In this episode of MIT CSAIL Alliances, host Kara Miller sits down with Professor Manya Ghobadi, a researcher and entrepreneur bridging the gap between academia and industry. Ghobadi, who has worked at Microsoft Research, Google, and now leads her own startup Systalyze, explores why so many companies struggle to efficiently deploy AI — and how her team is creating the “AI doctor” enterprises didn’t know they needed.
 
From hospitals sitting on mountains of private data to banks seeking smarter fraud detection, Ghobadi explains how better infrastructure and smarter tools can finally unlock AI’s full potential. Tune in for an inside look at how innovation moves from lab to launchpad — and what it takes to make AI work in the real world.
 
Topics Include:
00:07 - Origins of Systalze
01:40 - AI systems are difficult to build
02:53 - Systalyze is like an AI doctor
03:38 - How AI can transform the health care industry
04:41 - When companies unlock their AI potential
05:13 - Academia as an enterprenuer
  
 
Episodes, listener discounts, meet the host, and more can be found here: csail.mit.edu/podcast
 
Connect with CSAIL Alliances:
On our site: cap.csail.mit.edu/about-us/meet-our-team
On LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/mit-csail
 
#MITCSAIL #AI #Education #MIT #GenerativeAI #Leadership #Technology #csailpodcast

Bridging the AI Gap: Inside MIT’s Systalyze Startup with Associate Professor Manya Ghobadi

Episode 402 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Aaron Sekhri, CEO & Co-Founder of Le Walk.

Most apps are trying to get you to stare at your phone and create a stickiness factor for doomscrolling.  Yet, Le Walk wants you to look up and take in the world.  

If you have ever experienced a group tour for a museum or some other historical location, it can be a crap shoot and for me, even with the best tour guide, I have a hard time focusing and taking it all in.

This is where Le Walk comes to the rescue.  It is your personal tour guide, right in your headphones.  The company uses AI to enhance, not replace, human creativity. Every tour still relies on real guides, editors, and storytellers — AI just helps amplify their reach.

Le Walk recently announced a $4.1M seed co-led by Adverb Ventures and Lerer Hippeau, with participation from Origins Fund and Point72 Ventures.  In beta, Le Walk has reached 110k downloads, 160k+ social followers, and 20k+ tours taken. 

In this interview, we cover:

* Aaron’s experience growing up in Hong Kong and how he landed at Stanford to study Symbolic Systems.
* Getting his career started in Product Management while at Uber.
* His experience at TikTok and what he learned there.
* All the details about Le Walk and the plans ahead.
* Their content playbook for customer acquisition and why content is king when it comes to building traction for a startup and their strategy around content.
* And so much more.

Episode 402: Aaron Sekhri - CEO & Co-Founder, Le Walk

RevenStrat is a consultancy and advisory firm focused on helping both startups and established enterprises address their most challenging strategic issues. Our team is committed to guiding clients through disruptive market changes, helping them steer clear of pivotal business errors that could jeopardise their success.

Our unwavering commitment to your business success is at the heart of what we do. We offer a range of services and solutions designed to foster innovation and growth for your company.

The_70__Crisis__Why_Founder_Mental_Health_is_the_Ultimate_Strat

This song captures the mindset of a founder: pitching to people who don’t believe, leading a team when you’re unsure yourself, and fighting to build something no one else can see. It’s not about money or hype, it’s about resilience, responsibility, and the cost of choosing to create.

Founder Lullaby

This special episode features speakers and attendees recorded live during the 2025 Eclectic Convergence Conference at Cornell Tech in New York City. Listen in as they share advice for new founders, traps to avoid and the stories that motivate them every day. 

Hear from Javed Singha MBA ’09, co-founder and president, Fieldwire; Marissa Alden ’06, general manager of recreation, DaySmart; Chris Kirby ’15, founder and CEO, Ithaca Hummus; Erica Belsky ’04, co-founder, Good Inside; Scott Belsky ’02, former Adobe EVP and Behance founder, and others!


Episode 50!!!! Live from our NYC conference

In this episode of DisrupTV, Vala Afshar and R "Ray" Wang explore the future of AI, leadership, and collaboration with three groundbreaking thinkers.

Ed Addison breaks down the shift toward AI-first startups and what multi-agent corporations mean for the future of work. Dr. Scott Hutcheson shares how biohacking leadership can unlock stronger signals of warmth, competence, and gravitas. Ruchika T. Malhotra, author of Uncompete, makes the case for collaboration over competition—and why redefining success matters now more than ever.

A fast, insightful conversation on the forces reshaping business, culture, and human potential.

AI, Biohacking & the End of Competition: Rewiring How We Work and Win | DisrupTV Ep. 418

This is an impromptu monologue from me, Zach Servideo, creator/host of Boston Speaks Up, founder of Value Creation Labs, and managing partner at Unicorn Studios. And here's what I'm riffing about on in this emergency podcast --> “Workplace survival in the 2020s basically means becoming an entrepreneur.” <-- That line has been echoing in my head for years now. Every month, every CoFlo coworking session, every client conversation, it gets louder.

Here's a summary of topics I'm riffing on in this episode: 

1. The Portfolio Economy, in Plain English

Economists have a sterile term for what’s happening: the portfolio economy.

I just call it reality.

We are shifting from a world where most people had one job and one employer to a world where people build portfolios of income streams — projects, gigs, advisory roles, side businesses, creative experiments.

If you run the math, independent work has grown at roughly double-digit compound annual rates over the last decade, while traditional W-2 employment has been basically flat by comparison.

We are very quickly heading toward a world where well under half of the workforce is full-time W-2 — and a majority of people have at least one independent income stream.

So if you’re still betting your entire life on one company, one boss, one paycheck…
you’re playing last decade’s game with this decade’s stakes.

2. From “Climb the Ladder” to “Build the Web”

The old script was simple:

Go to school → get a job → climb the ladder at one company.

The new script looks nothing like that.

It’s more like: Build the web.

You start stacking: client projects, short-term contracts, fractional roles, creative experiments, advisory work, side businesses…into a portfolio of income streams that makes you more resilient and more free than any single employer ever could.

This isn’t just a “freelancer thing” anymore. The data shows that a third to nearly half of working adults are already operating this way — whether they use the word “entrepreneur” or not. 

3. Where I’m Seeing It Up Close: CoFlo

One place I see this shift most clearly is through CoFlo, the pop-up coworking community we host around New England.

If you’ve never heard me talk about CoFlo before, here’s the quick version:

We host monthly pop-up coworking days — in places like Beverly, Portsmouth, Weymouth.

People roll in with their laptops, their coffee, their chaos.

And something subtle but powerful happens.

Yes, people show up to get work done. But they also show up with ideas.

In one room, you’ll see: remote workers, creatives, founders, people between jobs, people with jobs they clearly don’t want forever. 

You can almost watch the old model and the new model collide in real time.

Over time, CoFlo has organically become a kind of low-pressure incubator: a place where people can bring half-baked ideas, get honest feedback, meet collaborators, and feel that little jolt of:

“Oh wait… maybe I actually can build something.” 

4. UnicornOS: An Operating System for Humans in This Shift

I’m not saying any of this from an academic distance. I’m in it.

Together with my partners at Unicorn Studios and Value Creation Labs, I’ve been building what we’re calling UnicornOS — an operating system for humans in this new world of work.

CoFlo is one of the ways we’re seeing this in the wild: real humans, real experiments, real proof that people want to build portfolio lives — even if they don’t have the vocabulary for it yet. 

5. A Personal Invitation

You can reach me directly at: zach at unicorn dot love

Entrepreneur or Bust: Zach Servideo Riffs on Workplace Survival

Episode 404 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Ben Sesser, CEO & Co-Founder of BrightHire.

Well this is a first…

It’s common to time my podcast interview around a milestone for a company like a funding announcement.  But, this is the first time that in the span between my interview with the founder to the publishing date that the company announced its acquisition.

Last week, BrightHire announced that the company has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Zoom.  It certainly is a combination that makes a lot of sense.

BrightHire is an interview intelligence platform.  We saw its influence firsthand this past summer when VentureFizz hosted a series of AI job searching events. Talent acquisition leaders consistently mentioned BrightHire as the most-adopted application—a signal that immediately led me to reach out to Ben for this interview.

As Ben shares, when they started, "interview intelligence" was a brand new category in hiring, and they faced plenty of doubters. But fast-forward to today, and much like the success of companies like Gong for sales teams, BrightHire's value is now obvious. But isn't that the case for all great companies in hindsight?

BrightHire's investors include Flybridge, Index Ventures, 01 Advisors, Zoom Apps Fund, and others.

Chapters

00:00 Intro
02:48 State of Hiring in the AI Era
06:51 Ben's Background Story
19:40 Getting Started in the Tech Industry
25:26 Origin Story of BrightHire
33:06 Creating a New Category
35:31 The Value of Video in the Hiring Process
41:17 BrightHire Screen - New AI Screening Platform
45:51 Experience of Raising Capital
48:36 Biggest Lessons Learned
50:22 Common Mistakes Companies Make When Hiring
51:57 Lightening Round Questions

Episode Sponsor: As a longtime champion of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank supports innovative companies with the solutions and financing they need through every stage of growth. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors, and $42B in loans as of Q2 2024 – SVB delivers the right people, service and resources to support your entire financial journey. Learn more at SVB.com.

Episode 404: Ben Sesser - CEO & Co-Founder, BrightHire

In this episode, Eric Tippetts talks startups, growth, and turning ideas into impact. He shares insights on execution, building strong teams, leveraging feedback, and staying resilient through challenges. Perfect for founders and innovators ready to scale their vision.

Eric Tippetts Talking About Startup Ideas and Growth

Eric Volmar is teaching lead at the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford. His work focuses on connecting defense, academia, and entrepreneurship to accelerate innovation for national security, supporting new ventures at the intersection of technology and policy. In this presentation – followed by a conversation with Tina Seelig, executive director of Knight-Hennessy Scholars and director emerita of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program – Volmar advises entrepreneurs about how to navigate a new landscape shaped by a shift to deep tech, blended capital, and governments reengaging with technology innovation.

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders and other Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), the entrepreneurship center at the Stanford School of Engineering. STVP empowers aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ecorner  
X: https://x.com/ECorner  
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stanfordtechnologyventuresprogram/  
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/stanfordstvp.bsky.social 
 
LEARN MORE
STVP: https://stvp.stanford.edu/ 
eCorner by STVP: https://stvp.stanford.edu/ecorner 

Support our mission of providing students and educators around the world with free access to Stanford University’s network of entrepreneurial thought leaders: https://stvp.stanford.edu/giving-to-stvp/.


Eric Volmar (Stanford University) - A New Entrepreneurship Playbook

MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) Alliances serves as a gateway into the lab for industry and governmental institutions seeking a closer connection to the work, researchers, and students of CSAIL. Our podcast aims to provide inside access to topics covered by CSAIL and other leaders advancing computer science and AI research.

The team at Stanford eCorner believes in the powerful combination of evidence and imagination. We share original stories from informed leaders in academia and industry that focus on innovation, startups, culture, and strategy. The goal: empower you to bring bold ideas to life. 

Stanford eCorner is led by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), the entrepreneurship center in Stanford University’s School of Engineering.

DisrupTV is a weekly podcast with hosts R "Ray" Wang and Vala Afshar. The show airs live at 11:00 a.m. PT/ 2:00 p.m. ET every Friday. The audience can expect A-list guests, the latest enterprise news, hot startups, insight from influencers, and much more. Tweet questions to #DisrupTV or @DisrupTVShow.

The VentureFizz Podcast is the flagship podcast of VentureFizz.com, the leading authority for jobs & careers in tech. In this podcast, VentureFizz Founder Keith Cline interviews the top founders and investors in the tech industry.

Leaders, entrepreneurs, creators, innovators and artists from all over the globe join Boston Speaks Up to share their stories of inspiration. Recommend a guest: team@valuecreationlabs.co. Learn more and sign up for the newsletter: www.valuecreationlabs.co.

Startup Cornell is a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell that explores the bold entrepreneurial ideas coming from our students, faculty, staff and young alumni.

New tracks tagged #Startups