Eli Promisel Podcast Transcript
Eli Promisel joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive podcast.
Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Eli Promisel. Eli Promisel is a partner at Silicon Foundry. He provides guidance to Silicon Foundry’s clients on emerging technologies and trends that are reshaping industries such as mobility, economic development, travel, energy, financial services, and consumer retail.
He has previously worked at Halcyon, a social impact startup incubator in Washington DC on the sustainability team at Budweiser Brewing Group UK and I in London and participated in the leadership development program at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield. Eli holds BSC degrees in business administration from the University of Southern California Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Bocconi University.
Well, good afternoon, Eli. Welcome to the show.
Eli Promisel: Thank you so much for having me, Brian. It’s great to be here.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I appreciate it. My friend hailing outta New York today, and I am in Kansas City, so we’re just an hour apart. Nothing too crazy as far as traversing the globe, but let’s jump into your first question here, Eli.
During high school you started an aerial photography business using drones. How did this early venture influence your approach to innovation and entrepreneurship in your late career?
Eli Promisel: That’s a great question, Brian. I’ve been fascinated by emerging tech innovation startups, venture capital from a very young age.
And I had come across, uh, another friend actually, who had started his own aerial photography business using drones. The, the DJ I familiar with the company, one of their very, very early models. They didn’t even actually have a camera attached to ’em at the time. I had to sort of hack the drone a little bit and attach a camera to it myself.
And I was, I was inspired by what he was doing and, and the space that he was playing in looking at sports specifically, and I found a, a really great opportunity to just go out to local businesses in my community and see if they would be interested in aerial photography services. Some of them were like car dealerships, others were roofing companies.
Some of these small businesses around the area, and it was a, a great opportunity to start to get my foot in the door of what it could look like to launch my own venture, but then also get some experience with selling, dealing with customers. A a lot of the, the different skills that I was able to start building and start developing, that I would absolutely start using much later on in my career.
And it’s helped me to this day.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. You know, learning a lot like that, especially at a young age, really helps build that character and that experience and resilience. Obviously, you know, that by now gonna need resilience to, to stay ahead in this type of business. I appreciate the backstory on that, how you started out really as an entrepreneur early on, fascinated by innovation, improving our modifying existing equipment or platforms to make it better or to address the current need that you had.
So I appreciate that. Eli, in your role at Silicon Foundry, you advise clients on emerging technologies. What trends do you currently see as most disruptive across industries like mobility, energy, and consumer retail?
Eli Promisel: I. Thank you. Everyone is excited about ai. That’s no secret. And if I were to talk about AI for a few minutes, it’d probably be like every other podcast episode, so I won’t do that.
But what I will do is maybe put a little bit of a different spin or a different flavor to it. When we think about AI right now, a lot of times people think about chat, GPT, they think about enterprise AI and how artificial intelligence advancements can help drive operational efficiencies within the enterprise or within the organization itself.
Particularly looking at tasks like marketing, knowledge management, some of the more information heavy tasks that relate more to activities that exist within the enterprise. I get really excited about this topic that, uh, Jensen, uh, stood up on stage a few weeks ago or months ago at this point, and, and proclaimed, you know, this is now the, the era or the age of physical ai I felt.
Like I was a little bit of a ahead of the game when I was actually looking at that space before he went up on stage and started talking about it. But now that nomenclature, that name is out in the wild, this topic of physical ai, you can’t unsee it. It’s, it’s really everywhere. And so it’s a topic that I think is going to impact a lot of these, these industries that do have a physical element to them.
Uh, particularly mobility energy in retail, especially when we. Think about it from the traditional perspective of iot technologies and edge computing, which have been around, and you know, being able to leverage sensors and existing infrastructure like cameras and operational environments. Uh, and being able to use that data in order to understand more binary, binary questions, uh, and, and use that for decision making That’s been around, I think the next evolution and what we’re seeing with this.
Era of physical ai, if you will, is this, this new layer that’s, that’s agentic and, and not only is it agentic in the sense that it’s able to autonomously make decisions based on the data and the information that’s being captured from that, you know, similar physical infrastructure, but it’s also able to.
Take action and bring real actuation into real world environments, if you will. So, for example, we’re seeing that with autonomous vehicles today in the mobility space. We’re seeing that with humanoid robots and, and a handful of other emerging technologies just to name a few.
Brian Thomas: That’s amazing and I’ve been talking to quite a few people as you know, I talk a lot about emerging tech here on the podcast, but AI of course has dominated this podcast last 18 months. But what I can say physical AI is also, it’s really got my curiosity peaked at this point. Obviously, equipping autonomous vehicles, like you had mentioned, they use cognitive reasoning, spatial knowledge.
All that and what’s cool, cool. I say cool because we gotta use ethics in the stuff that we’re dealing with today. I feel this could come back to haunt us, but adding agentic AI to physical AI and these platforms is gonna be a game changer, and I definitely see, you probably saw some I. News highlights just this week about Duolingo and others that are actually replacing human contractors now with ai, which is, like I said, we knew this was coming, but we just need to, again, not rush into this, but we need to do this with ethics.
So thank you. And I’m gonna switch gears to your third question. Eli, living in cities like Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Milan, and London has given you a unique cultural perspective. How have these experiences influenced your approach to building relationships and networks in the business world?
Eli Promisel: Yeah, my, my global experience has, has definitely shaped a lot of, of who I am today and, and also how I operate in my career.
You know, in addition to starting a aerial photography business early on, one of my very first jobs was just knocking on doors and then selling, uh, selling roof inspections actually for roofing company. And that helped shape, uh, a lot of, of my experience and then also just my confidence. When it came to meeting new people, being able to start up a conversation with literally anyone and at the same time being able to handle rejection because I definitely experienced a lot of that.
And so when I took my, I like to say when I took my world tour, living in places like La Hong Kong, Milan, London, I had the chance to really put those skills to the test and truly build relationships with, with people all over the world. And I found that there’s an incredible. Opportunity to start building these relationships no matter which direction they might head in.
In many cases, most of the relationships that I built were in more social settings or in more cultural settings rather than being those. Created in, in business settings like conferences or in meetings and such. And having those opportunities really helped me build this foundation for the network that I have today, which, you know, I’m meeting with startup founders, uh, venture capital investors, PE investors, corporate executives, academics, government leaders every single day, give or take.
And being able to tap into that network that I’ve cultivated over the years has really supercharged and really helped me do the work that I do every day, which is, you know, advising corporate executives on their innovation and venture strategies and helping them solve the challenges and problems that exist today, uh, within their core business, but then also helping them future proof against whatever’s going to come down the pipe.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate that. I really like how you highlighted starting out in sales built that resilience, that tough skin. So when you went out there, it was a lot easier during your global travels to meet new people, build relationships, handle rejection, but in the long run, this helped build the strong human.
Personal relationships that is excelling your career now in your professional life meeting, as you said, world leaders, founders, entrepreneurs, et cetera, and I think that’s so important. At the end of the day, it’s all about people and relationships, and I’m glad that you highlighted that for us today, Eli, last question of the day.
Looking ahead, what emerging technologies or business models do you believe will have the most significant impact on global industries in the next five to 10 years?
Eli Promisel: It’s a fantastic question, Brian, and I wish I had a crystal ball and I could, I could tell you, you know, exactly what we’re gonna see coming in the future.
But at the same time, I think what’s, what’s important about the work that I and my, my partners and, and the rest of the team at, at Silicon Foundry are working on is, you know, we don’t position ourselves necessarily as, as futurists. We’re, in many cases, we’re not necessarily looking at. Seven, 10 years out.
But instead we’re looking at the future but with a more near term mindset so that when we are making recommendations or facilitating introductions or looking to realize some of the outcomes that we’re looking to facilitate with our, our clients, whether that’s proof of concepts or pilots with emerging companies, partnerships, investments, or even m and a in some cases, we’re grounding it in reality and grounding it in what’s actionable in the near term.
So one of the things that I think is, uh, incredibly important for other corporate executives to, to keep in mind, especially as they’re navigating all kinds of turbulence. I won’t even begin to try to touch on the geopolitical moment that we’re going through right now, but that’s a fantastic example of this volatility that we can experience in the short term.
But then needing to study the course, uh, and keep a, a focus and keep attention on what the mission and vision is for, as you put it, the next five to 10 years to come more in that long term range. So when we’re talking to executives about how to navigate all the. To use the buzzwords, the, the noise from, or the signal from the noise, or, you know, the hype from, from the reality.
Especially, you know, going back to AI again, especially as it relates to ai or even, you know, more in the, in the buzz right now around agent ai, it’s very important that corporate executives develop a, not only develop a culture of exploration, discovery, and experimentation, but also to. Be diligent and, and patient and not overly cautious or conservative so that they miss the wave, but also making sure that they’re not jumping at every single use case or every single application that they see being put out.
But letting the market dictate sort of, okay, this is where we’re starting to see the highest value or the highest impact, or the greatest, you know, revenue uplift or greatest operational efficiency increase or cost, uh, reduction and using that as a guide. To help influence the direction that you start to experiment with some of these emerging technologies.
Rather than taking this, we need to be first and, you know, maybe fail fast, uh, in, in the process and also in the process, maybe wasting, uh, a lot of time and resources and, and capital. But maybe being a, a little patient to see sort of where things shake out and when the time is right and that market timing point is, is super important.
Being able to strike with speed. Direction and ultimately combining those two together velocity.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. That’s some great advice. And you know, you talked about really you’re not in your business there. You and your partners are not futurists, but more, I would say, of uh, a nexus, right? And I had someone on the podcast recently, somebody pretty famous actually, that said he was a nexus, not a futurist, more of a short term.
And I like how you put it, grounding it in reality and what is really the near term. And to your point, like investing, you gotta be patient. Write out the short term volatility and then of course be ready and lean into those opportunities. So I really appreciate your insights for audience today. And Eli, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Eli Promisel: Absolutely, Brian, thank you so much for having me. It’s been a real pleasure.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Eli Promisel Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
