The Agentic Edge Podcast

Schaun Wheeler and Arpit Choudhury talk about Content Management Systems (CMS) and how they are a treasury of information that can be leveraged for hyper-personalization. They explore how generative AI is transforming CMS, the importance of data quality, and the potential of LLMs in enhancing user experiences. The discussion also covers the challenges of implementing AI in recommendation systems,...

In order to mimic human decision making, agents need to estimate the probability that a particular intervention will move user behavior in the right direction, but also estimate how much confidence they should put in that probability assessment. The first estimate is easy - or, at least, straightforward. The second estimate is a lot harder, but it sits at the core of how agents balance exploration...

When you're on a team, you tend to figure out problems collectively - you chat with your teammates, compare notes, and swap stories about what has or has not worked in the past. What if the team is a team of agents? How do agents compare notes? An embedding space. An embedding space is a high-dimensional mapping of data points (words, users, events, etc.) to arrays of numerical values. It's like a...

Paul Meinshausen and Schaun Wheeler talk about the key components behind decision-making and what goes into automating it in this discussion hosted by Arpit Choudhury . They emphasize that successful decision automation includes understanding the nuances of decision repeatability, outcome evaluation, user preferences, and business constraints. They discuss the importance of designing systems that...

Agentic learners aren't tools or systems or programs. They're additional headcount. As with a a human team, one of the most important aspects of managing a team agentic learners is to know how you can give feedback and instruction. I made a video recently (link the comments) about representing user preferences as two parameters in order to do a random draw from a beta distribution. The probability...

How do you make a computer program show curiosity? You randomly draw from a beta distribution. Yes I'm serious. A core problem in agentic learning is the navigation of the explore/exploit tradeoff. Agents have many options to choose from when trying to engage users, and they always need to balance the goal of taking advantage of lessons already learned with the goal of trying options that haven't...

Agents that work on the basis of behavioral data need to be able to make judgements about how successful (or not) their actions are. Unlike an A/B test or a multi-armed bandit, where you use success rates over many users to determine the relative value of different options, an agent needs to be able to try one specific action with one specific user and make a judgement call about whether that acti...

Schaun Wheeler and DJ Rich delve into the intricacies of building recommender systems in this podcast hosted by Arpit Choudhury . The discussion highlights the steps to developing a recommender system, practical advice for startups, and the evolving landscape of recommender technologies.  KEY POINTS:  * Identify the Problem: Recommender systems address the "discovery problem" by helping users sift...

Most smaller apps wish they had the resources of a mega-app, but should they? Join us this week as we talk with Thomas le Hardy about his past experience working as Director of Customer Acquisition at Audible (Amazon) and how it compares with his current role as VP of Marketing at Tonsser. During the podcast, Thomas answered questions like:  👉 What were the biggest differences between running mar...

Growing a B2C app is difficult, but encouraging users to use an employer-sponsored app brings additional challenges: If a significant number of employees don't use the app, the employer will cancel your contract. Join us this week on the Appthropology podcast as we talk with Martyna Malinowska, co-founder and chief product officer at GajiGesa. During the podcast, we'll cover what GajiGes...

What are the most common mistakes apps make in CRM? 🤔 Join us this week as we talk with Annika Dunaway, Sr. Growth Consultant at Phiture,  about what she's learned in her experience serving in marketing and CRM roles in virtually every industry — from training and education to food delivery and travel and even health and fitness — and how she currently uses all this knowledge combined with h...

Managing CRM for an app is one thing. Running CRM for a FinTech app is quite another. ...especially when you're mostly a team of one. ...and your app is designed for people to STOP using it. 😳 Tune in this week as we talk to Joel Fransson, Global CRM Manager at Anyfin, the app designed to help users take control of their finances by getting lower interest rates on their existing loans and ma...

What will determine whether apps survive 2023? Lifecycle marketing. ...but not lifecycle marketing as we've been doing it. Apps came off a high in 2020, but the tides have changed. Now, most apps are feeling the squeeze between heavy resource constraints (both fewer physical resources and less capital during the recession) and worsening ad performance (between data privacy and user tracking r...

What's the role of lifecycle marketing, and how can you make the biggest impact on your brand? Tune in this week as we talk to Sean Collins, Director of Lifecycle Marketing at BILT Rewards, as we answer this and more! 💳 Get an overview of BILT and the awesome value they deliver to their users 😱 Learn how BILT discovered that their own name was potentially turning some users off (and how the...

1 in 4 children in America right now grows up without learning how to read — and we can't just fix it with "more school." In fact, only 35% of public school students are rated at or above 'Proficient' in grade 4 reading, and a full 37% of children arrive at kindergarten without the skills necessary for lifetime learning. Tim Dikun and the folks at Teaching.com don't t...

How can you stand out in a crowded marketplace? How do you effectively expand into new markets? ...and how can you make a big impact, as quickly as possible, when taking over in a growth role for an up-and-coming app? Tune in this week as we discuss all of this and more with Siim Pukk, the Head of Marketing and Growth at Fudy, Estonia's premier food delivery app! From auditing and documenting...

What's the role of data science and behavioral science in mobile apps? How do you prioritize and conduct experiments?  ...and how do you effectively interface with marketing? *gasp!* Tune in this week as we discuss all of this with Ben Tengelsen, the VP of Data Science at IntelyCare, the flexible healthcare staffing app! We'll dive into some common misconceptions and pitfalls that can oc...

This week on the Appthropology podcast, we're talking with Gijs Verheijke, the Founder of Ox Street, Southeast Asia's premier app for buying and selling authenticated shoes and apparel. Tune in to learn Gijs's advice on how to successfully start up a 2-sided marketplace, some of the tools and strategies he uses to keep Ox Street going, and the lessons he's learned along the way...

Tune in this week as we talk to Baptiste Malaguti, the CEO and Co-Founder of Kuri, the Climate-Friendly Meal Planning App. We'll dive into why Baptiste started Kuri, Kuri's mission, and how Baptiste was able to quickly scale and get featured in the Apple App Store. We'll also explore how Kuri chose their user-behavior metrics, the way Baptiste thinks about content, and the most inte...