Eric Müller lives in San Francisco, and explored many different paths before landing in tech. He looked into architecture, photography, but ultimately, he settled into the creativity, building and planning aspects of building software. Outside of tech, he's married with one kid, and a great tradeoff with his wife - he does all the cooking, while she does the cleaning. He still loves photography, and takes pictures regularly with his Olympus OM-1.
Eleven years ago, Eric joined his current venture as a consultant, taking on projects and delivering value. He was brought on board 6-7 months later, and started down the path where he would lead the engineering and security arms of your partner in creating digital products.
Alexi leverages AI to streamline litigation workflows and speed up research, with an eye to giving lawyers more time and energy to devote to client strategy and support.
“The founding thesis was, let’s try and build an AI that knows the law. And if we do that, there'll be lots of applications throughout the legal field. We knew that these foundational models, the underlying technology, were going to continue to improve and allow us to do more and more.”
“I mean, law is one of the fields where it seems like these large language models could have the most utility, because often what you're doing is taking on a case with potentially an enormous amount of case law that you need to search through to find the needle in a haystack that will help you and/or enormous amount of documents that you need to search through. And so a system that's capable of understanding, synthesizing, and annotating and pointing you to the ground truth is incredibly valuable.”
“ It's not supposed to give legal advice if it doesn't have the licensure and the insurance.”
“Part of the problem is we have these laws that are just not being enforced at all. And so either the laws have to change or they need to start getting enforced.”
“ We realized that if we have almost 100% recall in the top 5,000 documents, why don't we just apply some sort of agentic flow to filter down from these 5,000 to the 10 documents that were really needed?"
Rocky Thurston, Chief Executive Officer and DJ Oreb, President of the Managed Mobility Practice at DMI join the show to discuss where we are from a mobile evolution in government and what benefits can come from further investment in this strategy. We also talk about how emerging technologies like 5G, IoT, and augmented reality are changing the landscape of mobile citizen engagement and what advice they have for leaders looking to deploy mobile technologies in their organization.
Want a preview? Here are some great quotes from this episode:
“ The human transformation of getting off of this computer platform and back out into the world and back out into trying to advance, some of the existential, whether it's risks or opportunities or threats, but get away from this huge workforce sitting in front of computers. We also have this fundamental belief that humans actually aren't great at operating computers, but other computers are really good at it.”
“ We find the average RCM team has attrition rates of 10 to 40%, which is three to 10X other industries. So they already have a leaky bucket. They are actually understaffed. They are having trouble keeping up. So for us, it's more about adding abundance of capacity at a much more lower cost that a higher quality that will allow them to be more financially sound organizations. I know there's a lot of conversation about replacing the actual human. Yeah, of course. There are folks out there who organizations will look and say, Hey, if you're just sitting there moving data around and you're not very good at it and you hate that job and like it's hard to staff and train, it's going to make a lot of sense to replace with an AI solution.”
“ We think our mission is to fix the healthcare system, not to duct tape the current environment. And we have multiple acts in our mission to achieve that. And I completely align. It is the broken down institutions. That is actually what's driving a lot of the problem. We do have to get closer to the metal or we do have to get closer to the systematic changes. And, that's likely going to require some big movement as it relates to how the money moves.”
Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) What's the use case for OpenAI's Sora video generator? 2) Maybe Sora helps OpenAI understand physics and sets up world models + robotics 3) Siri is still bad 4) Check in on OpenAI's shipmas 5) OpenAI o1 tries to escape being shut down 6) Time Magazine's Person of the Year AI 7) Gemini 2.0 8) Google Deep Research 9) Tech's approach to Trump's second term 10) Is 'Big Tech' a monolith? 11) GM kills its autonomous driving program Cruise 12) Is GM a bunch of dummies?
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Matthew Finney, Vice President of Generative AI at LMI joins Breaking the Huddle to discuss how generative AI will drive efficiencies in the Federal government. We also discuss specific use cases for the technology and ways that DOGE but be using GenAI to isolate potential streamlining.
As we wind down 2024, we're diving into our archives to serve up some memorable throwback conversations.
Whether you're a long-time listener revisiting these gems or discovering them for the first time, these conversations capture pivotal moments in Africa's tech journey. In today's episode, we're rewinding to 2018...
Episode overview:
Join us as we eavesdrop on a fascinating corridor conversation from Afrobytes Tech Marketplace in Paris featuring Amadou Daffe, who has since transformed Gebeya from an Ethiopian tech talent marketplace into a pan-African hybrid organisation connecting African developers with global opportunities, and Adewale Yusuf, who went from leading the tech media platform Techpoint to founding AltSchool Africa, which is now expanding online tech education from Africa into Europe.
What makes this chat particularly relevant today is how it foreshadowed Ethiopia's emergence as a tech talent powerhouse and Nigeria's developer compensation dynamics.
Critical insights:
1. The "Andela Effect" on developer salaries in Nigeria and its impact on local startups
2. Ethiopia's unique developer culture characterised by quiet confidence and humility
3. The stark contrast between Ethiopian and Nigerian developer mindsets
4. An unexpected revelation about Paga's Ethiopian development roots
Standout moments:
- Daffe reveals why he chose Ethiopia over Nigeria and Kenya for his tech venture
- A surprising disclosure about Ethiopian developers' role in programming Sophia the robot
- The parallel drawn between Nigeria's music industry success and its tech ecosystem
Market intelligence (circa 2018):
- Ethiopia: 43 universities offering computer science degrees
Nigeria: Developer salaries reaching $50,000, pricing out local startups
- Ethiopian developers' competitive advantage: Similar quality at $10,000/year
Looking back, looking forward:
As we revisit this conversation in 2024, it's fascinating to see how many of these observations played out. Has Ethiopia realised its potential as a tech hub? Have Nigeria's developer salary dynamics stabilised?
We're curious...
- Did this episode resonate with your current experience in either market?
- Should we get Daffe and Yusuf back on the show to discuss how things have evolved for them as founders?
- Are you a developer from either country? We'd love to hear your perspective!
Andrey Kudievskiy has always been fascinated by technology, and when asked about himself, he identifies as an entrepreneur. He has been a software engineer, database developer, administrator and then jumped accidentally into management. Outside of his professional life, he is marred with two daughters. He enjoys running long distance. He has officially run 5 marathons, and unofficially, he has joined many more along the way.
Right after he graduated from University, Andrey saw a fantastic level of talent in developing countries. At the same time, he noticed the amount of profitable opportunity in the United States - and decided to build a business that joined the two.
