Founder and CEO Fardad Zabetian discusses Kudo’s mission to make live events multilingual, blending professional interpreters with AI to deliver real-time translation, captioning, and glossary-driven accuracy across hybrid and in-person events.

They cover Kudo’s origins, the role of AI, partner and reseller strategies, running a distributed team, and the future of event tech focused on accessibility and high-quality attendee experiences.

In this episode Mark Waddington explains why he identifies as a founder more than a CEO and how that product-first mindset drove the evolution of StaffWise from a rough first version into a full workforce management platform.

Mark describes solving the core problem of poor communication between tech vendors and businesses, building client-driven features — onboarding, divisions, scheduling, payroll integrations, reporting and sustainability tracking — and expanding into retail execution with RetailWise.

He also discusses the company’s commitment to responsive human support, cautious use of AI, compliance and integrations by region, and how listening to customers shaped the roadmap and growth strategy.

Tony, Partnerships and Creative Director at Eventagrate, discusses his journey from CGI to experiential events, how the company uses AI, AR and data to make audiences part of the story, and the importance of solving real problems rather than chasing tech trends.

Highlights include hyper-personalization, accessibility, metaverse opportunities and a case study on the Riyadh Marathon featuring AR invitations and AI avatars.