I've got a long story on. Let's let's see if we get through it very quickly. I was born in Cape Town in South Africa. Uh, and I grew up in London. You could tell from my accent that from London. Although, um, my my people originated from India from Southeast Asia. Um, and at that time, the tip of Africa was a melting part of a lot of, uh, people, people from around the world. You might also recall that it was also a period off the off apartheid in South Africa on so our family decided to move to London. Um, I we're schooled in London with the traditional British education. Um, got a degree physics at King's College on, then proceeded with a A career in It started off in the electron ICS, but moved onto software engineering very quickly. I focused on computer video, digital video, digital media, digital audio. Let's see, I'm worked with a start up, and the term startup was not known then or commonly used. But it was a small group of developers that were creating a novel product that allowed you to edit a movie on a computer. The product was called light Works. That product sold very well in Hollywood. And on the strength of that success, I moved my family to Los Angeles where I am now. And so my career path proceeded along that line. I'm now cto off Rheal Networks after a number of startup tours of duty and experiences, um, 11 of which I was a startup that we sold to Google. Um, and, uh, eso Now, I'm, uh, the CTO off a public corporation. Riel networks. You probably know riel networks. Well, real notes is the company that invented streaming media many, many years ago, 25 years ago. So that's where I am. This is how I got here.

well, briefly, um, had the CTO position in in a number of different companies, but I've come to realize that it's really very simple. The job of the CEO is to convert capital into technology on these air technologies that further the strategic aims off the off the company. Um so all of the decisions are typically around investment into technology. The CTO role is not the same as the VP of engineering role, so it's not managing the day to day engineering activities. But it's mawr off a strategic role. Looking at, um, technology trends, technology, investment opportunities, opportunities to modernize, opportunities to invest in a product roadmap. Um so the top three priorities one is to to align the technology roadmap with the strategic business aims of the company, um, the other is to is to form alliances on bake. Sure, that theologian mint between the technology, um, goals and ambitions align well with the, uh, the business. The business decisions that have been made s Oh, this is, uh, it zone important role, because typically the CEO eyes the big spender or his decisions on recommendations um, entail the big spending in the company and that sometimes runs at odds with the fiscal motives of the company. In order to extract maximum profit eso you have to form alliances and be able to maintain the level of credibility in order for you to be able to do your job going forward. What are the working weeks? What's the working week like? Well, it Z if you to do the job well, you're You're putting in a lot of hours, but it's not. It's not ours that are typically on the clock. Um, so you find yourself thinking about the problems, Um, and the opportunities, Uh, not outside of the 9 to 5 period on. I think all of those hours count towards your working week, but it's not a it's not a 9 to 5 job.

Yeah, it's It's easy. It's easy to make predictions about the future about what the future technology trends are going to be. Um, you can open up any tech magazine, and what is often correct is what technology is going to come in the future. What is often wrong and mawr often than not wrong, is the timing. And so it's easy for a tech journalists, Let's say I know in the 19 thirties to predict that, um, flying cars are going to be invented at some point. Yes, that's probably true, but their timing was way off. Um, and so one should one should, um, investors much time in figuring out the timing off technology trends as well as what those trends are. Um, it's easy to become reactive and look at where the thing is, where the in American sports parlance is whether hockey puck is now not where it's going. Um, but it's very easy for, um, uh, it's very easy to make Make predictions that are way off in the future, and you commit your company and your business on it on that course, and your timing is way off that the market is you end up actually achieving a technical advance. But it's way ahead of the market. On DSO. You end up not being the beneficiary off that success. You you've basically a philanthropist to the industry. You've created a technical achievement way in advance of the market to monetize it. So that's that is a real pain point. It's a thing I struggle with a lot. Um, there's another pain point that's very relevant for today, and especially in the area that I'm focusing on in a. I is to make sure that the the business decisions, um on the product decisions, the technical decisions align with your ethical principles. So this is Ah, um, is not a commonly held belief there, many in the industry who say no, keep ethics, ethical considerations out off business. And leave that to the politicians. The CEO of Coin Base famously says that if there's no place for for politics in our company, or there is no place of talking about ethics in our company, way were business people and the business motive would be first, um, I think that it's important that theme ethics come first, and here's why we, uh, creating technologies that have massive impact on society, and there's a potential for them to have a negative impact on society. And if we as thinking educated professionals do not anticipate what those negative consequences can be, um, nobody else is going to do it. There's a very good chance the business folks are not gonna turn revenue away if they are given an opportunity to sell a product I'm doing. And I think fire or a foreign unethical use case. I'm working in on technology in the area off facial recognition. A very scary a very skerry product, a scary technology if it's misused. So part off. The challenge on the pain point is to not only create the technology but create the ethical framework in which you run the program and make sure the technology is, um, secured in a way that you can police the ethical, use off the technology and be able to revoke access to the technology. If you detect any unethical use off the technology, these are important things, uh, stun times. Sometimes new technologies either get over hyped by the press or fear is invoked, depending on what the technology and depending on how many more clicks they could get or how many more impressions they could get from their article. Fear sells better than hype Uh, so often you'll get for brand new technologies like I'd knows, stem cells or crisper or even e commerce. You'll get the fear story, the story about why it is dangerous. Um, and you have to you have to blend these two. You have to look at the the hype as well as the fear and plot. Of course, in between on defined that that rational course, you can't say I'm just a nen gin ear. I'm just a technologist. I'm going thio, develop my technology and then let the business people let society deal with it. Afterwards, Um, there was a quote from Verner von Braun, Verner von Braun's the rocket scientist for the Nazis. Um, when? Later on, after the war, he was employed by the US government, he said, Well, it was just my job to make the Rockets go up where they landed with somebody else's problem. Well, that is, Ah, cowardly defense on. We don't support that on bond. It's We can do better than that. Ah, we can. We must do better than that now, more than ever. Oh, that's my response.