Asian Tech Leaders

Hosted by Justin Pang

Technology

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Sep 2024

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About the show

Learn from Asian CEOs, entrepreneurs and thinkers in technology on what led to their success and how you can apply their lessons to your life. Join host Justin Pang as he uncovers inspiring stories from Asian leaders in technology and unpacks how their Asian culture and identity impacted their life choices. Learn more at: www.asiantechleaders.com

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49 recent

September 2, 202441 min

Himanshu Verma - Country Lead and VP Engineering at Eventbrite

Himanshu Verma, VP of Engineering and Country Leader at Eventbrite - the world’s largest and most trusted events marketplace. At Eventbrite, Himanshu oversee’s the development team that builds cutting edge cloud, mobile and marketplace technology. Himanshu’s career spans more than two decades of engineering and product development leadership at some of India's and the world's largest and best known tech companies, including Oracle, Yahoo!, Flipkart, and most recently, Amazon. In this episode I chat with Himanshu about where he’s seeing the most value from implementing AI, his experience working in both big tech and startups, and his upbringing in a small town in Northern India. --------------- The Asian Tech Leaders podcast is proudly supported by Vultr, an advanced cloud platform that is revolutionizing how developers build and deploy applications. Their cloud infrastructure, featuring globally available cloud compute, offers unparalleled performance without the vendor lock-in or outrageous egress charges. See what all the buzz is about when you visit GetVultr.com/ATL and use code ATL250 for $250 in cloud credit.

July 17, 20241 hr 0 min

Dorothy Chang - Partner at Next Wave NYC and Co-Founder of Lynx Collective

Dorothy Chang is an early stage tech investor for Next Wave NYC and Co-Founder of Lynx Collective, a community to bring together tech founders in NYC. Previously, Dorothy served as the President of Kode with Klossy, where she led the organization's mission to create learning experiences to help young women pursue their passions in technology. Dorothy has 20+ year career working in technology in the NYC area, including leading marketing and communications at leading tech companies such as web3 platform Paxos and local search pioneer Foursquare. --------------- The Asian Tech Leaders podcast is proudly supported by Vultr, an advanced cloud platform that is revolutionizing how developers build and deploy applications. Their cloud infrastructure, featuring globally available cloud compute, offers unparalleled performance without the vendor lock-in or outrageous egress charges. See what all the buzz is about when you visit GetVultr.com/ATL and use code ATL250 for $250 in cloud credit.

May 15, 202453 min

Jason Fan - CEO and Co-Founder of Dealwise

Jason Fan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Dealwise, a platform that helps founders of SAAS startups get acquired through its innovative marketplace. Dealwise came out of stealth mode in 2023 and gives founders access to vetted buyers and provides them with flexible liquidity options while buyers get access to proprietary deal flow. Prior to starting Dealwise, Jason developed and co-founded LLM devtool Psychic during his time at YCombinator. Jason also spent over five years as a Product Manager at various software companies including Robin Hood, Wish and Top Hat. Jason Fan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Dealwise, a platform that helps founders of SAAS startups get acquired through its innovative marketplace. Dealwise came out of stealth mode in 2023 and gives founders access to vetted buyers and provides them with flexible liquidity options while buyers get access to proprietary deal flow. Prior to starting Dealwise, Jason developed and co-founded LLM devtool Psychic during his time at YCombinator. Jason also spent over five years as a Product Manager at various software companies including Robin Hood, Wish and Top Hat. In this episode, you will learn about: Current M&A Market Dynamics for start-ups and why he built Dealwise Why Jason pivoted away from the LLM devops space and where he thinks the value will accrue in the AI ecosystem How moving from Canada to the US changed Jason’s perspective about risk You can follow Jason on Twitter and learn more about Dealwise at https://godealwise.com/ --------------- Timestamps: (00:01) Tech Trends and Startup Pivots (11:40) Understanding M&A Market Dynamics (20:23) M&A and Startup Challenges and Insights (31:50) Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Upbringing (36:27) Navigating Career Shifts and Geographic Moves (41:23) Navigating Startup Risk and Success --------------- Transcript: https://justinpang.com/jasonfan-podcast-transcript --------------- The Asian Tech Leaders podcast is proudly supported by Vultr, an advanced cloud platform that is revolutionizing how developers build and deploy applications. Their cloud infrastructure, featuring globally available cloud compute, offers unparalleled performance without the vendor lock-in or outrageous egress charges. See what all the buzz is about when you visit GetVultr.com/ATL and use code ATL250 for $250 in cloud credit.

February 28, 202444 min

Jae Lee - Founder and CEO of Twelve Labs

Jae Lee is the Founder and CEO of Twelve Labs, a video understanding platform that uses AI to help developers and companies search and understand videos quickly. Using its state-of-the-art multimodal foundation model for videos that can accurately and instantly search exact moments within petabytes of video archives, generate coherent text summaries of videos, perform prompt-based video generation, and many more. Jae and his co-founders started the company in 2021 and has secured funding from prominent VCs including Index Ventures and Radial Ventures, and has been recognized as one of CB Insights' AI 100 companies. Prior to starting Twelve Labs, Jae was an award-winning cyber security leader for the South Korean army and he previously spent time as a software engineer at Amazon and Samsung. Jae graduated from UC Berkeley where he studied computer science. In this episode, you will learn: Where Jae is seeing the highest value from multimodal GenAI applications Why Jae believed that multimodal AI was the future and decided to start Twelve Labs How building Twelve Labs with a geographically diverse team is an edge Jae’s upbringing in Seoul and moving to the US with his uncle who sparked his imagination in math and statistics You can follow Jae on Twitter and learn more about Twelve Labs at https://twelvelabs.io/ ------------------------- Timestamps: (00:01) Early Trends in Generative AI Technology (11:55) Building Multimodal AI (23:27) Exploring Curiosity and Statistical Learning (28:31) Navigating Career Choices and Company Culture (42:12) Online Presence and AI Influence ------------------------- Transcript https://justinpang.com/jae-podcast-transcript

December 19, 202348 min

Vivian Sun - Head of Automated Driving at Amazon

Vivian Sun is the Head of Automated Driving at Amazon and an accomplished autonomous vehicle and AI expert. Vivian previously served as the Chief Commercial Officers at Waabi and the VP of Business Development at TuSimple, two leaders in autonomous trucking. In this episode, Vivian shares more about the current state of the AV industry, the potential of generative AI, and how her upbringing shaped her career path. Chapters: (00:01) Autonomous Vehicles (14:08) Hardware and Software Integration in Self-Driving (19:03) Future of Self-Driving Trucks in Industry (24:37) Curiosity, Industry Connections, and Staying Ahead (30:29) Importance of Deep Conversations and Reflection (45:20) Self-Growth and Future Plans ------------------------------------- Transcript https://justinpang.com/vivian-podcast-transcript ------------------------------------- Follow Vivian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivian-sun-0a22772a/ Learn more about Amazon's Middle Mile Product: https://www.amazon.science/latest-news/how-amazons-middle-mile-team-helps-packages-make-the-journey-to-your-doorstep

December 4, 202347 min

Albert Tai - CEO and Founder of Hypercare

Albert Tai is the Founder and CEO of Hypercare, a VC-backed healthcare technology company that helps connect the right healthcare providers at the righttime to improve patient outcomes in hospitals and community settings. Albert started Hypercare in 2016 when he realized how challenging it was to communicate efficiently in the healthcare space. He hasn’t looked back since then and Hypercare has launched in over 100 organizations across North America from large hospital systems to small community health centers. I had a lot of fun chatting with Albert about his upbringing that saw him move from Canada to Taiwan and back, how he convinced his parents to work in tech, and what advice he has to those trying to figure out what to do with their career. Timestamps: (00:01) Tech CEO's Takeaways and Childhood Experiences (10:10) Early Technology Exposure and Parental Support (15:12) Career Choices and Starting Software Company (26:11) Journey of Starting a Healthcare Company (35:58) The Importance of in-Person Brainstorming You can follow Albert and his work at Hypercare here: https://twitter.com/alberttai https://www.hypercare.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/alberttai/ Transcript: https://justinpang.com/albert-podcast-transcript

November 3, 202357 min

Francois Le Nguyen - CEO and Co-Founder of Staging Labs

Francois (Frankie) Le Nguyen is the CEO and Co-Founder of Staging Labs, a startup that secures crypto and NFT assets by intercepting dangerous transactions in real-time. Frankie previously built and launched startup incubator Entrepreneur First in Canada and served as GM in both its Toronto and Singapore location where he helped build 50+ venture-backed startups valued at over $400M. Frankie started his career in product management at software companies LightSpeed and Holmusk, and is an angel investor on the side. You can follow Frankie's latest work and thinking at: https://www.francoislenguyen.com/ https://twitter.com/flenguyen linkedin.com/in/francoislenguyen ------------------------- Timestamps: (00:01) - Halloween, Bitcoin, and Childhood Memories (08:28) - Asian Immigrant Families and Career Expectations (15:22) - Frankie's Unconventional Path to Entrepreneurship (23:28) - From Ambition to Accidental Tech Career (29:41) - Entrepreneur First (38:11) - Building Resilience and Creating Connections (46:11) - Exploring the Journey of Staging Labs ------------------------- Transcript: https://justinpang.com/frankie-podcast-transcript

October 3, 202341 min

Jaclyn Ling - Co-Founder of Hatchways

Jaclyn Ling is the Co-Founder of Hatchways, a Y-Combinator-backed startup that is modernizing the technical interview process for start-ups and developers looking for their next great job. Prior to starting Hatchways, Jaclyn was the co-founder of a fashion bot company Blynk which was acquired by Kik Interactive in 2016. Jaclyn grew up in Vancouver, Canada, studied finance at McGill University, and had her first taste of success as a YouTube fashion influencer that had thousands of followers. In this episode, you will learn: How Jaclyn’s love for competitive nature was first sparked as a kid playing board games How Jaclyn knew she wanted to be an entrepreneur at a young age How Jaclyn translated her dislike for interviewing into building Hatchways - a company focused on making interviews better You can follow Jaclyn on Twitter and LinkedIn and learn more about Hatchways at hatchways.io

July 21, 202357 min

Ivan Zhang - Co-Founder and CTO of Cohere

Ivan Zhang is the co-founder and CTO of Cohere, a leading GenAI startup that provides natural language processing models to help developers and companies build new products and unlock business value with language AI. Cohere’s models power interactive chat features, generate text for product descriptions, blog posts, and articles, and capture the meaning of text for search, content moderation, and intent recognition. Cohere recently closed a $270M series C round and is valued at over $2B. Prior to co-founding Cohere in 2019,Ivan founded FOR.ai, an independent AI research group and worked in the biotech and MLOps space as a software engineer. Ivan dropped out of his undergrad University of Toronto and he is a proud Torontonian, Chinese immigrant, and League of Legends player. In this episode, you will learn: How Ivan first fell in love with computer science in high school How Ivan made the mental calculation to drop out of university (and convince his parents it was a rational idea) Where Ivan thinks we are in the GenAI hype cycle and why Cohere is here to stay About Ivan’s favorite Chinese restaurants in Toronto You can follow Ivan on Twitter and learn more about Cohere at www.cohere.com --------------------------- (00:01) Tech Trends and Personal Background (16:55) High School, Computer Science, and Support (27:26) University, Hackathons, and Career Path (36:08) Founding a Startup and Building Technology (47:03) Recruiting Strategies and Cohere's Vision ---------------------------- Transcript: https://justinpang.com/ivan-podcast-transcript

July 6, 202351 min

Thomas Park - Partner at BDC Deep Tech Fund and Co-founder of Asian Canadian Ventures Collective

Thomas Park is a leader in global venture capital and is a Partner at the BDC Deep Tech Fund and the Co-founder of Asian Canadian Ventures Collective. Tom has been at the BDC since 2017 and currently leads a $200M venture capital fund that invests in Canadian startups developing cutting edge technology including quantum computers. Previously, Tom served 5 years at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and McKinsey & Co., where he had the opportunity to oversee numerous special projects across both the public and private sector. For the first eight years of his career, Tom put his law degree to good use as a consultant to the International Criminal Court (aka The Hague), and at the United Nations Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia. Tom is a graduate of Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and McGill University. He sits on a number of boards at McGill, Ryerson University, and as chair of the Banff Forum. He was recognized for his leadership when he was selected as one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 in 2017. In 2022, Tom co-founded the Asian Canadian Venture Collective that helps bring together Canadians of Asian heritage working in tech. In this episode, you will learn: How Tom's upbringing as the only minority in his neighborhood made him more resilient and resourceful About the Christmas Day revelation that motivated Tom to leave his early success in corporate law Where Tom's thinks we are in the GenAI hype cycle You can follow Tom on LinkedIn and learn more about the Asian Canadian Ventures Collective at https://ac-vc.ca/.