Inside Blumberg Capital’s Innovation Council

Startups must show customers and investors they have a “need to have” vs. “nice to have” solution. Blumberg Capital’s Innovation Council helps our team identify the “need to haves” and helps these companies grow, as an extension of our team and occasionally as company advisors or customers.?

Our Council started years ago as a CIO Council, but has recently evolved to an Innovation Council of CIOs, technology, and operational leaders who are passionate about driving innovation with technology, connecting with peers, and getting an inside look at startups that could transform their businesses and industries.?

Members offer perspectives from different sectors and companies including 美国银行 , 富达 , 谷歌 , Lyft , UnitedHealthcare Global , Tokio Marine Group ,and 美国联合包裹服务 . Some of our newest members include leaders from 波士顿谘询公司 , Capital One , 利盟 , and 维布络 .

Connecting with Peers at the Pier ??

Thank you to the Innovation Council members who joined us in Miami, New York, and San Francisco this month for good food and even better discussion. Our Miami Council members including Jill Walls and Eleonora Sokolsky (above) caught up on the "Going Galt" yacht.

Perspectives shared around the table at our recent Council dinners included:

• Point-solutions vs. platforms: Large enterprises tend to bet on incumbents, but forward-leaning organizations can press their own competitive advantage by engaging with best-in-class startups.
• Regulations in the banking industry: Founders can use these requirements to their advantage rather than being discouraged by the long sales cycles. Members recommend that startup founders understand business risks for the customers and translate their product capabilities into risk reduction or mitigation strategies for customers.
• Software supply chain: A growing challenge as more dependencies are introduced to development pipelines
• Talent is a concern: Challenges of keeping talent qualified to handle complicated tasks in a dynamic reality

Innovation Council Impact: Nutanix (Nasdaq: NTNX)

Blumberg Capital was the first investor in Nutanix , following input from the Council.

The CIO of one of the largest global law firms was Nutanix’s first pilot customer, after meeting the company through our Council. What started as a proof of concept under $100K evolved into a multi-million deal replacing legacy software.

Alan Boehme , former CIO at H&M , 宝洁 , and 可口可乐公司 , was one of Nutanix's early advisors. Today, Nutanix is trusted by over 25,000 leading companies, with customers including 富国银行 , Organic Valley , Toyota Motor Corporation , 家得宝 , and The Hershey Company .?

Resources from Inside the CIO's Office

• Check out The Modern CIO newsletter by Mark Settle , seven-time CIO, three-time CIO 100 award winner and two time book author. His latest newsletter covers topics from LLMs to data developments and cybersecurity news.
• "Can the CIO Role Prevail Over AI?"?CIO.com's Maria Korolov recently asked IT leaders for their opinions. Here's an excerpt from the article:

According to a recent report from the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium, 92% of IT jobs will be transformed by AI to a moderate or high degree. But when it comes to senior-level jobs, 100% will see moderate transformation. And when it comes to business and management IT jobs, 63% were classified as “high transformation” due to AI. And online education company Pluralsight conducted a survey of IT professionals in the US and UK and found that 74% worried AI tools will make many of their daily skills obsolete.

Innovation Council member Tim Crawford said:

“Generative AI does have the ability to replace CIOs who don’t embrace the innovative shifts coming for companies. For the rest, gen AI will greatly augment the power and value of the role of the CIO."

• For more insights from Tim, a former CIO and senior IT leader at organizations including KONICA MINOLTA, INC. , 美国斯坦福大学 , Knight Ridder , Philips Consumer Electronics , and National Semiconductor , check out the CIO In the Know newsletter.
• Mapping the AI Toolchain: 2024 Perspective - Roy Lowrance, advisor at Blumberg Capital and former CTO at Capital One and 汤森路透 , shares a refreshed vision on how AI is growing and impacting business decisions. Roy helped design 美国纽约大学 ’s Center for Data Science, a research and teaching center for AI and big data.

Questions from Recent Council Discussions

Here are some questions that fueled recent Council conversations - join in and share your thoughts in the comments:

• What GenAI projects are seeing ROI?
• How can startups compete with incumbents that have a stronghold on data necessary for AI development?
• How can founders navigate complex regulatory environments to their advantage?
• What strategies can startups use to reduce the perceived risks associated with their products in a highly regulated market like banking?
• How can incorporating an AI angle provide a competitive edge for IT or security products in today's market?
• What are some of the most promising use cases for AI in enhancing IT and cybersecurity solutions?
• How are CISOs currently approaching the integration of AI into their security strategies?
• What challenges do companies face when trying to add AI components to their existing IT or security products?

Upcoming Industry Events

?? New York City

The Wall Street Journal ’s CIO Network Summit will bring together leading CIOs, CTOs, enterprise technology executives and investors on October 7-8, 2024 in New York City. Themes on the agenda:

• The ongoing efforts to implement generative AI for businesses, including an examination of how the enterprise technology stack could evolve and a discussion of how to manage cultural change as more work becomes automated
• The CIOs’ role in delivering greater workplace productivity, while balancing software inflation and budgetary conservatism
• The future of U.S. technology policy following the Presidential election.
• Following the Crowdstrike outage, how companies are reassessing their resiliency, incident response, vendor relationships and modernization plans.

?? San Francisco

We'll be at the OWASP? Foundation Global AppSec US Conference this week: September 26-27 with Myrror Security and the cybersecurity community. The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) is a worldwide free and open community focused on improving the security of software. Its mission is to make application security "visible," so that people and organizations can make informed decisions about application security risks.

What questions do you have for CIOs and enterprise technology buyers? Let us know in the comments.