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.
Today, we are kicking off a new series entitled Minting Unicorns - Blockchain, AI and Dubai, sponsored by the City of Dubai.
Dubai is the new global center of gravity, connecting the world in a way few places can. As a hub for trade, tourism, innovation, and finance, Dubai offers the ideal environment for startups and scale-ups to thrive. Entrepreneurs find a home here, whether in health-tech, fintech, AI, or renewable energy, supported by SME-focused programs that empower high-potential companies to scale globally. From flexible regulations to tax incentives, world-class infrastructure to access to global investors managing $1 trillion, Dubai understands what businesses need to scale fast.
In today’s episode, we are speaking with Sonia Gokhale, Co-founder at VentureSouq, to understand how venture capital is thriving within all that Dubai has to offer.
Questions:
Tell me and my audience a little bit about you.
What is VentureSouq? What is your thesis as a venture fund?
Why focus on Fintech and ClimateTech?
How would you describe the tech and startup environment in Dubai?
You are a MENA based venture fund, what drove you to start here? Is this where you are physically based as well?
Dubai is increasingly being seen as a global fintech and ClimateTech hub. Can you explain how Dubai's startup ecosystem supports these sectors, and what advantages this offers for US-based investors looking to expand into the MENA region?
How does the DIFC, the AI Campus or the Blockchain center contributing to success of the startups you invest in?
What percentage of your portfolio is based in MENA?
Can you give me an example or tell me a story of success coming out of VentureSouq? How did VentureSouq fuel that success?
What advice would you give to the U.S.-based startups considering Dubai for expansion?
Alexandr Wang is the CEO and co-founder of Scale AI. He joins Big Technology Podcast to share his predictions for AI in 2025, including insights about emerging geopolitical drama in the AI field, AI agents for consumers, why data may matter more than computing power, and how militaries worldwide are preparing to deploy AI in warfare. We also cover quantum computing and why Wang believes we're approaching the current limits of what massive GPU clusters can achieve. Hit play for a mind-expanding conversation about where artificial intelligence is headed and how it will transform our world in the coming year.
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Josh Levine lives in Brooklyn, NY. He started programming when he was 6 years old, when his Dad brought home an Apple 2. He realized that though there wasn't enough legos in the world to support his creativity, he could get enough RAM. Growing up, he had a deep relationship with chess, setting up his own chess program. In fact, he states that he learned everything he knows about programming - by programming chess. Outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids. He loves karaoke, and is a musician, with his music online under the name Heavy Pennies.
In 2011, Josh joined an amazing online game website, when they started supporting his favorite game variant. Ten years later, he researched this company and their technology to see how it worked. He applied for one of the jobs, got rejected, but then quickly got a call from the CEO, who liked his application.
NightVision offers web and API security testing tools built to integrate with developers’ established workflows. NightVision identifies issues by precise area(s) of code, so devs don’t have to chase down and validate vulnerability reports, a process that eats up precious engineering resources. Get started with their docs.
“From the program side, I would say if you're running a security program or you're starting from day one, there's a danger with security people and being the security person who's out of touch or doesn't know what the life of a developer is like. And you don't want to be that person. And that's not how you have actual business impact, right? So you got to embed with teams, threat model, and then do some preventative security testing, right? Testing things before it gets into production, not just relying on having a bug bounty program.”
“With code scanning, you're looking for potentially insecure patterns in the code, but with dynamic testing, you're actually testing the live application. So we're sending HTTP traffic to the application, sending malicious payloads in forms or in query parameters, et cetera, to try to elicit a response or to send something to an attacker controlled server. And so using this, we're able to. Not just have theoretical vulnerabilities, but exploitable vulnerabilities. I mean, how many times have you looked at something in GitHub security alerts and thought, yeah, that's not real. That's not exploitable. Right. So we're trying to avoid that and have higher quality touch points with developers. So when they look at something, they say, okay, that's exploitable. You showed me how. And you traced it back to code.”
Saagar Enjeti is a political journalist & commentator, co-host of Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar and The Realignment Podcast. He is exceptionally well-read, and the books he recommends are always fascinating and eye-opening. You can check out all the books he mentions in this episode here: https://lexfridman.com/saagar-books
Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep454-sc
See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc.
Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) Amazon's new Nova AI model 2) How Nova is differentiated 3) OpenAI heading to AWS in 2025? 4) OpenAI's 12 days of Shipmas 5) OpenAI's $200/month ChatGPT PRO 6) Google's new Veo video generation model 7) Will OpenAI's Sora video generation model measure up? 8) Jeff Bezos talks at Dealbook 9) OpenAI considers an ad product 10) Generative AI companies suck at advertising 10) Bitcoin $100,000 11) Hawk Tuah in trouble with $HAWK Coin 12) The Tikok ban is upheld in court, but what does it really mean? 13) Should you TikTok your layoff?
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James Coyle, the Chief Technology Officer for Public Sector at Lookout joins the show to share some of the biggest trends he is seeing in cybersecurity and some predictions for 2025. We also discuss the evolution of the zero trust architecture being deployed and how that has impacted the overall security posture of Federal agencies.
