Danielle Newnham Podcast

Welcome to the Danielle Newnham Podcast where I interview tech founders and innovators to learn the inspiring, human, stories behind the game-changing tech we use every day. I am so excited to be back and I have another incredible lineup of guests this year which I can’t wait to share with you so don’t forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts so you don’t miss out. Just so you know...

To end Series 3, my guest today is Yodit Stanton, co-founder and CEO of OpenSensors which is a technology company that provides advanced data-based solutions for workplace optimisation.  It essentially uses internet of things data points to learn how your office building is being utilised and how that usage could be better optimised - something which is especially useful in the time of Covid where...

Today’s guest is Dr Anton Howes , a historian of innovation, with a focus on the inventors of the British Industrial Revolution. He is also author of  Arts & Minds, How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation and author of the popular newsletter, Age of Invention. For those who don’t know, The Royal Society of Arts or its full name - Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce is a London...

“As a kid, I lived in a place where as a young Black man, you had only two choices: become a predator or become prey.” This is a quote from today’s guest - Clarence Wooten – serial tech entrepreneur, investor and entrepreneur in residence at X, Google’s Moonshot factory. Clarence grew up in a tough area in Baltimore which instilled in him a level of grit that ked him on to a hugely successful care...

What is money?  It seems like such a simple question, doesn’t it? But, like anything, when you drill down to its inner skeleton, it becomes far more interesting. After all, currency is one of the most fundamental cornerstones of our being and yet how many of us could describe how it exists, how it evolved or even comprehend why the financial model is actually far easier to disrupt than we think? I...

Today's guest is Eileen Burbidge - esteemed early-stage VC, co-founder and Partner at Passion Capital and co-founder of co-working space White Bear Yard in trendy East London which witnessed the birth of incredible some incredible startups including Monzo and Go Cardless Eileen spent her early career in Silicon Valley, working at tech stalwarts such as Apple and Sun Microsystems before joining the...

Today’s guest is Guy Kawasaki – marketing guru, founder, author of 15 books including The Art of the Start, The Art of Social Media, and his most recent book – Wise Guy: Lessons from a Life. Guy is also an investor, host of Remarkable People podcast, Apple Fellow and Chief Evangelist for Canva, among other positions. Some of you might recognise Guy’s name from the work he did at Apple in the 1980s...

Ten years ago today, on 5th October 2011, we lost one of the greatest tech innovators of our time – Steve Jobs. It’s almost unfathomable how much impact Steve had on the world and how much his work will empower future generations but as he wished, he most definitely put a ding in the universe and left a wide, gaping hole when he passed. To mark Steve’s life, it seemed fitting to talk to someone wh...

I am over the moon to kick off Series 3 with the incredible Alvy Ray Smith – co-founder of Pixar.  Dr Alvy Ray Smith is a computer scientist and pioneer in the field of computer graphics. After starting his career in academia, Alvy had an epiphany following a serious skiing accident. He decided to move to California to combine his two passions - art and computers - in a place where he felt somethi...

I am back! And I have an incredible lineup for Series 3 including Alvy Ray Smith, the co-founder of Pixar, Guy Kawasaki, Yodit Stanton, founder of OpenSensors, serial entrepreneur Clarence Wooten, who, among other roles, is currently Entrepreneur in Residence at X – Google Alphabet's Moonshot Factory - and Nicolas Cary, co-founder of Blockchain.com, among others. As always, we will be digging deep...

Have you ever seen a picture of someone you've never met and wanted to know their story? I first saw a picture of Donna Auguste in Doug Menuez's great book – Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley 1985 - 2000 …and I had to know more about her. A black woman leading an engineering team at Apple – her photo stood out – for all the right reasons, among a sea of pictures of Steve Jo...

Today’s guest is the incredible Ed Smith - one of only two known African American engineers who worked on the design of video games in the 1970s and the first African American to work in the design of a personal computer, and the only hybrid video game/personal computer ever released.  In this episode, Ed talks me through his childhood, growing up in one of the toughest neighbourhoods in Brooklyn,...

Today’s guest is the incredible Megan Smith - award-winning entrepreneur, engineer, and tech evangelist. It would take me an hour to talk through Megan’s illustrious career but some of what we discuss in this episode includes working on multimedia products at Apple Japan, working on early smartphones at General Magic, 11 years at Google where she held a VP position, leading new business developmen...

My guest today is Avery Wang – co-founder and Chief Scientist at music recognition app Shazam and now Principal Research Scientist at Apple. Almost ten years ago, I conducted my very first interview for my first book and it was with the Shazam founders. The story of Shazam is one of pure innovation, foresight, and friendship. In 1999,  Chris Barton dreamed of a seemingly impossible solution to amb...

Today’s guest is David Byttow – a self-described engineer by trade and, very much an artist at heart. David is most famous for his role as co-founder of mobile app Secret which allowed people to share messages anonymously. Whilst there was a lot of hype around Secret when it officially launched in 2014 - lauded by the press and tech industry, and with the company raising millions of dollars within...

Today’s guest is the legendary Nolan Bushnell – serial entrepreneur, co-founder of Atari and a pioneer of the video games industry. After an early interest in Engineering, Nolan went on to study Electrical Engineering before setting up Atari with Ted Dabney and Al Alcorn (I interviewed in Series 1, EP 8 - listen here ). Atari experienced huge success with Pong which was one of the first computer g...

Today’s guest is Rana el Kaliouby a pioneer in Emotion AI and, before I go any further, I wanted to say that this is one of the most honest, and authentic interviews I have ever conducted with a startup founder. Rana is co-founder and CEO of Affectiva - a software company that builds artificial intelligence that understands human emotions, and cognitive states and activities by analyzing facial an...

Welcome back to Series 2 of the Danielle Newnham Podcast. I am your host – Danielle Newnham and each week, I interview tech founders and innovators to learn the inspiring, human, stories behind the game-changing tech we use every day. Today, I am thrilled to kick off Series 2 with Dan Bricklin – the man behind the very first electronic spreadsheet. Dan received a Bachelor of Science in electrical...

And we're back! Great to have you here for more interviews with the tech founders and innovators behind the game-changing tech we use every day. Listen in to hear who we have coming up on this Series as well as why the telling of these stories is so important. This Series is hosted by Danielle Newnham and produced by Jolin Cheng. If you would like to sponsor this or another Series, please get in t...

In this episode, I speak to Al Alcorn – electrical engineer, Apple Fellow and the man who created Pong – one of the earliest arcade video games and one of the first video games to be commercially successful. Pong very much put Atari at the forefront of what became the gaming industry in the early 70s. Al is a great storyteller and we dive into the early days of Atari from hiring an 18 year-old int...

In today’s episode, I speak to AI and Machine Learning Scientist and founder of Kingfisher Labs - Dr Catherine Breslin . Catherine spent several years in academic research before she joined the Amazon Alexa team during its infancy back in 2014. Whilst there, Catherine managed the Cambridge-based AI Alexa team which were working on inventing foundational Machine Learning tech to build intelligent c...

In today’s episode, I speak to Dhiraj Mukherjee, co-founder of Shazam – the music recognition app which was started in London in 1999, and acquired by Apple in 2018 for a reported $400 million. The story of Shazam is one of pure innovation, foresight, and a twenty plus year friendship. In 1999,  Chris Barton  dreamed of a seemingly impossible solution to ambient music recognition and created the t...

In today’s episode, I speak to Jim McKelvey – serial entrepreneur and inventor, co-founder of Square and author of The Innovation Stack. Jim is also the co-founder of LaunchCode, a non-profit which helps people learn to code and get hired and founder and CEO of Invisibly which aims to give consumers control over how their personal data is monetised by advertisers. He also serves as an Independent...

In today’s episode, I speak to Shellye Archambeau – esteemed Silicon Valley leader and tech CEO. Shellye was one of Silicon Valley’s first African American female CEOs and pioneered a path in tech for others to follow. She started her career at IBM where she spent 15 years, ultimately leading its Asia-Pacific business for the public sector.  Shellye later became the CEO of MetricStream in Palo Alt...

As a child, Philip Rosedale dreamed of creating a fully-fledged virtual society and that’s exactly what he did with Second Life. Despite it being conceived many years before, Second Life was launched in 2003. Almost two decades later, and with one million active users and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transactions, Second Life experienced a boom during the Covid-19 pandemic as the world...