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Episodes

615
July 23, 2026

#615 Gamification Is Not a Feature. It Is Consumer Behavior | Matt Edelman

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Matt Edelman, CEO of Super League. Matt explains why gamification has become a default expectation for younger digital consumers, not an optional engagement tactic. The conversation reframes gaming as a major behavioral and commercial environment rather than a niche media channel. Advertising spending remains concentrated in television and social media even as younger audiences divide significant attention across gaming, while...
614
July 16, 2026

#614 AI Can Replace Tasks, But Still Can’t Replace Judgment | Dilip Chetan

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Dilip Chetan, founder of DefensibleZone.ai. Dilip brings more than two decades of experience across Google, Meta, Oracle, Salesforce, and Intuit, spanning engineering, product strategy, human factors, and customer research. The conversation challenges the assumption that AI adoption is primarily a technology deployment or workforce reduction exercise. AI can automate tasks, write code, analyze data, and operate agents, but ...
613
July 9, 2026

#613 Innovation Is Not the Bottleneck. Commercialization Is | Roland Austrup

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Roland Austrup, Chief Growth Officer at Innventure. Large companies produce valuable technologies, but they are rarely structured to build new businesses around them. The conversation reframes innovation as only the first stage of value creation. A technology can work, address a real market need, and still fail because productization, leadership, supply chains, financing, and market adoption were treated as secondary concer...
612
July 2, 2026

#612 The Next EV Race Is on the Water | Alexandre Mongeon

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Alexandre Mongeon, CEO and Co-Founder of Vision Marine Technologies. Alex is building electric marine propulsion systems for family boats, commercial use cases, and future autonomous vessels. The conversation frames marine electrification as the next EV market after cars. The episode reframes electric boats as a commercialization problem, not only a battery or engineering problem. Alex explains why range, charging, customer...
611
June 28, 2026

#611 You Are Probably the Bottleneck And AI Won’t Change That | Jordan Solender

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Jordan Solender, founder of Jordan Solender Coaching and IT Select. The central tension is simple: if every decision still depends on the founder, AI will not fix the business. Jordan argues that most founders are not resource constrained, they are clarity constrained. The conversation reframes AI from a shortcut into a leverage layer that only works when outcomes, SOPs, KPIs, and ownership are clear. Instead of chasing too...
610
June 25, 2026

#610 Your POS Should Run the Business. Not Just Take Payments | Ahmed Sameh

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Ahmed Sameh, CMO at Fortis. Ahmed brings a fintech and B2B marketing view on how SMEs are changing the way they run daily operations. The conversation reframes POS as more than a payment terminal. For small businesses, the real constraint is not accepting cards, it is connecting payments, inventory, customer data, loyalty, invoicing, reporting, and AI into one operational system. Ahmed explains why adding more tools often c...
609
June 21, 2026

#609 AI Can Assess Leaders. It Shouldn’t Replace Judgment | Logan Yonavjak

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Logan Yonavjak, Co-Founder and CEO of Founder Readiness Engine. Logan brings an investor and operator view into how founders and senior leaders can be assessed beyond resumes, charisma, and gut feel. The conversation reframes leadership assessment as a decision system, not a personality test. Logan explains how transcript data, developmental psychology, quantitative linguistics, and AI can surface signals such as coachabili...
608
June 18, 2026

#608 AI Won’t Replace Therapists. It May Replace Guesswork | Dr. Steve Rondeau

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Dr. Steve Rondeau of AxonEG Solutions. Dr. Steve brings more than two decades of work across developmental medicine, EEG brain scans, biomarkers, and mental health diagnostics. The core tension is clear: mental health has too often treated labels as answers, while the brain may be telling a different story. The conversation reframes AI in healthcare as a decision-support layer, not a replacement for clinicians. Dr. Steve ex...
607
June 14, 2026

#607 More AI Won’t Help. Better Processes Will | Lara Hamilton

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Lara Hamilton, a technology leader at HelpDesk Realty. The conversation focuses on why more AI will not help companies that have not fixed their processes first. Lara reframes AI adoption as an operations problem rather than a technology problem. The discussion moves from property management and paperless workflows to AI agents, security, documentation, and the practical friction that slows teams down. The core argument is ...
606
June 12, 2026

#606 AI Can Generate Code. It Still Can’t Replace Engineering Judgment | Jason Li

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Jason Li, CTO at Laurel. Jason brings experience from enterprise software, Salesforce, Ironclad, and AI-native product development. The conversation reframes AI adoption away from replacing work and toward understanding work. Faster code generation does not eliminate engineering bottlenecks. Quality, technical debt, review processes, and organizational design are becoming the limiting factors. If you are leading engin...
605
June 7, 2026

#605 AI Won’t Fix Broken Organizations. It Exposes Them | Jürgen Dauk

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Jürgen Dauck, advisor, consultant, and creator of the Leadership Operating System. AI is not the real bottleneck. Broken organizational design is. The conversation reframes AI adoption as a leadership and operating model problem rather than a software rollout. Jürgen argues that companies built around control, reporting, and top-down approval are too slow to capture real value from AI. The discussion moves from misaligned K...
604
June 4, 2026

#604 AI Can Generate Expertise. It Still Can’t Generate Judgment | Dan Pratl, Founder & CEO, Quadron

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Dan Pratl, Founder and CEO of Quadron. Dan is building infrastructure around trust, credibility, reputation, and human judgment in a world where AI can generate expert-looking work at near-zero cost. The conversation reframes one of the most common assumptions about AI. The scarcity is no longer knowledge creation. The scarcity is verification, judgment, and the ability to demonstrate that a person stands behind a claim. Ra...
603
May 31, 2026

#603 Startups Scale Too Early. The Basics Are Still Broken | Raphael Peyret

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Raphael Peyret, Founder and Principal Advisor at SHA/RP. Raphael brings experience across product, cybersecurity, Google, and startup execution from MVP to acquisition. The main tension is clear: companies keep chasing scale before the basics are working. The conversation reframes AI security, startup growth, product management, and GTM as the same sequencing problem. AI-native threats matter, but unpatched systems, weak cr...
602
May 28, 2026

#602 AI Can Set Meetings. It Still Can’t Build Trust | Alex Grant

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Alex Grant, SVP of Sales at North. Alex brings more than 16 years of experience building sales teams across fintech, payments technology, and SaaS. The conversation centers on a hard tension: AI can create more opportunities, but it still cannot create trust by itself. The conversation reframes AI in sales and fintech as an execution problem rather than a technology topic. Alex explains why companies are using AI to move fa...
601
May 24, 2026

#601 The AI Bottleneck Is No Longer GPUs. It’s Energy and Memory | Eugene Cheah

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Eugene Cheah, CEO of Featherless AI. The AI bottleneck is no longer just GPU access. Power, memory, inference cost, and model reliability are becoming the real constraints. Eugene reframes the AI infrastructure debate away from a simple race for bigger models and more chips. The conversation connects energy capacity, HBM shortages, open source model adoption, linear attention architectures, and the enterprise need for predi...
600
May 21, 2026

#600 AI Reliability Is a Business Risk. Not Just an Engineering Problem | Helen Gu

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Helen Gu, Founder and CEO of InsightFinder AI. Helen brings decades of research in distributed system reliability, anomaly detection, and AI-driven operations. The conversation focuses on why AI reliability is becoming a business risk, not just an engineering issue. The conversation reframes AI observability as a production control layer for enterprises deploying AI agents. Helen explains why traditional DevOps and SRE prac...
599
May 17, 2026

#599 AI Agents Are the New Attack Surface. Security Teams Are Already Behind | Jason Remillard

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Jason Remillard, Founder of Data443. Jason brings more than 30 years of cybersecurity, data security, infrastructure, and enterprise risk experience. The conversation focuses on the gap between AI adoption speed and the security operating models still built for slower systems. The episode reframes AI security as an execution and visibility problem, not only a model risk problem. Jason argues that security teams lose when th...
598
May 14, 2026

#598 AI Pilots Don’t Fail. Enterprise Systems Do | Omid Pakseresht, CEO of Goodfolio

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Omid Pakseresht, CEO of Goodfolio. Omid works on enterprise AI systems that move beyond pilots and into real business workflows. The conversation reframes enterprise AI failure as a systems problem, not a model problem. Omid argues that most AI initiatives break because the workflow, ownership model, governance layer, audit trail, and adoption path were never designed properly. The model may work, but the enterprise system ...
597
May 10, 2026

#597 Dashboards Are Dead. AI Agents Replace the Forecast Call | Laura Fu, GTM Architect at DevRev

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Laura Fu, GTM Architect at DevRev. Laura brings a RevOps and sales enablement lens to a question many GTM leaders are now facing: AI does not fix sales by sitting on top of old workflows. The conversation reframes AI in go-to-market as an operating model problem, not a tooling problem. Laura argues that AI-native execution requires new feedback loops, better data capture, agent-readable systems, and a different view of enab...
596
May 7, 2026

#596 AI Agents Need Managers. Not Prompts | Ross Barnes

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Ross Barnes, Founder of Galahad Group. Ross brings a rare operator view on AI adoption, shaped by his background as Global CTO at a WPP agency and his current work building AI platforms and adoption frameworks. The conversation reframes agentic AI as a management problem, not a prompting problem. Ross argues that useful AI systems need purpose, boundaries, delegation, accountability, and human judgment. The episode moves aw...
595
May 3, 2026

#595 Engineers Optimize Code. They Mismanage Money | Stanley Leong, Author of Engineering Your Finances

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Stanley Leong, private wealth advisor and author of Engineering Your Finances. The core tension is simple: technical people often apply logic to money, but still make emotional financial decisions. The conversation reframes wealth planning for engineers, founders, and senior tech professionals as a risk management problem rather than a returns problem. Stanley explains why concentrated employer stock, overexposure to techno...
April 30, 2026

AI Is Being Deployed Without Control. Security Is Playing Catch Up | Tim Freestone

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Tim Freestone, Chief Strategy Officer at Kiteworks. AI is already inside the enterprise, but control is not keeping pace. The conversation reframes AI security as a data control problem rather than a tooling problem. Tim argues that agents are not just another interface. They act, call tools, move data, and introduce a new identity layer that most enterprise security architectures were not designed to govern. If you a...
593
April 26, 2026

#593 AI Agents Are Becoming the Workforce for Events | Ritesh Patel, CEO & Co-Founder, Ticket Fairy

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Ritesh Patel, CEO and Co-Founder of Ticket Fairy. He has built a full-stack operating system for the global events industry, spanning ticketing, payments, marketing, and AI. The conversation reframes event technology as an infrastructure problem, not a commerce problem. Ticketing looks simple on the surface, but hides deep system complexity, fragile scaling layers, and continuous engineering trade-offs. AI is not simplifyin...
592
April 23, 2026

#592 Stop Treating AI Like Software. It Is Workforce Infrastructure | Karl Simon, CTO, Subatomic AI

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Karl Simon, Co-Founder and CTO at Subatomic AI. Karl is building orchestration infrastructure for AI agents and enterprise workflows, focused on turning AI into operational capacity rather than isolated tools. AI adoption is often framed as a model problem. This conversation reframes it as a systems problem. The gap is not model capability but data quality, workflow design, and orchestration. The discussion breaks down why ...