Akli Adjaoute Podcast Transcript
Akli Adjaoute joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Akli Adjaoute. Akli Adjaoute is the founder of Exponion, a venture capital firm that provides cutting edge startup companies with the financial resources and expertise they need to achieve success.
Prior to Exponion, Akli was the founder and CEO of Brighterion, acquired by MasterCard. Brighterion provides enterprise AI applications for payment service providers, financial institutions, healthcare payers, and merchants. Brighterion’s AI solution is trusted by 74 of the top 100 U. S. banks and more than 2, 000 customers worldwide, processing over 150 billion transactions annually.
Brighterion is also successfully applied in Homeland Security, Healthcare, Anti Money Laundering, Credit Risk, Default Prediction, and Data Breach Detection. Brighterion has received multiple awards, including Innovation World Series Award, The Morgan Stanley FinTech Award, the Business Intelligence Group’s 2022 Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award, the US Fintechs Award 2022 Banking Tech of the Year, and the 2021 Business Transformation one 50, and lastly, the 2020 Fortress Cybersecurity Award for threat detection.
Well, good afternoon, Akli. Welcome to the show.
Akli Adjaoute : Good afternoon, Brian. Thank you for having me with you.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I love this. Appreciate you making the time hailing out of California. So, we’ve got a couple hour difference here as we’re doing it this evening but do really appreciate that.
And so, I’m going to jump right into your 1st question here. Let’s talk about Brighterion has been recognized as a leader in applications across various industries, receiving numerous awards. Brian. What do you believe were the key factors in Brighterion’s success? And how did you, how did it manage to stand out in the competitive AI landscape?
Akli Adjaoute: Yeah, and that’s kind of an important question. You know, I apologize if I start talking initially about myself, I don’t like talking about myself, but I think as a founder, And the CEO of the company, it’s a, it has to have something to do with me. So, because of the question about why, why Britain was successful.
So, I think I would tell you exactly what I do believe the reason. The number one is I grew up in. really poor, being a minority. Like when I started my first company in France, I knew I had to be 20 times better because people did not expect people like me to be entrepreneurs or CEO. Our parents were more used, you know, as a clean office, work in the field, do all this jobs that the other people did not want to do.
So, so I knew from day one, That I had to be really, really good in what I was doing. By the way, I never learned AI with the idea I want to be rich. The only thing I said is like, if I want to learn something AI, I want to be sure that I, I learn as much as I can. So, I had a PhD in the field at the university in Paris, which is called Parisis.
From day one, I refused to do a PhD that was more research oriented. I wanted something more in the applied AI. So, I did it at Necker Hospital, which is like one of the most known hospitals in Europe. The idea initially is to you know use AI to build doctors in a computer and ship them to Africa.
So, it was always for something that really had to have an impact and be useful. So, I always had this you know, Patient for being an entrepreneur, particularly in AI. As I said, I started my first company, Concepcion Intelligence Artificiel in France before finishing my PhD. And also, as a side, because, you know, I wanted to have a hobby you know, there are some in school of engineering that look at for entrepreneurs to share their knowledge with student.
So, I was lucky to be Initially, as a teacher, I was asked to lead the AI department and then to become the head of the scientific department. So, I think what, if I go back to why Brighton, so look, my background was in AI. My first company in Europe was in AI. From day one, I touched on mission critical was in my first company applied in many fields then when I found it Britain, because again, go back to the fact that in first, it was difficult for someone like me to really expand or even to be successful because of the stigma and a lot of people in the United States, they don’t know that, but actually it’s way more difficult.
For people like me to succeed in Europe, in France, it’s mission impossible, impossible back then. And I think even now, so when I moved to the U.S. and was founded by Chilean I had the same I was prepared the same thing. Think about something that English was not perfect, no one to introduce me no connection.
And actually, I was the first one in my family to go to university. So, I knew again that I had to have a unique AI. I knew, I absolutely knew that if another company offered the same type of performances as Praetorian, I had zero chance to succeed. So, I had to bring something that’s unique. I think it’s a, it’s the combination of the desire to to succeed, like survivor mode.
The other things that I like to tell entrepreneurs is you know, if you have money, you know how to spend it. If you don’t have money, you will learn how to make it. And I actually was talking to one of the company I’m best yesterday. With the CEO who’s handling some challenges, it’s working, but so I, when I shared my story, he said, thank you, sir because you made my day, I felt, I felt now that I can move forward and continue.
I said, of course, I’m here to help you. But again, how did we make it? We had to be the best. And I will add something for your listeners. Hopefully, if there are, you know, CEOs or people that are founders. So, when we initially I thought the quality of a company must be just on the quality of AI has to be like in fraud prevention, the key was to detect fraud, but to not do any false positive, you should not reject cards that are legitimate.
And saying it’s fraud because the customer gets frustrated, you lose deals, they will switch, use a different card. So, because I went to a field where a performance is a key even if you had connections, if your product did not work, people will look for a good product. Allow us then to be people I was lucky to have actually first company that trusted us, and then after that, people heard about us, but let me just help your audience.
I’m sorry I’m taking too much time for the first question, but I think it’s important. So, initially, we thought it was AI, and then when we had a big customer that requested billions of transactions to be processed per year, billions. And then when we started processing them in real time the system did not work because database, we were relying on database to not to, for AI, but to store the transaction, get them.
We had complex formulas to detect, you know, the risk database was AI. So initially we thought we were going bankrupt or my engineering, they were depressed. And by the way, they still work with me in the now for my new venture, but I told him, don’t worry, we will find a solution. The key initially was just to help them.
Don’t get too depressed, but luckily, we were able to design in a very short period of time. And listen, 6-month way of storing the transactions that not only was better, but allowed us to manage over 60, 000 transaction per second per second with a 5 to 6 millisecond response time. So, we combined.
The quality of the AI detects better, less false positive, but man, the scalability was really something that no competitor, I think, even today, can really reach the level of bright turn. I’m sorry, again, it took too much time, but I think it was important for me to tell you how we did it.
Brian Thomas: I appreciate that. I really do. I know you brought some of that background in and you had a very competitive landscape starting out, obviously, in France. And you had some challenges you’d mentioned, but I think that helped you persevere and, and push harder than, you know, most entrepreneurs would. So, we appreciate that part, but the fact on the tech side I do love to hear about.
That monumental effort that you had to bring to the table to do that many transactions per second with a. 5 to 6 millisecond response rate is, which is insane. I know this. I work in tech and that’s amazing. So, thank you. And after founding and leading criterion to global recognition, what inspired you to transition into venture capital with Exponion?
And how do your experiences as an entrepreneur influence your approach to selecting and supporting startups?
Akli Adjaoute: You know, I think it’s, you know, when you spend all your life, like myself as an entrepreneur I don’t, I don’t picture myself retiring. So, I had another company as a foundation to help people that struggle with mental illness, which is a very challenging problem in AI and also in, in the world actually.
But so, I told myself, what can I do? I have was, very successful because as a founder, they refused initially to take a lot of money from VCs although in the beginning, they did not even want to give us money. So, it worked well for me in the end. So, this allowed me to with partners to start a venture capital firm.
I think it’s, it’s the main reason is I want to stay involved in technology and help new startups. And you know, it’s when you have a mindset for entrepreneurship on truth, you know, it’s not a bad job title. It’s just a mindset. It’s like I’m, I’m, I’m fascinated by technology, what technology can do.
And so, I find myself to help like people giving them some advice. I’m not in any way perfect, but I do think that my experience as the example I gave you earlier about the CEO that you know, had some challenges and went to questioning and, and you know when he listened to someone like me, who.
Who you know, had experience in building companies and you know give him some advice about what they need to do. And like last week maybe you, yeah, last week, another person called me. I invested this is what’s the best marketing strategy you use. And I say, you know, I would tell you my, I’m not an expert in marketing, but when I was running the company, the only thing you should talk about is what do you have that no one else has.
All the rest is, you know, it doesn’t make any sense. Don’t, don’t make a presentation saying that we have this, this, this, and that. And if other people have that, it’s irrelevant. Just highlight the one, two things that you have and make them. And it may look everyone should think the same way. But I guess when you have the entrepreneur background like me, once over my first company I started my first company is 87.
So, man, I was young 87 now it’s how, I don’t know, like three, 37, 38 years of experience. So. That’s really the goal and also because we have our source and, you know, it’s a really exciting. As a matter of fact, today, I did another investment in a company that’s changing the world. You know and, and.
In the veterinary field in biotech and the company is really bringing some amazing new ways of alleviating the suffering of you know, pets, dogs horses, cats, et cetera, with technology. So, I love, I love being a part of that because it’s. It’s just exciting to see the talented people that we see coming with amazing ideas.
And I feel a privilege to share my experience with them.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I love that. And you’ve certainly got a knack as an entrepreneur. To share your knowledge, be a mentor, be a coach, be someone to look up to as far as advice for a lot of entrepreneurs starting out. So, I appreciate that. And of course, I can hear the passion in some of these investments and startups that you’re making.
Like the one with the, with the pets, obviously is, a great one. So, thank you. And Akli with Exponion, you’re providing startups with both financial resources and expertise. What types of startups really excite you? We just talked about one and what criteria do you use to evaluate their potential for success?
Akli Adjaoute: You know, number 1, the due diligence is not just myself. We have a group of people doing due diligence, but the key is always the same. You know, it’s the team like the mission. What’s the goal? What are they trying to do? Like, I refuse to invest, and I had, honestly, I said no to many investment ideas that deals with gaming when it comes about a casino on the web, but when about anything that can harm people I refuse to do it.
Just period. I don’t want to deal with it. I don’t care if, if they send it to you, it’s going to make this and that. That’s not what I’m interested in. So, I look for people that have. really desire to succeed. Obviously I’m more connected to people there than the entrepreneur I would say not just the vision, the division of but the desire to it’s like they have a mission, a goal, they know where they are going and that they are also humble.
And also the fact that I always ask question because a lot of young entrepreneurs don’t, don’t know that, you know, when you build a company, you will always, always have people that will say negative things about you, about your company, about, of course, they’re talking about themselves, you know, the, the dislike themselves, the anyone that reminds them, you know, Of anything positive, they will be against it.
So, I, I remind them about, are you ready for to, no matter what people say do you, you move and just don’t listen to them and don’t get discouraged by people that tell you cannot do it, you wouldn’t, it would be this and that that’s important because really it’s a company they succeed with resilience.
Resilience is really something really important. Of course, we want to understand that the project is, you can do it, you can achieve it. Sometimes we refuse, I refuse to invest in companies that people have projects that make, you know it’s, it’s just like way too complex without any really true foundation.
We look to the background, we look to you know about the fields, you know, I love to invest in things that I understand, but I’m lucky to have a part of a group that I am with that are, we have experts in biotech, we have pretty much experts in fintech, technology, robotics, we invest in robotics, we invest in software we invest in fintech, we invest in biotech.
And we invest you know, any company that really has a business plan that bring you know, of course, the business plan has to be sound and I’m talking about the business with a good team, we’re happy to hear from them and I will introduce them to the other partners. Why belong to other groups of partners?
And when we invest, as you said, it’s not just about the money. I think the most important thing is connections and also the advice and the fact that they come to us always with you know, you only know what he knows, the experience he had, you know, it’s like it’s being an entrepreneur is it’s like learning how to swim.
And sometimes you, you have never expected waves and the waves sharp you and you have to be prepared for that.
Brian Thomas: Thank you very much. And I appreciate you breaking down some examples of those. And obviously you have a certain amount of moral compass or ethics. And that also I guess guides your decision as you invest in companies.
So again, appreciate the share and Oakley last question, if you could briefly share as a renowned academic and expert in AI, where do you see AI technologies heading in the next decade and what will be their impact on society?
Akli Adjaoute: You know, I, I just wrote a book called Inside AI and I have a lot of there’s a lot, I quote a lot of smarter people than myself.
There’s a lot like the guy who created the first product called Elisa, like you know, the first Alexa, if you want, just amazing guy. And in the book, you will see that all the predictions about AI were wrong. I mean, since you know predictions about AI were always And of course, today there’s a lot of benefit about artificial intelligence.
It’s amazing as technology. And again, if I am successful with AI, we build a company that’s successful, that allowed me to be successful, it means that there is people willing to pay a lot of money for companies that have value. Now so you see it in your watch, you see it in every, pretty much everything now AI.
Quote unquote is getting involved in one way or another. I’m more concerned about the risk because we, you know, today there is hype about ChatGPT and all this what we call large language models. And ChatGPT is amazing, amazing. It’s the first product that allowed everyone to see what AI is.
It’s, it’s like, you know, It’s, it’s like, it’s like intranet, everyone use intranet now and love it. AI was, was for companies for you know, expert academia, this and that. And then charge GPD allowed everyone to use. Now I will just share with you quick, like few problems that I see. Number one is like, you know, I would tell you through history, like the trajectory of human civilization has always been like.
We validated the knowledge, like we understand the world based on cumulative and validated knowledge, you know, we, everything that we call science was proven, you know, we, we, we do a lot of validation before we accept something as scientific, because the credibility of That’s why it’s called science.
In France, we use the word science exact, which is the exact science. The problem with AI is we’re entering a world where everything is in proximity. We, there’s no more cumulative. It’s just, we, we, we learn from data and, and, and then what do we call learn? It’s based on statistics and probability. And, and that can be a risk of moving from the world where science was proven validated to a world where approximation becomes science.
That’s a really big risk. The other problem is like, you know, if we see more and more of this in education, we don’t want everyone to think the same way. We don’t want the world of future generation that will rely. For sure on AI system to learn, but we then we end with like an intellectual confirmative where no more out box thinking, no more imaginative thinking, no more nothing.
It’s just we don’t want to zombies people thinking all based on probability and statistics. We don’t have a lot of time, but I would tell you the ideas that I had with the first version of my technology called Smart Agent. We have a lot of patents on it. When I was in France, I was broken. I couldn’t have coffee.
So I was doing my PhD and then I bought a book, because books in the street of Paris Saint Germain near La Sorbonne, I was waiting for my wife now, Natalie, she was doing her PhD at Stanford La Sorbonne, and I bought a book that was written 1600, like 1684 or something, it’s in my PhD thesis anyway, and the book says, oh, you know, if you want to It talks about religion and this and that, and inside it says, if you want to teach how a clock works or a watch works you have to dismantle the watch and be sure that every element justify why he needs to be in the watch.
And that’s opened my mind to, to create something that helped me solve a big problem in the industry in France. So that book, Chanchipiti would not. I’m going to look for it because it’s like an outliner. So that’s one of the risks. I see another thing. I’m sure everyone is looking for it today. So, we want to be sure that we see the problem with deep fake application.
You saw, for example, what happened to with Taylor Swift and this type of things is going to go, you know, being used for Fragile teenagers in school, because there’s thousands of apps that allow you now to do deep fake and because they were probably still tell the data of people who knows. So, we entered a world where we don’t know what’s true.
What’s false worthy. You know, a lot of people don’t believe any news anyway, but if we start not knowing if the picture is true. or not, which world we will be in, who will listen to anything. That’s the problem. The problem is like, we’re creating a world with deep fake. This is a big risk for, for democracy you know, it’s, it’s, it’s scary to live in a world where you don’t know if the information you’re seeing or the picture, whether it’s true or fake.
And think about the sabotage that can happen for companies. Hear about Rosemarie there, you know, big corporation, a hospital gets hacked, this and that, you pay, or we will not do, you know, what happened in Las Vegas, what happened with many companies, I forget the one that manages oil, that they had to pay picture Deepfake, the way you know.
Things portraying CEOs or board members doing things to destroy the reputation, reputation of the product itself. So, I’m more concerned. I, I do know that AI is beautiful, brings a lot of value, but hell, we have to start immediately, immediately worldwide which is extremely difficult defining. The most stringent rules to protect against the risk of artificial intelligence.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Yes, absolutely. As you know, there’s a lot of activity going on right now. In fact, Elon Musk is spoken very outright about this about on the ethics of AI and subsequently has. File a lawsuit against open AI and he has a lot of concerns there. And as we’re starting to see some people have some serious discussions about it.
So, I do hope we bring ethics to bear. So, we do this the right way. And Akli, it was such a pleasure having you on this evening. And I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Akli Adjaoute: Hey, Brian, thank you so much for having me. Thank you. It’s an honor. So anytime.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Akli Adjaoute Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
