AI and the Future of Work: Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace, Business, Ethics, HR, and IT for AI Enthusiasts, Leaders and Academics - Mona Akmal, outspoken CEO of Falkon, discusses how to use data to help sales reps "make the best deal the typical deal"

Mona Akmal, outspoken CEO of Falkon, discusses how to use data to help sales reps "make the best deal the typical deal"

10/23/22 • 33 min

AI and the Future of Work: Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace, Business, Ethics, HR, and IT for AI Enthusiasts, Leaders and Academics

Mona Akmal, CEO of sales intelligence platform Falkon, is the outspoken co-founder behind an emerging leader in a hot space. Mona migrated to the United States at age 20 with a CS degree and little else. She had an impressive 12-year run as a product leader at Microsoft where she helped scale OneDrive and Office. She subsequently led product and technology organizations at places like Code.org and Amperity. Two decades later, Mona’s the CEO of Falkon AI, an intelligence platform for go to market teams. Falkon recently raised $16M from a group of A-list investors that includes Greylock and Madera among others.
Listen and learn...

Why Mona's philosophy revolves around two words: "efficiency" and "excellence"
What makes a standout sales rep great.
How do find signal in noisy sales and marketing data
How many touches are required from stage one to closing a B2B deal
How to fix the CRM data hygiene problem
Why econometrics approaches perform better than machine learning to solve the "small data problem"
Why "everyone needs to be coached and nobody needs to be managed"
Mona's (legendary) mental health advice to entrepreneurs

References in this episode...

Barr Moses from Monte Carlo on AI and the Future of Work
Derek Steer from Mode on AI and the Future of Work
Peter Fishman from Mozart Data on AI and the Future of Work
Stephen Messer from Collective[i] on AI and the Future of Work
Kamal Ahluwalia on AI and the Future of Work
Leading scientists fear AI could lead to nuclear war by the end of the century

Why Mona's philosophy revolves around two words: "efficiency" and "excellence"
What makes a standout sales rep great.
How do find signal in noisy sales and marketing data
How many touches are required from stage one to closing a B2B deal
How to fix the CRM data hygiene problem
Why econometrics approaches perform better than machine learning to solve the "small data problem"
Why "everyone needs to be coached and nobody needs to be managed"
Mona's (legendary) mental health advice to entrepreneurs

References in this episode...

Barr Moses from Monte Carlo on AI and the Future of Work
Derek Steer from Mode on AI and the Future of Work
Peter Fishman from Mozart Data on AI and the Future of Work
Stephen Messer from Collective[i] on AI and the Future of Work
Kamal Ahluwalia on AI and the Future of Work
Leading scientists fear AI could lead to nuclear war by the end of the century

Previous Episode

undefined - Hina Dixit, venture capitalist at Samsung NEXT and former Apple engineering leader, discusses how to get your AI or web3 startup funded

Hina Dixit, venture capitalist at Samsung NEXT and former Apple engineering leader, discusses how to get your AI or web3 startup funded

Hina Dixit, venture capitalist leading AI investing at Samsung NEXT, grew up in a small town in India from humble beginnings. She couldn’t afford a Starbucks coffee and graduated with significant student debt... which fueled her passion for mentoring and coaching as she became financially independent.
Prior to Samsung NEXT, Hina was an Apple engineering leader who helped launch two-factor authentication and other core iOS technologies. Hina’s a reluctant venture investor having always been a builder. A mentor from Homebrew encouraged her to pursue investing and she’s now passionate about finding and funding the next generation of AI and web3 entrepreneurs.
Listen and learn...

How Hina overcame institutional biases to achieve success in engineering leadership roles and venture investing
How being trusted with money at a young age by her father helped Hina become independent and confident in her career
The challenges Hina faced transitioning from a builder at Apple to an investor at Samsung NEXT
What Hina looks for when investing in AI and web3 startups
Where there are opportunities for innovation in web3 and metaverse infrastructure
What will prevent Big Tech from centralizing the decentralized web
How Hina thinks about responsible AI when evaluating new investments
How and when entrepreneurs should engage corporate venture capital (CVC) firms
The AR/VR technology Hina wants to invest in... her inbox is open :)

References in this episode:

Next Episode

undefined - Eric Olson, CEO and co-founder of Consensus, discusses how to use LLMs to help researchers get better answers faster from evidence-based journals

Eric Olson, CEO and co-founder of Consensus, discusses how to use LLMs to help researchers get better answers faster from evidence-based journals

Eric Olson, CEO and co-founder of Consensus, is a collegiate athlete turned data scientist turned entrepreneur who needed faster access to reliable data while working at DraftKings. Consensus is a search engine that uses a large language model to find answers in peer-reviewed research articles. Eric's living proof that the best entrepreneurs start by solving a problem they've encountered. Hear how Eric's scratching his own itch.
Listen and learn...

Why Google isn't the answer for scientists seeking evidence-based answers online
Why a business model that relies on ads can't solve the "unbiased answer" problem for researchers
How Consensus addresses the problem of conflicting information online from credible resources
How to use labels to improve search retrieval accuracy... without introducing bias into results
How to use extractive large language models (LLMs), to extract relevant portions of documents and match them to NLP questions
Why generative AI like GPT-3 can't answer "what's the consensus opinion out there" when multiple potential answers exist
Who is responsible if Consensus delivers answers that lead to harmful outcomes
What Eric learned as a division I NCAA athlete (Go Wildcats!) that has helped him as a high-tech entrepreneur

References in this episode: