The Silicon Valley Insider Show with Keith Koo

On this episode of Silicon Valley Insider (#SVIN), Keith Koo’s guest is Wayne Huang, CEO & Co-Founder of XREX (“x-rex”) a blockchain trade technology that enables cross border trade. Wayne shares his background of how the CEO and Co-Founder of Armorize Technologies a cybersecurity company that was acquired by Proofpoint in 2013. From there he went on to by the VP of Engineering in which he built t...

On this episode of Silicon Valley Insider (#SVIN), Keith Koo’s guest are John Burris, Chief Strategy and Blockchain Officer and Nancy Beaton, Vice President of Strategy of IMVU the 20+ year old online metaverse game and social networking site. John and Nancy share how IMVU is the first company to ever received a “no action” letter from the SEC resulting in the company being granted the permission...

On this episode of Silicon Valley Insider (#SVIN), Keith Koo’s guest is Justin Breen, Founder and CEO of BrEpic Communications, LLC. Justin shares his humble beginnings as a 20+ year career as journalist who through a series of career transitions ended up starting a PR firm with zero business experience. In building BrEpic, Justin empowers his clients using his deep expertise in being a “super-con...

On this episode of Silicon Valley Insider (#SVIN), Keith Koo’s guests are Jonathan Littman and Susanna Camp, co-authors of their new book: “The Entrepreneur’s Faces: How Makers, Visionaries and Outsiders Succeed” Jonathan and Susanna share with Keith the story behind “the why” of writing their book which is that entrepreneurs come in 10 different archetypes. With the pandemic being seen as a “blac...

On this week’s Silicon Valley Insider (#SVIN), Keith Koo’s guest is Lt. Col. JJ Snow, Chief Technology Officer of the United States Air Force’s innovation center, AFWERX. JJ shares her story on how she got her start in the military and the different roles she took, including combat, on her way to becoming an innovation leader. During this episode JJ shares: Did you know that 80% of military invest...

What does Atari, the iconic video game maker and cryptocurrency have in common? Find out on this episode of Silicon Valley Insider when Keith Koo’s guest is Fred Chesnais the CEO of Atari who discusses their new Atari video computer system (VCS) and Atari Token, their in-game virtual currency. Hear why video game companies like Atari are embracing blockchain and cryptocurrencies. More information...

On this episode of Silicon Valley Insider, Keith Koo's guest is Jacob Farber, Co-Founder and Partner of Ouroboros, LLP.  Jacob is an early pioneer in legal matters regarding blockchain and cryptocurrency having worked with dozens of clients on token sales and white papers before becoming the R3 blockchain consortium's general counsel. Keith and Jacob discuss the current state of blockchain, crypto...

On this week’s Silicon Valley Insider, Keith Koo talks to the founders of MyDream Interactive, Allison Huynh, CEO and Tammy Laverty, CMO. MyDream has built a series of free learning mobile apps for test prep like S.A.T. and A.C.T.  called the “Adoraboos” using current examples such as cryptocurrency and blockchain. Hear their story of how they came up with their idea and how students can try out t...

On this week’s Silicon Valley Insider (#SVIN), Keith Koo’s guest is Emrah Gultekin, Co-Founder and CEO of Chooch A.I. a company innovating visual artificial intelligence on the edge and in the cloud. Emrah discusses why Chooch is trying to solve a fundamental problem for visual A.I. to acquire visual expertise in a structured way similar to how human knowledge. By making this achievement, the tech...

On this week’s Silicon Valley Insider (#SVIN), Keith Koo’s guest is serial entrepreneur Dirk Lueth, Co-Founder of Upland a Monopoly-like mobile game built on blockchain that connects virtual worlds (called metaverses) to their corresponding physical world addresses. Dirk explains how in Upland, a game powered by blockchain, the player doesn’t need to know anything about cryptocurrency or crypto wa...

On this week’s Silicon Valley Insider (#SVIN), Keith Koo’s special guest is Cathy Trinh. Cathy is a seasoned executive recruiter with Logic Consulting group and focuses on filling executive roles in finance and accounting. Cathy is also a personal coach and the author. Cathy discusses a number of topics on the show: Self-care for professionals during COVID-19 – Cathy’s advice for avoiding burnout...

On this week’s Silicon Valley Insider (#SVIN), Keith Koo’s returning guests are Eric Clark, Chief Digital Officer and Kris Fitzgerald, Chief Technology Officer of NTT Data. Eric and Kris discuss how companies have been adapting to work in the “new normal” by embracing new procedures and technologies to safely come back to work. Digital Transformation is the adoption of digital technology to transf...

Title: ICON Foundation - Public & Private Partnerships on a Decentralized Network On this week’s Silicon Valley Insider (#SVIN), Keith Koo’s guest is Min Kim, Co-Founder of the ICON Foundation, a decentralized network of private and public blockchains. Min discusses the latest developments with the ICON Foundation and ICONLOOP and some of their recent successes and use cases including: Jeju Island...

On this episode of Silicon Valley Insider, Host Keith Koo’s special guest is Mike McDerment, Founder and CEO of FreshBooks the billing and invoicing software used by millions in over 100+ countries. The show begins with Mike and Keith reminiscing about Mike starting in his parent’s basement. Since Mike is from Toronto, it was a basement, not a garage. Mike discusses how he kicked himself for makin...

In this episode of Silicon Valley Insider, Host Keith Koo very special guest is his friend, Steve Cadigan, Talent Hacker, and advisor. Steve and Keith have known each other for decades and reminisce about their time working together during Cisco’s dotcom era working in Cisco’s famed M&A Integration team. They even mention a time when they had to work on seven acquisitions all at the same time! Sin...

On this week’s Silicon Valley Insider (#SVIN), Keith Koo’s guest is Jacques Voorhees, CEO of Icecap Diamonds a company that is creating a two-way marketplace for investment-grade diamonds using Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Jacques is very well known in the diamond industry, but not so well known in the blockchain/cryptocurrency world (however you need to listen to the end of the show to hear how Ja...

Did you know that there are currently over 70,000 open and unfilled Cyber Security jobs in California? The market salaries for these jobs can range from $100,000 to $150,000. The volume of traditional four-year college graduates has not been able to fulfill the demand. This is also true for other technology related jobs. On this episode of Silicon Valley Insider, Host Keith Koo discusses his passi...

Would you be willing to sell your data for ice cream? Sadly, many people do not realize they do this daily when given a free offer of a product in exchange for their personal information. In this episode of Silicon Valley Insider, Keith Koo’s guest is technology industry veteran Kevin Coppins, CEO of Data Protection company, Spirion. www.spirion.com In the beginning of the episode, Kevin talks abo...

In this episode of Silicon Valley Insider, Keith Koo’s returning guest is Jonathan Nelson, Managing Director of the Hack Fund and founder of Hackers and Founders. Jonathan updates Keith on how the Hack Fund is moving forward with putting their next fund, “Hack Fund Five” as an IPO on the London Stock Exchange.  (Tune in to hear how two years ago, Jonathan and Keith had been discussing how the Hack...

In this episode of Silicon Valley Insider, Keith Koo special guest is Alexander “Alex” Bilous, Chief Technology Officer of Aeronyde Corporation. Aeronyde is a next-generation drone-as-a-service and drone-as-a-managed service provider located in Melbourne, Florida (aka the “Space Coast”). www.aeronyde.com Alex begins the show discussing how he followed his passion to pursue UAS/UAV and eVTOL (i.e....

In this episode of Silicon Valley Insider, Keith Koo’s returning guest is Dr. Parimal Kopardekar (PK), Director of NASA’s Aeronautics Research Institute (NARI) who discusses the importance of a safe and resilient supply chain for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). AAM is dedicated to ensuring the safe operation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and eVTOL (electric Vertical Take-off and Landing).   PK di...

In this episode of Silicon Valley Insider, Keith Koo’s special guest is Paul Chen, Partner at Mayer Brown in their Silicon Valley and San Francisco Corporate & Securities Practice.  Paul is an internationally recognized legal expert in complex transactions in the insurance, financial services, and health care sectors, especially in deals involving technology and innovation. His experience spans cr...

In this episode of Silicon Valley Insider, Keith Koo’s special guest is Sean Worthington. Sean is the president of the CloudCoin Consortium, CEO of the RAIDA Protocol, a professor and author of the books: “Perfect Money” and “Beyond Bitcoin”.   Keith and Sean enjoy a deep discussion around Sean’s hypothesis that monetary systems are really information systems and with that knowledge created both t...

In this episode of Silicon Valley Insider, Keith Koo’s special guest is Rob Henderson, Senior Vice President of Operations at Westmont Living, company committed to being a model of innovation in senior living. With all the news regarding how COVID19 has adversely affected the senior population, Keith felt it was important to address what senior living and senior communities are doing to safely and...

In this episode of Silicon Valley Insider, Keith Koo’s special guest is Allan Leinwand, SVP of Engineering at Slack. Allan is an engineering legend inside, and outside Silicon Valley and he tells what it is like to be powering the “new normal” via Slack’s collaboration platform. Allan is known for helping companies in “hyper-growth” mode and has literally “done it all” in the engineering community...