Meet the Tech Exec: Doug Winter, Founder & CEO, Seismic

Doug Winter started his career as an engineer. Eventually, he made the switch to the executive side of business when he started his company, Seismic. Seismic provides a sales enablement tool that helps businesses with optimizing the way that they market and sell to prospective customers. Further than that, Doug and his company pride themselves in a company culture that goes above and beyond.

How was Seismic born?

If you think about what had happened in enterprise software, a company like Salesforce comes along and they took an established base like CRM (customer relationship management) that was a well-solved problem. But then they ‘consumerized’ it, they made it easier to use, they put it onto the cloud, made it a SaaS offering, started selling it as a subscription, so a different business model.

We also had been involved heavily in sales cycle as executives. We felt that the existing solutions that were out there were really the worst fit for sales and marketing teams in terms of aligning them around commons goals and ensuring that they could work together on the important assets of a sales cycle. We had the vision of: let's build a solution like that for sales and marketing, and from there, we can expand into all kinds of different areas. That was really the vision of Seismic.

When we started, honestly, I hadn't heard the term sales enablement. It wasn't until a little ways into the journey that we realized that it’s a great description for what we're doing. We were going to jump aboard that bus and lead the way.

When was that? When did you start?

We were officially founded in 2010. We started building the product in 2011 and started selling it in the 2012 time frame. We didn't raise any money, actually, until the very end of 2013. We decided we had a great product and should start to tell the story a little bit more loudly to get some sales and marketing efforts going, and then raise funds.

In simple words, what do you do? How do you help people, sales people in particular?

At Seismic, we enable marketing teams to support sellers throughout the sales cycle. We provide marketers a way to understand what content is working and how it's being used, and then allow them to turn the dials and the knobs to deliver the perfect message for a seller to use as they sit down to have that conversation with a prospective customer.

It takes a lot of different forms. For one, obviously, data comes into play. It's about collecting everything that happens with content throughout sales cycles. All that data then comes pouring back to marketing to help them have a better understanding of what's working. If buyers received content in the sales cycle, was that sales cycle ultimately successful or not? If it was successful, maybe the content was a part of the reason why it was successful. If it wasn't successful, maybe we need to try to improve it.

We also allow the content to be customized. If you know that you're talking to someone in a certain industry, and you know that you're talking to someone with a certain role, we can allow the content to actually be customized so that it matches that point in the selling conversation where the other party is.

What was the biggest technological breakthrough that has enabled you?

Analytics is a great example. The data that flows into our system is an incredibly valuable part of what we're doing. We're not building our own technology to present that data in fancy dashboards. We leverage other companies' technologies to help us build that.

Second, we’ve made great breakthroughs in the management of content itself--the ability to handle large volumes of content and keep them organized. We're really good at helping marketers to that by giving them insight into where content currently resides and how it's being used, while also keeping track of when content should be expired or refreshed.

The third major technological innovation that we have which is really unique and powerful is our personalization engine. The ability to assemble content dynamically in real time, pulling in data, and automatically build charts and have them show up in a PowerPoint presentation or PDF that's being shared with buyers.

The fourth piece would be our predictive capabilities. As our platform monitors what's happening with all the content and data, it also feeds that back into an engine that says what content would be best for each unique seller’s situation and place in the sales cycle in order to beat your competitor.

That predictive engine and capability, it's something that will never be finished. It's something we continue to work on and invest in. I would say that's one of the areas that we view ourselves as differentiated in.

Talking about data analysis, do you want to add anything about how you're doing it and how it's servicing B2B marketing?

First, you have to have as much data as possible. You can't train the machines if you don't have data to train them with.

We've built a big infrastructure around collecting that data. We're now collecting millions, literally millions, of data events every single day. It has to be a very big and scalable warehouse, so we architected a capability that can handle that type of volume.

Then, you start to look at correlating content data with data about the sales cycles. Sales cycle data is generally kept in CRM like Salesforce, and everybody customizes their CRM. What a sales cycle looks like for your firm is different than what it looks for someone else's firm. So you have to put some work into how you wire this thing up so that it can understand your particular CRM instance.

Then you start to put the pieces together. That's where our system comes into play.

I would say that ourselves and everyone in the industry is chasing that. It’s still in a fairly early stage, but it's a very rapidly evolving field and one that's pretty exciting to be right in the middle of.

Can you describe a bit about your career? How did you grow from engineering to building this sales enablement tool? Was it intentional?

I would say it has been little bit intentional and a bit serendipitous. Out of school, I started out taking a job for a very old-school, traditional company: Westinghouse. It was a good experience. I was very proud of being an engineer. I had great leadership experience. I was helping train nuclear engineers and was part of a team that, at the age of 23, I was leading. Ultimately I was in charge of a nuclear power plant.

I realized, however, that it wasn’t a space that offered a lot of growth, so I settled on business school to make a little bit of a change in direction in my career. When I graduated, it was the very beginning of the dot-com days, and I really wanted to start a company. Unfortunately, I didn't have the courage to jump and do it on my own, and I wasn't effective at recruiting anyone else to jump with me. So I ended up taking a job out here in San Diego at CalCon, which was great because it wasn't quite a startup anymore, but it was still in very early days and a high growth, high excitement environment.

From there I joined a true startup in the services business. Part of that jump included moving from being an engineer and operations person to being an executive and a leader, and trying to learn those things on the fly. That was 2000 and I've never really looked back.

The last time I interviewed for a job was 1996. I don't have a resume anymore. Entrepreneurship is not for everybody, but I certainly encourage people to have confidence in themselves and go for it if they really feel like they have an idea and an opportunity.

One characteristic of being an entrepreneur is you can't be too smart, because if you're smart, you'll see all the reasons why it's not going to work. I qualify for not being too smart.

What were some of the important skills that you had to develop in order to be successful as a leader?

To be a leader, it's really much more about how you can get the best out of a team.

One thing I've found is that listening skills are so important. The way I think of it is if you've got a team, some of them have lots of experience and big job titles, some of them don't. But you don't really know where the good idea is going to come from. As a leader, if you're not encouraging conversation, you're not encouraging the ideas to flow, and everyone is going to miss out on a great idea.

That also leads to something else, which is building lasting relationships. It’s so important to treat people with respect and having an understanding of what they bring to the table. That kind of loyalty and working relationship, it goes past individual companies.

You explained that, in the beginning, you weren't so great at recruiting people. Now, you're in a place where around you, people are empowered and enabled to really share what's on their mind. How did that happen?

Like most things in life, there's an amount of your early upbringing that sets the stage for who you are as a person, but then, just like every other skill, it’s recognizing that it's important and trying to actively work on it.

I observed early in my career when I was working for Westinghouse that one of the leaders there was very much despised by his team. However, it was a military environment, so your power comes from the stripes on your shoulder. He was in charge and he told everyone what to do, and they did. What I realized, though, was that his whole team was rooting for him—and in turn themselves--to fail. I saw another leader who was the complete opposite. His team would have run through a wall for him. They were rooting for him to succeed. That made a huge impression on me.

It’s about being aware of little experiences like that, where you see things that work and you see things that don't work. I’ve made millions of mistakes along the way, but being self-aware, and being willing to change and work on things that you think are important, that's the long-term success.

In what way are you incorporating innovation and new IT tools in your environment?

I was in a meeting with our finance team, and we've added a lot to our finance team recently with an eye towards potentially being a public company somewhere down the road. They came in with all the tools that they currently use and all the tools that they want to use. I thought, "Wow, there's like eight tools that we're using just in our finance team alone."

We're constantly evaluating and upgrading in different areas. We’ll explore any way we can use technology to free people up to do more interesting things and be more efficient at their jobs. It frees the dollars for us to go do something else as a company. That's an important part of being successful.

You are known to have a great work culture. How did you establish that? How do you achieve that?

It goes back to the earlier conversation about treating people with respect and acknowledging the fact that they're here because they choose to be. I tell new hires in our orientation program, Seismic Acceleration, "You could work anywhere. I know you could work anywhere. Thank you for working here. We want to provide an environment that you want to work at, and by the way, it's now part of your responsibility to make that environment happen."

People have to feel good about what they're doing. We have a great product and we want to have the best product. People feel pride in that. They feel pride of helping create it and being associated with it.

Upward mobility is another thing. One of the great things about a company that's growing really fast is there's lots of opportunities. I look at our sales team, for example, where two of the three top reps started life with Seismic making cold calls. We’ve been able to consistently provide upward mobility for folks and that is something that's really exciting for them, too.

Also, people celebrate each other's success in a way that is pretty unique and really cool. It started happening organically, and now we actively encourage it. For example, we have something we call pushpin. Every time we win a deal, the sales rep sends out an email explaining who the new customer is and why they chose Seismic.

The best part about it, is that they include all the other people that made the deal happen. It's not about the sales rep or any single person, it's about all the people that helped and all the people who went out of their way to assist a teammate. Even further than that initial email, people will reply to them throughout the company saying “that-a-boy” or “way to go”, that kind of stuff. I love that. I think this whole process and mindset is a huge piece of our culture and it’s something that we try to encourage.

If your employees are happy and encouraged, they're also going to do well with customers, right?

Customer-first focus is another huge part of our success. I think you just have to be that way. Customers, especially in the SaaS model, can pick up and move across the street very easily. We’re asking you as a customer to put your faith in us again and again during each renewal. In order for that to happen, we’ve got to give you a better product. We’ve got to give you a good experience. We’ve got to do all of these things to show the value we provide so that you're going to choose to stay with us, and hopefully grow with us.

One of my favorite sayings is, "Happy customers buy more stuff." It’s just true and we put a lot of effort into that. I'm very proud of our customer success team, but also the way our product team listens to customers and incorporates their feedback into the product. Even in the selling situation, we're trying to sell a solution that's a perfect fit for each customer, not just to get a deal done. We work hard at that, and I think that it pays off.

What is next after Seismic?

It’s kind of hard to think about. I'm having so much fun right now, and I firmly believe this is a huge space. It's a huge opportunity. We have a big company with the resources to continue to build. I love the fact that we're building it with headquarters in San Diego, which hasn't historically been a big software destination. That’s changing, and I like the fact that we're being a part of it.

I love the way that we're helping our customers be more effective sellers and more efficient at how they market. You always keep an eye on the horizon, but try not to trip over the step that's in front of you. We have eyes on building something much bigger over the next few years. Then, I don't know after that. I'll hop on a rocket ship and fly to Mars, maybe.

Is this road also challenging? Does anything scare you about how fast you're growing?

I'm no math whiz but, 100% growth at the size we are now is a lot different than 100% growth a few years ago. The bets that we make, and the number of people that we need to onboard, and the number of initiatives that we're doing, they all just get bigger and more risky in a lot of ways.

I wouldn't say anything scares me, and I would also say everything scares me. It's, where in the organization is the place that's going to break if we don't make some changes? Try to be aware of that and get in front of it instead of waiting until after the fact. That's the game, and that's how I see my role in order to stay ahead.

Meet the Tech Exec: Michael Scarpelli, Director of IT & Technical Support, La Jolla Institute for Immunology

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]To download the full magazine and read the full interviews, click here.

Michael Scarpelli acts as Director, IT, Technical Support Manager at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LIAI). He oversees LIAI’s team of support technicians and assists in managing the day-to-day flow of the Information Technology Department. With assistance from Senior Information Technology Manager John Stillwagen, Michael is an integral part of making sure that business, both administrative and research, runs smoothly at LIAI.

Michael joined LIAI in 2002 as a Tech Support Specialist. A Writing major from UCSD, Michael brings a broad skill-set to the Information Technology Department, and is continually looking to advance and expand the functions of the IT Department at La Jolla Institute for Immunology.

What did you want to grow up to be when you were a kid?

When I was a little kid I wanted to be a scientist. Then I hit high school chemistry and there was just some disconnect between my brain and what they were teaching me. Same thing with math. I was very good at math up until calculus level and then natural ability ran out and the subject matter sort of caught up with me. Then it was, "No buddy, this is not working anymore."

At that point I made a hard left into Bachelor of Arts, literature kind of stuff. I'm actually a writing major so I have nothing applicable to what I'm doing in any way. That’s how a lot of my friends are. They went for astronomy or their passions and then they end up doing something totally different.

Growing up I'd always been interested in computer stuff because they were cool toys to play with and I liked getting into them. I wasn't afraid to sort of poke around on them. I had a Mac computer growing up and then, at college, one of my friends, John Stillwagen, he's our Management Information Services director now, was working here at the institute and he said, "Do you want a job? Go apply." I showed up and essentially my interview was my boss shaking my hand and saying, "Do you know how to use a Mac computer?" And I said, "Yes." And he said, "Great, you're hired." So initially what got me into it was not necessarily my saying, "Hey, I want to do IT." It was more that it was already something that I was doing on my own.

This is where the communication aspect comes into play finally, I like to try to translate and explain ideas to people and I like to answer questions. That's a lot of what support is like, especially in the early stages. You having to just sort of walk people through, not only is this how you do things, but let me explain to you how it works so that you maybe understand it the next time and we don't have this problem repeatedly forever. So that's sort of how I got into IT.

I like being able to fix problems, so being able to do that what's kept me in the position for as long as I've been here.

What super power do you want most?

Being able to stop time, slow down time, affect time. I think there's a lot of different applications for that. There's a lot of flexibility to it. I feel like you can get creative if you can stop time.

If you were on an island, what three things would you bring?

Well, I feel like I'd probably want some sort of board game. I'm not a chess player, but that's one of those games that I can think of where there are so many solutions. Checkers has been solved. A computer has figured out how to win any game of checkers, right? Chess, I think they haven't quite gotten there yet. I think I read something like there's supposed to be more combinations of chess games available than there are stars in the universe kind of a thing. The number of permutations you can have is so vast, that you could always be coming up with new ways to play a game. I feel like that would be good. I'd have to pick a book, I just don't know what book it would be. Maybe some anthology book.

Maybe something like a soccer ball or something, something you can entertain yourself with, something that will keep yourself in shape and entertained, but also like you could draw a face on it, make it a new Wilson or whatever.

What’s the area of focus that you're concentrated on?

Generally, my focus is still sort of where I started out, which is end user support. The primary goal is always how is what we're doing affecting the researchers and their ability to do the research, essentially. We try to really focus on that more than adherence to any particular sort of IT standard or methodology. I feel like it's really common that it's IT's job to enforce a specific set of restrictions or standards on the company. Whereas for us, unless there's a really compelling reason to say no, like it physically cannot be done or it's a really dangerous idea, we aim to say, yes, and here's how we'll help you get there.

We’re trying to bring the most minimal amount of friction to the way research gets done. As a result, we have a pretty good rapport with the general user population. I think users trust us to handle data and solve problems effectively, so I don't believe we have a lot of shadow IT issues, where people are buying things on their own because IT can't solve it, or they've tried to fix it through the official channels and it didn't work so they did their own thing, or went out and bought their own software or pulled in an external hard drive from home. I feel like people generally know that if they come to us, they'll get the help that they need. They don't have to go and look on their own to do something.

Are you a part of the executive conversation with growing the business forward?

Yes. The structure for our leadership is going to be a little different from the standard company. We have an executive vice president and chief operating officer. And then above him is the president and scientific director. When I started, the president was just a head of a lab and also a division, which is like a logical grouping of labs. I feel like he still primarily thinks of things like a scientist. So, for him, research is paramount and protecting the unique structure and feel of the institute is really important.

The COO, who is my direct boss, has been my direct boss since I got hired, used to be the IT manager and is now the COO of the company. He understands the IT side of things. He was also a researcher himself, has his PhD and had been an immunologist at some point. He understands both sides of the equation very well and can back initiatives that we are pushing forward, knowing that we're making the right choices. I'd say it's pretty easy to feel like we're part of that discussion and the driving goals of IT are aligning well with what the organization on the whole is looking to accomplish.

We've developed a level of mutual trust. The COO knows that we are going to try to do our best to assist the research, and we know that if we really need him to come to bat for us, that if it's something that really matters, we know what can happen.

What does this year look like for you?

I've been focused on security. We have a simple site, we have a simple network. So, it's pretty easy to protect the perimeter. Single firewall, single site. We're able to say, “Let's just not let all this stuff in unless it's through the VPN or is a service that we specifically allow.” The network security side of things is fairly straightforward. Obviously, I'm sure security experts anywhere wince when someone says that to them. Where it gets tricky is the end users. Especially where we're at because we have a lot of visiting scientists. We've got 400 people in a given year and you might have 100 people turn over in the course of a year. It’s because you have people who are grad students, who maybe graduate or get another job or go somewhere else. You'll have post-doctoral candidates, and they're there to be doing lab work, but their goal is to have their own lab, so they're going to leave one day. That's sort of the ideal scenario, that they're doing so well, they have projects of their own, they go off and start their own gig.

You’ll have visiting scientists, people from China, Japan, Spain, the Netherlands, anywhere, all over the world. And they're here for months and then they leave. Having very user-focused rules is important because we're not their home institution, we're not even their home country for many of them. So, it's difficult to instill the sense of corporate culture responsibility when they're just going to be leaving soon. You really want to have easy options available to them.

The labs are all sort of their own little companies, they all bring their own funding, I simply control what they're going to buy. We have some labs that are all PC, some labs are all Mac. Some labs, everybody gets their own stuff, some labs it's bring your own from home. That’s all based on their funding level, but also the comfort level of the PI, of the lab head, the principle investigator. Which is also why we have to be flexible in our department. I can't say to anyone, you have to be using this particular hardware and it can't be more than four years old and it has to be running all this stuff because if they don't have the money to pay for that. I can't be like, “Well then you can't do your research.”

The other issue that we have used to be storage. The storage in research nonprofits was a big deal for a while; it was the topic of a lot of conferences. But that's sort of been "solved" now. It's tricky because we generate a ton of data but we don't have Fortune 500 budgets. We just have nonprofit institute budgets. But, the data output is excessive. The question's not how do you store it, it's how do you find it again. We're now looking at solutions that will enable us to do a lot more metadata management and a lot more automated assistance with tagging and sorting and collecting that data.

Analytics is probably downstream of that. Data management is what's really critical, and it's something that most file systems don't really do well natively. Especially not at the volume we would need. We're dealing with 150-200 million files. Research data is frequently write once, read seldom if ever. You may have people that just collect data, and they should be, it's their job. But it may be data that they didn't really need to analyze at the time because it didn't quite get them the results that their research needed, but you still want to keep it. It also means that people aren't touching it very often, so it's really easy to lose track of it.

A lot of places cover this with data librarians, and we may move in that direction. Larger institutions, solve it just through raw manpower. They throw interns at it, they throw grad students at it, which is not a luxury we have.

The next initiative will be probably coming up in two years from now, which is then moving that data quickly. Especially as more collaborations are being done between institutions and those datasets are not small. You're going to be dealing with stacked TIF images. Maybe one image file you're working with is actually a stack of hundreds of other images compressed to give a 3D model of a cell structure. That's going to be a 50 gigabyte single file that you might need to send to somebody, and maybe they don't want to wait seven hours to get it. Having a network that's sort of hardened to do large transfers like that and systems that will help chaperone transfers across the land is going to be big for us.

What's the greatest mistake that you learned from?

Coming up through the ranks as a part-time, hourly help desk guy I think was very helpful because you make a lot of mistakes doing that stuff. I can think of a time where I lost somebody's data. I can think of times where I didn't give someone a good answer or I didn't follow up with them. It helps me understand the help desk that I'm managing and the work that they're doing, because it's work that I did for a long time. I can tell what flies and what doesn't. Somebody tells me, “ I didn't have time to do this,” I can be like, “Well, you did. You just didn't do it.” Or I can be like, “Yeah, I can tell it's been crazy, I've seen the tickets. I know what's been going on.”

I would say more specifically for me on that, I learned a long time ago to sort of separate my ego from the process. In IT, you don't often have great conversations with people. It's usually like why is my stuff broken? What happened, what did you do wrong? People don't generally come to you to say everything is great today. If nothing is broken, people wonder why we have so much IT staff. But the answer is the reason it's not broken is because you have so much IT. You need to learn to be not defensive about that or to realize that it has no bearing on you as a person necessarily, as long as you are doing your best in the job. Being able to just have someone unload on me and let them know we'll fix it for you and we'll make it better, I think goes a long way.

You always hear horror stories about people's bosses and the way they handle conflict, and I feel like a lot of that is tied with their sense of ownership and power in the organization. I think not having that is crucial for this kind of service-oriented role. I still think of it as a service. It doesn't matter that I've been doing it as long as I have, it doesn't matter that I have a director title, I still consider myself to be a service employee. I solve tickets regularly in the system. I'm still one of the guys that goes out to a microscope to install new software.

There are things where the help desk has surpassed my knowledge set at this point because they're doing it every day. There are times I don't know the method they're using anymore. Also realizing that it's sort of like working in retail. You're going to see some ugly stuff out of people, and sometimes realizing that they're not mad at you, they're mad at a situation. Being able to grasp that is important.

What are the hiring challenges, and how do you hire?

I’m actually usually not super focused on an applicant’s resume. I look for certain key words, but for the help desk especially, I actually prefer a resume that is not a six pager or super dense. I am willing to hire people who are pretty green as long as it seems like they have the willingness to pick stuff up and run with it. We tend to hire for who's going to fit best for both the group and the personality and structure of the organization. So, if we get a sense that someone's a self-starter, that they are a good communicator, that they are going to be able to be relaxed in a stressful situation, those are things we tend to hire for more than this person has three pages of certifications and has worked at a hundred tech companies and has probably seen it all before.

Now obviously, sometimes those candidates are great because if they can come in and know everything and hit the ground running, then awesome. Perfect. But I also feel like sometimes you come in with a lot of preconceived methods about ways of handling situations. I hire based on fit for the team more than I do for the resume. You could have a pretty low amount of actual resume experience, but as long as it seems like you'll catch on quick, that'll work out pretty well for you. We want someone who can communicate well to our end users rather than someone who just knows it all already.

I’d say the biggest challenge there is that people, since it's sort of like an entry level-ish kind of job, depending on the tier of tech, you tend to have people who shotgun resumes out. So, we'll get people who are fresh out of school, and you'll also get people who are clearly looking for high end level six figure salary sort of jobs. And they'll say that specifically, in our recruiting system. It appears they didn't apply for this job, a robot applied for this job, or they just applied to anything that had a keyword. We get a lot of that.

If you could give guidance to any IT manager about how they position their careers, what would you tell them?

I think it's really important to be part of the greater organization and to work a lot with other groups where possible. When another department has a technology problem they need to solve or a problem you can solve with software, really work with them on it. Be involved in that process because it helps you both understand the business. It will help you immerse faster, but it also makes you more valuable. You'll be involved in more discussions because people will have learned that they can bring something to you and you'll be willing to sit down with them and solve the problem.

I find that the more up front you are about stuff, the less things can come back and bite you in the ass later on, and the more people believe in you and depend on you.

Final Question:

Top concern - Choose from: security, mobility, IoT, analytics, DevOps, advanced systems architecture, cloud, automation. Pick top 3 and rank order

Security
Mobility
Cloud

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Meet the Tech Exec: Claire Weston, Founder and CEO, Reveal Biosciences

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height="20px"][vc_column_text]To download the full magazine and read the full interviews, click here.

Dr. Claire Weston is an accomplished and dedicated scientific leader with a track record of success in cancer research. She was awarded a PhD in from Cambridge University in the UK and has lead teams and projects focused on cancer biomarkers in both large pharma and start-up environments. Claire founded Reveal Biosciences in 2012 and has since demonstrated strong year-on-year growth. She has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications in leading journals including Science, and is a respected member of multiple professional organizations including the Digital Pathology Association.

Reveal Biosciences is a computational pathology company focused on tissue-based research.

Why did you decide to explore biotechnology?

When I was a child I went to a local science day and watched a scientist pour liquid nitrogen onto the floor. The liquid nitrogen changed from liquid to gas, something I’d never seen before, and I thought it was amazing! It really initiated my interest in science. I love biotechnology because it's at the interface of science and technology, and solves real world problems.

How was the idea of Reveal Biosciences born?

Several years ago I was working at a different company developing a biomarker-based test for breast cancer. As part of that test, we sent a set of 150 patient slides to three different pathologists to review and provide a diagnosis. We then compared those results to our quantitative biomarker test. What really struck me at the time was the variation in the results that we got back from the pathologists. These are all very qualified, experienced pathologists, yet they didn't agree on the results for all the different patients. This is important because the way the patients are treated is often dependent on the way that the pathologist reviews the slide. It became clear that taking a quantitative, computational approach could help provide more accurate and reproducible data to benefit patients. This became one of the driving missions of our company.

In simple words, how do you help people?

We provide data from microscope slides or pathology samples that can benefit research, clinical trials, and patients. For example, we generate quantitative pathology data to help pharmaceutical companies develop therapeutic drugs, we use it for clinical trials to increase precision and stratify patient groups, and we're also in the process of building pathology data applications to help pathologists diagnose disease in a way that will ultimately benefit patients.

Click here to watch more videos.

How are your services different from other similar companies in the market?

We are fairly unique in that we have a scientific team in the lab doing pathology and a computational team of data scientists and software engineers who are developing our AI-based platform. Our ImageDx platform includes models to generate very quantitative data and diagnostic outputs that can be applied to many different diseases. The products that we are working on are unique and differentiate us, but the main driver is the quantitative pathology data that we generate.

How did you marry artificial intelligence with pathology?

We've been using traditional machine learning to identify and quantify cells from images for a while, but in the last few years AI has advanced significantly. It's impressive to see how well it works in pathology images. We've made the natural evolution from more traditional machine learning into AI. Compute power is now more readily available which means that we can generate data from one patient slide in minutes rather than the days or weeks it used to take. This sea change in computational speed means that the data we generate is more meaningful and relevant to routine pathology workflows.[/vc_column_text][grve_video video_link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apAy6ZRi11w"][vc_column_text]Click here to watch more videos.

You are planning to use cloud-based technology to deliver accurate diagnosis and to address medical needs worldwide. How does that work?

There's a huge shortage of pathologists worldwide. Even in the US where we have very highly qualified pathologists we’re heading for a retirement cliff, and less pathologists are coming through residency to maintain their numbers. This is particularly evident in rural areas where there's a real shortage of expertise. Having a cloud-based approach will help address some of those problems.

I'm excited by the potential for AI in a cloud-based platform to bring advanced pathology expertise to anywhere with internet access. Hospitals or pathology labs throughout the world could upload an image from a microscope slide into the cloud, and that image can be analyzed to generate advanced diagnostics. Countries with limited resources often have the ability to generate the most basic kind of microscope slide, but they sometimes lack the ability to do the more advanced diagnostics. The possibility to do so is going to revolutionize pathology and be impactful for healthcare globally. This should also benefit patients in the US by helping to lower the cost of healthcare.

How is AI impacting pathology?

The application of AI in pathology is a very new thing. We've been developing this for a while and we're launching the first products in the clinic for patients in 2019. We are also building more enhanced pathology models by integrating other data sources. We’re finding that we can use AI to detect aspects of cancer that are not obvious just by looking down a microscope. For example, we're detecting small changes in the texture of the nucleus of cells or small cellular changes that you wouldn't necessarily notice by eye but can be predictive or prognostic of disease. I think this is going to be really impactful for personalized medicine.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column heading_color="primary-1"][vc_empty_space][grve_callout title="Tech Spotlight Interviews" button_text="Learn more" button_link="url:http%3A%2F%2Finfo.managedsolution.com%2Fc-level-interview-registration||target:%20_blank|"]IT is a journey, not a destination. We want to hear about YOUR journey!
Are you a technology innovator or enthusiast?
We would love to highlight you in the next edition of our Tech Spotlight.[/grve_callout][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Meet the Tech Exec: Denise Bevers, Co-Founder, President, and Chief Operating Officer, Kindred Biosciences

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height="20px"][vc_column_text]To download the full magazine and read the full interviews, click here.

Denise Bevers, Co-Founder, President, and Chief Operating Officer of Kindred Biosciences is an experienced pharmaceutical executive with a distinguished career in clinical operations, medical affairs, and scientific communications. With over 20 years of pharmaceutical and research experience, she has successfully managed dozens of product launches and development programs from Phase I through Phase IV. Bevers previously held leadership positions at Elan Pharmaceuticals, Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, Quintiles, and SkyePharma. Prior to co-founding KindredBio, she was President and Founding Partner of SD Scientific, a full-service medical affairs and communications company.

KindredBio is a leading veterinary biotech company in the world that develops breakthrough medicines for our best friends: cats, dogs, and horses.

Watch more videos here.

How was the idea of KindredBio born?

KindredBio was born from the understanding that our pets need access to the same caliber of medicines to which we have access as humans. When my partner, Dr. Richard Chin, and I were working in human drug development, we decided we wanted to develop cutting-edge products for cats, dogs, and horses. We formed KindredBio to develop these drugs, specific for each species, and have them approved for use by the FDA and/or other relevant regulatory agencies, for veterinary use.

How do you help pets?

At KindredBio, we identify drugs and biologics that work in humans, and we develop veterinary versions for cats, dogs, and horses. We lovingly say that we will not test any products on animals that have not been tested in humans first! By adapting the research and development from existing human products, we both increase the chance of success and decrease costs and timelines. We can develop these product candidates for an average of $5 to $8 million in 3-6 years. This is a phenomenal feat if you consider that human drugs may cost over $1 billion and take over a decade to develop. At KindredBio, we have approximately 20 product candidates in our pipeline and hope to make a tremendous difference in the lives of pets and pet owners by providing products to veterinarians.

What has been you biggest professional challenge so far and how did you overcome it?

After nearly 25 years working in human drug development, it was a big leap to start a company focused in veterinary medicine. As I have done throughout my career, the number one step was to surround myself with the most talented people in the industry. We hired the top veterinarians, protein engineers, and drug developers in the business. As a result, we developed an incredible pipeline and ended up taking the company public (Nasdaq: KIN) in just 14 months after founding. It was one of the fastest IPOs in biotech history. We are proof that, with the most talented and motivated team members, anything is possible!

What is the most important role of technology in biotechnology?

As a virtual company with remote employees across the US, we need to collaborate at all levels of the business daily. Our IT team believes the technology should be transparent so whether we’re in virtual conferences, sharing information or collaborating on documents, or crunching data for research – our teams should be working as seamlessly as if we were all working in the same physical location. The good news for companies like us is that the tools we have today, which were unattainable 5 or 10 years ago, are cost-effective and work quite well.

Watch more videos here.

What has been the biggest technological breakthrough for your company?

Our real technological breakthrough has been the development of specific monoclonal antibodies and recombinant proteins for cats, dogs, and horses. We are walking in lock-step with biotech innovation, such as immunotherapy, on the human side. We have hired world-renown protein engineers and have the some of the most sophisticated manufacturing in all of biotech. We are developing first-in-class, cutting-edge product candidates for cats, dogs, and horses. We can manufacture very sophisticated products at a much lower cost, which for us was the key to starting the company. Before we start to develop any product, we need to know that we can manufacture it at a cost that the pet owner can afford. And that really was what drove us to be able to start the company, the incredible advancement in biotechnology and manufacturing technology. Our goal is to truly revolutionize veterinary medicine.

You have held leadership positions at numerous professional organizations, what advice could you offer other professionals in STEM fields to help them become good leaders?

One of the important messages that I like to communicate to young women (and men) is that you can have a career in STEM without being a bench scientist, engineer, or mathematician. I am a great example of that. While I have a BS in biology, I am not a scientist, yet I have managed to surround myself, throughout my career, with the best scientists in the world. I get so much gratification from a career in STEM. For leaders, I particularly encourage them to work on their communication skills. For technical talent, it is critical to be able to discuss the technology to many stakeholders, from non-technical employees, to management, and likely even to investors. The ability to tailor communication is a cornerstone to great leadership.

Innovation is the essence of KindredBio. Can you give us an example how you innovate with medicine for pets?

In 2018, we received FDA approval for our first product which is a transdermal ointment for cats. Until recently, a human drug was used off label. The owner was dispensed a little white pill and he or she had to cut it, typically into eights, and then pill that cat. Which, if you’ve ever had the pleasure of doing so, is really not fun. We worked very closely with our scientists to make a product that penetrates the skin of the ear. So, you rub some in the ear, and the transdermal ointment penetrates the skin and works as well as if you were taking a pill. And that’s how we use innovation to create value for the pet owner and veterinarian.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column heading_color="primary-1"][vc_empty_space][grve_callout title="Tech Spotlight Interviews" button_text="Learn more" button_link="url:http%3A%2F%2Finfo.managedsolution.com%2Fc-level-interview-registration||target:%20_blank|"]IT is a journey, not a destination. We want to hear about YOUR journey!
Are you a technology innovator or enthusiast?
We would love to highlight you in the next edition of our Tech Spotlight.[/grve_callout][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Meet the Tech Exec: Jaye Connolly-LaBelle, Chairman & CEO, RippleNami

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]To download the full magazine and read the full interviews, click here.

Jaye Connolly-LaBelle, who serves as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at RippleNami, brings more than 30 years of experience to the table. She has served in various leadership roles during her tenure in the finance and mergers & acquisitions areas, as well as in key C-level roles in both privately and publicly traded corporations. At RippleNami, she holds the responsibilities of developing and executing the company's long-term strategies as well as creating shareholder value.

RippleNami is a company that is redefining mapping, connecting the unconnected through its proprietary visualization platform. They have positively affected 3 million+ users (such as farmers, refugees, veterans, women, and children) in places like Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, and the UK.

Why RippleNami?

"Phil Gahn was in the intelligence services for about 12 years and after that he went on the humanitarian side landing aid for the UN in Africa. One of the things that he kept seeing over and over and over is that no one had current maps. He started putting it all together and said, 'Why can't we connect to unconnected people?' We spend about 150 billion dollars a year on aid, 90 billion never reaches those in need. He pitched it to me, and I said, 'I love to travel, I love to help people, let's do this.' That’s how RippleNami was formed. Nami in Swahili means with me. Ripple means movement, so create movement with me. We're a for-profit, social good company."

How do you turn the unutilized data into powerful, smart information?

"While we had landlines and computers, developing countries have immediately just got cell phones. They've created huge amounts of data. What they don't have in Africa is data structuring and data management. A lot of it comes from lack of security. That's why when blockchain came around, we thought it was a great way to break down data silos. We put it up in the block, so it's secure, and we give access to those who actually need it."

How does blockchain technology work on the cell phones and help the people who need it?

"I'll walk you through Kenya livestock. We partnered with the Department of Veterinary Services. Their problem was that they went out and provided animals with vaccinations, but didn’t know anything about the animals, what disease they have, if they've been treated before, who owns them. The farmers that own the cattle can't prove that they own it, therefore, they're not bankable. We realized this is a whole ecosystem of problems. To solve it, first we need to know who the animal is. By using a microchip, we can do a whole electronic healthcare record on a cow, as we say, the internet of cows is here. Once we identified the cows, we also identified the farmers. Now when the vets go out, they can provide them with the healthcare that they need, they can see it on a map real-time, and the blockchain will come into play with micro financing. The banks can now start micro lending to the farmers, based upon the assets they have, the cows."

What has your impact been so far?

"In the livestock, in three months, 40,000 cows were tagged, 700 farms were recognized, in one county. There's 47 counties in Kenya, so we are planning to do the same in next 3 counties, and so on. Once we have phase one done, then they'll go to the micro lending and slaughter houses. In the UK they don't know where their veterans are, who they are, what they need, what services are available. Compare that to the US, we have 47,000 charities that help out veterans, but no one is really collaborating in helping them out, so that's where our system comes in and allows everyone to collaborate. In UK it's about 2.8 million people right now that are on our system and are using it to collaborate and figure out how and where can they get the services they need."

Being on the road a lot in different parts of the world, how does your team collaborate, how does technology help in that?

"Believe it or not, WhatsApp is the app of Africa, Skype is the app of Europe, and a lot of different ones in Asia. We're a virtual company, we're up all the time."

How do you make sure your data is secure?

"Because our customer is the Ministry of Defense in the UK, we are already GDPR compliant, which has now been the gold standard that everyone else is following."

How does an IT department look like at RippleNami?

"Everyone's based in San Diego, all our corporate offices are here. We're a SaaS based model, and cloud based, but when something new comes around, we'll look at it, we'll evaluate it and make the decision. On technologies, we'll either buy it, partner, or build it. If there's something already great out there, we're not going to go recreate the wheel. If it doesn't exist, we'll build it, and if it exists, we want to possibly own it."[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column heading_color="primary-1"][vc_empty_space][grve_callout title="Tech Spotlight Interviews" button_text="Learn more" button_link="url:http%3A%2F%2Finfo.managedsolution.com%2Fc-level-interview-registration||target:%20_blank|"]IT is a journey, not a destination. We want to hear about YOUR journey!
Are you a technology innovator or enthusiast?
We would love to highlight you in the next edition of our Tech Spotlight.[/grve_callout][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Talk About Tech Trends: Local Information Executives Discuss Emerging Strategies and Tactics From a Technology Perspective

Talk about Tech Trends

To download the full magazine and read the full interviews, click here.

Featured on www.sdbj.com

About These Excerpts

San Diego — Local Information Executives Discuss Emerging Strategies and Tactics From a Technology Perspective

Excerpts were selected for publication by the San Diego Business Journal from interviews conducted with local industry experts as part of a survey by Managed Solution, a San Diego-based full-service technology firm. These excerpts have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Alex Bates

CTO Mtell

On leveraging big data: Some customers are more paranoid about hoarding their own data and others are more open to sharing it because they get greater benefits.

Offloading a lot of the IT support, I think that everyone is warming up to the idea in the industrial realm. For big data, the costs are still a little bit high, to truly host that in the public cloud. The best scenario would be to use public cloud for elastic computing, scale it back down, figure out how to transfer the data.

But I definitely think it’s the wave of the future.

On customer-focused solutions: For us, our customers, we travel out and get a whole new appreciation for the challenges they face. When you meet them on a drilling rig, you get a whole new appreciation for what they face.

The movie Deepwater Horizon showed how their lives are on the line. People are responsible for many lives, and for us, our software is supposed to help reduce risks and predict catastrophic incidents. For us to deliver value, we have to have state-of-the-art monitoring capabilities and integrate with their work so things don’t slip through the cracks. We have to deliver value for improving efficiency with equipment.

Joe Beery

SVP & CIO ThermoFisher Scientific

On the role of IT in corporate strategy: My CEO is looking to move to cloud strategy faster. The CEO never thought we would say this, but we’re the competitive advantage for the company. It’s an incredibly target-rich environment because we can do things better than we’ve done before.

In the next five years it’s going to be drastically different. You won’t have silos. The question is what do we go after first that’s going to drive the best amount of value?

The speed we can move is so much faster, you don’t want to make mistakes; you want to invest in the right things.

We are connecting all of our sales force around lead management. We did a lot of work crunching our CRM data and systems to better enhance our sales agents to manage leads. As we continue to roll out the cloud it gets us closer to the customer.

On real impacts: When you look at what we do, the mission is to make the world healthier, cleaner, safer, and that is all digital. So this is going to change the way we live.

I have two kids alive today because of what the company does. They were both born with a rare genetic disorder, and because of our instruments (the rare genetic mutation was found and treated). (The kids) take medication three times a day now, and it was this digital answer.

When I think of the future of big data, you see a future that is really different for everyone.

Jonathan Behnke

CIO City of San Diego Department of Information Technology

On what IoT means to operations: We hear from a lot of vendors in the technology sector and when we talk about it as a local government, IoT is discussed alongside Smart Cities. There is a lot of discussion about improvements to transportation, development, and energy.

We see a lot of potential for the city and surrounding governments to partner and make life better for our residents, neighbors, and community members. The city announced a partnership with Google Waze, and we are looking at how we can use that data to really improve transportation. Our traffic engineering department can take that data and potentially implement changes.

The city also has a project to deploy LED streetlights, and some will have sensors to generate new data and drive analytics that the city can make improvements from.

If the regional governments can take advantage of IOT and aggregate that information into a single source, there are some great possibilities. You can take analytics and data from multiple organizations and aggregate it and put up a heat map, and so some really cool things.

The city has an open data portal releasing a lot of data sets to the community. As we look at IOT, we really look at a lot of future potential, data and analytics, which could ultimately bring improvements to the everyday life of citizens.

Ken Lawonn

SVP & CIO Sharp HealthCare

On how IT is helping drive revenue through the company: We are looking at taking our current assets to expose those services to more through things like telehealth, video-based, online services which allow us to extend services without having to build new buildings or have people come to us.

Using technology makes things more convenient for individuals. We use technology to understand if we are providing the best treatment, and make sure we are not penalized or making sure we are effectively leveraging our payment process. That’s how we are effectively leveraging technology to help increase

On the role of IT in corporate strategy: We’ve gone from IT being a back-end service to being partners with the business. It is the engine for business transformation and growth.

There is hardly anything we look at that doesn’t have technology involved in some way. There is so much technology available, pick the right technology and hold people accountable to leverage it and provide value.

We have to think about how we bend the cost curve. We can’t keep increasing the spend if there isn’t some return. Everyone likes to add stuff, nobody likes to take things away.

CIOs are becoming more like change agents and transformational leaders. The message is we’ve got to be nimble, faster, more accessible.

Todd Stewart

VP, Global Infrastructure and IT Operations Western Digital

On the public cloud: Public cloud is one of several tools for corporate computing, but not one

that solves every need — or will ever solve every need. This is a hybrid world.

Public cloud isn’t cheap. Some things run cheaper on premise. Sometimes you have capital to spend, and public cloud is only OpX. Fit the right tool to the right job.

On the role of IT in corporate strategy: Our company views IT as a key enabler for marketing, sales, manufacturing, business intelligence, supply chain, and productivity.

This change occurred because our CIO and his team set out to understand every facet of our business, and then focused on delivering innovation at every opportunity. “Keeping the lights on,” low-value work was moved to SaaS and cloud, allowing our internal resources to focus on innovation and delivering value.

Patrick Tinklenberg

VP of Information Technology Sycuan Casino

On how IT is helping drive revenue through the company: A lot of people think of IT as being a cost center. We really tie every initiative we do in IT to some business initiative. Sometimes those initiatives are not specifically a revenue target. We don’t always look at return on investment, sometimes the focus is return on objective.

When it comes to truly revenue focused goals we do a lot of projects for marketing and for finance that drive revenue back into the casino.

We also take some of the things we do really well that other casinos don’t do and commercialize them. As an example, we are commercializing a process we developed in-house for transferring data in real time to analytics providers. We are the only casino that does that for this provider, and now they want to commercialize the product and offer it to other casinos.

On IoT: We are expanding, so we’re looking at smart building technologies. You’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of thousands of end points, from lighting, to fans, to temperature sensors, to valves for sprinkler systems, all can be tied together and integrated to a system that controls everything.

We have a little over 2000 slot machines on our floor. Each of them sends us all kinds of data, being able to mine all of that data, being able to grab all of that useful data, and process it with streaming analytics is going to be very important for us.