Ep. 22 - From NASA to Amazon AI to Zaqa: Matt McCann on Building Trustworthy GenAI Agents

Matt McCann has worked across defense contracting, NASA, computer vision for drones, Amazon AI, and now seed-stage startup life. That is not exactly the standard LinkedIn career path, and that is what makes this conversation so good.

After six years as a software engineer, Matt co-founded PixElement, a computer vision company working with drone technology. After selling the company, he joined Amazon, where he worked on GenAI and reinforcement learning. Now, as Co-Founder and CTO of Zaqa, he is building GenAI agents for industrial customers, where mistakes do not just create bad chatbot answers. They can create real-world consequences.

Warner Moore sits down with Matt for a conversation about reinforcement learning, AI agents that can show evidence, the difference between big tech and startup execution, raising capital, founder grit, family life, and the many versions of winning after an exit.

🔗 Connect

Matt McCann: https://www.linkedin.com/in/r-matt-mccann-0494b512/

Zaqa: https://www.linkedin.com/company/105160161/

Gamma Force: https://gammaforce.io

Warner Moore: https://www.linkedin.com/in/warnermoore/

📚 Books mentioned

➡️ The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

➡️ Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

➡️ Blindsight by Peter Watts

➡️ The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

➡️ Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky