Episode Summary

Bryan Dennstedt, fractional CTO at Tech CXO and sustainable investing advocate, discusses 2025 technology and business trends with host Todd. They explore venture capital's post-SVB recovery, AI's practical applications and limitations, the evolution of marketing through influencer content and podcasts, and emerging shifts in crypto regulation, intellectual property, and remote work culture.

Key Quotes

"I think we're living in an age where one person can start a company and turn it into a big huge idea in a couple weeks with the right social media virality and a couple AI agents helping in the background."
"Every company is an AI company right now, whether they realize it or not. If you don't have a corporate objective roadmap for it, your employees are doing it secretly behind the scenes to make their job more efficient."
"The interesting thing for me is there are huge server farms out there just capturing every piece of internet traffic they can get their hands on, hoping that sometime in the next 10 to 20 years quantum computing comes along and they can unlock all of that data."
"I think AI is going to permeate society. I feel like it's almost going to usher in this new Renaissance era for us as a humanity."

Transcript

Hi, welcome to Tales From The Sky Lounge. It's a podcast about business consulting and venture investing. We get out there in the world, we talk to people who are making it happen, and we get their stories. If you could like and subscribe, it really helps us get our word out.

So today in the Sky Lounge, Brian Denat. Hey Brian, hello everybody, thanks Todd for having me. I'm looking forward to talking with you today.

So Brian, who are you and what are you working on these days?

Todd and I are kind of partners in crime over at Tech CXO. I am a chief technology officer fractionally with the firm. I've been with them about eight years now. In addition to that, I've had a couple successful exits throughout my years, and so I kind of think of myself as that climate change sustainability person. I'm that crazy vegan guy. So I'm the plant-based investor on that front. Those are the places I like to put my money for both returns and to help change the world and make it a better place.

That's awesome, and I know you get your fingers in a lot of really cool things, so that's why I'm excited to talk to you. In this kind of kickoff to the 2025 episode, I just want to talk to you a little bit about some trends that we're seeing out there in the world. We talk to a lot of people and we're experiencing a lot of interesting technology trends both in the trenches and also at 10,000 feet. So we kind of put together a little list, and I'm just going to throw out topics and then maybe we can go back and forth and pick your brain a little bit about what we should be looking at.

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