Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast

The inspiration behind Superhuman struck CEO, Rahul Vohra during an Uber ride, an experience that reshaped his perspective on productivity, giving users the gift of time.  As the CEO of Superhuman, Rahul Vohra has dedicated himself to solving one of the most pressing challenges of our digital age - email overload. I met with Rahul Vohra, who proudly shares Superhuman as the fastest email experienc...

Marketing ROI continues to be a budget black hole.  The advent of digital has created mechanisms for marketing accountability. Before digital, it was difficult to validate the halo effect from television impressions or magazine or print reach. With the rise of digital came services within AdTech, the growth of SEO, SEM, attribution software. now more than ever Marketers have a wide range of opport...

This is the state of Generative AI Today. The stunning speed of adoption of ChatGPT since its release in November 2022 has been extraordinary  ChatGPT currently has 1.16 billion users. It crossed 1 billion users in March 2023. These numbers depicted an increase of almost 55% from February 2023 to March 2023.  It managed to cross 1 million users within 5 days of its launch and 100 million users wit...

Today, we are witnessing the price of progress. As generative AI swiftly evolves amidst a booming landscape of adoption, the marvels of artificial intelligence are met with astounding costs and challenges. The allure from the VC community and tech giants, who have invested billions of dollars into startups specializing in generative AI technologies have not considered the underlying reality of the...

What investors want is not always aligned with what founders expect in how they appeal to investors. The gap between what investors expect and what founders believe when it comes to funding is often attributed to different goals and perspectives.   Investors are primarily focused on maximizing return on their investments and managing risks while founders are emotionally attached to their ideas and...

For founders who are in the early stages of their product concepts, they should begin the process of determining how to make their solution real. If you are bootstrapping founder who does not have a technical resource in-house, developing your MVP can be cost prohibitive if you choose to develop locally.  Also, many non-technical founders, especially those who are part of under-represented groups...

In an era that has given rise to e-commerce and digital transactions, fraud has become an ever-pressing challenge for retailers. Cybersecurity Ventures estimates cyber-crime cost organizations $1.9 million every minute, and with cybercrime costs predicted to grow by 15% to a staggering $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, businesses are grappling with the need to optimize their revenue streams while s...

You are ready to develop your Minimum Viable Product (MVP). You’ve done your research and you feel you have everything you need to move to the development phase. Have you truly considered who you are developing for? Have you tapped into the earliest users and their needs? What are the essential functions and features?  Have you developed a test plan?   Michael Siebel of YCombinator professes that...

Privacy has become a precious commodity. It is often at odds with the pervasive nature of surveillance. Tech giants and governments alike have harnessed the power of technology to gain unprecedented access to personal data, raising concerns about individual privacy and the health of democratic societies.  To examine this complex issue, I sat down with Andy Yen, the Co-founder and CEO of Proton, a...

Today, TikTok is arguably one of the most engaging social networking platforms in the world. Available in over 150 countries, with over 1 billion users, with downloads over 210 million times in the United States alone, this app is used by about 130 million Americans and 3.2 million Canadians per month. It is the 4th largest social networking site behind FB, YouTube and Instagram. Its user base is...

The International Education Market is expected to soar to $433Billion by 2030. Admission Overseas has developed a solution to move at the speed of global demand.  Across the globe, the demand to pursue education in North American post-secondary institutions has witnessed an extraordinary surge. Students are increasingly drawn to the exceptional academic standards, extensive program offerings, and...

The resistance to change is emblematic in a sector that has idealized practices and the legacy systems that have been working for decades. One founder seeks to disrupt this.  AI adoption continues to lag in the healthcare sector. The complexity and sensitivity of patient data, how they’re governed and communicated within systems and between institutions requires significant time and investment. Th...

Chemical surfactants, ubiquitous in our everyday lives, serve as critical ingredients in an array of consumer products, ranging from cleaning agents, personal care products to cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. These compounds enable the effective dispersion of substances and are vital to enhancing the properties of the products we use today. Over time, this has come at a steep cost to the environment...

After an exhausting and exhilarating 3 days of Collision, we wrapped up the event with an interview with Paddy Cosgrave, Founder and CEO of Web Summit and Collision, two of the fastest growing tech events in the world.  The event which was hosted in Toronto since 2019 drew attendance of 36,378 from 118 countries in Toronto.   In addition, a record-breaking 30 percent of startups this year this yea...

Google continues to be the window to the internet. It is the intelligence that informs real time intentions, and what people are searching for. Great SEO continues for business to be the way to let search engines know that your business pages can answer people’s queries.   The advent of Generative AI can uplevel the playing field and create avenues for content creation, images, code, video.  The s...

Sales is one of the toughest jobs in any industry.  And it’s only going to get harder with evolving buyer behaviors towards digital engagement and self-directed research wreaking havoc on sales engagement strategies.    Driving successful sales outcomes means the right composition of individuals and process. What does this look like? How do the two work together?  We spoke to Robert Simon, VP of S...

A business needs a leader, a builder, and a marketer. You may find that in one person, but often times, you will need to build a team with these complimentary skills in order to properly manage and scale a business.  We welcomed David Peterson, who founded his own coaching company and was previously a regional manager for IT Operations for HSBC that covered 8 countries. David provides insight in h...

“Collapse does not happen suddenly it is a result of an erosion over time until a breaking point arrives.”  Andre Picard on the state of our healthcare system – Globe & Mail  We were pleased to host Rishad Usmani, MD  to discuss the state of healthcare system in Canada. From the ack of available nurses, long wait times, our doctor shortage and increasing calls to privatization of our long-cove...

Entrepreneurs have big ideas. They have a vision for how they want to change the world. They’ve validated their idea and want to get started in bringing this to fruition. They need someone who can, not only build this for them, but someone who is willing to become a significant member of the team to help in its growth and commit to the long term.  Finding the right technical cofounder goes beyond...

It’s been called the toughest jobs in industry. For startups who are building their business from the ground up, finding the right customer who is willing to buy your product can be daunting. This is where all companies start out. They have an idea. They go out to talk to people to validate the idea. They build it with all this feedback in mind. And they identify the ideal customer profile that wo...

We are all familiar with the phrase “Fail Fast”.  The “fail fast” philosophy values extensive testing and incremental development to determine whether the idea has value.  The important goal of the philosophy is to cut losses when testing reveals something is not working and quickly try something else known as pivoting.  The goal is not to perfect the concept but get it good enough to get it out t...

We see it time and again. One of the last things companies invest in when they’re starting their company is marketing. The developer is hired before the marketer. The product is designed without consideration of who it’s for.  The product is tweaked without talking to a customer. Marketing strategy takes a back seat to product strategy, and this is a fatal flaw.  One of the most common marketing m...

For many start-ups developing a financial model is a daunting task.  Why are they necessary? How do I build one? What should it include? Geoff Simonett, Investor, Advisor, Entrepreneur-in-Residence and formerly one of the founders of GreenSky Capital, and currently the President of Pinelands Capital, joins us to tackle this challenging topic for many startups: the importance of building a financia...

Have we finally arrived? Has technology finally given us the ease and convenience that we’ve been striving for?      From ChatGPT, Dall-E2, Lensa, Generative AI is all the rage... or is it just hype?     ChatGPT has been known to generate emails or replies on any given prompt. It is now a threat to Google search by delivering relevant web results. It can generate text summaries from video and writ...

In 2022, the state of global venture capital funding reached $74.5 B in Q3 of 2022, minus 34% quarter over quarter loss and the largest quarterly percentage drop in a decade according to CB Insights.    This marked a 9.5% quarterly drop and 7 quarter low – with just under 8000 deals being done in Q3 2022.    For many startups will 2023 follow the same trend from the last 2 quarters of 2022? There...