The Next Great Thing Andrew Greenstein

As the planet warms, we're experiencing more frequent and destructive extreme weather. Yet, 85% of the world lacks critical atmospheric data for precise forecasting that could help us better prepare. John Dean and Kai Marshland, Co-Founders of WindBorne Systems, are on a mission to close this gap. Born out of the Stanford Student Space Initiative, WindBorne began as a project to extend the flight duration of conventional weather balloons. Realizing the impact of their technology on climate change, they turned their project into a venture-backed startup serving both private and government partners like NOAA and the U.S. Air Force. John and Kai share how WindBorne deploys a global constellation of autonomous, navigable, AI-powered balloons that fly longer, are more sustainable, and collect more real-time measurements than standard balloons. Their data is fed into powerful AI models to create the world's most accurate forecasts – better than Google DeepMind’s GraphCast – unlocking the potential to improve disaster preparedness and climate resilience worldwide.
Show notes, episodes, and more at thenextgreatthingpodcast.com. For more information on SF AppWorks, visit sfappworks.com.

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Technology connects us more than ever. Yet, we feel lonelier than ever. Worldwide, one in four adults (more than a billion people) feel lonely. And 36% of all Americans — including 61% of young adults aged 18-25 — feel “serious loneliness.” It’s gotten so bad that, in 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a health advisory about America’s loneliness epidemic, equating social disconnection to the physical health risks to that of drinking alcohol, obesity, physical inactivity, and even smoking 15 cigarettes a day. In this session from SXSW 2024, Andrew Greenstein, Co-Founder and CEO at SF AppWorks and host of ‘The Next Great Thing’ podcast leads a thought-provoking discussion, joined by panelists Leslie Witt, Chief Product and Design officer at Headspace; Kyle Rand, Co-Founder and CEO at Rendever; and Erick Hachenburg, Founder at Tenor, creator of GIF Keyboard. Together, they dive into the paradox of loneliness in our hyper-connected world, explore how the complex relationship between loneliness and technology impacts different cohorts (especially young people and older adults), and offer their vision for a mentally healthy digital future.

Background reading:
Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation 2023: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the  Healing Effects of Social Connection and CommunityHealth Risks of Social Isolation and Loneliness - Centers for Disease Control and PreventionTechnology’s role in the ‘loneliness epidemic’ - The Washington Post Loneliness or social isolation linked to serious health outcomes, study finds - CNNThe Global State of Social Connections - Meta-Gallup

Show notes, episodes, and more at thenextgreatthingpodcast.com. For more information on SF AppWorks, visit sfappworks.com.

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Arvind Jain, Co-Founder and CEO of generative AI workplace search startup, Glean, has an impressive, 25-year career in Silicon Valley. It’s safe to say he’s learned a thing or two along the way. He’s held engineering roles at Microsoft and Akamai, spent more than a decade working on Search at Google as a Distinguished Engineer, and started two companies, Rubrik, in 2014, and Glean, in 2019. Arvind joins us to reflect on key takeaways and pivotal moments across his career as he’s moved between engineering and entrepreneurship – and shares lessons he’s learned about himself as a founder, what it takes to scale a startup, and how to build the right team. He also takes us inside Glean’s AI-powered enterprise search platform, built on technology that combines AI models like GPT-4 with a powerful search engine. Finally, Arvind offers his vision for the future of productivity, where everyone – regardless of their role or title – will use a personalized AI assistant to help them be more efficient and productive at work.
Show notes, episodes, and more at thenextgreatthingpodcast.com. For more information on SF AppWorks, visit sfappworks.com.

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Named to TIME’s inaugural AI 100 list, Nancy Xu is an AI innovator who worked on early foundation models at Stanford’s AI Lab before founding Moonhub. It’s here where she’s revolutionizing recruiting with AI-powered assistants. But Moonhub didn’t start as an AI company. Nancy reveals invaluable insights she learned from her company’s early days as a traditional recruiting agency, explaining how these lessons fueled an AI recruiter that frees human recruiters from manual, repetitive tasks like candidate sourcing and outreach. She argues that AI will revolutionize hiring efficiency while empowering career mobility and purpose. Workers will get greater access to job opportunities. Recruiters will be able to source larger, more diverse talent pools and focus on building meaningful candidate relationships. And companies will save time and money. Nancy also shares her optimism for our AI-assisted future, making a pragmatic call for policies and training programs to ensure a smooth transition into this transformative era. 


Background reading:
Moonhub's Nancy Xu on the TIME100 AI listTIME100 AI - full listThis Startup's AI Is Used By Billion Dollar Companies To Hire Top Talent - ForbesShow notes, episodes, and more at thenextgreatthingpodcast.com. For more information on SF AppWorks, visit sfappworks.com.

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Devo Harris isn't your typical tech founder. He’s a builder. A creative visionary who’s most comfortable at the intersection of media and technology. From co-founding G.O.O.D. Music with Kanye West, to launching John Legend’s career, to snagging a Grammy, to pioneering interactive choose-your-own-adventure web videos before they were cool, Devo's entrepreneurial journey is nothing short of extraordinary. Now, he’s the founder and CEO of Adventr, an AI-powered smart video platform that lets any creator make interactive, Internet-connected, hyper-personalized videos at scale – across the web, ad networks, and social media. Devo explains how Adventr is disrupting the digital media landscape with videos you can talk to, stories you can steer, and brands that come alive. He shares how he’s not just building a tech company; he's forging the future of storytelling – one interaction at a time.
Show notes, episodes, and more at thenextgreatthingpodcast.com. For more information on SF AppWorks, visit sfappworks.com.

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AI is booming, but transforming industries still requires custom models that most companies can't build, customize, and deploy themselves. That's the opportunity May Habib saw early and seized. As Co-Founder and CEO of Writer, May and her team have built a full-stack generative AI platform tailored for enterprise companies, giving knowledge workers across a range of industries access to AI's unprecedented capabilities. Combining generative language models with specialized training and guardrails, Writer lets enterprises generate content, analyze data, automate workflows, and more through a no-code interface. Its secret sauce? Palmyra, Writer's own family of LLMs optimized on customers' data for accuracy and tailored to their security needs. May joins the show to share her entrepreneurial journey, trace Writer's pandemic-era origin story, and walk through how business teams are using the platform to build their own tools. She also shares her vision for an AI-augmented business world — one where “if you aren't an AI-enabled team, it'll feel like you're working without the Internet.”
Show notes, episodes, and more at thenextgreatthingpodcast.com. For more information on SF AppWorks, visit sfappworks.com.

Follow Andrew on LinkedIn at @Andrew Greenstein

Questions? Feedback? Guest recommendations? Email us here.