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This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Steve Kramer, VP of Product of PayNearMe, a fintech platform that helps businesses simplify and accelerate the way they collect payments. PayNearMe brings every major payment type into a single platform, from Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal and Venmo to cards, ACH and cash at more than 62,000 retail locations across the US. They discuss the friction points that still make paying a bill harder than it should be, and how the expectations of the “everything-now” economy are forcing billers to rethink the payment experience. Steve explains how PayNearMe balances high-security payment architecture with a seamless user interface, and why its ability to accept cash at retail sets it apart from digital-only competitors. He also unpacks how digital wallets lift conversion for billers, how electronic check solutions keep returns and fraud in check, and how payment behaviour data helps clients improve their collection rates. The conversation covers the industry’s shift from digital-first to mobile-only, the hurdles of growing in highly regulated sectors, and how to balance custom features for Fortune 500 clients against a scalable, universal product. Steve also looks ahead to real-time payments as a catalyst for growth and explains how PayNearMe competes with legacy processors that hold vast market share but innovate slowly. Drawing on more than 25 years in payments and his roots as a Virginia Tech computer science graduate, he shares his leadership philosophy and his approach to communicating technical roadmaps to non-technical executives. Find more about PayNearMe here: https://www.paynearme.com/Follow Steve Kramer here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ADD-STEVE-KRAMER-PROFILE

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Beth Flippo, CEO and Founder of DEXA, a Dayton-based autonomous logistics company transforming last-mile delivery from the birthplace of aviation. Spun out of TELEGRID Technologies in 2021, DEXA designs, manufactures and operates its own FAA-certified DE-2020 drone, turning two-day shipping into deliveries in under 15 minutes. They discuss how drone delivery is shifting from futuristic novelty to everyday infrastructure, and why Beth sees an emerging autonomy economy as the next evolution of the gig economy. Beth explains how DEXA’s roots in secure defence communications shape its approach, from the encrypted mesh networking behind its AeroGRID+ swarm technology to the customer-facing platforms that link retailers’ orders to real-time flight operations. She also unpacks what makes DEXA rare in the sector: as one of only four fully integrated drone manufacturer-operators in the US, alongside Amazon, Google and Zipline, it controls the entire delivery ecosystem end to end. The conversation covers the long road through commercial aviation regulation, which saw DEXA become only the seventh US company to secure FAA Part 135 Air Carrier certification, alongside a nationwide BVLOS waiver. They explore how DEXA turns pilots like its early Kroger partnership into lasting integrations, what investors look for after its $15 million seed round, and which signals tell the team a city is ready for drone delivery. Beth also shares how two decades in financial technology at UBS, Goldman Sachs and Cantor Fitzgerald prepared her for founding a deep-tech company, the steep learning curve of moving from CTO to CEO, and her advice for women building hardware businesses in tech and aviation. Find more about DEXA here: https://www.flydexa.com

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Anatolii Papulov, Founder & CEO of NewOrbit, a Reading-based satellite manufacturer opening up a band of space that has been written off as too hostile for commercial flight for sixty years. NewOrbit is building the world’s first commercial satellites designed to operate reliably in Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO), between 200 and 300km, powered by its own in-house air-breathing electric propulsion system. They discuss why VLEO has sat empty since the dawn of the space age, with aerodynamic drag, atomic oxygen and aerodynamic torque meaning a conventional satellite at that altitude survives weeks rather than years, and why an increasingly crowded, debris-heavy Low Earth Orbit makes the case for a self-cleaning orbit more urgent than ever. Anatolii explains why almost every subsystem has to be rebuilt from scratch to keep a satellite alive at 200km, and how NewOrbit’s AURA air-breathing thruster turns a few days in orbit into five years. He also makes the counterintuitive economic case: for the price of one conventional satellite, customers could fly a whole fleet of smaller VLEO satellites delivering up to 20x better imagery, alongside 5G direct-to-device connectivity and live HD video from space. The conversation covers what it takes to scale a European deep-tech company towards a first launch in 2028, from closing an oversubscribed $18.5 million Series A led by Voyager Ventures to hiring thirty scientists and engineers in a field where the skills barely exist as a category, and selling infrastructure rather than a consumer service. They explore the sovereignty argument for a UK-led VLEO capability at a time when Europe has none of its own. Anatolii also shares his journey from stargazing in rural Siberia to physics research in collaboration with MIT, how he and co-founder Ruslan Rakhimov split the work, and the conviction it takes to bet a career on unlocking a single orbit. Find more about NewOrbit here: https://neworbit.space/

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Claire Coady, Founder of The Attention Practice, a specialist communications consultancy built for what Claire calls the “Age of Attention Scarcity“. Drawing on more than 20 years of advising global brands, governments and NGOs, Claire and her team fuse brand and media strategy, audience research, information risk and the science of attention to help organisations cut through in an overwhelmed world. They discuss why attention should be treated as a finite resource, and why it now belongs on every CEO’s agenda rather than being left to the marketing team. Claire explains the tipping point that led her to found a practice dedicated entirely to attention, and how the battle for attention changes when the subject is complex or sensitive rather than commercial. She walks through her approach to designing strategies that sustain attention rather than simply capturing it, from applying behavioural change insights to building a brand’s defences against the attention hacks used to spread disinformation. The conversation covers the realities of scaling a human-first, research-led consultancy in an AI-driven information environment, including how generative AI is complicating the attention problem, how the “Can We Have Your Attention?” podcast and Claire’s Substack attract government and institutional clients, and how she bridges the cultural attention gap across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Claire also shares what award-winning, high-budget campaigns and shoestring projects have each taught her about attention, how she thinks about risk and resilience, and how her commitment to social progress as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts shapes her day-to-day work. Find more about The Attention Practice here: https://www.theattentionpractice.com/Follow Claire Coady here: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/clairecoady

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Mona Potter, MD, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Strategy Officer of InStride Health, an insurance-based virtual provider of specialty anxiety and OCD treatment for young people aged 7 to 26. Founded by two Harvard-trained clinicians who spent over a decade building intensive anxiety programmes at McLean Hospital, InStride delivers a purposefully time-bound course of care, typically four to eight months, through a dedicated three-person team of therapist, exposure coach and psychiatrist. They discuss why treatment with decades of evidence behind it still fails to reach most families, blocked by long waitlists, a shortage of specialists and geography rather than by any gap in the science. Mona explains the InStride model: cognitive behavioural therapy with exposure at its centre, delivered virtually so that practice happens in the places where anxiety actually shows up, at school, in a restaurant, at home, rather than in a clinician’s office. She points to the outcomes InStride publishes every year, including 97% of graduates showing clinical improvement and fewer than 1% being hospitalised in the year after finishing the programme. The conversation covers what it takes to scale specialty care without thinning it out: going in network with major commercial insurers, expanding state by state, and using technology, including AI trained on InStride’s own clinical data, to support care teams while every clinical decision stays with a clinician. Mona also shares what nearly two decades inside the Mass General, McLean and Harvard Medical School system taught her about the distance between care that works and care families can actually get, and why she left to build something that closes it. Find more about InStride Health here: https://www.instride.health/Follow Mona Potter, MD here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mona-potter-md-28ba2179/

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Adam Harvey and Kiran Chauhan, Co-Founders of Proofed, the editorial partner behind some of the fastest-moving content teams in the world. Proofed combines a global network of hand-picked expert editors with proprietary technology, giving businesses a fully managed editorial desk that scales with their content volume rather than their headcount. They discuss how the editorial landscape has been reshaped by generative AI, and why volume without quality control has become one of the biggest risks facing content teams. Adam and Kiran explain what humanising AI-generated work actually involves in practice, from stripping out the flatness and repetition that makes readers disengage to catching the bias, insensitivity and quiet factual errors that LLMs introduce. They also unpack the mechanics of the model itself: a dedicated editorial team matched to the client’s subject matter, overseen by a Service Delivery Manager, running 24/7 and costing less than a single in-house editor. The conversation covers what it takes to scale a service that depends on top-tier human expertise, including the bottlenecks of recruiting and training editors, staying ahead of good enough AI tools, and building a trans-Atlantic company across the US and UK while serving clients from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 teams. Adam and Kiran also share the personal side of the story: Kiran’s route into editorial via computer science, building surveying and large-scale event operations, Adam’s pivot out of a technology career at American Express, and how both approach the balance between scaling a startup and family life. Find more about Proofed here: https://proofed.com/Follow Adam Harvey here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjohnharvey/Follow Kiran Chauhan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiran-chauhan/

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Dan Beck, CEO & Co-Founder of 401GO, a fintech platform that uses integration and automation to deliver affordable, simple and accessible retirement savings for small and medium-sized businesses. Founded in 2017 after Dan tried and failed to find a workable 401(k) for his own team, 401GO has built its technology in-house to strip out the administrative burden that has long kept smaller employers out of the market. They discuss why the traditional 401(k) model still fails smaller employers. Financial services follows assets, advisers are compensated on them, and a plan starting near zero carries higher fiduciary risk than almost any other product an adviser can sell, so the incentives never line up. Dan explains how automation inverts that maths, taking a set-up process that averages six to seven weeks industry-wide down to minutes, and replacing pricing that needs a decoder ring with a structure an owner can actually read. He also makes the case that a 401(k) is a culture tool rather than just a benefit, and that the hardest part of saving is what he calls the first dollar hurdle, which an employer match exists to clear. The conversation covers how 401GO scales without losing the people-matter ethos behind it, from payroll integrations and strategic partnerships to the harder problem of reaching small business owners who have no spare hour to spend learning about retirement plans. Dan gives his read on whether larger financial institutions moving into the small-plan market is a threat or a validation of the model. He also reflects on a route into fintech that ran through more than a dozen startups and exits including TekMat and HydroBlu, what a private pilot’s discipline lends to running a company, and how he decides when an idea is worth pursuing and when it is time to move on. Find more about 401GO here: https://401go.com/Follow Dan Beck here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielgbeck/

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Jari Närhi, Co-Founder of NADMed, a Finnish health technology company that is redefining personalized diagnostics and global health. NADMed has developed a breakthrough method for extracting and measuring nicotinamide adenine dinucleotides (NADs)—critical biomarkers for metabolic health, aging, and disease management. They discuss how the medical landscape is transitioning from the age of genomics into the age of metabolism. Jari explains the fundamental role NADs play in cell-level metabolism and regulating hundreds of metabolic processes. He highlights how NADMed has revolutionized the field by shrinking a process that previously required million-dollar mass spectrometry machines and weeks of waiting into a simple, rapid kit that clinical laboratories can use to get results in hours. The conversation covers the challenges of scaling a global medtech brand from Finland, including navigating complex regulatory paths like the FDA’s de novo pathway and educating the broader medical community on metabolic measurement. Jari also shares key insights from his 30-year leadership journey across information security and healthcare tech, explaining his philosophy on capital efficiency through strategic research partnerships and why honesty, trust, and respect remain universal leadership truths. Find more about NADMed here: https://www.nadmed.com/ Follow Jari Närhi here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jari-n%C3%A4rhi-38b44/?skipRedirect=true

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Nikki Barua, Co-Founder & CEO of FlipWork, an AI transformation partner building the human operating system for the agentic era. FlipWork helps organisations close the gap between the speed of AI and the speed at which their people actually adapt, turning judgement, context and experience into measurable, repeatable capability. They discuss how becoming an agentic enterprise differs from traditional digital transformation, and why intelligence becoming universal makes advantage increasingly personal. Nikki explains the cultural barriers leadership teams hit when they first integrate AI, and how FlipWork’s methodology is deliberately built to protect uniquely human capabilities rather than automate around them. She walks through the platform itself: the FlipFactor diagnostic that measures how people work with AI and whether their environment supports them, the applied Sprint that turns personal context into working AI systems, and the Agentic Leader credential earned through demonstrated outcomes. The conversation covers how FlipWork differentiates itself in a crowded market of consultancies pivoting to AI, the role the Reinvention Roadmap newsletter plays in client acquisition, and the tension between bespoke organisational change and a scalable, repeatable product. Nikki is candid about the real growth constraint — whether it is technical talent or AI-ready mindsets in the C-suite — and the question executives keep asking her behind closed doors about the future of their workforce. She also shares the story behind building her own table: arriving in America with little more than ambition, three master’s degrees, five languages, and 25 years spent proving that the most powerful technology on earth is still the human being. Find more about FlipWork here: https://www.flipwork.ai/Follow Nikki Barua here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkibarua/

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Eric Chang, Co-Founder and CEO of Claira, an AI-powered deal intelligence platform for financial institutions, backed by Citi and Barclays, that turns complex legal and financial documents into actionable data. Built by a team of former bankers and investment professionals alongside technologists, Claira focuses on private markets, including private credit, private equity, and commercial real estate, where the deal process has barely changed in decades. They discuss how private-market investing still runs on an antiquated, manual process of NDAs, virtual data rooms, Excel models, and PDFs feeding a tribunal-like investment committee that says yes or no with no real way to learn or scale. Eric, a CFA charterholder who managed risk on more than $1.5 trillion in assets at BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, and AQR before founding Claira, explains why a data-first approach is the real unlock: rather than just bolting agents onto documents, Claira first stitches all that scattered deal data into a single intelligence layer that the AI can then run on top of. The result behaves like an executive assistant that never leaves, where firms simply email Claira to track deals, log information, and answer questions while a durable, queryable data foundation quietly builds underneath. The conversation covers the hard reality of selling into tier-one financial institutions, from the incumbents’ trap and notoriously slow procurement to why the trick is finding the individual stakeholder and making it easy to start small rather than boil the ocean. Eric also shares how his investor’s brain shapes the way he thinks about growth, treating every product and marketing decision as a risk-reward trade-off, and why he believes B2B selling is more emotional than B2C when a buyer’s professional reputation is on the line. He closes with advice for founders: don’t agonise over a linear career path, pick a problem and a group of people you genuinely want to serve, and let curiosity carry you somewhere interesting. Find more about Claira here: https://www.claira.io/Follow Eric Chang here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-chang-cfa-74086319/

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Michael Pytel, Technology Leader & Director of VASS, a global digital transformation group of nearly 5,000 experts operating across 26 countries, built to help large organisations simplify complexity and turn technology into measurable business impact. Through its THINK – BUILD – SCALE approach and partnerships with both SAP and Google Cloud, VASS is assembling the intelligent ERP layer that moves enterprises past simple automation and into genuinely agentic operations. They discuss where the real line sits between a traditional ERP system and what Michael describes as an intelligent ERP, and why the enterprise conversation has moved on from automation. He explains how VASS is building agentic AI for functions like procurement and inventory  systems designed to work alongside people as trusted teammates rather than sit behind them as tools. Michael also unpacks how the connection between SAP Business Data Cloud and Google BigQuery helps break down the data silos that have quietly capped what enterprise AI can actually deliver. The conversation covers the VASS@1BILLION strategy and what it takes to reach €1 billion in revenue by 2028: eleven acquisitions including Zington, Intelygenz and Movetia to bring under one culture and technical vision, a North American expansion where SAP Business AI adoption looks different again, and the balance between funding AI research and delivering long-term value. Michael also shares the lessons of more than 25 years in the SAP ecosystem , co-founding NIMBL and then moving from startup founder to intrapreneur inside a global group, authoring books on SAP HANA and SAP Fiori security, and why that technical depth makes him both an advocate for and a sceptic of low-code AI tooling. Find more about VASS here: https://vasscompany.com/Follow Michael Pytel here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelpytel/

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Ahikam Kaufman, Co-Founder and CEO of SafeBooks AI, a San Francisco-based platform building the world’s first financial data graph for the office of the CFO and Chief Accounting Officer. SafeBooks connects fragmented data across CRM, billing, and ERP systems into a single, agent-ready layer that automates complex contract reviews and protects revenue recognition integrity from contract to cash. They discuss how the office of the CFO has been left behind by the automation wave that reshaped sales, marketing, and support, with finance teams still stitching data together by hand across systems that were never designed to talk to each other. Ahikam explains how the SafeBooks financial data graph creates a unified, automated audit trail that reconciles every transaction, executes booking and billing policies on each one, and documents the work, turning the finance professional from a preparer into a reviewer. With SOC 1 certification and audit-readiness by design, the platform shifts revenue assurance from periodic, reactive close-process checks to continuous, real-time control, all without ripping out the systems companies already run. The conversation covers the realities of selling specialised software into conservative finance teams: why the heavy lifting is proving the technology on a customer’s own data, how strategic partnerships with accounting firms and ERP providers can accelerate go-to-market, and why Ahikam believes B2B buying is ultimately emotional. He also shares the lessons behind building SafeBooks, drawing on a career that includes co-founding Check (acquired by Intuit) and senior finance roles at HP, Mercury, and Intuit, from hiring people smarter than you in every domain to staying relentless about adapting as AI rewrites the SaaS playbook and enterprises start demanding tailored solutions over cookie-cutter products. Find more about SafeBooks AI here: https://safebooks.ai/Follow Ahikam Kaufman here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahikam-kaufman-688310/

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Erika Anderson and Andalib Samandari, Founder and AI Researcher of Building Humane Technology, a grassroots movement and public benefit corporation working to make humane design the default rather than the exception. Together they co-created HumaneBench, an open-source framework measuring whether AI models respect human well-being, and how easily those protections collapse under pressure. They discuss how the movement grew out of Tristan Harris’s Center for Humane Technology and a deceptively simple question: what does it mean to build technology that makes people feel cared for, connected, and present? Andalib explains how the team turned that into a working benchmark, using synthetic scenarios, a rubric scored from minus one to one, and LLM judges validated against manual scoring, all grounded in eight humane principles. The findings are sobering: across 15 leading models, most nudged users toward prolonged engagement, and 67% could be manipulated into giving harmful advice through adversarial prompting. The conversation covers how HumaneBench is moving from research into practice, running live in production code bases like Storytell.ai, where humane evals show product teams how their LLM actually treats users and have even shaped new features. Erika and Andalib make the case for nutrition facts for AI and a certified-humane standard, and argue regulation has a role to play, citing the EU’s line that AI is less regulated than a San Francisco food truck. Throughout, they return to Donella Meadows’ idea of dancing with systems: that the biggest leverage point isn’t a single villain to defeat, but the culture and paradigms we build technology inside. Find more about Building Humane Technology here: https://humanebench.ai/ Follow Erika Anderson here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikamanderson/Follow Andalib Samandari here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andalibsamandari/

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Paula Chiocchi, Founder & CEO of Outward Media, a B2B data and digital marketing company that helps firms turn data into revenue. Over 27 years, Paula has built one of the world’s largest SMB databases and driven hundreds of millions in revenue for Fortune 500 clients, including more than 300 million for a single client in one year, through high-quality contact data and multi-channel marketing solutions. They discuss how B2B marketing has shifted from breadth and depth toward pinpoint accuracy, and why the true measure of data is whether the right contact is matched to the right company, title, and function. Paula explains Outward Media’s concept of the “B2B Living File,” a model of constant, automated maintenance that keeps client data fresh through monthly cleanses and replacements rather than the static snapshot licensing many providers still rely on. She also unpacks the company’s industry-first 95% email validity guarantee and the 15-plus verification steps behind it. The conversation explores the growth roadblocks facing data-driven marketers, from siloed teams and eroding CRM data to the rising tide of programmatic fraud, and the shift from lead volume to genuinely qualified leads. Paula also reflects on her journey as a leader and entrepreneur: her passion for mentorship, two decades in a Vistage CEO peer group, and a guiding belief that silence in a meeting means agreement. She closes on the technology that excites and concerns her in equal measure, AI, and why blending a Zen perspective with the high-stakes world of B2B marketing keeps the work both grounded and human. Find more about Outward Media here: Outward MediaFollow Paula Chiocchi here: LinkedIn

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Arnon Shimoni, VP of Growth at Solvimon, a next-generation billing monetization platform. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Solvimon is designed to help modern SaaS companies navigate hybrid business models and the shifting landscape of usage-based pricing. They discuss the evolution of software billing, analyzing why traditional seat-based models are giving way to usage-based options as companies look for new ways to grow revenue. Arnon highlights the dangerous traps and complexities of leaning too heavily into credits and tokens, which can disincentivize product usage and detach customer value from the actual compute cost. The conversation dives deep into the “holy grail” of monetization for autonomous AI agents: pricing per outcomes rather than inputs. Arnon shares real-world examples, including how a mortgage-processing agent aligns vendor and bank motivations through shared incentives. They also tackle the technical and financial hurdles that modern CFOs face regarding forecasting and compliance and why a flexible, unified revenue stack is crucial for scaling businesses. Finally, Arnon outlines Solvimon’s regional growth strategy and his bullish outlook on the European tech ecosystem. He notes why European companies have historically been underserved by rigid American payment tools and wraps up with a unique go-to-market lesson: viewing invoices as critical, underappreciated touchpoints to showcase culture and human value. Find more about Solvimon here: www.solvimon.comFollow Arnon Shimoni here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnon-shimoni