Welcome to Tech Talk. Bye. CT. Tea.

Sure. So, just wanted to do a little bit of clarification here. So Yeah. What did I screw up? So real time cases is actually a startup that I joined. I didn't, co found it, but, there there are actually three cofounders, and they just were recently named, Forbes 30 under 30, two days ago. So Congrats. I'm in good hands. But, but, you know, what real time cases is is a education, EdTech startup that, that's pretty much disrupting the education space. It's an experiential learning platform that teaches students by way of highly interactive, video business cases. So, essentially, what we're doing is, we're sort of disrupting, you know, Harvard business cases or Harvard business, but don't tell them that. Okay?

But, but but but the reason why I joined them, is actually kind of a a a very funny story. I mean, previously, I was sort of co managing the AOL Fishbowl Labs, which is a premier incubator here in DC. Yeah. And so, one of our previous, startup that we had, they were looking for a product guy. And they approached me and say, hey, hey, we're looking for a product guy. Would you like to join us? And then, you know, me sort of being the manager, I'm like, hey, I don't date employees, you know. I don't do that. So, you know, I I sort of had to respectfully decline. And, certainly after they raised $30,000,000 and they got a top VC on their board, and I'm like, hey. Different proposition then. Yeah. So so, so then real time cases, very similar. They They they approached me, and said, hey. We're looking for a product guy. And I hark back from that moment. I'm like, I'm not gonna say make the same mistake. I'll take it. So so I'm doing real time cases. Great. But, actually, I just wanna say before real time cases and before the AOL Fishbowl, I was the, the the global COO of startup grind, which I'll explain a little later. Oh, okay. And then before that, I had done three, startups, and one of which I grew up to 20,000,000 in revenue, and and that's my, background. Well, and that's why we have you here, an entrepreneur, a successful one at that. So let's get to the gig economy. I touched on it a bit in the intro, but how would you define the gig economy? I've seen multiple definitions of this. Sure. You know, it's funny because then, you're probably gonna have a a lot more definitions. I mean, gig economy is not gonna be gig economy next year. I guarantee you. But there's it's nothing new. I mean, let's face this. Nothing new. In the past, we call it the sharing economy. And before that was called collaborative consumption. And before that was called p two p marketplaces. But really what it is is that it's it's really rehashing the old. And now there's two points when I I wanna talk about with the gig economy. Chris, well, let's it's the progression of the gig gig economy, and then also the activation of these services and products. So number one is, you know, the progression of the gig economy, the way it worked was or the gig economy or the on demand economy. It actually, started, you know, you know, the advents of the Ubers and the Airbnbs of the world. But before that was Craigslist. So folks will put, you know, hey, I got I got some stuff I like to sell, or I got a gig, you know. And, actually, there's a gig section there in in Craigslist. It's there. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But before Craigslist was the local newspaper section, you know, and so people can put their products or they can put their, you know, goods that they don't use on on the newspaper listing. But even before that is the, was was the physical form of of these, local marketplaces. It's by way of, like, flea markets and Mhmm. Places. It's by way of, like, flea markets and Mhmm. Garage sales and car boot sales and secondhand shops. So so that that's that. And then so the second point is the activation of these services. The the the process by which we obtain the products and service has changed. So that's the only thing that's changed. So, you know, products and services has always been there ever since mankind, but by which how you obtain it has changed. And it's because of this web two point o, web three point o mobile technology and social media. Mhmm. So you have the on demand, you click on a a phone and boom, you you get that you get that product or you get that service. So basically, gig economy is what I would say, you know, it's a bunch of freelancers, and back then we call it moonlighters. Yeah. But but essentially, there it's, these folks that are on demand for both high skilled and low skilled workers. In the past, I guess the process took a few days if you wanted, you know, if you wanted to get a gig gig, it took a couple of days, weeks, months to negotiate the scope of a a short term project. But now now with this automation and software, you know, these sort of like the AirBbs and Ubers of the world, they're automating a lot of the back office processes like billing and, you know, invoicing, APAR, and then onto the other stuff like the social aspects like pure ratings Right. And and and feedbacks that you can get. So, so then this whole gig economy is very, very tuned into the high volume, customers like an on demand, what an on demand company needs.

So, you know, it's interesting when you say this disruptive notion for many industries, is interesting when you say this disruptive notion for many industries, it's actually, it's not that businesses don't like disruption.

They just simply don't like change. And so, they don't want anyone to take away the gravy train. Like, I mean, you had you've been doing a business. You've been doing it for some time, for decades, and then suddenly a newcomer, you know, hipster kinda walks in, and he's like, I wanna do things a little differently, and I'm actually gonna commoditize your industry on a on a cell phone. That's changed. And so, I mean, ultimately, what it is is that, a lot of this is predicated on fear itself. And if you don't understand something, what's natural human instinct, you're gonna fear it. But honestly, I think that big companies need to, embrace change. They need to learn to face the music. And I've seen many, you know, with, you know, with my involvement with StartUp Grind, you know, I I get these Fortune 500 companies, you know, approaching me. It's like, hey, how can we, you know, reach out? And how do we how how can we reach out to the new generation, the millennials, and how can we think more innovatively? And, you know, and I will say, like, it's it's actually not that hard. You you should think about how to recruit more millennials or Mhmm. How to create, you know, innovation labs that sort of promote, you know, design thinking, which we can talk a little bit about design thinking. Sure. And or even, you know, do things like have a hackathon, where you're aligned with your mission and and then sort of, like, allow employees to have a space and time for them to, be a little bit more creative. And then and then and then make them feel like they're big they're part of a bigger plan to, quote unquote, change the world.

I I have an observation every time the government steps into anything. It's one of two things. One is, hey. Are you, you know, impinging on rights? Are you are you hurting another, entity? Are you hurting somebody? Are you, are you negative negatively affecting another citizen? It's number one. And number two is, am I getting my tax dollars? And so I think that, I think that regulations are in place to first protect workers, and I think with this gig economy, they may be a little bit too early on the curve of trying to, impose regulation. But I think starting the dialogue, starting the conversation is needed right now. And I and I think, again, if if they're using this and they're kinda masquerading this with, you know, that we're trying to figure out how to get more tech tax revenues, that's that's different. I think they should just, like, try to defer as much as possible and let it just thrive. That innovation in the space and gig economy should just thrive. Economy

or starting a business in this realm or people already in the businesses in this realm? Okay. So yeah. I mean, if I had to rephrase the question, I would say, what sectors are primed for disruption? I'll first start with the the gig economy first and then go more broader. But, so first of all, if you are a startup and you are doing, you are a startup in the gig economy and you don't have, you know, any angel funding or VC, do not, and I repeat, do not approach the VCs and say, I am an Uber for x. I am an Airbnb for y. Never do that. They actually avoid you like the plague because, it's so it's so cliche, first of all. And, and then secondly, if you do say that, then they're thinking, well, Uber is gonna dominate your your market. And that's exactly what's kinda that's kinda what's happening. I mean, you see now Uber going into Uber Eats. I mean, who who would have thought, you know, like, in in a in a few years, they were gonna go into delivering food and and being on demand that way. So, I would say, the only niche in the gig economy that's worth, that that there are some interest is in the space for transportation and moving. And what I mean by that is, I actually had a a very good friend of mine who just invested into a company called Convoy, which is basically in a okay. Wait. Wait. Wait. Before I say Uber for this, right, the only way you can say Uber rules for Verizon. I mean, you can't say you are Uber for x. Right? But you can always say that with to your customers. Okay? Because because, you know, right? Because they're they're they're because they're they're they they don't Different connection you need to make. Yes. They don't they don't understand. It's like, oh, I I know Uber. Okay. Then it's Uber for, you know, babysitter, Uber for dogs. So this this particular one is Uber for trucking. Okay. So so essentially is, like, hey. I'm a business. I wanna send a pallet of this. How do I do it? You know? And then it's just a couple taps and boom. See, that process would have taken months and now it's it's boiled down to, a couple seconds. So I mean there's there's some really interesting interesting things that are happening in the gig economy space, but again, and and, you know, transportation moving. There's a I think there's a lot of space, leg room for innovation in transportation, especially with the advent of driverless cars and trucks. Good point. So I I I remember talking about this in a different panel, but I think, another, another, potential is, you know, is is is you've heard of the last mile phenomena. Right? Like, the last mile and then well, I'll say the last doorsteps. So, you know, a a driverless car pops up. How do you get that pizza to the door? Mhmm. It could be done by a drone or robotics, but completely automated. You don't the point is you don't wanna have a human being involved. As someone from Buffalo, you don't always wanna walk all the way to the car on the curb. Trust me. I know that. So Right. In fact, you probably wanna have a robot doing your, your the the snow plowing. I would take that. Yeah. I know my parents would at least. So so, you know, the thing is is that that, you know, there'll be a combination. There'll be a convergence of all these technology, you know, driverless cars, gig economy. But then use again, Uber is doing that. They're looking into driverless cars. And how do you replace humans and automate automating that? So I'd say there's there's definitely some, some potential there.

So I think this discussion about having human, humans being replaced by machines, I think we got a long ways to go. That's not to say that we there are gonna be certain, categories of jobs that that may be replaced in this timeline or in this lifetime. I think that's that's more of something that's gonna happen three hundred years from now. Like like, a robot, an AI is an is an actual, like, you know, I just see in, Terminator,

I I I think that there are some interesting things where it's like low skill task that will be replaced in, like, I mean, it that would be a huge shift. I mean, this so there's one particular startup that that I find very interesting and and and when I saw that, I was like, oh, man. I gotta get this. There's a startup called XAI, and it's a it's a company I believe out in New York. What they do is really simple. It's like and I'm sure you would like this because this happened to us, but, you know, you you write an email and say, hey, hey, when can we meet for lunch? And it's, like, you then I'm I'm I'm assuming your workflow was, okay, I gotta go to my calendar. Okay. Here's some spots open, then you're typing that stuff in. Yeah. Well, this one is, like, it figures it out for you, and it has a conversation. It will put it in an email. It's like, oh, I have these times open, and then list them out. And then the guy, the recipient will reply with, okay. Let's go pick this. Let's pick this time slot. And then it will actually put it into your calendar,

So, I mean, there there are there there's gonna be a lot of, startups that are that are going to replace and automate the low, low skill task in that way. Now for the higher skill task, we got a long ways. Okay. So but I but I actually wanted to mention the other other, sectors that are very interesting I'm sure. Please do. That I see from the VC world is that, you know, it's AI. It's big day. Big day is always gonna be, it's gonna be a, a trending, topic or area that VCs are always gonna be investing in. Because with with the exponential growth of data, that's not going away. We're gonna, you know, we're gonna have, like, you know, devices that that literally carries petabytes of information, and that's not gonna go away. There's gonna be so much information. That's that's the Moore's Law. It's gonna just increase. And so there's gotta be a way, a mechanism for us to sift through that data and make sense of that. So that's the big data. And then there's machine learning. There's connected devices, Internet of things, cybersecurity as as, as more devices are connecting, and then, seamless integration with devices and then software and physical world, cybersecurity is gonna be very big. And then lastly, education. And so that's what real time case is. Education, it's gonna be, a space that hasn't hasn't made much development. I mean, there was there hasn't been any much innovation in that space compared to the other, you know, other spaces like transportation and what what have you. But, I would say if if your audience is interested in knowing, like, new industries to disrupt, you should pick up, Steve Case's book, Third Wave, and he goes into detail. And he he talks about education. He talks about government. He talks about transportation. It's we're literally seeing this is the third wave of the Internet. And you should definitely there's some really good insights,

Absolutely. So, you know, in other words, entrepreneurship the word. I mean, again, it's a rehash of the old, but it's, you know, know, thirty years ago it was called the American dream. And so I'm I'm actually a product of, the American dream. So in the nineteen seventies, my dad actually immigrated from South Korea. Oh. And, during that time, you know, America had a huge shortage of doctors and nurses. And guess what? My mom and dad, they're doctor and a nurse. So they came here and literally I mean, things changed a little bit, but I mean, literally, they became a naturalized citizen within a year. And, you know, and this is this is the thing about America is that the immigration strong and smart immigration policy is so important because it's all about hiring the best from anywhere. Multibillion dollar corporation, you, anybody in this listening listening to this podcast, if you are running a multibillion dollar company and your goal was to find the best engineers as you go into a room of a 100 people. And I told you, hey, Brian. See all these 100 engineers, these top, like, really talented people. But here's the rule. You can only talk to the, the folks in your circle in your corner. Yeah. And, oh, by the way, that's the only people you can, you know, you can hire. You're gonna be pretty livid at me. You're gonna be really, really angry. So here's the thing. This is a fact. The US only has 5% of the world's population. And here's the thing. The smartest people in the world are evenly distributed globally. So that means if I have, a very poor immigration policy and I say, you know, hey. Only hire people within your corner. You've just excluded 95% of the of your pool. Right? Let's think about this. You're a CEO of a multibillion dollar corporation. You have to be thinking globally. You You have to be thinking where can I get the top talent? So that's why you see, like, the IBMs and the Googles space. They have research centers in Tel Aviv, in Dublin, in China. They have it everywhere because they understand that concept. So and here's the other thing too that I recently heard on the news. But, you know, my dad was a really big, like, big fan of Nobel prizes. He's like, it won't be around the around the dinner table. He's like, hey. Did you hear about that Nobel Prize winner? And it's like, yeah, dad. Whatever. So I kinda caught that bug. So I didn't I've been, you know, I've been tracking Nobel Prize winners. And, they announced, the American Nobel Prize winners, all immigrants. How fast You see what I'm saying? Yeah. So so the thing is is that so America does have a component of recruiting the best mind, but they need to do they need to do a better job. So again, if they're getting them through universities by way of, you know, recruiting as PhD students, researchers, you gotta have a strong program to keep them here and not send them back to compete against us.

Yeah. And and actually, I wanted to add to that, but, you know, their my opinion about the government should be as my advice that I always give to entrepreneurs to their customers. I always say, you know, if you wanna have a great customer base, you need to get out of the way. And I feel that the government is really good at getting in the way. And so, I would say stop getting in the way. If anyone policy makers here who are listening to this, like, just get out of the way in terms of, like, innovation. Entrepreneurs, what they're gonna do is they're just gonna do. They're gonna, this is the mentality of entrepreneurs. They always like doing. And then and then if somebody has a problem, they're like, okay. Well, let's go fix that. Let's let's go let's go see if we could create, a better solution so everyone's happy. But so that's one. And the other thing I wanted to mention about government involvement with innovation, there's been lots of examples where the government has been, very friendly to start ups and then created, you know, tons of innovations after that. So, innovations after that. So a good example is the SBIR program. So SBIR, you know, I talked with, Mark Walsh. He's the head there at the SBIR SBA. I'm sorry. And, really, what it is back back then with the, the Beltway Bandits, where they didn't have set asides, for small businesses. It was just, hey, you're you're a big company. Okay. We'll we'll throw you a billion dollar contract. Because United States is run by taxpayers, they're like, okay. Well, this we should be represented. Right? So, 25% of the businesses out there are small business, then at least the research dollars should go to small business. So then that's the SBIR program. And as a result, you know, you got companies that apply. They they'll get, you know, their phase one, you know, funding. And that's really the, the way where they had to find, that a feasibility there's a feasibility part of that. Then they have to figure out, okay, is this can this work? And then the government says, okay. We like to use it. We like to have first right of refusal. And then it then your first, your first, customer is the government. If it doesn't, if the government doesn't need it, then you have the right to commercialize it. So AOL, Qualcomm Yeah. Know, there was there was some solicitation that, hey, we we wanna have this type of technology. Can you do it? And it's for this branch of the government. It's for the navy. It's for the, you know, marines. It's for the air force. So much innovation has come from that. And so, you know, as much as the government does get in a way, they actually are a, an advocate, a strong advocate for small business and innovation. They can do good things. See?

So, Startup Grind is actually the organization that started, probably seven years ago by, a good friend of mine, Derek Anderson. And it started with nine people. And they're like, hey, let's talk about our problems. You know? And it was and they're like, oh, great. But, why we're sort of an echo chamber. Like, why would we wanna talk about our problems? We should talk to, entrepreneurs, you know, high higher profile entrepreneurs and, and how they overcame their problems, you know, their successes and and and successes and failures. And so that sort of balloon into nine, you know, from nine people to, you know, 200, 300 people. And then finally, we just hit a million people. A million entrepreneurs into the network. So what what what Startup Grind is is is is a very specific format. We do fireside chats of tech titans in your local city. So I do Washington DC. When I started the chapter here, Derek really loved my chapter because he was like, wow, Washington DC. There's no there's nobody there. I'm like, that got me angry when he said that. Right? And it's like, well, you know, there are startup communities besides New York and San Francisco. You know? And, and so, what really got caught his attention, was when I brought the the cofounder of Rosetta Stone. And that's a software that Derek used a lot when he was growing up. And he was like, oh, okay. Well, looks like DC has some pretty, pretty crazy entrepreneurs, some some great entrepreneurs. And I'm like, well, you betcha. I mean, there's and I started rallying off. The UK's right here. Yeah. I know. That's what everyone knows. So many different, companies here. And in fact, here's the thing. Now you got me going. I know it's a little at the end of this. We got me going now. If you took San Francisco and you took DC and I took the labels off, and I just said, just just show me data. And I said, okay. Well, per capita of engineers, per capita of, of postgraduate degrees, number of STEM related jobs opening, wealth, like, per capita of angel investment, even, I would say, richest counties in the area Yeah. They would look exactly the same. You would have no idea what is San Francisco, what's Washington, DC. And so what's why are we not even number two, number three, number four? I mean, we're like fifteenth on the startup list. And I'd say one of the biggest and probably the most important, reason why we're down in the listing is because of one thing. It's because of this notion of culture. And what I mean by that is the startup culture is all it's all always about, you know, it's predicated on failure, so then you can get to successes. So if, the thing is is that if I failed here in DC, like, am I gonna be brandished and and and excommunicated? I see that happen a lot of times here. Oh, interesting. And then if you go to San Francisco or New York, like, hey. This guy raised $50,000,000. He's the biggest failure, but we're gonna add him more. Throw some more money. It's the whole it's the whole culture of the mindset of filling fast, iterating, get to product market fit, find customer skill very quickly. And I think that, in the DC area, we have, a problem with grasping that concept. So my culture. Slow moving federal contract. That's the problem. That's the problem. The federal government. You got, like, the