Where Should Investors Focus Now? AI, Finance & Business Strategies for Success

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0:31Ireland that put Chase on the map and launched a fun and difficult conversation about lovers who cheat and lie. That's why I'm scared to get married. You're giving me trust issues, brother. Crook and Chase Nashville chats with Chase Matthew. Listen and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. The Volkswagen Beetle started out as Hitler's dream car. It wound up as a beloved hippie icon and the best-selling car of all time. How did that happen? I'm Jacob Goldstein. And I'm Robert Smith. On Business History, we tell the surprising stories behind the inventions and entrepreneurs that shaped our economy.

1:06And the story of the beetle is truly surprising. It has so much in it. He says you should be able to mount machine guns on it. Sure. Not for the family vacation, but, you know, for other things, other plans. Listen to Business History on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Business History and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today. earners what's up you ever walk into a small business and everything just works like the checkout is fast the receipts are digital tipping is a breeze and you're out the door before the line even builds odds are they're using square we love supporting businesses that run on square because it just feels seamless whether it's a local coffee shop a vendor at a pop-up market or even one of our merch partners.

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3:18Where should this cohort of new people who graduate or are studying now, where should they be focusing in terms of AI intelligence? I would say to focus on a problem to solve versus focusing on the technology tool. So find a problem that someone's willing to pay to have solved. Think of it as a valuable problem. It's a lesson I had to learn in grad school. In grad school, we were solving these very hard, difficult problems, but they were not necessarily valuable ones. They were not necessarily, you know, you're solving a theorem that's been sitting around for 30 years, but no one necessarily wanted to pay you to solve that theorem.

3:56But if you go into a business and an enterprise, like, OK, what problems do you have that I can solve that will be valuable to you? And it's usually around helping a business increase revenue or decrease expenses. right and that way you're delivering an roi or you look at the work i do in technology as you mentioned i've been doing it for a long time but i don't do a lot of work around consumer technology right it's a very big space very important space that's not my specialty what i tend to understand is give me a business and let me find a problem within that business that i can write software to solve for them and i tend to think about that across three layers no matter what kind of business you are a healthcare business or a manufacturing business.

4:38There's three things that most businesses have in common. One is they have a layer of infrastructure, right? You have data, you have compute, you have networking, you have software, you have a layer of IT infrastructure. Then another thing that most businesses have in common is the next layer is finance or the money, right? The money has to move. You have to pay bills, you have to get your account receivables. You have to pay payroll. And so there's a layer of finance in every business. And then lastly, you have people. And you need to care for and optimize your people. So you have training, you have upskilling, you have health tech, health care.

5:17And so I tend to spend my time looking at those three layers within a business and finding problems to solve and seeing how software is disrupting things within there. So in IT infrastructure, this shift from cloud to AI to agenda. I mean, it is uncovering lots of opportunities to go build companies to help businesses understand that and manage that, scale that, secure that, right? Cybersecurity is an industry that's still hundreds of billions of dollars and it's been around for 20 or 30 years, right? It is the gift that keeps giving in many ways because every time there's a new platform, the cyber criminals will spend their days and nights trying to figure out how to break it.

5:55And so that creates lots of opportunities, to your point, for the next generation of entrepreneurs. When you look at finance, you know, what's happening now? Open banking, the globalization is creating this need for cross-border payments. There's this need for embedded finance. You know, there's a saying that every software company is ultimately a fintech. Every software company needs to move money around. And so embedded finance is a huge area that we spend time. And then lastly, software around the people. As AI disrupts many things, you have to decide, well, how do you deal with your workforce?

6:31How do you upskill? How do you retrain? How do you deal with health tech? I mean, we look at health care in this country. It's a$4 trillion industry. Yeah. And there's lots of efficiencies and efficiencies there. Right. And so there's room for improvement around health care. And so I tend to say, don't go focus first on the technology. Focus on going to find a problem that you can solve. Go find one customer solve it for and then another and then another. And that's when you have a business. That's when you start to have repeatable recurring revenue. An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child in Massachusetts.

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7:47But if you register using our CBP Home app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally. Do what's right. Leave now. Under President Trump, America's laws, border, and families will be protected. Sponsored by the United States Department of Homeland Security. Crook and Chase Nashville chats with the coolest cat in country music. He is edgy. He's fun. He is Chase Matthews. Keith Urban helped make him a global sensation last year, but it's his recent number one hit Darling that put Chase on the map and launched a fun and difficult conversation about lovers who cheat and lie. That's why I'm scared to get married.

8:23You're giving me trust issues, brother. Crook and Chase Nashville chats with Chase Matthews. Listen and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. The Volkswagen Beetle started out as Hitler's dream car. It wound up as a beloved hippie icon and the best-selling car of all time. How did that happen? I'm Jacob Goldstein. And I'm Robert Smith. On Business History, we tell the surprising stories behind the inventions and entrepreneurs that shaped our economy. And the story of the Beetle is truly surprising. It has so much in it. He says you should be able to mount machine guns on it.

8:57Sure. Not for the family vacation, but, you know, for other things. You never know. Other plans. Listen to Business History on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Business History and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

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