that was a huge inflectionpoint.
Totally influenced me.

Combination of being an electrical computer
science engineer, I went intotech and the rest is history how
did I, from from perspective ofyou, know folks who are
Executives now or man managersnow and they want to make that
leap?
How did you make that leapright from from working for
somebody?

(58:26):
You didn't just jump right in,you didn't go Okay, dad, I'm
gonna start my company right now, after I finish these these
carpets.
Right?
How did you make the leaf no?

I mean, like most, most people yeah, yeah, I mean
most people will jump into a bigcompany.
You know Google, facebook, youknow Twitter, name your web
skill, success here in thevalley You'll jump into a
company that you're, you know,passionate about.
You'll learn a lot there.
I did my first ten years andthen I realized, man, it's been

(58:56):
ten years been working for thisbig company, this whole vision
of trying to get in and becomean entrepreneur.
Then my next leap was into astartup.
I went to work in a startup, anexisting startup, and that was
my first kind of you know tasteof what small and nimble and you
know Entrepreneurial reallymeant.

(59:17):
But it wasn't my own.
And that first company I spunout some technology and started
my first.
And when I started my firstcompany, I didn't start it on my
own right.
I had an amazing set ofco-founders when there was known
chemistry which was reallyimportant and clear you know

(59:39):
strengths that we augmented eachother with.
And then I had amazing board ofdirectors, oh my god.
And I was so lucky to bring ina, a mentor who became my
chairman, who chaired in,mentored me as a CEO, gave me my
wings as a CEO.

(01:00:01):
So if I had like a message forentrepreneurs out there starting
.
It would be pick that firstteam like you pick your family
members.
You know if you're gonna go getmarried, you don't do it just
in five minutes in Las Vegas andthen make sure you've got a
mentor that you aspire to be.
I had the founder of terrordata and His co-founder who

(01:00:25):
decided to come work with me.
It was just over-the-top pinchme moment.
You know, anybody knows thebrand terror data, the largest
data warehouse company in theworld.
Data was everything for me.
It still is everything to me interms of what fuels technology
and analytics now, and AI isreally nothing without data.

(01:00:46):
And so I had the data canes,the innovators on data, you know
, basically jump in and say yeahwe'll help you start your first
company, which is just still apinch me moment huge for me.

Rajiv Parikh (01:01:00):
So you go from your nightrider moment to your
home building moment, and thatleads you to want to being the
want to be the boss, and you puttogether a plan to get yourself
there.
Do you feel like it was amethodical plan?
Was it a?

Jim Kaskade (01:01:20):
This is the time a little bit of both.
Right, I think you have to havethe fire in you to say this is
the time.
Right, you can't go intostarting anything.
Where you're, you're somewhatconservative, reserved, you know
, you don't have the resolvebecause it's hard, it'll be the
hardest thing you do, and so youwant to go in with all the

(01:01:42):
energy and positive you know andcome out that max because it's
going to be challenged.
And then methodical from theperspective of Sure, you want to
kind of go with the flow, andeverybody's flow is different,
but you want to put somestructure around it because you
can waste energy and you couldbe the 999 failures to the one

(01:02:06):
success, right, if you don't puta little bit of structure to
your thinking.
So you need a little bit ofPassion, unless this is the
moment, you know, fueled by somethought, you know, with others,
not in the isolation thatallows you to systematically
kind of nudge yourself tosuccess.
You know you're gonna, you'regonna bump into things and this

(01:02:29):
is how I run my businesses today.
I think of it as agile.
Everybody's heard agile.
Right, you know, software isn'tbuilt In an environment of
waterfall, it's all scrum.
Now I think of business in nodifferent way right.
It's every quarter is a is asprint and you know there's a
systematic process of nudgingthe business forward at every

(01:02:51):
quarter.
You know boundary that I have,so it's amazing.

So it's awesome when you have that kind of
situation in lifestyle andyou're able to come to it and
take the great leap.
I know in my life and Many ofour friends lives it is that
moment where you think you canjust go and not take salary for
a while Is just one of thosescary moments.

(01:03:17):
It never goes as planned, butit's always exciting when you
think about it afterwards, afterthat journey let's talk about
let's do a few quick Closersthings about you, jim, that I
think people would love to hear.
What's your favoritetechnological innovation or

(01:03:38):
invention?
What was the thing that thatGave you that feeling of magic
that when you touch it, itsparked to life this notion of
building tools for people.

Wow, that's a hard question, rajiv.
I mean, every one of mycompanies has been.
Obviously, as an entrepreneur,one that you know has the
promise of changing the worldright.
And so my you know crazy firstbusiness that I jumped into was

(01:04:09):
developing new semiconductorpackaging for microprocessors.
Can you believe that?
I mean, who remembers thesemiconductor era that is now
long past as an investment?
You know that all VCs wanted tomake and now it's just
softwares eating the world.
But I started off insemiconductors and that first

(01:04:30):
company promise of building achip package for Intel and AMD
and TI was game-changing.
I had investors who thoughtthis was gonna be a
billion-dollar business easilythat wanted to jump in and the
technology was so incrediblethat I kicked my first you know

(01:04:55):
entrepreneurial, you knowexperience off with what I
thought was just gonna make itand that's a story in itself.
But it literally was.
What you know is now in myblood.
You know the experience of thattechnology that would have made
Moore's law look like nothingto the board that I had.

(01:05:17):
That was amazing to just theexperience of the whole ride.

Building something from scratch that could change
so many things.
So, Jim, I wanna thank you.
This was so much fun to chatwith you like this, being one of
my first guests.
I always feel great knowingthat I have amazing, caring,
wonderful friends like you whoare changing the world, making a

(01:05:43):
difference, having an impact ina super positive way, and so I
think anyone listening today canget that full breath of that
life journey that you had andthose sparks that drove you.
And if they're growth-mindedenough and I'm sure many of them
would love to be they can justtap off of some of the work

(01:06:05):
you've done and build from there, maybe even reach out to you.

Appreciate that Rajeev Sandeep yeah yeah
absolutely honored to be engagedwith you guys today.
Great conversation, so muchmore we could talk about till
the next time.

Wow, that was really amazing.
It was so great to have aperson like Jim cascade working
with us, chatting with us,telling him about his life, his
journey, what sparked him, howhe became an AI CEO of a really
cool company, but really whatmotivated him to get there.
And I'll tell you, the onething that got to me that I

(01:06:52):
really wanted others to learnabout was how he leads a
transparent culture and howthese 360 reviews like you're
like well, what the hell is a360 review?
It's when all these people areinterviewing, all these people
are assessing you.
It's like not just hearing fromyour teacher, but it's like the
students and your peers, yourother folks, and in the

(01:07:13):
workplace, it's your boss, it'syour workers, it's all the peers
around you and it's like apersonal experience.
It's like a joint therapysession.

Sandeep Parikh (01:07:24):
That's right and I think when that happens, when
people get vulnerable aroundeach other and they start to
admit their faults or they talkabout childhood traumas or
whatever it is, you end upfeeling closer to them and you
wanna help them, Causeinherently, I think we wanna
help each other and anything onthe AI front that you gotta take
away from.

I've heard so much about AI and with Jim I've had
a chance to do seminars with him, with other folks, and so what
I got out of it was that senseof optimism that these are tools
that are so he was veryoptimistic, yes, so easily
available, yes, so easilyavailable to us that it's not
gonna just yes, it might takeover the world.

(01:08:07):
This might be a terminatorscenario, or it could be
something that can help ustremendously today.

Yeah, I feel like the terminator scenario is
far away.
I'm less worried about that.
For me it's the velocity thatthe change is happening, that
like you talked about, like ittook 50 years before we really
adopted the light bulb and so wehad all this time to kind of
adapt to what that might whomight be out of a job or

(01:08:35):
whatever lantern lighters Iguess, whoever those folks were
like, who had to figure out anew trade and so but right now
things are happening month tomonth.
It feels like Day by day.

I mean, I think there's this whole notion of the
disruptive nature of generativeAI and we have to remember that
it was just introduced inNovember of last year, of 2022.
And it's just truly coming intothe mainstream, like there's
this.
The latest version of theirlanguage model is so much better
and but it's approachable inthat you can.

(01:09:10):
It's an interface question inwhich, just like original
browser is to the internet whenyou, you know you had a chance
to view things in a way thatnever viewed before or social
media is to the message boardconversations.
Now you have this even easierinterface.
You could just ask this promptanything you want in English and

(01:09:33):
it'll figure stuff out for you.

Well, I just like to let you know that I've
been in a chat bot this entiretime and Sundeep is not actually
here.
So, I hope you've enjoyed thisfake conversation with your fake
brother.

All right.
Thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed this podcast,please take a moment to rate it
and comment.
You can find us on Applepodcast, Google podcast,
everywhere podcast can be found.
We'll catch you next time Story.

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Building the New Growth Workforce with AI/Jim Kaskade - Use Cases, Playbooks, Transparency ~ Spark of Ages Ep. 5

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Building the New Growth Workforce with AI/Jim Kaskade - Use Cases, Playbooks, Transparency ~ Spark of Ages Ep. 5