The Tech Trek
by Elevano
Latest episode
Building Custom AI Models and Rethinking Engineering With Agents
Building Custom AI Models and Rethinking Engineering With Agents
About this podcast
The Tech Trek is a podcast about how founders, operators, and technology leaders build and scale technology companies.
Each episode explores the decisions behind building products, teams, and technical organizations, with conversations spanning engineering, AI, data, product, hiring, leadership, and growth.
Guests share what they are building, what they are learning, and how they are navigating the challenges that come with turning technology into a successful company.
Episodes
The newest 50 of 724 episodes
- Building Custom AI Models and Rethinking Engineering With Agents · 32 min · Episode 724Catching phishing attacks is only half the challenge. An AI security model also has to avoid blocking legitimate emails. Ryan Luo, Founder and CTO of Aegis AI, joins The Tech…
- AI in Healthcare: Faster Models, Human Judgment, and Trust · 23 min · Episode 723AI is helping healthcare teams move faster. But faster models do not always mean better patient care. Hetal Patel, VP of Healthcare Economics and Data Science at Harmony Care…
- What Healthcare Teams Really Want From AI · 25 min · Episode 722Some healthcare professionals want to brainstorm about AI. Others are reluctant to use it. And many simply want technology that helps them do their jobs. Dany Jradi, Head of…
- Rethinking Engineering Sprints in the Age of AI Agents · 29 min · Episode 721What happens when AI makes writing code faster, but your engineering process still operates on two week sprints? Junaid Warwani, VP of Engineering at Brellium, joins The Tech…
- What AI Native Really Means for Engineering Teams · 26 min · Episode 720What actually makes a company AI native? Is it using AI across every department, building more agents, or changing how the organization works? Eswar Vandenapu, Cofounder and CTO…
- AI Agents, Deepfakes, and the Problem of Trust · 24 min · Episode 719A few seconds of audio can now be enough to clone a voice. But the bigger challenge is knowing who, or what, is on the other end of an interaction. That question matters when…
- Building AI Agents by Removing Features · 26 min · Episode 718The goal is not to do less. It is to give agents the flexibility to handle more of the work customers actually need. Henry Hopcroft, Chief Product Officer at Gradial, joins The…
- AI Productivity, Code Reviews, and Domain Expertise · 27 min · Episode 717Jayeeta Putatunda, AI Engineering Lead at Turing, joins The Tech Trek to explore what happens after AI generates the first draft. She explains how excessive code can create…
- Forward Deployed Engineering: Building AI That Businesses Can Use · 39 min · Episode 716AI teams can build solutions faster than many organizations can make decisions. That gap is changing how engineers work with the business and what companies need from technical…
- AI, Human Evidence, and Better Business Decisions · 33 min · Episode 715AI can generate answers in seconds. But what happens when the information needed to make a decision isn't available online? Sagar Kadakia, founder and CEO of Qualitate, believes…
- Building an AI First Company With a Lean Team · 19 min · Episode 714AI can help a small company move faster. But a leaner team also has fewer people to rely on when someone leaves. Kevin Bradt, founder and CEO of CasaPerks, joins The Tech Trek…
- Technical Founders, AI Pivots, and the Value of Focus · 32 min · Episode 713The original idea may not be what makes a startup successful. As AI changes markets and creates new opportunities, the ability to learn and change direction becomes increasingly…
- AI Observability: Measuring Quality, Risk, and ROI · 25 min · Episode 712An AI agent can be fast, available, and still get the answer wrong. That changes what engineering teams need to measure. Jeetendra Soneja, VP of Engineering, AI Platform at…
- How AI Is Changing Engineering Teams and Hiring · 23 min · Episode 711What happens to engineering teams when everyone can code? Bali Raghavan, cofounder and CTO at Hero Safety, joins Amir Bormand to discuss how AI is changing team structures…
- Voice AI Agents: Testing, Trust, and Scale · 23 min · Episode 710Getting a voice agent to talk is one challenge. Knowing whether it can handle real conversations is another. Brooke Hopkins, founder of Coval, joins The Tech Trek to discuss how…
- AI Engineering, Small Teams, and Public Demo Days at Omni · 24 min · Episode 709What happens when AI changes more than coding speed? Chris Merrick, Co Founder and CTO at Omni, explains how his engineering team is adapting around AI, autonomy, product…
- From Token Maxing to Outcome Maxing in AI Engineering · 24 min · Episode 708AI coding tools are helping engineers write code faster. But faster code does not automatically mean better business outcomes. Vitaly Gordon, cofounder and CEO of Faros, joins…
- Problem Statements, Business Outcomes, and Better Technology Decisions · 24 min · Episode 707Technology teams are often asked to solve something before everyone agrees on what the actual problem is. Chad Carrington, CIO at Golden1 Credit Union, joins The Tech Trek to…
- Physical AI and the Real Time Supply Chain · 21 min · Episode 706AI has learned from the digital world. Physical AI brings real world data into the picture. Doron Hazan, Director of Products and AI at Wiliot, joins The Tech Trek to explain…
- From Smart Dust to Edge AI: Building Intelligence Everywhere · 26 min · Episode 705Scott Hanson went straight from a PhD program at the University of Michigan to building a semiconductor company. Today, as Founder and CTO of Ambiq, he is working on the same…
- Early Stage AI Investing: Moats, Expertise, and Founder Anti Patterns · 28 min · Episode 704Building an AI product is getting easier. Building an AI company that lasts is not. Itamar Novick, Founder and General Partner at Recursive Ventures, joins The Tech Trek to…
- AI Agents, Engineering Workflows, and the Cost of Being Wrong · 28 min · Episode 703AI coding agents can produce software faster, but they do not replace the judgment needed to understand the system. Shaun Patterson, CTO at Titan, joins The Tech Trek to discuss…
- AI Agents, Identity, and the Security Gap · 32 min · Episode 702AI agents create a different security problem from traditional software. They can operate at software speed and scale while behaving in ways that are much less predictable. Ev…
- Can AI Agents Help One Founder Run a Company? · 31 min · Episode 701AI agents are moving beyond helping with individual tasks. The bigger question is how much of a company they can actually run. Ben Cera, founder of Polsia, joins The Tech Trek…
- How AI Is Changing Engineering Workflows and Software Teams · 31 min · Episode 700AI coding agents can help engineering teams ship more code. But the bigger change may be what engineers spend their time doing. Viren Baraiya, Co-Founder and CTO of Orkes, joins…
- How AI Agents Are Changing Who Can Build Software · 24 min · Episode 699AI is doing more than helping engineers write code faster. It is starting to change who can participate in software development, how teams divide work, and where technical talent…
- How to Build a Data Team Ready for AI · 30 min · Episode 698AI can make teams faster, but it can also expose every weakness in the data underneath it. Elizabeth Stanford, VP of Data at PandaDoc, joins The Tech Trek to talk about what it…
- How AI Startups Can Challenge the Enterprise Services Model · 30 min · Episode 697AI is not just changing software. It may also change the economics of the services businesses built around it. Anirudh Sriram, CTO at Tessera Labs, joins The Tech Trek to…
- From Head of AI to CTO: How AI Is Changing Engineering and Product · 32 min · Episode 696AI changes more than the product roadmap. It changes how engineering teams build, how data flows through the company, and what a CTO needs to own. Andrew Rabinovich, CTO and…
- Where VCs See Opportunity in Regulated AI · 23 min · Episode 695AI is making software faster and cheaper to build. It is not making trust any easier to earn. Simon Wu, Partner at Cathay Innovation, joins The Tech Trek to discuss how AI is…
- Why AI Makes Work Faster but Teams Slower · 24 min · Episode 694AI can make individual tasks faster while leaving the organization with the same old coordination problems, or even making them worse. Sergei Sorokin, CEO and co founder of…
- AI Deepfakes and Hiring Fraud: Can You Trust Who You’re Interviewing? · 26 min · Episode 693AI is changing hiring in ways that go far beyond candidates using ChatGPT to answer interview questions. The harder problem is knowing whether the person on screen is actually…
- AI Is Changing Software Engineering: Engineers Need to Solve Problems, Not Just Write Code · 26 min · Episode 692If AI can produce the code, what becomes more valuable for engineers? John Kuhn, CTO and cofounder of Integral, joins The Tech Trek to discuss how agentic development is…
- How AI Is Changing Sports Analytics and Strategy · 27 min · Episode 691Sports organizations have more data than ever. The real advantage comes from knowing which problem to solve, which data matters, and whether people will trust the answer enough…
- How Do You Hire Engineers When AI Writes the Code? · 28 min · Episode 690AI is changing more than how engineers write code. It is changing what leaders hire for, how candidates are assessed, and which engineering skills may matter most. Raymond Wang…
- AI Data Centers Are Outgrowing the Power Grid · 26 min · Episode 689AI infrastructure is expanding faster than the power systems required to support it. A data center can be built in two to three years, while a new power plant or transmission…
- How Coding Agents Are Changing Machine Learning Engineering · 32 min · Episode 688Machine learning teams are moving faster, but the hard part has not disappeared. The work is shifting from writing and debugging every line of code toward defining the right…
- How AI Is Reshaping Healthcare Revenue and Access · 28 min · Episode 687Healthcare providers can wait 60 to 75 days to get paid, while many hospitals spend 5% to 7% of revenue on the collection process. That makes revenue cycle management more than a…
- How AI Agents Are Rewriting Enterprise Analytics · 22 min · Episode 686Most companies are not short on data. They are short on the time, cost, and coordination required to turn it into action. Ethan Ding, co founder and CEO of TextQL, joins The…
- Scaling Enterprise AI Beyond the POC · 29 min · Episode 685Enterprise AI is easy to demonstrate. The real test begins when a promising POC meets production costs, security requirements, data movement, latency, and internal adoption…
- How Todoist Is Rethinking Engineering With AI · 35 min · Episode 684AI can generate code faster, but that does not make software delivery simple. It shifts the pressure to requirements, architecture, review, and technical judgment. Goncalo…
- The Future of Engineering May Have Fewer Handoffs · 26 min · Episode 683AI is not just changing how engineers write code. It is changing who gets close enough to shape the work. In this episode of The Tech Trek, Robert Stewart, CTO at Arbital…
- The Hard Part of Voice AI Is Not the Voice · 22 min · Episode 682Voice AI is moving from simple call routing into work that used to require trained human agents. The harder question is what happens when those conversations involve lending…
- Why Healthcare AI Is So Hard to Ship · 19 min · Episode 681Joanne Chen, VP of Data and AI at SimplePractice, joins The Tech Trek to talk about what it takes to build AI data products in a regulated, sensitive domain where privacy…
- Engineers Are Becoming AI Orchestrators · 25 min · Episode 680Kevin Haggard, Vice President of Engineering at Barracuda, joins The Tech Trek to talk about how AI is showing up across cybersecurity products, engineering workflows, team…
- Your Team Is Using AI Anyway · 27 min · Episode 679AI adoption is no longer just a policy conversation. For many organizations, the bigger question is how to move faster without creating avoidable risk. In this episode of The…
- What AI Agents Need Before Production · 27 min · Episode 678AI agents are easy to demo. They are much harder to trust, maintain, govern, and put into production. In this episode of The Tech Trek, Amir Bormand talks with Lucas Thelosen…
- Yahoo CTO on AI, Engineering Velocity, and Why the SDLC Has To Change · 26 min · Episode 677Yahoo is not just adding AI on top of existing products. It is using AI across product experiences, internal tools, engineering workflows, and modernization efforts. In this…
- Why AI Founders Need to Say No Faster · 20 min · Episode 676Mike Choi wanted to work at Apple for years. Then he got there and had the moment many ambitious builders eventually hit. Is this the thing I was sprinting toward? In this…
- Why Sovereign AI Matters Now · 29 min · Episode 675AI is moving fast, but the bigger question for companies and governments may be control. Who owns the data, the workflow, the output, and the risk? In this episode, Amir talks…
