In Good Companies - Season 6
Episode 1: “Building a Career for 2030, with Shuo Chen”
1. Intro
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[00:00:00] Ari Marin VO: This is In Good Companies, from Cadence Bank. The podcast where we share the forces shaping business to navigate the opportunities ahead. We’re empowered to help! Through this podcast — or any of our more than 350 locations across the South and Texas. Because that’s what Cadence is all about: The expertise and flexibility to do business on your terms. Me? I’m Ari Marin, and I’m your new In Good Companies host. I’m a Family Wealth Strategist here at Cadence Bank, a long-time listener, past guest and podcast aficionado… Welcome to Season 6!
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[00:00:00] Ari Marin VO: Hey folks! Ready to dive back into business? Alright – so let’s do a warm-up.
Close your eyes! Clear up your mind… And for a moment, imagine the future of work. If the year is 2050… What does your office look like? What tools do you work with? Are you still doing the same job? What’s changed and what stayed the same?
It can be hard to picture. After all… We never know what the future holds. But this season, on In Good Companies, we’re going to make an educated guess. Starting with the question on everyone’s mind: could technology change… everything?
In 2024, 86% of organizations have maintained or raised their IT budgets. Because tech – we know it’s part of the future. We’re just not sure what to do with it yet… But you know who’s got an idea? Our next guest: Shuo Chen.
[00:00:00] Shuo Chen: My name is Shuo. I run a venture fund called IOVC based here in Silicon Valley, where we focus on investing in very early-stage startups, driving the future of work. I also teach part-time at Stanford where I've been teaching entrepreneurship for the past kind of 15 years. So I've had to recap, I'm a former recovering entrepreneur, now investing in entrepreneurs and teaching entrepreneurship.
[00:00:00] Ari Marin VO: Shuo wears many hats. Partner, Professor, Board Director, Founder… She’s a Silicon Valley connoisseur… And the person you want to ask about technology.
Shuo started her career as an entrepreneur when she was still in college at UC Berkeley. She built a financial literacy startup from the ground up; then she exited and went over to Goldman Sachs, to do investment banking. There, she covered technology for some of the giants in the industry… She helped Google acquire Motorola, and secured them a 12.5 billion dollar deal – you know, no big!
After a few years, Shuo missed working with founders, so she joined IOVC and started teaching faculty. Since 2016, she’s been on a mission to meet some of the smartest entrepreneurs out there… She helps them bring their vision to life.
[00:00:31] Shuo Chen: Across the past decade-plus that I've been in venture, we've seen a number of the companies that we invested in exit, whether it's via an IPO and going public, or it's getting acquired by the typical Fortune 100 suspects. So it's been such a humbling process to see a team with just one or two people at the very beginning, hacking in some garage now running companies of thousands and tens of thousands of people.
[00:00:56 ] Ari Marin VO: She knows what a promising venture looks like… has her eyes on the future, and with her today, we set our sights on 2050. And buckle up – because from top to bottom, start to finish: it’s all about technology.
2. Technology 101
[00:00:59] Shuo Chen: I do see technology playing a major role in driving what the future looks like. So I would say probably two to three of the most common technologies I always talk about are AI, blockchain and VRAR. And maybe I'll just focus on the first two in the interest of time. I want to juxtapose the two against each other because I think it's really important to set the context.
[00:01:21 ] Ari Marin VO: Yup, she’s right. Before we fully get into it – let’s set our terms. Today, we’re going to talk about some of the most influential technology in business. And that’s AI and blockchain. Ready for a crash course? Shuo, let's go!
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[00:01:25] Shuo Chen: AI was first coined as a term in 1956 in a paper that came out between academic professors and industries' research labs, and it's had decades to mature over time. There's a really interesting time lag effect in a venture where a lot of the companies that I meet with and invest in won't even notice any mainstream adoption until five to 10 years later. So while it seems like AI is super popular, super topical, and top of mind for folks this year, more so than any year before, we've seen this AI hype come and go several times in the past decades.
[00:01:56] Ari Marin VO: Ok, so AI is the star of the show. But it’s also been around forever. If this was show business, AI would be the guy who’s been in every sitcom. You know their face; you’ve seen one or two things they’re in… Then one day, years down the line: boom, they finally get their big break. And the whole industry is excited. Meanwhile, blockchain?
[00:02:20] Shuo Chen: Blockchain in comparison is very young as a piece of technology. It's only been invented in the late 2000s and has only been around for a little over a decade. With blockchain, you're in those early days where everything you have to do from the ground up, you can't just outsource a service. So relative to AI, it just hasn't had as much time to mature.
[00:02:41] Ari Marin VO: Yep. Blockchain’s the new kid. It's come out of nowhere, it’s in everything, and plays with the big names -- it's got potential -- but: there’s still a long way to go before the hall of fame. You know what I mean? Ok, so maybe that's where the comparison stops (; But the nuance is important.
[00:03:00] Shuo Chen: Remember, in the early days of the internet, if you wanted to build a website, you had to know how to write HTML code, you had to write the code and then bring in someone good at editing the code. So the formatting of the website looks nice. And you had to perhaps even buy your servers, get your domain, and get all these things set up to have a website up and running.
Now, of course, fast-forward a decade, two decades later, you now have all these platforms you can use. You drag and drop a few buttons, and you have a website up and running. You have platforms you can use to just buy a domain, or use a cloud provider, and you don't even need to write your code anymore. There are all of these graphical interfaces to just get whatever design you want automated. So we were talking earlier about the most important kind of three pillars. As I think about AI, data computing, and algorithms, a lot of that infrastructure exists now, right? For data, there are all these data providers. For computing, you have all this cloud that's made possible. And even for algorithms, you can outsource a specific type of algorithm to a software or data analytics provider to help you sort through all this information. Blockchain will get there in maybe a decade or two or more, but it's going to take time just like the internet needed time to mature.
All of these infrastructural plays aren't in place. Whereas for the case of AI, a lot of that infrastructure now does exist. So when I think about both of these technologies changing the way we work day to day, it will 100% happen. AI is going to automate a lot of the boring work and augment the way that we currently do things. So we free up more of our time. Blockchain is going to change the underlying incentives of how we work. Because now we can track ownership and IP. And the two combined are going to be even more powerful because now we have all sorts of data floating around everywhere for AI companies. Well, with AI and blockchain combined, we can not only take data, but we can take data that we can trace to say, this is who owns the data. This is who we should compensate for the data.
These are automated structures. We can track that information and leverage it to build better AI models. So I do think the two combined are going to be way more powerful.
3. A Picture of The Future Tech-Led Workplace
[00:05:03] Ari Marin VO: Ok so – if I got this right – AI & blockchain are key players in the tech industry because they could change how we use and store data. And here’s why:
Blockchain is a database technology. It gets its name because it stores data in blocks – linked together via cryptography. If this is all Greek to you; don’t worry. All you need to know is that blockchain is good for traceability. It makes data easy to pin down, which is something AI is not great for. But AI can digest information efficiently, and help us interpret it.
So when they’re together – AI and blockchain can help us build entirely new systems. And what does this have to do with business? Well.
[00:05:11] Shuo Chen: As I look out 10 years into the future, I don't think companies are going to see this, but they will eventually see this play out in the next five to 10 years. Which is number one, I think we're going to see a lot more workflows and decision-making become increasingly augmented by technology. Let me give you a very specific example. When we show up at work, most of our time is sucked into a lot of repetitive tasks. Basic things that we do, whether it's screening through email, whether it's working on a spreadsheet, or working through presentations. And when you think about getting off of work and going home, you have access to some of the best software products and services on your phone. You can go onto any social network, you can order food. You can do all of these things that used to not be possible, but a lot of those basic tasks you don't benefit from in a work setting. So now that we have access to more data, more computing, and more algorithms than ever before, a lot of the boring aspects of our jobs are just going to be automated so that we have more time freed up to do more interesting things like aligning different stakeholders to decision-making, like building relationships and building trust. And then in terms of who does the work, we're going to see increased diversity because now we have technologies making education and ongoing training accessible to people that wasn't possible before. And we're also going to see workplaces start to diversify, not just in the typical hybrid work in the sense that people get to work in the office and work at home, but truly see deep technological integration in terms of how people get work done across different geographical regions.
[00:06:40] Ari Marin VO: Can you picture it now?
With AI and blockchain… We can collect information easily and safely; streamline our processes; and make the boring, repetitive tasks… Automatic.
In turn – we get more free time. We still do the “critical thinking”… The human, creative part, that tech is not so good at. And that plays to our strengths.
[00:07:10] Shuo Chen: So the way that I think about it, there are technology problems that should be solved by technology, and then there are human problems that only humans can solve. So if we're solving your growth, then this is where the scalability of tech comes in. Anything that is technology-enabled, we will see exponential growth and it's rooted in the belief that technology can scale in ways that we as humans cannot. And it's not necessarily a great thing that technology can scale because when technology can scale so fast, well humans don't scale relationships or trust as easily. So that's where that human piece is still going to be incredibly important. If we're solving for building trust reliability and credibility, we need to take things slow and not scale too quickly.
4. Future Jobs
[00:07:50] Ari Marin VO: So technology – it’s going to change how we conduct business. And it’s also going to create new careers.
[00:07:54] Shuo Chen: Every single time we have a new wave of technology, it creates a whole slew of job opportunities because there's a lot of re-skilling or up-skilling that's required even for the consumer end.
So you need someone well-educated and well-trained on that particular technology and used to be able to walk other people through it. 80% of the jobs available in 2030 weren't even invented just five years ago. And if that's hard to imagine, we can see it both bottom-up and top-down. Bottoms up, if you're just looking at LinkedIn data for all the new jobs that are popping up, you have jobs now like that of an AI ethicist that was not a job that was popular five years ago that now people are hiring for. They need people focused on AI policy and AI ethics in a way that wasn't top of mind before. We can see this top down and you see C-suite roles that are emerging as well. For example, I sit on the board of a nonprofit called Decode. It is the largest tech and entrepreneurship nonprofit that's co-hosted between Berkeley and Stanford.
One of my fellow board members is the chief privacy officer at Google. And when he had started his career, that was not a C-suite title you could aspire to. He had been legally trained, he would've been a lawyer, and general counsel was kind of the path that you would go down. But now, being chief privacy officer is such an important role where he is not only thinking about things from an AI and data perspective, but he's also thinking about a policy perspective of how do I coordinate with legislators and lawmakers and policymakers from around the world about what things should look like.
[00:09:26] Ari Marin VO: Technology will also change existing roles. And if you’re wondering what that means for you… Well, according to Shuo, there are three possibilities. First case scenario: nothing changes. Because the human side of your job is valuable.
[00:09:47] Shuo Chen: So there's so many new jobs that are being driven. There are going to be jobs that are completely replacing technology, as in people care about personalized service. I don't want any technology at all. I'm here because I want to enjoy service.
For example, this is where you can imagine hospitality. Is it cool to have a robot serve you? Yes. But is it a very different experience having an individual attend to you and be there for you? Absolutely, right? So these are going to be jobs where that personalization is super important. Similarly, with say, kindergarten teachers, that's another great example of, yeah, you could have robots watching over kids to make sure they don't hurt themselves, but you probably really want a kindergarten teacher to pay attention and be creative and interact with your kids and all of that good stuff. Because that's how we as humans learn, right? We need that social connection. We need that social-emotional learning.
[00:10:34]Ari Marin VO: On the other end of the spectrum -- some jobs are completely replaceable by technology. And they may not be the ones you think.
[00:10:43] Shuo Chen: You can have a completely automated and incredibly high-paying job. Take that of a radiologist. Incredibly important work, don't get me wrong, but a lot of what a radiologist does can now be easily replicated or augmented by technology because you can have AI sorting through all this imagery and identifying patterns for regularities or irregularities in that data.
And radiologists don't typically have to build a relationship with the end patient. So that's a great example of a job that may be increasingly automated. So it's not just low-paying jobs like blue-collar factory workers. Some of those motor skills are difficult to be automated by technology.
[00:11:20]Ari Marin VO: Okay – so the future of business is siloed. Some jobs will be hyper-personalized; others, entirely automated. But then… There’s also going to be a middle bucket. Jobs that require both the tech & the human touch.
[00:11:33] Shuo Chen: You have jobs of individuals like strategy consultants or even CEOs, people who need some automation in their job, for example, processing and ingesting a lot of the data to understand and make sense of things. But then you also need that build personal relationships, build trust, managing complex stakeholders to get everybody to agree. You have the job of that, of a politician to think about, well, we do need a lot of data around what our constituents want, but we also need to think about how to get to the result that we need to because I need to get all these different stakeholders to agree with each other for one reason or another.
So there's all of these complex decision makers, I would say, that kind of sit in the middle where you need both the personalization and the automation that comes with technology.
5. Future Leadership
[00:12:17] Ari Marin VO: Being a decision-maker means looking at the big picture. And that has to involve technology. But remember: you’re the one leading the way. Technology is a tool to refine your strategy and help you get where you want to go.
[00:12:18] Shuo Chen: Where leadership is evolving and changing going forward into the future. Now that we have more technology is one where there's a much wider spectrum available. So with technology, you perhaps don't need to spend as much time in person because now you can do these automated reports of what's going on. So when you do spend time together in person, it's chatting through the most challenging decisions that you have to make together because they're trade-offs and you have that conversation. Or again, navigating that complex stakeholder landscape of figuring out where we want to be in the future. So when I think about the impact of technology on leadership in the future, I think it's going to give us a wider spectrum of what makes for good leadership.
So leaders don't have to be the traditional kind of image of a CEO that we imagine as being super extroverted, always out there talking to people, but technology is going to open up the world of possibilities to make different kinds of leadership styles possible. In terms of how we get there, still, we have to first ask ourselves what we enjoy and how we want to evolve our skill set so we can lean into the things that we enjoy doing more from both, not just leadership, but also from a personal standpoint as an individual in terms of spending your time.
[00:13:31] Ari Marin VO: As a leader, you’re never done learning. And with tech, you’ll need to keep looking ahead.
[00:13:33] Shuo Chen: So in the past, if I were a typical CEO, not as much technological change would happen over a decade or two decades or three-decade tenure. However, now things are happening in a matter of months, weeks, or even days. So it's more important than ever before for good leadership to also mean more education and more ongoing education and training. So it means spending more time following the right sources of information and a diverse set of information. So I'm not just learning about one subsector out there to continue learning from my peers, my colleagues, and even people who are younger than I am and who don't have as much professional experience but may have more experience with technology. So how do I continue to educate myself so that I can stay on top of whatever is happening now, so I know the impact of that on me?
[00:14:20] Ari Marin Retake: We've talked a bit about established executives... But what do you think technology means for emerging entrepreneurs?
[00:14:28] Shuo Chen: It means that barriers are lower than ever before. So in the past, if you were building, say, a financial services company, you wouldn't expect an entrepreneur who is a dropout out of undergrad to all of a sudden build something that can outcompete you.
But now they have leveraged all of these solutions and tools out there that they can drag and drop and put together and just focus on building trust with customers, building a brand, building reputation, and credibility through, for example, even social media and leverage all of those tools to their utmost advantage, be able to grow and scale faster than ever before. So we see the barriers coming down. The reverse of, I guess side of the same coin is that if it's easier to be an entrepreneur more so than ever before, then it also means that we see more competition in unexpected places than ever before. So in the past, the average age of entrepreneurs that we saw in Silicon Valley, was in kind of their mid-40s.
That's kind of the average age. Now, we see that coming down to late 20s to early 30s. That's the average age of entrepreneurs now who can successfully raise rounds of venture capital funding. So I would say barriers are lower than ever before. It's easier to start a company than ever before and be successful at it, but it's also harder than ever before to be successful because now you have to expect competition from all sorts of unexpected places.
[00:15:45] Ari Marin: And the consumer benefits?
[00:15:48] Shuo Chen: Hopefully!
6. Next trends in Entrepreneurship
[00:15:50] Ari Marin VO: Technology is reshuffling the cards and dealing a new hand for entrepreneurs. There’s room at the table for new folks, and the rules are changing too. We already fund our ventures differently.
[00:15:57] Shuo Chen: When I think about Fintech, I tell people this somewhat controversial sentiment coming out of Silicon Valley, which is that every single company is going to be in financial services. And here's what I mean by that. If I were to look back, there's been kind of a couple of cycles of Fintech. I think finance originally started as a big finance provider, like a big bank embedding technology into their existing services. And then the second wave of that is traditional what we call Fintech, which is all these spinoffs of separate companies that try to do one specific function of a bank better, faster, cheaper. And then I think now we're in this 3.0 phase where we're in embedded finance with the availability of technology. It's easier than ever before to embed finance of some sort into your existing offerings, whether you're selling to an individual consumer or an enterprise regardless of what industry you're in.
So I have invested in companies that were software companies focused on providing software tracking for equipment maintenance that now is thinking about embedding finance because they have all this data around when equipment is most likely to break down that they could offer all these preventative services on top. It could be preventative, it could be insurance, it could be even a line of credit because they see exactly when this equipment is being purchased when it monetizes, when it needs maintenance, et cetera. So they can offer a lot more specific financial services on top of the existing software that they're providing. So it's easier than ever to embed finance. And so we're kind of one stage pass at Fintech space where we're seeing all these startups now just embedding unique ways of providing financial services into their existing businesses.
[00:17:38] Ari Marin VO: Another trend we should be looking into… Is what Shuo calls:
[00:17:45] Shuo Chen: The rise of fractional founders. I think in the past we didn't have as much conversation around this where it seems like entrepreneurs were secretly popping up from the middle of nowhere and they were an overnight success. But the reality is when you dig into how some of the most successful entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs come out to be, they almost always start fractionally.
[00:18:05] Ari Marin VO: So what is a fractional leader? Well essentially… It’s someone who starts working on their business as a side gig. Maybe they’re working full-time, or they’re still a student…. Either way – they don’t wear the “entrepreneur” label. But they come across a problem in their life and want a solution for it.
So they’ll start building a product – they’ll hack something together, possibly even get some users, and some attention around their idea… Then with time, after testing and proving… An institution backs them up, or they set up a startup to get their idea off the ground. So they get into business little by little.
And that – if you’re wondering – is how Shuo started her career.
[00:18:16] Shuo Chen: The way that I originally became interested was that I was an international student. I'm Canadian, I came down here for school, and I just remember paying exorbitant prices for education [inaudible 00:15:36]. Things have gone even more crazy since those days. And I remember thinking, man, I wish there were better resources out there that taught me how to think about managing my own money and thinking about money management 101. And so I went out there to other students, to faculty members, to people in education that I knew to say, Hey, why doesn't anything like this exist?
Is there room for us to build a new curriculum in this space? Back then, the way that I thought about it was, that I had a problem. I don't see a really good solution out there. I would love to build a better solution. And that was it.
[00:19:02] Ari Marin VO: So yeah – Shuo’s curiosity got her into her first startup, Cashify; a social enterprise that aimed to create a curriculum and software for money management and financial literacy.
[00:19:19] Shuo Chen: We eventually exited to someone in the financial services space, and then what eventually led my path into dedicating my entire career to entrepreneurship.
[00:19:28] Ari Marin VO: Cool story, right? Well to take it back to Shuo’s original point – with access to technology, this kind of career build-up is going to be more and more common.
[00:19:30] Shuo Chen: There's a little bit of taboo around building fractionally. It's like people expect you to not openly disclose that you're working on something. But I do think it's important to open up discourse even within companies to say, look, I came across a problem. No company is perfect. Here's my attempt at trying to solve this problem. Can I give this a shot? Can I give this a try? And when you look at some of the most valuable companies in the world, at least here in the US, there have only ever been seven companies worth a trillion dollars from a market capitalization perspective.
And when you dig into the histories and stories of those companies, six of the seven companies were started fractionally. Six of them were not started when the founder said, look, I'm just going to quit cold turkey and do this from the ground up. They all tested the idea. Jensen Huang who founded Nvidia, one of these seven trillion companies, famously had this whole series of interviews where he talked about starting Nvidia out of a bullet-ridden Denny's where he and his two co-founders would meet up after work, brainstorm these different ideas, try to take this off. He had built his pitch. He'd done all these things part-time before he even thought about quitting his job.
So if I were someone running a larger organization, I would ask, how do I inspire and empower more fractional founders within my organization to start new solutions? If I were an investor, I would ask, how do I inspire and empower more people who then might have the right resources to build these part-time projects and turn them into full-time solutions? Because at the end of the day, the best founders are people who have experienced that pain point firsthand. They understand why it hurts so badly, and that's how they're able to build the best products and solutions that resolve that problem.
7. When Tech Drives Diversity
[00:21:05] Ari Marin VO: Ultimately – what technology means for our companies, on a large scale, is: more accessibility, and more diversity.
[00:21:08] Ari Marin: You said previously that technology can drive better diversity and inclusion. Do you think that culture also has a part to play here? Can it support that effort?
[00:21:18] Shuo Chen: I believe so. I tend to be a techno-optimist. If anything, I tend to be optimistic about the medium to long-term of where we're going to be. Here are a couple of things. Number one, just in terms of even thinking about data, if you don't have a representative data set, your input is going to be garbage and therefore your output is going to be garbage. So this is where we don't even have to use the word diversity, but we can think about is the data is even representative, right? Of the population that we're working with? So this is where without diversity, you don't get representation and without representation, you just have horrible algorithms and nobody wants to have horrible outputs, right? So this is where I feel like technology requires that we have some level of diversity. And then there's another component of technology that has again, lowered the barriers for people to be able to express what they think, what they believe.
And as a result, we have all of these channels like social media that give a voice to people who previously might not have had a platform. Now sometimes it's for better, sometimes it's for worse. I love this quote where someone said, "In the past, every village had an idiot. Now every idiot has a village." Right? So you certainly do have that where you give the platform to the hands of the wrong people, and you have extremists that gather together. But at least some individuals are very junior in organizations, who can go on social media and articulate these the reasons why I believe what I believe in and be able to get their voices out there. So if I were thinking about this just purely in a corporate setting though, how can we give voices to people who are putting out quality information and help make sure that we have the right processes to incentivize that?
[00:23:04] Ari Marin VO: And the thing with diversity is — we don’t always have to agree. But we need to listen to each other. Confronting our point of view; and discussing new perspectives – is already a step in the right direction.
[00:23:20] Shuo Chen: I would like to believe that at least in terms of the world of entrepreneurs that I'm working with and investing in, it is opening up more opportunities for everyone, freeing up more of our most valuable resource, which is time to engage. So it's freeing up more of our time that's sunk into boring tasks at work so that we can participate in better decisions, can engage in more conversations to create a better social discourse. Now, whether or not that time is spent in a direction that I agree with that is not the key. I would love for people to just have more time, even if it means being informed and disagreeing with what I believe the future of the world should look like.
8. Tackling resistance; embracing the future.
[00:24:04] Ari Marin VO: The point is: that when we’re having a conversation, our differences are not destructive. They’re constructive.
[00:24:05] Ari Marin: What could you say about some of the attitudes in terms of resistance that you probably see a lot of these days when it comes to AI or all the new emerging technologies that are suddenly out there and seemingly at a very quick pace more than most people want to realize things are changing.
[00:24:22] Shuo Chen: Resistance is a healthy part of technological development because without resistance, we can't improve the underlying technology and in terms of the policies and ethics that are baked into how a product is being built. So I think it's a really good thing. And all the skepticism is valid when you think about the downside and potential risks of the technology. So I think you do need both the yin and yang of technology, so to speak, to help healthy conversation progress, and to have healthy debate. So you do need both sides of the story. Now, when I think about resistance, there are two types. Typically, there's informed resistance and uninformed resistance. Now, informed resistance is a yin and yang part of technological development where it's super important. These are people who have tried these products and can pinpoint specifically where they have an issue with the technology or the product or the lack of alignment in incentives.
Those are really important things for us to talk about. The uninformed resistance piece, that's where it can detract from the conversation. Where you have people who have never tried the technology who say that in theory, that just doesn't sound good, even though I've never tried it or played around with it, I just don't think it's possible. This is where people are using their imaginations to fill in where others could be trying with hands-on experience. And so I do encourage people to have more informed resistance and perhaps less uninformed resistance. So if something doesn't sound good, give it a try so that you can pinpoint all the specific reasons why you hate it instead of imagining all the reasons why you might not like it.
[00:25:58] Ari Marin: I love the way you put that. For anyone who is thinking about the future of their work right now, any final words of advice?
[00:26:06] Shuo Chen: One of my favorite quotes from former Secretary of Education in the US, Richard Riley, said that we're currently solving problems we don't even know are problems yet using technologies that haven't been invented yet and creating jobs that we don't currently have. And I think in the context of that, it's so important for us to continue to stay curious and explore. So if we're currently solving problems, we don't even know our problems yet, then we ought to do more problem exploration, right? We have to explore more effectively before we know what that could look like.
So if there's one thing that I would love for people to take away it's that you build this when you habit, that allows you to stay curious and continue to explore a problem that you're interested in. Whether it's a hobby, something that helps you build out your career, or even something that helps you give back to society and solve a problem. Just pick up that one new source of information that you follow over depth of time, over time. And with that, you'll be able to get this continued exposure to new information that hopefully will get you to make better decisions in the long run.
9. Conclusion
[00:27:11] Ari Marin VO: Get informed. Stay involved. Make better decisions. That’s the final word from Shuo today. And there’s quite a lot to compute! So remember:
Technology is the future of work – it’s going to change everything. Scratch that, it’s already changed everything. 80% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 were not invented five years ago. So we need to pay attention. AI and Blockchain are key players in this revolution. If you’re not familiar with them – get educated. And start experimenting, just for fun!
Tech holds great potential for our companies. It will change how we work… Eliminate repetitive tasks… And shift our attention toward human questions. It will also give us more time – a precious resource – to hone our leadership and make robust decisions.
Technology brings on new career opportunities too! Our jobs will change - and the nature of business also. The way we fund our ventures, and launch into entrepreneurship… It’s already shifting.
We’ve got a new generation of self-starters taking their seat at the table – so let’s embrace this diversity. And we’ll build effective capabilities that can withstand a fast-changing business landscape.
I want to thank Shuo Chen for getting into the nuts and bolts with us today, and helping us launch Season 6 into the future! We hope her insights got you wired in, and we’ll see you next week – for another episode of In Good Companies.
Ari Marin: In Good Companies is a podcast from Cadence Bank, member FDIC, Equal Opportunity Lender. Our production team is Natalie Barron and Eydie Pengelly. Our executive producer is Danielle Kernell. This podcast is made in collaboration with the team at Lower Street. Writing and production from Lise Lovati. Sound design and mixing by Ben Crannell.
Disclaimer: General Disclosure III:
This podcast is provided as a free service to you and is for general informational purposes only. Cadence Bank and its affiliates make no representations or warranties as to the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the content in the podcast. The podcast is not intended to provide legal, accounting or tax advice and should not be relied upon for such purposes.
To the extent that this podcast includes predictions about the economy, these predictions are subject to a number of variables and you should confer with your legal, accounting and tax advisors for their input regarding the possible outcomes of any economic subject matter discussed herein. Predictions are forward-looking statements that reflect current views with respect to, among other things, future events. Forward-looking statements are not historical facts, and are based on current expectations, estimates and projections, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and beyond the control of any person or entity. Accordingly, please be aware that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees and are subject to risks, assumptions and uncertainties that are difficult to predict.
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