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On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Brian Childress, a seasoned technology executive & fractional CTO with over 15 years of experience helping businesses in healthcare, finance, education & more develop and scale their technology solutions.

In this episode we dive into Brian's journey to becoming a fractional CTO, the most common challenges he sees businesses facing with technology, his advice for non-technical founders, and his predictions for the game-changing technologies of the future. We'll also explore topics like how to mitigate the risks of outsourcing development work, best practices for application security & scalability, strategies for closing the tech talent gap through global hiring, & the importance of collecting the right data to leverage AI effectively.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
Fractionality is a trend where you’re trying to find access to a high level of expertise even though you may not have the work or capital to employ them full-time. If we’re honest with ourselves there’s not 40 hours worth of work to do in a lot of organisations or in a number of roles, so if I can come in & make high impact in an organisation for a fraction of the cost, that’s really valuable.
One of the biggest things that’s helped me is that day-to-day I do software engineering work, but through most of my career I’ve been freelancing & moonlighting on the side, so I’ve doubled the amount of exposure & experience I’ve been able to gain in my career by working with a number of different organisations, teams, projects & technologies. I’m drawing on ever single one of those experiences to help & support the teams I work with.
One of the biggest challenges I see for non-technical founders is understanding what advice they should be following. Technology can be a black box that’s really hard to understand & for non-technical founders there are a lot of people that look & sound like they understand technology & unfortunately they could be giving bad advice. 
We make things too complex too early, many of us think we have the next great idea & it’s going to be huge right out of the gate & we need to build so we can support millions of customers from day 1. That’s never the case. But, a lot of the guidance that’s out there is from the Googles and the Netflixs of the world & we build our architecture around these organisations. But, we forget that they have thousands of people to support those architectures & complexity, & they have millions of users to support. 

BEST MOMENTS

‘It’s a fraction of the cost, not the expertise.’

‘Don’t follow the advice of the first person to come to you, it puts a lot of founders and companies in bad positions.’

‘Building in complexity from the outset hurts us all the way through the growth of our business.’

‘What is the most simple set of technologies & solutions that we can put together that solves a real business need? A lot of those boring technologies can be scaled up to support millions of users & billions of requests, we just have to be smart about the way we do it.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Brian Childressis a seasoned technology executive & fractional CTO with over 15 years of experience helping businesses in healthcare, finance, education &more develop and scale their technology solutions. 

As a technical advisor with a strong background in software engineering, cloud computing, & cybersecurity, Brian is experienced in helping CTOs & CEOs make the right technical decisions for their organisations.

Website

ABOUT THE HOST

Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor &  multi-award winner.

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Do you want exclusive bonus content for free? <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfqqeriz8spsTijMd7SwfC8nwXMVlapA_AJbNlnRGDShlgxaw/viewform?usp=sharing">Please fill out this survey</a> to get just that as well as getting your say about the future of this podcast including content ideas and future guests.
On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Brian Childress, a seasoned technology executive &amp; fractional CTO with over 15 years of experience helping businesses in healthcare, finance, education &amp; more develop and scale their technology solutions.
In this episode we dive into Brian's journey to becoming a fractional CTO, the most common challenges he sees businesses facing with technology, his advice for non-technical founders, and his predictions for the game-changing technologies of the future. We'll also explore topics like how to mitigate the risks of outsourcing development work, best practices for application security &amp; scalability, strategies for closing the tech talent gap through global hiring, &amp; the importance of collecting the right data to leverage AI effectively.
KEY TAKEAWAYS 
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">Fractionality is a trend where you’re trying to find access to a high level of expertise even though you may not have the work or capital to employ them full-time. If we’re honest with ourselves there’s not 40 hours worth of work to do in a lot of organisations or in a number of roles, so if I can come in &amp; make high impact in an organisation for a fraction of the cost, that’s really valuable.</li>
<li aria-level="1">One of the biggest things that’s helped me is that day-to-day I do software engineering work, but through most of my career I’ve been freelancing &amp; moonlighting on the side, so I’ve doubled the amount of exposure &amp; experience I’ve been able to gain in my career by working with a number of different organisations, teams, projects &amp; technologies. I’m drawing on ever single one of those experiences to help &amp; support the teams I work with.</li>
<li aria-level="1">One of the biggest challenges I see for non-technical founders is understanding what advice they should be following. Technology can be a black box that’s really hard to understand &amp; for non-technical founders there are a lot of people that look &amp; sound like they understand technology &amp; unfortunately they could be giving bad advice. </li>
<li aria-level="1">We make things too complex too early, many of us think we have the next great idea &amp; it’s going to be huge right out of the gate &amp; we need to build so we can support millions of customers from day 1. That’s never the case. But, a lot of the guidance that’s out there is from the Googles and the Netflixs of the world &amp; we build our architecture around these organisations. But, we forget that they have thousands of people to support those architectures &amp; complexity, &amp; they have millions of users to support. </li>
</ul>
BEST MOMENTS
‘It’s a fraction of the cost, not the expertise.’
‘Don’t follow the advice of the first person to come to you, it puts a lot of founders and companies in bad positions.’
‘Building in complexity from the outset hurts us all the way through the growth of our business.’
‘What is the most simple set of technologies &amp; solutions that we can put together that solves a real business need? A lot of those boring technologies can be scaled up to support millions of users &amp; billions of requests, we just have to be smart about the way we do it.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Brian Childress is a seasoned technology executive &amp; fractional CTO with over 15 years of experience helping businesses in healthcare, finance, education &amp;more develop and scale their technology solutions. 
As a technical advisor with a strong background in software engineering, cloud computing, &amp; cybersecurity, Brian is experienced in helping CTOs &amp; CEOs make the right technical decisions for their organisations.
<a href="https://brianchildress.co/">Website</a>
ABOUT THE HOST
Sabine is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur. She is the CEO and Managing Partner of Alchemy Crew a venture lab that accelerates the curation, validation, and commercialization of new tech business models. Sabine is renowned within the insurance sector for building some of the most renowned tech startup accelerators around the world working with over 30 corporate insurers, accelerated over 100 startup ventures. Sabine is the co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, a top 50 Women in Tech, a FinTech and InsurTech Influencer, an investor &amp;  multi-award winner.
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There are over 140,000 FinTech ventures out there, including FinTechs, InsurTechs, HealthTechs, and WealthTechs. And the number keeps on changing every month. One statistic remains the same: 25% of these ventures have received investment and support from the financing world. 75% of these businesses still seek financing support from institutional and corporate investors alongside value-creating commercial collaboration opportunities with Global Fortune 500.

Through this podcast series, I would like to demystify the world of corporate venturing, including how corporations collaborate with growth ventures, how venture capitalists and corporate venture capitalists make investment and collaboration choices in ventures and give tech founders and entrepreneurs, the strategies, tactics, tools, and techniques to build, grow and scale their business by understanding how those with financing power think. 

So, listen in, share and comment as you see fit.

There are over 140,000 FinTech ventures out there, including FinTechs, InsurTechs, HealthTechs, and WealthTechs. And the number keeps on changing every month. One statistic remains the same: 25% of these ventures have received investment and support from the financing world. 75% of these businesses still seek financing support from institutional and corporate investors alongside value-creating commercial collaboration opportunities with Global Fortune 500.
Through this podcast series, I would like to demystify the world of corporate venturing, including how corporations collaborate with growth ventures, how venture capitalists and corporate venture capitalists make investment and collaboration choices in ventures and give tech founders and entrepreneurs, the strategies, tactics, tools, and techniques to build, grow and scale their business by understanding how those with financing power think. 
So, listen in, share and comment as you see fit.

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