FutureWork Playbook

Gunderson Dettmer
  • 5.0 (16)
  • TECHNOLOGY
FutureWork Playbook

The FutureWork Playbook podcast explores the intersection between the workplace, technology and law. Hosted by Natalie Pierce, a partner in the San Francisco office and chair of employment and labor at Gunderson Dettmer, this podcast delivers a front-row seat to the latest trends and innovations that are transforming the future of work. The FutureWork Playbook podcast is your go-to resource for understanding how these technologies are changing the business landscape and how you can stay ahead of the curve. Each episode features an interview with a visionary leader, offering insights and strategies for navigating the evolving world of work. Whether you're a founder, investor, or legal professional, the FutureWork Playbook podcast will inspire you to develop new playbooks for success in the years ahead. Tune in and join the conversation today!

  1. Fast Co. “Most Innovative Companies” Amogy: Navigating Legal Waters in Clean Energy: Insights from the Head of Legal

    JAN 16

    Fast Co. “Most Innovative Companies” Amogy: Navigating Legal Waters in Clean Energy: Insights from the Head of Legal

    Daniel Landesberg had a passion for clean energy but little background in the industry when he applied to Amogy. Hired as the head of legal, he feels the excitement among engineers and, indeed, the whole company. It’s contagious. With host Natalie Pierce, Daniel describes the startup’s revolutionary work to unlock the potential of ammonia as a source of clean energy. He also discusses the role his team plays in navigating a new frontier of regulations and tax credits and educating the market about Amogy’s novel technology. “When it comes to regulations and whether those regulations might restrict or impose certain requirements on our technology or things like tax credits, a lot of it's about education,” Daniel says. “And it's not just with regulators. It’s with customers. It’s with investors.” Episode HighlightsAmogy’s primary product is an engine that runs on ammonia fuel by converting it into hydrogen at the point of use; that hydrogen is then fed into a hydrogen fuel cell to generate electricity.Daniel’s legal department is disrupting an industry that’s been largely static for years.  “It’s challenging, but I also feel like we're helping to create standards and norms for the future of ammonia-to-power technologies.”Recognizing that its technology is unknown to many, Amogy prioritizes educating regulators, customers, and investors through proactive messaging such as meetings on The Hill and publishing white papers.For Daniel, leading the legal team on a young startup means constantly assessing risk, problem-solving, and weighing whether to bring in outside counsel for guidance.Amogy inspires team members to know its technology – and each other – through innovations like a software that arranges “coffee chats.”  💡 Meet Your Host 💡Name: Natalie Pierce Organization: Gunderson Dettmer Connect: LinkedIn 💡 Featured Guest 💡Name: Daniel Landesberg Organization: Amogy Connect: LinkedIn | X | Instagram | YouTube Contact☑️ Connect with us: LinkedIn | X | Gunderson Dettmer ☑️ Subscribe to the FutureWork Playbook in your preferred podcast app so you never miss an episode.  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not to be construed as legal advice specific to your circumstances. If you need help with any legal matter, be sure to consult with an attorney regarding your specific needs.

    27 min
  2. Fast Co. “Most Innovative Companies” Justo: Inside Its Approach to Fulfillment, Supply Chain, and Customer Loyalty

    JAN 2

    Fast Co. “Most Innovative Companies” Justo: Inside Its Approach to Fulfillment, Supply Chain, and Customer Loyalty

    When a Jüsto shopper fills their digital basket via the platform’s app, the teams behind the scene are getting to know the customer. Using AI, they create a personalized experience to meet the customer’s evolving needs.  Paulo Neto, Jüsto’s Chief People and Performance Officer, visits host Natalie Pierce for a conversation about the teams and technology that are driving Latin America's fastest-growing online grocery platform. Tune in as Paulo pulls back the curtain on Jüsto’s strategies for building high-performance teams and processes that ensure its fulfillment centers deliver results 24/7. Every person, regardless of position or level, must be committed to Jüsto’s culture: “Always thinking about the customer,” Paulo explains. Episode HighlightsJüsto is a 100% digital platform that leverages AI to map the customer’s shopping journey for a unique experience. By cutting out supply chains, buying from local farmers and products, and saving customers’ time, Jüsto responds to these key components of shopping: experience, time, and economy. Jüsto’s strategy to ensure operating efficiency is focused on these three pillars: people, process, and systems.New people leaders should not try to turn a team’s weaknesses into strengths, Paulo suggests, but rather discover strengths and consolidate. That way, high-performance teams can deliver results that support the company’s goals. 💡 Meet Your Host 💡Name: Natalie Pierce Organization: Gunderson Dettmer Connect: LinkedIn 💡 Featured Guest 💡Name: Paulo Neto Organization: Jüsto Connect: LinkedIn Contact☑️ Connect with us: LinkedIn | X | Gunderson Dettmer ☑️ Subscribe to the FutureWork Playbook in your preferred podcast app so you never miss an episode.  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not to be construed as legal advice specific to your circumstances. If you need help with any legal matter, be sure to consult with an attorney regarding your specific needs.

    33 min
  3. Fast Co. “Most Innovative Companies” Slang.ai: A Non-Traditional Route to Becoming a Technical Founder

    12/19/2024

    Fast Co. “Most Innovative Companies” Slang.ai: A Non-Traditional Route to Becoming a Technical Founder

    Gabe Duncan combined his unique experience – including stints as a musician, data engineer, and data science manager – with his entrepreneurial spirit to co-found Slang.ai five years ago. In Slang.ai, he envisions a “utopian vision.”  If you dine at restaurants, you’ve probably called to book a reservation, only to be put on hold by a harried host. If you’re a host, you’ve probably had to navigate buzzing phone calls when other duties called. Slang.ai leverages voice AI to power its digital phone concierge platform. “In the utopian vision, we are helping restaurants level-up their hospitality by removing, one, the need to do these tasks. And two, the frustration that can not only affect the caller but also the person standing in front of the host at that time, too,” Gabe explains to host Natalie Pierce,   Gabe discusses his non-traditional past and his innovative future – and how AI fits into it. That future includes Slang.ai’s exciting partnership with OpenTable, the global leader in restaurant tech. Launched last month, the partnership involves Slang.ai helping OpenTable operators with their phones and communications.  As for AI, Gabe believes “we should use this opportunity to get better as humans doing what humans should do well, which is connecting with each other and learning to live better lives – human lives – without being pulled into things that frustrate us.” Episode HighlightsSlang.ai’s mission is to create a great conversation between restaurant customers and staff that isn’t stilted and is intelligent enough to save time on both ends.Gabe’s early repetitive stress injury from playing guitar eventually led him to work on Spotify’s hands-free voice assistant. Today, Slang.ai has several voice capabilities. “Inclusive” is the keyword at Slang.ai, where technology is democratized so users aren’t trapped by a big corporate voice assistant.Gabe suggests that entrepreneurs should think like sailors, not race car drivers. “If you start with an idea of where you're going, and you have to keep directing yourself back, it's more like sailing a ship than it is driving a car. You just have to keep going back, tacking through the wind to find your course.” 💡 Meet Your Host 💡Name: Natalie Pierce Organization: Gunderson Dettmer Connect: LinkedIn 💡 Featured Guest 💡Name: Gabe Duncan Organization: Slang.ai | LinkedIn Connect: LinkedIn Contact☑️ Connect with us: LinkedIn | X | Gunderson Dettmer ☑️ Subscribe to the FutureWork Playbook in your preferred podcast app so you never miss an episode.  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes

    43 min
  4. Fast Co. “Most Innovative Companies” Arkose Labs: Building Startup Growth Teams in the Age of AI

    12/03/2024

    Fast Co. “Most Innovative Companies” Arkose Labs: Building Startup Growth Teams in the Age of AI

    Host Natalie Pierce invites Justin Schiefner, vice president of global people operations and culture at Arkose Labs, for a conversation about how Arkose Labs – on Fast Company’s prestigious list of “Most Innovative Companies” – builds on an alchemy of technology and people to create a successful global platform. Arkose Labs emphasizes a holistic approach to talent acquisition and prioritizes skills like emotional intelligence and communication over traditional degrees. Initiatives like R&D demo hours, newsletters, and hackathons foster employee engagement and idea-sharing.  “Justin's insights remind us that, even as technology advances, success in the modern workplace still comes down to people,” Natalie observes. Episode HighlightsThe elevator pitch about Arkose Labs: It protects the most recognizable brands in the world from bad actors and bots that perpetrate malicious online activity.Arkose Labs works hard to ensure that its global teams build upon the company’s core values and, at the same time, nurture and support regional cultures.Arkose Labs is learning to leverage AI to assist managers during the performance feedback process. For the global People Operations team, AI is leveraged to streamline the updating of employee manuals and policies in real-time, affording the team more resources to allocate to employee relations and strategic initiatives. The fine line with feedback: “If something is not going well, we want to know, but we also want you to come to the table with a solution,” Justin explains.Arkose Labs doesn’t use the term “culture fit” because “we don't have a mold here. We want someone who's going to be an add to the culture that we're creating.”In drafting job descriptions, Arkose Labs starts with a list of must-haves and nice-to-haves, which becomes a foundation for direct sourcing for the role.Committed to breaking down silos, Arkose Labs uses tools like “all-hands” sessions, q-and-a’s with the C-suite, r-and-d demos, and hackathons to keep employees engaged and informed. 💡 Meet Your Host 💡Name: Natalie Pierce Organization: Gunderson Dettmer Connect: LinkedIn 💡 Featured Guest 💡Name: Justin Schiefner   Organization: Arkose Labs   Connect: LinkedIn Contact☑️ Connect with us: LinkedIn | X | Gunderson Dettmer ☑️ Subscribe to the FutureWork Playbook in your preferred podcast app so you never miss an episode.  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not to be construed as legal advice specific to your circumstances. If you need help with any legal matter, be sure to consult with an attorney regarding your specific needs.

    43 min
  5. Fast Co. “Most Innovative Companies” Vanta: The CLO/CPO Journey w/ Ari Shahdadi

    11/14/2024

    Fast Co. “Most Innovative Companies” Vanta: The CLO/CPO Journey w/ Ari Shahdadi

    Vanta, a company that helps customers get compliant and build security programs, uses an AI tool to answer security questionnaires. Where humans had once spent hours on the task, the tool completes it quickly and accurately. Vanta’s customers love it. That’s not to raise the specter of automation stealing human jobs, explains Vanta’s chief legal officer and chief people officer, Ari Shahdadi. “We certainly don’t see this as a thing that’s threatening to anybody or going to replace anybody so much as drive future efficiency and accuracy and how people do their jobs,” he says. Ari joins host Natalie Pierce and Steve Baglio, both former colleagues from Ari’s earlier role at Gunderson Dettmer, to discuss how technology intersects with people, particularly in the legal HR context. Their conversation covers how small, focused teams can prioritize business outcomes; how in-house professionals must become flexible in today’s fast-paced environment; and how the lawyer is moving away from being an “oracle of knowledge,” as Steve says, to becoming an expert in making good judgment. “If you can put yourself in a position where you’re able to be flexible and develop other operational skill sets, you can have a role in a company like a chief judgment officer, right? Instead of a chief legal officer,” he suggests. Episode HighlightsVanta uses a recruiting tool called Ashby but also has a rigorous, structured interview process designed to bring in strong talent and get them productive as soon as possible.Will AI replace lawyers? “I think they’re useful as tools to kind of help you with general tasks, but I am not going to ask one what the law is on something because I might get a wrong answer,” Ari observes.Today’s general counsel is branching into integrative roles within an organization, such as COO or deputy CO, Steve says.   While Vanta isn’t in a highly regulated sector, it has a robust compliance team because, as Ari explains, “if we’re not using our own product, then should our customers?”AI systems excel in areas of subject matter expertise, Ari says – “but they have to be trained properly and designed properly.”The silos around lawyers are breaking down as companies find success by running legal with business development or other functions, Ari says. 💡 Meet Your Host 💡Name: Natalie Pierce Organization: Gunderson Dettmer Connect: LinkedIn 💡 Featured Guests 💡Name: Ari Shahdadi  Organization: Vanta  Connect: LinkedIn | Email Name: Steven Baglio Organization: Gunderson Dettmer Connect: a...

    38 min
  6. Generative AI Killer Use Cases with Dazza Greenwood and Dr. Eliot

    10/19/2023

    Generative AI Killer Use Cases with Dazza Greenwood and Dr. Eliot

    “Those that are equipped with and know how to ably use AI are going to be outdoing those lawyers and law firms that do not.” The FutureWork podcast episode 6 features Dr. Lance Eliot, a regular Forbes contributor and AI Fellow at Stanford University and Dazza Greenwood, a renowned Fortune 100 legal tech advisor and the Executive Director of Law.MIT.edu. Both guests have industry-leading research and publications, and they routinely counsel attorneys, CEOs, educators, and business leaders. Lance and Dazza are also on the cutting edge of GenAI trends–developing roadmaps for legal teams, engineers and executives to transform the future. Viewing generative AI as an effective tool for lawyers and not something to fear, Lance and Dazza provide listeners with suggestions for the most effective uses of legal prompt engineering and generative AI as a whole. From summarizing discovery material to identifying ambiguities in a legal document, generative AI can be a huge asset to the legal field. However, they caution that the results are only as good as the prompts. Tune in as Natalie, Lance, and Dazza discuss key steps in creating a framework for the responsible use of generative AI in the practice of law, crucial techniques for how to boost your prompt engineering skills as a lawyer, high value use cases for generative AI in the practice of law, and why lawyers are in a great starting position to use generative AI.  Key HighlightsAn effective framework for harnessing the power of generative AI responsibly in the practice of law involves formulating well-constructed prompts, reviewing and critiquing the outputs, iteration, and human oversight.AI is coming into law practices, whether lawyers or law firms want it or not.Prompt engineering is the idea that there are effective ways to craft prompts to carry on conversations with generative AI that are beneficial to the person who is interacting with the generative AI.Summarization is an example of a high value use of generative AI on legal tasks. There are various prompt engineering techniques that lawyers can use to effectively interact with generative AI. 💡 Meet Your Host 💡Name: Natalie Pierce Organization: Gunderson Dettmer Connect: LinkedIn 💡 Featured Guests 💡Name:  Dr. Lance Eliot Organization: Stanford University Center for Legal Informatics Connect: LinkedIn Name: Dazza Greenwood  Organization: Civics.com | law.mit.edu Connect: LinkedIn   Contact☑️ Connect with us: LinkedIn | Twitter | Gunderson Dettmer Website ☑️...

    53 min
  7. Developing Your Generative AI Strategy, a Conversation With Charlene Li

    09/28/2023

    Developing Your Generative AI Strategy, a Conversation With Charlene Li

    The FutureWork podcast episode 5 features Charlene Li, an expert in transformative technologies that disrupt the business landscape. Charlene is a keynote speaker, Fortune 100 advisor and author. Her upcoming book "Mega Transformations" is set to release in early 2024.  Charlene Li's expertise in generative AI provides valuable insights into the future of work and the potential of AI to drive innovation and transform industries. Companies can benefit from embracing generative AI and leveraging its power to analyze data, enhance collaboration, and create new customer experiences. Natalie Pierce and Charlene discuss what companies can do to start their generative AI journey and how to develop a strategy in the first 90 days.  Key HighlightsCompanies should take action and not be afraid to be early adopters of generative AI.Establishing policies, guidelines, and codes of conduct for the use of generative AI is important for responsible and ethical use.Data governance and permissions are crucial for protecting employee and customer data when using generative AI.Companies should tap into internal data and expertise to enhance collaboration and create new customer experiences using generative AI.Responsible and ethical use of generative AI is essential, and companies should prioritize protecting employee and customer data. 💡 Meet Your Host 💡Name: Natalie Pierce Organization: Gunderson Dettmer Connect: LinkedIn 💡 Featured Guest 💡Name: Charlene Li Connect:  LinkedIn Contact☑️ Connect with us: LinkedIn | Twitter | Gunderson Dettmer Website ☑️ Subscribe to the FutureWork Playbook in your preferred podcast app so you never miss an episode.  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not to be construed as legal advice specific to your circumstances. If you need help with any legal matter, be sure to consult with an attorney regarding your specific needs.

    49 min
  8. Helping Legal Teams Leverage Generative AI: A Conversation with IronClad Co-Founder, Cai GoGwilt

    09/08/2023

    Helping Legal Teams Leverage Generative AI: A Conversation with IronClad Co-Founder, Cai GoGwilt

    Who said the legal industry is slow to adopt novel technology? Generative AI has made it possible to shift even the most reluctant of industries to create a new paradigm for reading, writing and reasoning. And beyond that, the era of generative AI is helping develop a new mindset about how these tools can augment human intelligence and strategic planning. In this episode, Natalie dives into the world of AI-powered business contracts and how the legal industry may be leading the way, with special guest, Cai GoGwilt. Cai, the co-founder and chief architect of Ironclad, discusses the transformative impact of generative AI tools and Ironclad’s commitment to responsible AI deployment.  Tune in to learn how Ironclad has revolutionized the way contracts are created, reviewed, and managed, and discover the incredible potential of AI technology in the legal industry. From securing a monumental funding round to sharing their generative AI policy, Ironclad is at the forefront of AI adoption and responsible usage.  Don't miss out on this captivating episode where Natalie and Cai uncover the future of work and the power of AI in the world of contracts. 💡 Meet Your Host 💡Name: Natalie Pierce Organization: Gunderson Dettmer Connect: LinkedIn 💡 Featured Guest 💡Name:  Cai GoGwilt What he does: Cai GoGwilt is the co-founder and Chief Architect of Ironclad, the leading digital contracting platform. Cai leads research, strategy, and development for Ironclad AI, and has always been passionate about building products that make people more effective at their jobs. He is an MIT graduate in Computer Science and Physics, as well as a former software engineer at Palantir Technologies. By day, he’s a celebrated software engineer and thoughtful leader; by night, he’s a concert cellist and karaoke enthusiast. Organization: Ironclad Connect:  LinkedIn Contact☑️ Connect with us: LinkedIn | Twitter | Gunderson Dettmer Website ☑️ Subscribe to the FutureWork Playbook in your preferred podcast app so you never miss an episode.  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not to be construed as legal advice specific to your circumstances. If you need help with any legal matter, be sure to consult with an attorney regarding your specific needs.

    37 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
16 Ratings

About

The FutureWork Playbook podcast explores the intersection between the workplace, technology and law. Hosted by Natalie Pierce, a partner in the San Francisco office and chair of employment and labor at Gunderson Dettmer, this podcast delivers a front-row seat to the latest trends and innovations that are transforming the future of work. The FutureWork Playbook podcast is your go-to resource for understanding how these technologies are changing the business landscape and how you can stay ahead of the curve. Each episode features an interview with a visionary leader, offering insights and strategies for navigating the evolving world of work. Whether you're a founder, investor, or legal professional, the FutureWork Playbook podcast will inspire you to develop new playbooks for success in the years ahead. Tune in and join the conversation today!

Information

  • Creator
    Gunderson Dettmer
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2025
  • Episodes
    32
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    Copyright © 2023 Gunderson Dettmer. All Rights Reserved.
  • Show Website
    FutureWork Playbook

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