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Why Middle East is the Frontier of Innovation: Victor Madueño
62 Plays5 months ago
Victor Madueño is an award-winning business and innovation consultant who helps companies bridge their digital gaps through creative thinking, strategic frameworks and measurable outcomes. For the last 10 years Victor lives and works in Dubai and witnesses the development leaps in the Gulf Region that enable huge growth, reasonably unlimited opportunities and giga-projects like NEOM and Expo 2020 Dubai amidst the pandemic.
In this episode we talk about what is digital transformation in clear and digestible terms, why many companies fail doing it and why others succeed. We delve into practical cases, including the project where Victor and his team develop a next-gen loyalty experience for ultra-reach segment of people to replicate real world experience and attitude in digital realms.
In this episode we also delve into one of the recent projects that we worked on together, creating a phygital experience for kids that explains who an engineer of the future is – a Digital Transformer – and what skills are required for kids of today to become successful in future.
We also discuss benefits and limitations of working at a startup vs big corporation, how to balance multiple hats of thinker, doer and enabler under one role and where to source creativity.
Victor knows Gulf Region very well and we dedicate a part of the conversation trying to uncover secret ingredients of success in UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other countries, and coming to very interesting conclusions.
Victor Madueño: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victormadueno/
Alex Babko: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderbabko
Please, enjoy our conversation, subscribe, rate the show and share your thoughts with us at monthsandmillions@gmail.com!
This is a personal podcast. The views and opinions expressed here are only those of the author and do not represent those of any organization or any individual with whom the author may be associated, professionally or personally.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Month in Millions'
Meet the Host and Guest
00:00:15
Speaker
Hey, welcome to Month in Millions, a practical and inspiring show about innovators and emerging tech practitioners. I'm the host of the show, Alex Babko.
00:00:25
Speaker
We, as information technology professionals, tend to use complicated constructs to describe what we do at work. We are innovating, enabling digital transformation and visioning future state, embodying concepts in digital and physical worlds, and building human-centered new solutions. A quick task to validate if it doesn't sound insane is to try to explain this meaning of your work to a seven-year-old kid.
00:00:52
Speaker
Some time ago, with my today guest, we designed an immersive and engaging concept of a physical and digital experience that explains to kids what it means to be an engineer of the future, what digital transformation means in very clear and simple terms and how exciting and interesting it can be.
Victor Madueno's Journey and Insights
00:01:13
Speaker
My guest today is Victor Madueno and a world-winning business and marketing consultant who helps brands reach the digital gaps through creative thinking, strategic frameworks and measurable outcomes. A father of two kids living in Dubai and my comrade in arms. Hi, Victor. Hi, Alex. Thank you for the invite. Lovely to be here with you.
00:01:38
Speaker
Wonderful. I'm so excited to be with you here today and remember the conversation when we met in Dubai some time ago and I was telling you about the podcast and how cool it would be to get your practical hands-on experience. Indeed. Yeah, and make a story about that. Indeed, that was great. Great conversations always happen with you. And if it's around food, even better.
00:02:00
Speaker
Absolutely. Before we start, how would you introduce yourself? Who is Victor Madueno in an elevator pitch mode? Well, thank you for that. You've done an amazing intro. I think I cannot. I need to go to AI to improve that one. I'm Victor Madueno, originally from Spain.
00:02:28
Speaker
with 20 years of breaking malls in the digital space. As you properly said, I help companies bridge that digital gap that usually happens, mostly from an emerging technology. So, you know, we're always sitting on a dock, you know, far-fetched from everybody else as early adopters.
00:02:53
Speaker
And yeah, well, my seed is there. I've been there for the last 20 years and is always trying to navigate what's next and how do we make the future real today. And I think we both enjoy being out of our comfort zone. So that's pretty much me. A risk taker who is always out of the comfort zone, trying to find the next thing and how to make it real.
00:03:23
Speaker
Wonderful. Thank you so much. And before we started this podcast, I was preparing for the podcast with my wife and she asked me, who are you interviewing today?
Lessons from Startups and Consulting
00:03:35
Speaker
And it's like Victor, just like my friend and soulmate, because we have such an interesting coherence between
00:03:45
Speaker
not only in attitude towards emerging technologies, experience, and so on, but also about the career trajectory. Because from what I know, you started your career in investment field as a startup founder back in the early days, and my career even started from university, it was also an investment.
00:04:09
Speaker
And then huge transitions to financial strategy roles and then focused on your career on marketing and digital directions, where it's like part of my career also encompassed marketing and digital and communication. And now we are both in emerging technology and consulting, working with metaverse, working with blockchain, working with other forms of digital transformations.
00:04:35
Speaker
But we are like from like geographically different parts of the world. So I wonder what was your decision making process like when you were choosing this trajectory? So far and so close. We're from so different places, but so close. Look, I think that the trajectory is never linear. And, and
00:04:59
Speaker
where we studied as a studies, doing things that I didn't, I was not trained in university to do the things that we do.
00:05:09
Speaker
There was no studies. The technology wasn't there. The things that we do today were not there before, at least 20 years ago when I came out from uni. But it's true that I started as an entrepreneur. I didn't see myself working for this. It comes from background, entrepreneurial background in the family. So I felt the need to go and do something on my own.
00:05:35
Speaker
Digital has evolved since 24 that I started doing digital advertising and simple websites, simple mobile apps, a little bit of SEO here and there. Things have evolved quite drastically. And as I said, it's not linear.
00:05:54
Speaker
the learnings that you acquire over the period of those twenty years are based on your curiosity and by being curious you start stitching and formulating orchestrating what does it mean for a business, what does it mean for the customer or the end user. So one of the main things that keeps me going and
00:06:20
Speaker
reinventing myself because what I did in 2004 is nothing to do what I'm doing today. It's to be curious and keep stitching this emerging technology that allows us to do greater things.
Balancing Visionary Leadership and Hands-on Work
00:06:38
Speaker
I think that's in a more personal way, in a more interconnected way, omni-channel, and yeah, organized.
00:06:52
Speaker
Right, right. So what are the key lessons or takeaways that you've taken from your investment chapter and marketing chapter and now the business slash technology slash experience consulting?
00:07:10
Speaker
I think that the startup world has its own uniqueness, right? And the way that you work with teams in small pots, I think that mentality that has been created in Silicon Valley for the last 30, 40 years, more on how to create things much more agile, quicker and faster. They say, if you want to go fast, go solo. If you want to go far, go together.
00:07:40
Speaker
I think the startup mentality allows you to create really small teams of multidisciplinary teams that think like, same as you and me, that we work in those projects, where you don't need that many people. You just need some great thinkers that then combine with great doers and then we all mix together to drive that change, right?
00:08:05
Speaker
I think from a startup perspective, the best thing is how to drive teams that are agile and versatile. When you go into a consulting level or agency level, you have all these people around you.
00:08:21
Speaker
But sometimes it's really hard to find an orchestra who is the right people and what's the right size for those teams. And I think that is the
Digital Transformation Misconceptions and Strategies
00:08:30
Speaker
biggest challenge that we go through in consulting. But it has its own benefits, which is bringing talent, the best talent, all over the world.
00:08:40
Speaker
to work on projects with this kind of size and agility to do things as well in a similar way as a startup. So you can create your own parts and teams built on sprints that you can deliver great things in really short time, period of time. I think that's kind of the transitioning. But the most important thing that comes with me is the creativity to do things differently. There's no, I would say that this,
00:09:11
Speaker
There's nothing set in stone, never. It's always enough for you to draw the canvas. So I think the learnings are just for you to have a better sense of the future, what to do for the next. Right. And speaking about the creativity, where do you source it from? Well, things like this. Chatting with you is always a source of creativity, finding right people with great minds that
00:09:41
Speaker
feel your ideas, right? That's one. Talking with people literally that is having experiences to places that you've never been with cultures that you've never encountered with.
00:09:56
Speaker
Reading obviously, I keep myself reading. I think I told myself I want to learn. I will stop learning when I came out from uni and definitely it's been the other way around. I think I learned more or studied more or read more than what it did in the first 20 years of my life.
00:10:18
Speaker
The most important thing, I think, for anybody to learn something, to discover something and come up with a new idea is to be exposed to new things. Being outside your comfort zone, things that you don't control and that fuels or inspires you in a way, right? And I guess that for everybody else that would have the shower, I think that's the place.
00:10:44
Speaker
Yeah, wonderful. I really appreciate how my guests, each of them have different recommendations and ways, like what inspires and what cultivates the creativity. So thank you for adding yours to the list.
00:11:01
Speaker
So being a project leader and as a businessman yourself, you always have to wear many hats. So what do you think are the keys to balance hands-on?
00:11:18
Speaker
experience with envisioning work, because those thinkers and doers, dreamers and doers, how do you balance between those roles? That's a great question. It is hard. I think I have a magic formula. I can maybe say what works for me. Maybe I will start saying what didn't work for me in the past.
00:11:45
Speaker
As part of that, being a solopreneur or entrepreneur, you want to be really hands-on and you have, as you said, multiple hats. You tend to do much more micromanagement than what you do or what I do now. I saw myself in a place that I didn't want it to be, that it was micromanaging teams, trying to enforce my way of thinking, my
00:12:09
Speaker
Even though you collaborate with those thinkers and dreamers, being a leader on your own company, you tend to have always to be right, which is not the case. And you learn this with years of experience as well. You are not always right and your view is not always the view. What I've learned and how I'm doing it today, which is a slightly different way, is to trust in people.
00:12:34
Speaker
and surround yourself with people that you trust. First, that you look, not look alike, but think alike, that you can trust on their judgment, that you give them the way to, or the leeway to fail, fail quick and cheap, if possible, rather than late and expensive, but tend to trust. I think the word is surround yourself with people that you trust.
00:13:02
Speaker
And then the things flow in a natural way. I think that's key.
00:13:12
Speaker
Speaking of by far one of the most ambiguous to some people, Torm, in the world of IT, the digital transformation. I remember when I joined and it was like, hey, what are you guys doing here? We are doing all sorts of digital transformation. And for me, it was just like a black magic.
00:13:35
Speaker
what it means, what practically it means on business things, and then you step by step progress and develop your perception, your vocabulary, and so on. But for our listeners, based on your experience, what it practically means on your examples and what role you and your teams are playing there.
00:14:00
Speaker
I think it depends on, and this is what we do as well in our work, right? It depends who's listening.
00:14:08
Speaker
It will depend on who's listening, who's actually receiving this message, and what it means for them. One, because in an age of 2024, talking about digital transformation, when pretty much 90% of the businesses out there are digitally driven or taken able,
00:14:30
Speaker
It's just business as usual. There's no digital transformation anymore as it used to be 10, 15, 20 years ago. I think it has involved quite a lot. So depending on who's listening, if you are at the early stage of your maturity as a business,
00:14:47
Speaker
And you have a lot of legacy systems, legacy processes, legacy people, legacy goals, an organizational structure that is kind of anchored in the past. Then you need a digital transformation. What it means for them.
00:15:04
Speaker
means to change all those things or at least shape those things, right? So you think about your organization first, how is it structured? How is it organized? So you need a lot of organizational change management, you know, business modeling, etc. HR, human, you need to think about the people who is there with you.
00:15:25
Speaker
the capabilities they have, the skill sets they have, if they're geared towards the future, if they have the right mindset and skill sets to take you forward. The other part is literally the processes that those two interlink between themselves, so the organization and the people. How do they build processes to drive forward the business itself?
00:15:50
Speaker
Then the tools that you use, we tend to think as a magic box that we come with a digital transformation team and we're going to put a technology box in the middle and it's going to create that magic. It's going to change and transform everything, which is not. It never happens. And that's, I think, one of the reasons why 70% of the people or the companies doing digital transformation have failed in the past because they
00:16:17
Speaker
tend to bring in this new technology that is going to revolutionize and change my business. It's completely the opposite. It's going to disrupt so much that your people will know how to use it. Hence, they will destroy the business as usual that you were doing before, right? And then your revenue plumps, and then you're out of business. So I think the technology or the tools are enabled. The enablers, you need to find the right ones and the right balance for you and your team.
00:16:47
Speaker
and always adopt them with a pace that is doable and feasible for the people who are going to use it. And the last and not least is how you measure what are the goals and the OKRs and how do you measure KPIs that are true to your business. There's many metrics, there's many KPIs out there, but what are those top five that will drive forward your business? And I think
00:17:14
Speaker
When you look at how you structure your organization, the people that are in there, the tools that you have, the processes that you have, then you can really measure and say, okay, this is where I want to go. And that leads you forward. I think that's what I will say to those ones in the early stage. Those ones in the future,
00:17:35
Speaker
Right. More mature stages of the transformation. I would say find those really the key areas of emerging technology that is driving the highest revenue, the 80-20 Pareto kind of metric.
Emerging Technology and Innovation
00:17:52
Speaker
So how can you focus on the most important time of your day
00:18:02
Speaker
Let's say you're 80% of your time to drive 80% of your revenue in a way, right? They usually say that we usually tend to focus 80% on the 20, just focus that 20% to drive your 80%. But if you can focus more, if you could focus 80% on driving even more incremental revenue, why not?
00:18:27
Speaker
The more mature you are, the more exposed to new technology, the more exposed to change. And for that, you need to be more laser focused. So I think spending the right time on the right things is critical for any business. Yeah, thank you so much. One more question in that regard. So I'm sure in your practical experience, you've seen different
00:18:56
Speaker
stimulus for similar for this digital innovation for digital transformation and innovation. So how much of that and what is the right way either like to experience the technology push or market pool? How was the right way to actually make it happen?
00:19:21
Speaker
Well, again, I don't have a magic formula. I wish I had. I think it's a combination. There's no right or wrong. There's so many successful companies out there that are changing the game and they don't follow the norm. I think it's just... It depends on, again,
00:19:43
Speaker
where you are and where you sit in your journey and finding the right balance between pull and push. It's just a matter of fact. There's a lot of businesses who are, you know, I will go again to the startup maybe thinking you need to have
00:20:05
Speaker
the mentality of Mark Zuckerberg, you know, of do great and great things. Right. That was that was what draw Facebook to where it is today, for example, and despite the likes of these likes of Facebook. But in terms of mentality, I think that that is something that you need to do things that are not in your day to day or no one of those paths that no one
00:20:35
Speaker
walk before you. So you need to really tend to test and experiment a lot. And that mentality is what makes the huge change. You said at the beginning of the same validation when you were introducing
00:20:54
Speaker
There's no better validation than an experiment that was cheap, fast, and quick and brought results, data, to validate that process and say, well, we are not perfect, but we're 80%. This is the way forward, right? And you can validate that. Or a strategy, or you can validate a campaign, or a technology,
00:21:19
Speaker
or a new VR headset, you name it, right? You need to have the right validation. And I think that few of the projects that we've been doing is all about helping businesses validate what is the right way forward, and that is all about data.
00:21:39
Speaker
Can you name a couple of such recent projects or previous projects that you've been working on that illustrate the right way to implement the digital transformation? I think one that I'm really passionate about is my little baby in Saudi Arabia, which obviously we're talking to the world here.
00:22:05
Speaker
you will think, you know, Europe and the US is always more advanced, but there's a lot of new countries coming, well, no new, but countries that were not, that were emerging once, and now they're leading the way, right? And I'm really engaged with the region, the Middle East, obviously in Dubai, but in Saudi Arabia, specifically. One of the clients,
00:22:28
Speaker
We're building a complete new loyalty program for some of the most ultra high net worth individuals in the world. So they're really hard to please. How do you please someone from a travel and hospitality line of business, right, industry? How do you please someone who has everything, who has at least one thing of everything? But the most important thing is how do you pay attention to the details
00:22:57
Speaker
How do you personalize the experience to that person and the entire family and the entire friend ecosystem in a way and you treat them in a personal way the same way you will do offline? You do it all night, which is one of the hardest, I would say, tasks that we have as digital practitioners.
00:23:21
Speaker
how to translate that experience of coming to a restaurant that you always go in your neighborhood, and they know you by name, they know your family because you grew up there, and they know your friends, and they know your cousins, and they know everybody around them, right? And they know you by name and your behaviors, they know you. So the way that you engage with your customers that way is so personal that it's really hard to replicate. What we're doing here,
00:23:47
Speaker
and going back to the validation. We envision it an amazing Web3, blockchain, NFTs, super thrilling, amazing campaign and program. When we started to talk to the people, they really don't care about those things. Although they are really hype, we translated the technology jargon into meaningful
00:24:14
Speaker
you know, assets. It's calling our way for not giving away too much here. But the way that we started is how this technology can help us to customize and personalize that experience to the most little detail of the company itself and how do they engage with the company. And I think that is, it's
00:24:39
Speaker
one of the most satisfying projects because we're able to tackle that challenge of how can I personalize the same way we were doing offline 50, 100 years ago at the same level digitally, which is one of the biggest challenges, I would say. That
00:24:57
Speaker
I would say it's one of my little babies. You can feel it. Wonderful. Thank you so much. You mentioned this challenge of...
00:25:11
Speaker
conveying idea and benefits of Web3 to customers, to users. I think that's pretty much applicable to any immersion technology in general. So what might be your recommendation to the practitioners who are working in the Web3 space now in 2024?
00:25:35
Speaker
You can put your head down and keep building. That will be one. Don't listen to the hypes. Gartner, you know, hype graph explains it really nicely. And I think every technology goes through different phases, right? And right now Web3, despite, you know, the bull run that we're going on crypto and
00:26:01
Speaker
underlying technology as blockchain or different protocols and NFTs and stuff is how you make that truly seamless for the user without them knowing that that is behind. When we go to a website, we don't think what's behind us technology. When we open a mobile app, we don't care if it's
00:26:24
Speaker
will be on Rails or Sitecore or any other technology building or any commerce professionals. We will go to the detail and we will screw it up and get to the details of everything. But as a user, you just want it to work. You just want something that you click and you get what you want, either a product,
00:26:44
Speaker
from an Ecom mobile app or from your Visual Pro, the experience that you get by touching and that when we had the session you and me the other day, it's just that seamless experience that nothing is unknown. I remember, and I'm sure you remember too, moving from Nokia phones to smartphones was a big change.
00:27:13
Speaker
You only had numbers and buttons there. You didn't swipe, zoom in and so on. Apple did a great job with iPhone to make it as seamless and intuitive for anybody.
00:27:27
Speaker
known or unknown to the technology to be able to use it. The more complex it gets, the technology, the harder it is for us to adopt. And that is where the digital gap that I work with with those brands is how do we help transition from an adoption perspective, right? So you're using this technology today, but your consumers might not be.
00:27:52
Speaker
And it might be 10 years from now that they start mainstreamly adopting that technology. But as a business, as professionals, we tend to bring that technology really, really quickly in the cycle. And then it takes a while until, you know, business adopts. I think that is the key for Web3. We saw the heights 2020, 2021, 22.
00:28:17
Speaker
peak of inflation on hypon 2223 and then you see AI taking over and then the next will be AEGA. So we're looking at how do we bring this new technology and emerging technology and innovation for brands and companies really at the early stages to validate, but it only happens when the consumer starts to adopt.
00:28:45
Speaker
For Web3 professionals, I would say try to put your head down, keep building, find new ways to make it seamless, to find more adoption on mainstream users.
00:28:59
Speaker
and experience as far as I've seen experience, it's everything.
Educational Projects for Children
00:29:05
Speaker
So once we crack the UX UI experience layer of those touch points, I think we will be able to find more people adopting and get it on board also.
00:29:18
Speaker
So you already mentioned the things like what's the trends, like what's coming, we will get there. But before that, so you remember, like we designed the concept of like so-called digital transformers with you, with the team for one of the children entertainment, like amusement centers in the region to help kids like, I mean, your kids, mine kids, like whomever's kids understand what we do at work.
00:29:46
Speaker
Speaking about that, engaging concept, of course, we cannot uncover all the details and names because it's a company stuff, but still, can you reference the most engaging mechanics that you think demonstrated the principles of our work in the simplest and engaging terms?
00:30:12
Speaker
It was a long time ago, but it was amazing to work with you on that one. The way we transform our engineering practice into something that any kid could understand by placing different stations where they could, you know, one task was sent to the next. You have the name of that. What was the name of the physical? It was like a digital machine. Digital machine, yeah. Digital machine.
00:30:38
Speaker
It was based the concept on something that you presented. Oh, Goldberg. It was Goldberg machine. The Goldberg machine. So how do we take the Goldberg machine into a digital transformer kind of a way? And without even knowing how to use AI, they know how to send commands. Your kids, my kids talk to CD.
00:30:55
Speaker
or google or alexa more than we do pretty much and they know how to use the phones when with one year old that they actually start swiping and you know into the phone so the technology is there for them what was great it was transforming a physical way of showing engineering and placing into
00:31:19
Speaker
a completely digitalized way and physical. So there was a mix between, if I remember correctly, correct me if I'm wrong, there was a mix between some of those elements that they needed to place in the Goldberg machine and then translate it into a digital component that it was sent to the machine and the kids from the machine, they had to send commands to the AI, which was sending another task to another kid who had to go back again to the physical world and place it there.
00:31:47
Speaker
I think that was a great way to say and showcase what we do as engineering. And there was the project manager behind and the account manager there and then all given directions. That's a task too that someone needs to take. So that was good.
00:32:05
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I also love this concept so much that I'm really looking forward to making it real. One day, you want the validation and prototyping, but yeah, that's super cool. When you do some action, like in the physical world, and you see how interconnects with different technologies, different systems, and has certain visualization, or vice versa, you draw something and that's...
00:32:30
Speaker
drone element than is being processed, 3D printed, and you see the physical embodiment of the things that you created in a virtual environment. And then this physical thing is again integrated in some machine, into some sensors, with some level of technology, and then it's kind of like
00:32:54
Speaker
or combines all together and say like, hey, you all have some impact on this world, be it your digital footprint or like some physical actions. Yeah, so that's
Path to Becoming a High-Demand Tech Professional
00:33:07
Speaker
super cool. We'll have to re-bring back those ideas to labs at some point. By the way, to the listeners, if you'd like to make this idea real, you know who to reach out to. Yes, we accept our insights to make it real, no worries. Exactly, exactly.
00:33:24
Speaker
Yeah, so actually speaking about millions and like months and millions, how much time and money do you think a person needs to become a high demanded professional nowadays? Wow, I didn't expect that question. Months, I will say, let me start with months. If we start with months, I will say never. You are never completed.
00:33:53
Speaker
You're never fully completed as an emerging tech or technologist or digital professional. Always in beta. There's always in beta. There's always learning and always curious to know what's next, right? I think what gives you a good starting point is to find a niche specialization, something that you're good at, but as well you're curious and
00:34:22
Speaker
have the right interest that you will keep fueling with new areas of, as we said before, new areas of orchestrating that expertise. That could be, I will say, I don't know. I'm not a fan of careers anymore. I'm not a big fan of four or five-year studies, and you study many things that don't serve, and then you end up doing something completely different.
00:34:51
Speaker
I think there's a lot more practical places without doing promotion here that can guide you with many degrees in really expert and practical ways. That's one of the things that I was doing in one of my companies. We had a six months, it was a digital marketing, social media marketing and digital analytics program as a private MBA.
00:35:21
Speaker
And we train practically to people with no expertise, no knowledge, zero knowledge of marketing or anything. Obviously, it's beneficial to know a little bit more. You could, in six months, get the most practical way to learn a job. But that doesn't mean that you're an expert. You cannot call yourself an expert or a professional. You need real practice, right? So I will say,
00:35:47
Speaker
There's many small degrees that are really nice, really specialized that can give you the way in and six months you're prepared. And then you will have to fail many times and test and validate many times and experiment. And in years to come, you might be a, you know, a great master of, of that specific task. If you are, if your aim is to be more consultant, more masters of order trades,
00:36:14
Speaker
with a wider view in what is as a business consultant or management consultant within the digital space. I think that there's a lot of great MBAs or programs that will train you to think differently. But again, you will never stop learning so that there's no months and when it comes to millions, millions you mean in terms of how much it costs to get there or?
00:36:42
Speaker
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, that's very much like how you perceive that because in terms of millions, it can mean that either the money that you spend on your education or money that you're dealing with, like the budgets that you are managing, investing, or like, I mean, either like to fail or to learn. It's just like, that's also like part of the resource type in time and money.
00:37:12
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So time, yes, we just said that money, there's many really great places to spend with not that much cost, you know. Obviously, when we go to high, you know, let's say, MITs and stamp floors of the world, obviously, that gives you more than the knowledge, gives you the connections, and that it's worth more than months and millions, I would say, those connections. But to succeed in life and in your career. But I will say that
00:37:43
Speaker
There's one difference between how much you spend on your training, on your skill build up. The more you educate yourself and the money you spend on yourself on training, it's going to pay back in the future, right? And that is for sure. So there's a lot of free
00:38:05
Speaker
you know, great people doing podcasts like you. There's many thinkers out there and dreamers out there and doers out there that they share their views on a practical way.
00:38:15
Speaker
That is free. And we are in a digital economy where there's so much information, there's so much knowledge out there that you just need to listen and do your proper search. If you really want to have a more certified professional stuff, there's always ways to do that. I wouldn't know how to calculate or do the amount, but a lot of money. If I understood correctly, in terms of managing budgets, in terms of managing
00:38:43
Speaker
millions. It really doesn't matter how much budget you get, it's what do you do with it? And I think that plays for both things, right?
The Carbon Mobile Story
00:38:53
Speaker
We've worked with startups with really small budgets and that fuels our creativity to do more with less. I think that was one of the examples that we discussed back in the days with Carbon Mobile that we can talk about later if you want to.
00:39:09
Speaker
But when you have less budget and less money, you tend to be much more laser focused on how to spend it. And you're more diligent on
00:39:23
Speaker
your KPIs, as we said before, what are those metrics that will make me successful in the long run? So you really drive more that growth mentality of experiment, validate quickly, agile, and build the ROI of it. Many of these big companies that we work with
00:39:44
Speaker
They have plenty of budget and they don't mind spending millions in things. And I can say some of the greatest failures I've seen, you know, building a complete new platform metaverse, you know, virtual world and never see the light, for example, spending 80 million or more in it and never sees the light, that product, right?
00:40:08
Speaker
What's the point? What do you want us to build something that even if you spend $100,000, it's worth it and people will be impacted in their lives. So 10, 15, 20 years from now, you ask them and they still remember because you made that impact on their lives, right? I think that's what motivates me and what I think teams like we do, we care about that craft.
00:40:35
Speaker
And we tend to do, not because we have a lot of money, but we tend to do the right thing. I think that mentality makes a lot of difference from company to company and teams to teams. I think that that's one of the key things.
00:40:49
Speaker
Yeah, indeed, that makes perfect sense. And you referenced the Carbon Mobile, and I indeed wanted to cover that chapter as well with your experience working with Carbon Mobile as an advisor. So can you briefly explain the concepts and your role there?
00:41:08
Speaker
Yeah, that is a great story. Almost nine years ago, a friend of mine with his co-founder published in the
00:41:19
Speaker
Government, World Government Summit in Dubai, they published that they were doing the first UAE phone, the first carbon fiber smartphone in the world. And I saw the name when I was reading the news and I saw my friend's name, which we partnered in some of the startups in the past. And I called and I said, Firaz, what the hell are you doing? What is this? You're building a smartphone, the first one in the UAE, but as well the first one made of carbon fiber and composite materials.
00:41:48
Speaker
Is it the same as Formula One, the spaceships, and some other consumer products? I said, yeah. And I said, where are you? In which stage you are?
00:42:01
Speaker
Because I was thinking, can I support you? Can I invest? Obviously, it was quite interesting. And I love consumer electronics. So I'm a big gadget guy, same as you. So we tend to always look for the next thing, right? So I sat down with him and his partner, and they both told me, look, this is the vision we have.
00:42:19
Speaker
We have nothing. We have no product. Literally, we are mechanical engineers. One was hardware. My friend was software. We're building together to bring this to life, the first carbon fiber smartphone in the world. And I said, well, that sounds interesting. And I started thinking how emerging technology, the same way I was saying, I started connecting the dots.
00:42:43
Speaker
built a campaign out of an amazing freakout. I think this could be another podcast in itself, the story. But I said, OK, I mean, they needed a few grants to go to China and Taiwan to build the prototype. So we came together, a few angels. We entered in the pre-seed stage. We funded the project. They went there to China and Taiwan. And four months after, they came with a prototype.
00:43:10
Speaker
fully functioning prototype. It was a toy, right? It wasn't really commercialized product, but it was a prototype.
00:43:18
Speaker
And I don't know if you saw Blackberry prototype when they show it in the film, and they show the calculator with the buttons and things, you know, it was just a transformer. But it did really well. So we went there, we started raising some funds, we got really successful, we won
00:43:40
Speaker
I'm start of a year in jite x two thousand sixteen and in the ua we fade out a little bit from the ua and we started seeing other countries we went to germany so the team move to germany the main team funding and court team.
00:43:58
Speaker
I've been playing more as a partner and advisor, part of the board member at the beginning, then I left the seat to the VCs who came later and so on. I'm still there. It's really close to my heart. We sold around 3,000 phones. Wow. The phone amazing. We end up producing the phone and I wish I was in my home because I will show you the product itself.
00:44:25
Speaker
we stopped producing our own products. We had a huge line of products from laptops to consoles and stuff, VR glasses. So we decided to stop. It was really hard to get funding. And that's one of the reasons that I'm really an advocate of startups because you can pivot really quickly, change your model. So we have one of the most interesting patterns in the
00:44:53
Speaker
consumer electronics, which is how do we use composite materials like graphene, Kevlar and carbon fiber. Motorola tried Nokia tried Apple tried for 15 years and they couldn't crack that formula of the antenna and the heat dissipation. So we created the pattern. We actually got it. The whole industry knows about it. We won Red Dot Award as well in 2018.
00:45:23
Speaker
as best innovative product. So that is a statement of the work we did and the team did. But we couldn't get more money. You can imagine with the likes of those monsters and big corporations and enterprises, it's really hard to compete. So we decided, look, why don't we pivot and we do B2B?
00:45:49
Speaker
As soon as we did that, we started getting a lot of attention on the market itself to utilize our patent to help other brands use it in their products. Look, it's less consuming. As we said, the organizational structure is much leaner, much more agile. We still do a lot of research and R&D, but now we do it for our clients.
00:46:16
Speaker
We recently released with Qualcomm a console, one of the first console made of carbon
Dubai's Vision for Business and Growth
00:46:23
Speaker
fiber and Kevlar and graphene and composting materials. And we're in discussions with many others about building new consumer products with our technology. So out of the building a brand itself, we pivoted to create a B2B and support with an open source and, you know, a more
00:46:43
Speaker
creating impact to our world because it's fully sustainable. Pretty much everything is recyclable from our products. And now there's others enjoying the pattern that the team created and how do we got there. So it's going to be, I will say the next 10 years, it's going to be the explosion of this kind of products and consumer electronics. So it's going to be interesting in the future.
00:47:10
Speaker
Wow, that sounds amazing how this sustainable approach towards replacing plastics in consumer electronics can actually make benefits because, you know, like in my experience, I've also been working with the
00:47:28
Speaker
with the company that brings to life sustainable products for a household, like how to make, how devices can help make our living more sustainable, like I mean, sorting, pre-recycling, waste at home and so on. So yeah, I'm very much into this topic and would love to have this conversation as a follow-up.
00:47:55
Speaker
You're originally from Spain and you're right now in Madrid and for more than 10 years you've been living in Dubai. Yes. And what do you think makes this region very special for you and for businesses that are based there? Well, that is quite an interesting question. I think
00:48:23
Speaker
Why I know, I know why for me Dubai and the region is a magnet and is to have people in power who has a vision and obviously the support in terms of budget although we said before budgets don't come but enough budget to make that vision a reality and within that process and that journey
00:48:52
Speaker
bring everybody together and unite to drive that vision without them losing their identity. I think for me that is what I'm so impressed with what UA in general, but the region itself is capable of doing to transform from an oil driven and fossil fuel driven economies
00:49:18
Speaker
They had that view at some point and they envision it. How would they leave 50 years from now? And they had the guts to actually invest and go full fledged into it without looking backwards, without saying sorry, respecting everybody, but without pleasing everyone at the same time because it's impossible to please everyone at the same time.
00:49:47
Speaker
For me, the magnet is how do they really accomplish that mission over time, bringing everybody together. UAE is the only place in the world who has a minister, a Ministry of Air. The Saudi, for example, Saudis is investing the same way with Qatar and UAE. The three countries are leading the transformation of the region.
00:50:12
Speaker
10 years ago, 11 years ago, when I landed in Dubai, there was no e-commerce. There was no digital platforms. There was no mobile apps. Obviously, Europe and US, we were a bit more advanced. So I moved away from Spain, where we were doing a lot of digital. As I mentioned, I was training companies and people on how to do digital.
00:50:38
Speaker
back in 2009 and even beyond that. So I started doing social media for businesses in 2006. Two years after Facebook was released, I was in MySpace and we were helping businesses to come into and test and experiment social media in those days. And I felt the same way in 2012 in Dubai. There was a need for experimentation. There was a need for digital transformation
00:51:07
Speaker
So I decided to move there and help that transition happen faster than anywhere else. Today, I think it was years ago. If I'm not mistaken, around 2015, 14, somewhere there, 15, 16, UAE was the market with the highest penetration of smartphones in the world, 99%, and internet penetration, 99%.
00:51:35
Speaker
Everyone had access to a smartphone. Everyone had access to internet. Everyone had good salary to actually contribute to that evolution and spend. I think apart from everything that they say in Dubai or the region itself, the money doesn't reign.
00:51:56
Speaker
But the people are so early adopters to everything that is out there that technology, it's just flourish, right? And we are, I think, one of the parts that is actually, you know, is one of those magnets as well. One of the main USBs is how can I get anything if I want to anywhere in the world or in my own
00:52:26
Speaker
local neighborhood deliver or the experience that I get is so seamless that I can I can pretty much focus on my most important things right and the rest is more automated or it's more we're really few months away from flying
00:52:47
Speaker
you know, taxis in Dubai. It was a day that Uber had Uber chopper. It was, I think, one of the few places in the world that you could actually book an helicopter just to go from one to another. I'm really happy to see first the transformation and the cultural, societal, and economic transformation of Saudi. 14 years ago, 10 years ago when I went there in 2014, it was completely a different place. Today is one of those prominent
00:53:16
Speaker
emerging economies in the world. And it's because they're adapting themselves through technology on respecting everybody, but always looking forward. Right. So basically what they're doing is that they digitally transform themselves to a certain degree. They're using the technology as an enabler to enhance their lives.
00:53:41
Speaker
Nothing different from any company we're doing, right? In some previous podcast, one of my friends mentioned that the advanced emerging technology becomes really ubiquitous when it just becomes boring. Exactly.
Creativity, Influences, and Future of AI
00:53:58
Speaker
But before the technology becomes boring, there is like this emergent tech cycle. And what do you think are like one or two most ambitious advanced projects that you follow in the region? Well, obviously, if you're in the region, you follow what Neomand and the entire Neom development, I think that is
00:54:22
Speaker
For me, I'm a really big fan of this kind of innovation changing society for the better. I hope so. But definitely is one of my key things. I was really impressed with Expo in Dubai, how they brought in
00:54:46
Speaker
from actually after COVID, how the country itself brought together a global event in a really successful way. They managed to keep everyone safe.
00:55:03
Speaker
while still building something truly remarkable. Right. Yeah, well, and indeed, I think as the temperature hit records a couple of days ago, like 60 degrees of Celsius, body temperature, this is crazy. So I think that's definitely out of comfort zone that you were referencing at the beginning.
00:55:22
Speaker
that probably stimulates your brain like to function differently and like to consider many many different factors and like how to survive how to change things how to make world a better thing and so on that's exciting exciting definitely putting yourself into a stress positions makes you more creative so what is that level of stress to keep you pump just enough just enough but not too much.
00:55:48
Speaker
I think 62, the last week, it was a bit of a hush to put people off. But yeah, AC is always good in that part of the world. Yeah, right, of course. So you mentioned those two Giga projects, like very ambitious. On a more personal level, I wanted to ask who or what inspires you. You said that you're reading books, you're watching some blogs and so on.
00:56:14
Speaker
Who do you follow? What do you follow in the emerging tech space or when you're looking for some opinion, knowledge, inspiration? So what about that? I cannot say one because I have a lot. I'm a big fan of Elon Musk, to be honest, the way he drives business and the way he
00:56:35
Speaker
his personal branding, I think that is. But it's a stereotype, it's a cliche. Everyone loves Ilamas. I'm a big fan of Seth Godin. I think it's been a source of inspiration for me since early days, from a marketing perspective. I'm actually reading Philip Cutler, I think the new
00:56:56
Speaker
new book, 6.0, not doing marketing here, but it's an amazing book. I will say it's quite an initial thinking, but Philip Cutler is one of the only things that I've learned in UD that I still learn today from him. I really follow a lot of VCs like Sequoia, A16C. There's many people who can inspire you in one or two aspects, but I think
00:57:26
Speaker
It's the broader, you need a village to raise your kids, right? And I think you need an industry of professionals worldwide broadly to build you as a professional in digital transformation. There's no one person who can fuel your inspiration. I think there's many people who
00:57:48
Speaker
need to put that seed into your brain that you build from there with curiosity you build from. I personally also remember like the Phil Kotler, like the book that was also like my
00:58:01
Speaker
Bible during the university times. And I'm also listening to the A16Z podcast, so that's also very inspiring. So yeah, very much resonates with what you mentioned, like resonates with where I source my inspiration as well.
00:58:21
Speaker
You mentioned that it takes a village to raise a kid, especially if you have two, especially in Dubai. What skills do you think they would need to acquire now to be future ready? Well, I started already teaching my 80-year-old how to use AI. A few years ago, it was how to be a coder and teach our kids to code because that was the language of the future and programming and so on.
00:58:49
Speaker
But that changes so drastically in six months, in a year, in two years, in three years, five years, it's impossible to know what's coming next, right? But I definitely started teaching him how to use, how to prompt, how to ask the right questions, the right things, so he gets the right answers.
00:59:07
Speaker
Because if you don't know how to search on Google, you get tons of wrong things, right? But if you know how to properly search, you get the right place, the right link, the right website to visit. The same happens with AI. So I'm teaching him on AI.
00:59:23
Speaker
To my four-year-old, she's a bit playful for now, I think. She prefers Barbie and dolls and the kitchen and cooking with me rather than the AI, but I think they're going to be so exposed to AI in the next few years. Not only at home or as a hobby, but as part of the educational
00:59:52
Speaker
journey that is going to enhance the way that they are able to consume information. So I think the sooner they start phasing and learning and experimenting, as we said, the faster they will adopt and understand how can they benefit from it.
01:00:10
Speaker
Yeah, I couldn't agree more, because I also have two boys, like seven and nine. And the nine-year-old recently took part, we were in Montenegro, and he took part at EPAM Innovation Hackathon for Kids. And he was just like, I mean, he knows about chat GPT. Sometimes we say, hey, what chat GPT thinks about that, and so on. So just kind of like,
01:00:39
Speaker
a quick check instead of Googling, so we're going to chat GPT. But I'm very curious how fast they learn, because they were using some online tool for just presentation and huge prompt engineering stuff without knowing that it's prompt engineering. It's just like, hey, I need this page that just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
01:01:03
Speaker
And it works out nicely. So I mean, in my 36, I sometimes would spend significantly more time making a PowerPoint than a nine-year-old with the help of AI did. And it's just like you couldn't make much of a difference. So that's exciting how quickly they learn and adapt and apply that learning. So yeah, it's really important to teach them how to be adaptive.
01:01:32
Speaker
then maybe like AI literate. Sometimes we need to give them the ball. Sometimes we need to say, go and play football, basketball somewhere, get out there. But definitely technology, I think it's one of the learnings that we are truly passionate about and it will benefit them quite nicely in the future. Yeah, absolutely. So,
01:01:59
Speaker
to wrap up the topic about AI. How Gen. AI changed your job? Well, it didn't change. It actually enhanced it. We can do much more research with less. We can validate with synthetic data with less research or client facing with the models. I think it allows us to
01:02:24
Speaker
to validate a lot of the things that we usually, you know, think or dream and bring it to life in a more cohesive and structured way. Definitely, I love the creative part of it. So, letting myself, I'm a frustrated designer and architect, Alex. So, I got to be journey, I got to Dali, I got to all this. It is literally
01:02:48
Speaker
I can tell the same way I was telling my design teams what I want and suddenly, boom, it's a million times better than what I thought I expected or visualized. So I think it enriches and enhance the capabilities we have as professionals, but you still need to have a base, a proper base, so you know what to ask. I will ask you the question, what would you, what do you think?
01:03:13
Speaker
about work and AI or how AI is putting us, everyone at risk. What do you think?
01:03:25
Speaker
Yeah, well, I, as a human, like I tend to also hope that it enriches our capabilities. Yeah. It's more about like doing, spending less efforts on some mundane tasks and like more routine operations. Chat GPT probably like the, has like highest usage rates on my smartphone. And obviously like the mid-journey or like we're making some projects and programs using the,
01:03:54
Speaker
Google Cloud, Google Gemini, LLM. So I think, well, I see it now that the Gen.AI and usage of large language models is almost a must-have for almost any digital transformation project right now. So of course, part of that is kind of like, oh, everyone does that. So we should also incorporate this. Otherwise, it doesn't tick.
01:04:19
Speaker
I'm looking for the meaningful and reasonable usage of that. There are also many cases when we just say we do not recommend to use that because it just doesn't make sense. It doesn't bring value to your business, to your particular scenario. Every startup has now either
01:04:40
Speaker
as an AI as a component next to it, otherwise you don't raise any funds. Exactly, exactly. And that's kind of like the downside of that, because, I mean, the AI fridge, AI iron machine, AI table, it just like doesn't make sense. But I think it's like in the same
01:05:00
Speaker
manner as it was with Web3, with AR, with any other emergent tag that you can name. It will follow the same hype cycle, same curve where the meaningful thing remains. It's just the question about the
01:05:23
Speaker
length of this curve of this cycle and the impact, the volume of the capital, the volume of the talent involved, how deep this slope will be and when it's going to be. But anyway, it's inevitable for any merchant tag.
01:05:43
Speaker
But of course, here, it might be different because it's a combination of different waves. So it's not just AI. It's followed by the overall readiness of the world towards digital transformation, where we are all full of wearables, full of data. We generate sensor-generated data. And we as humans generate data with digital footprints, with all possible
01:06:12
Speaker
digital aspect, it has certain inputs for large language models and for more advanced models. So that can mean that it won't be like a slope, it can be something different or like the combination of waves.
Victor's Future and Podcast Conclusion
01:06:31
Speaker
I mean, it's hard to predict. Well, definitely 100% agree with that. We're in such a wavy
01:06:37
Speaker
time by now, orchestrating all those things. It is, it is time consuming. Indeed. So, so probably like the final question from my side to you is like, Victor, what's next? What's next? What's next? You never know what's next. What's next professionally, I think,
01:07:05
Speaker
doing something really meaningful for the human race. I think we have great projects now happening and that's what's next. What's next as professional, as personal will be Dubai. I think I'm going to stay there for another decade.
01:07:24
Speaker
I went there for 10 years and I accomplished that last year, so I planned myself this year to stay for another 10. Then we'll see. Not coming back to Europe, that's for sure. But we'll see. It's hard to plan, as you said. I think geopolitics now in the world, it's hard to say, well, I'm going to do this and six months might change.
01:07:49
Speaker
definitely living today as the best. They say, you know, you know what they say, but what's the name for? Well, I was telling this in Spanish to one of my, one of my colleagues. They say present, present is a gift, right? We live in a present. We live in intimate gift. So I think live in the present, be mindful of today and what you have around you.
01:08:12
Speaker
I think it's the most important thing and then obviously have a view and a vision. That's why I think I'm engaged with that region. Knowing where you're going, but then it's literally taken step by step and accomplished that. So I think it's living in today. That will be my next, my next thing. Let's see tomorrow.
01:08:35
Speaker
That was Victor Madueno, an award-winning digital transformer, bridge builder, and practitioner. Victor, thank you so much for coming to the podcast. Thank you for your kind words. Thank you for inviting me. Pleasure, Alex.
01:08:50
Speaker
Hey, thank you for tuning into the show. You've been listening to the Month in Millions and Practical and Envisioning show about innovators and emerging tech practitioners. Please subscribe so that you don't miss the new episode. I'm Alex Babko and you've been listening to the Month in Millions.