GSD Venture Studios, Menlo Park, CA (2026)

10/16/2026

Join Christos Floros, Founder and CEO of Monnett and President of DP International, for an essential conversation on how Europe can build alternative consumer technology platforms that protect individual freedom, safeguard user privacy, and prioritize genuine human connection. Ad-funded social media algorithms generate revenue by keeping users scrolling, using outrage and passive consumption to maximize ad impressions. Drawing on his background spanning architecture, media analytics at Talkwalker, and European political leadership, Christos explains how Monnett reached over 100,000 registrations by replacing surveillance-based advertising with a membership model. In this episode, he breaks down how to design a social network that helps users spend quality time with real friends and then get on with their lives.

🎯 Insights You’ll Learn:
The Attention Economy vs. The Membership Model: Why shifting from ad-revenue models to a user-centric membership model aligns platform incentives with user well-being rather than screen-time addiction.
Designing for Intentionality: How Monnett restructures feed algorithms to prioritize chronological, real-friend updates over engagement-baiting AI recommendations and viral rage.
Scaling Beyond 100,000 Registrations: Key product and community strategies for growing a European consumer platform while competing against trillion-dollar tech monopolies.
Europe’s Strategic Digital Autonomy: Why Europe must develop its own core consumer tech infrastructure—governed by EU privacy standards—rather than outsourcing digital public spaces to foreign tech giants.
Digital Architecture & Civic Health: Applying principles from physical architecture, performing arts, and media analytics to construct digital environments that protect democratic discourse.
Preserving Human Value in an AI-Driven Web: Why authentic human relationships, verified identity, and human-created content become more valuable as synthetic AI media floods the internet.

🌍 Why This Matters:
Modern social platforms have evolved from tools of connection into algorithmic engines designed to capture human attention for ad monetization. This incentive structure has contributed to rising youth anxiety, widespread misinformation, and fragmented civic discourse. Christos Floros is building an alternative paradigm. By building Monnett on a membership foundation hosted within European jurisdiction, Floros proves that consumer technology can be profitable while treating users as members to be served rather than product inventory to be sold to advertisers.

👤 Expert Background:
Founder & CEO of Monnett, a European social network built around privacy, user control, and authentic friendship.
President of DP International, leading the international branch of Luxembourg’s Democratic Party and advocating for European digital sovereignty and individual liberty.
Former Tech & Media Executive, with operational experience at social analytics leader Talkwalker and background across architecture, media, and civic engagement.
Prominent European Political Candidate, standing in the 2024 European Parliament elections with a focus on strategic tech autonomy, AI governance, and democratic resilience.

🎙️ Hosted by Gary Fowler, CEO of GSD Venture Studios — global AI entrepreneur, investor, and innovation leader spotlighting founders navigating the realities of building in the AI era.
💡 Perfect For:
Consumer tech founders, digital privacy advocates, European venture capital investors, policy makers, social media product managers, and civil rights leaders focused on ethical technology.
🚀 Timely Topic:
As scrutiny over data privacy, social media addiction, and algorithmic manipulation intensifies across Europe and globally, building human-centered social platforms is a critical priority. Christos Floros provides a compelling blueprint for founding and scaling a privacy-first European tech platform.

Subscribe for more global founder conversations from GSD Venture Studios: https://gsdvs.com

10/15/2026

Join Randy Perkins, CEO and Co-Founder of FreightPro and Co-Owner of Truckbook Repairs, for an insightful conversation on solving the chronic workforce challenges in American trucking. While the freight industry routinely blames a "driver shortage" for high churn rates and recruitment friction, the real issue is an alignment problem between motor carriers and CDL drivers. Having led operational, growth, and technology strategy at ITS Logistics during its transformation from $12 million to over $1 billion in annualized revenue, Randy brings deep industry experience to fixing logistics workforce dynamics. In this episode, he breaks down how FreightPro uses responsible AI to match driver preferences with carrier requirements—improving retention and trust without removing the human touch.

🎯 Insights You’ll Learn:
The "Driver Shortage" Misconception: Why high CDL driver turnover is rooted in misaligned expectations—such as home time, lane preferences, and pay structures—rather than a lack of qualified drivers.
Responsible AI in Logistics Recruitment: How FreightPro uses AI algorithms to analyze operational data and driver preferences to create sustainable, long-term matches between carriers and CDL drivers.
Preserving the Human Element: Why human relationships and empathetic communication remain essential in driver onboarding and fleet management, even as recruiting workflows automate.
Building Trust in Traditional Industries: Key strategies for introducing modern digital platforms to conservative, relationship-driven trucking operators and independent drivers.
Scaling Operations from $12M to $1B+: Operational leadership takeaways from scaling ITS Logistics through rapid business transformation, P&L expansions, and market volatility.
The Dual Founder Advantage: How operating both FreightPro and Truckbook Repairs provides direct, ground-level visibility into fleet maintenance, driver conditions, and carrier economics.

🌍 Why This Matters:
Trucking moves over 70% of all domestic freight in the United States, yet the industry suffers from annual turnover rates exceeding 80% among long-haul fleets. Traditional driver recruiting relies on high-volume, transactional job boards that fail to align driver lifestyle preferences with carrier freight lanes. Randy Perkins is tackling this operational gap. By creating an AI-enabled career and professional ecosystem for CDL drivers and carriers, FreightPro treats drivers as core partners—reducing costly driver churn, improving road safety, and bringing long-term stability to the supply chain.

👤 Expert Background:
CEO & Co-Founder of FreightPro, a logistics tech company building a driver recruitment and career ecosystem.
Co-Owner of Truckbook Repairs, driving operational solutions for heavy-duty truck maintenance and fleet reliability.
Former Vice President at ITS Logistics, where he led major technology, workforce, and operational initiatives during the company's growth from $12M to over $1B in annualized revenue.
Logistics & Supply Chain Leader, with over a decade of executive experience across P&L management, carrier operations, and digital enterprise transformation.

🎙️ Hosted by Gary Fowler, CEO of GSD Venture Studios — global AI entrepreneur, investor, and innovation leader spotlighting founders navigating the realities of building in the AI era.
💡 Perfect For:
Fleet executives, motor carrier leads, logistics technology founders, supply chain directors, HR and talent acquisition managers in transportation, and venture investors focused on supply chain tech.
🚀 Timely Topic:
As freight markets demand greater efficiency and lower operational costs, modernizing driver recruiting and retention through responsible AI is a top business priority. Randy Perkins delivers an actionable blueprint for applying technology to improve alignment and build trust across the trucking industry.

Subscribe for more global founder conversations from GSD Venture Studios: https://gsdvs.com

10/14/2026

Is digital labor about to redefine how professional services operate?

On October 14 at 3:30PM EST, Miles Maggio and Justin Zelaya, co-founders of Prest0, join us to explore “Getting Sh*t Done with Digital Labor.” Together, they’re building AI employees that learn, retain organizational knowledge, and execute business workflows across law and finance.

We’ll dive into how autonomous AI agents are moving into high-stakes industries, taking over complex knowledge work, and transforming the future of ex*****on.

Mark your calendar and join the conversation!

10/09/2026

Join Maurits Kaptein, Co-Founder and CTO of Kyvvu, for an authoritative, research-backed conversation on solving the single biggest barrier to enterprise agentic AI: runtime safety and deterministic control. As AI agents transition from read-only chatbots to autonomous system operators capable of reading sensitive databases, sending emails, and executing API calls, traditional safety models are failing. Standard model guardrails and prompt filters evaluate text inputs, but they cannot predict or verify what an agent actually executes once it starts taking sequential, multi-step actions. Drawing on his background as a full professor of Applied Causal Inference, author of AI Agents at Work, and a serial founder with a successful exit, Maurits breaks down how Kyvvu’s Agent Security Kernel (ASK) enforces organizational rules at the ex*****on layer—giving banks, insurers, and governments the confidence to deploy autonomous agents safely.

🎯 Insights You’ll Learn:
The Illusion of Prompt Filters: Why relying on system prompts, guardrails, or model alignment cannot stop agents from executing unauthorized system calls once exposed to indirect injection or unexpected reasoning paths.
Action-Level Policy Enforcement: How checking every API payload, database modification, and external communication against hard organizational constraints before ex*****on prevents rogue agent behavior.
What Regulated Industries Demand: The strict compliance, auditability, and deterministic boundary conditions that financial institutions, healthcare providers, and governments require before deploying agentic workflows into production.
Causal Inference in Agentic Systems: How mathematical models of causality and path dependence help predict agent behavior trajectories and isolate system vulnerabilities before they hit production.
From Academia to Serial Entrepreneurship: Key lessons from transitioning from a professorship at Eindhoven University of Technology to co-founding Scailable (acquired by Network Optix) and building Kyvvu.
The 2026 Runtime Governance Standard: Setting up tamper-evident audit trails, policy manifests, and real-time ex*****on gates to align AI autonomy with corporate governance.

🌍 Why This Matters:
The true economic value of AI lies in autonomy—giving agents write access to enterprise tools so they can perform complex tasks end-to-end. However, giving an unconstrained, non-deterministic system direct access to production databases or financial APIs creates catastrophic operational risk. Maurits Kaptein and the Kyvvu team are filling this critical security vacuum. By introducing an in-process Agent Security Kernel that validates actions dynamically, Kyvvu enables enterprises to capture the productivity explosion of agentic AI without surrendering operational control.

👤 Expert Background:
Co-Founder & CTO of Kyvvu, building the foundational runtime security layer for enterprise AI agent deployment.
Full Professor of Applied Causal Inference at Eindhoven University of Technology, with 100+ published papers on statistical learning, causality, and AI systems.
Serial Tech Founder, previously co-founder and CEO of Scailable (acquired by Network Optix).
Acclaimed Author & Researcher, co-author of AI Agents at Work, author of Statistics for Data Scientists (Springer), and PhD recipient cm laude from TU Eindhoven including two years at Stanford.

🎙️ Hosted by Gary Fowler, CEO of GSD Venture Studios — global AI entrepreneur, investor, and innovation leader spotlighting founders navigating the realities of building in the AI era.
💡 Perfect For:
Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), enterprise AI architects, compliance directors, CTOs, fintech and insurtech leads, and deep-tech venture investors seeking runtime governance solutions for autonomous agents.
🚀 Timely Topic:
As enterprise adoption shifts rapidly from conversational assistants to fully autonomous agents, traditional software security and perimeter defenses are no longer sufficient. Maurits Kaptein delivers a rigorous, actionable framework for governing AI actions at runtime.

Subscribe for more global founder conversations from GSD Venture Studios: https://gsdvs.com

10/07/2026

Join Kunal Chopra, CEO and Founder of Certivo, for an operational dive into turning artificial intelligence from a speculative tech pilot into a measurable driver of enterprise value. While many organizations struggle with "AI fatigue" and fragmented software implementations, traditional physical industries—from heavy manufacturing and construction to insurance, logistics, and government contracting—continue to rely on fragile manual spreadsheets, phone calls, and institutional memory. Drawing on two decades of operating experience as a public and private tech CEO (Kaspien, Beckett Group), enterprise general manager at Microsoft and Amazon, and hyper-growth leader at Groupon, Kunal shares a battle-tested blueprint for modernizing legacy compliance operations and driving real bottom-line growth.

� Insights You’ll Learn:
Identifying High-Impact AI Opportunities: Why the most profitable automation projects sit in unglamorous, complex back-office workflows—such as supply chain compliance, vendor audits, and regulatory tracking.
De-Risking Compliance for Acceleration: How transforming manual compliance into a real-time, automated system of record speeds up time-to-market for enterprise products and global trade.
Moving Beyond AI Pilot Purgatory: Practical frameworks for transitioning from proof-of-concept experiments to enterprise-wide software adoption that drives double-digit operational efficiencies.
Modernizing Analog Supply Chains: Bringing digital infrastructure to heavy industries to eliminate supply chain bottlenecks, reduce regulatory risk, and replace siloed data.
The Operator’s Scaling Playbook: Key leadership takeaways from scaling startups through hyper-growth (Groupon’s four-year IPO path), leading Nasdaq-listed companies (Kaspien), and building AI-native ventures.
Connecting Engineering with P&L Growth: How combining computer science fundamentals with Booth MBA discipline enables founders to build products that solve real operational friction rather than chasing vanity tech trends.

� Why This Matters:
The global economy relies heavily on physical manufacturing, construction, and supply chain networks. Yet, regulatory demands and ESG compliance continue to grow in complexity, forcing companies to sink thousands of human hours into tracking vendor certifications, safety standards, and global compliance checks. Kunal Chopra is solving this systemic bottleneck. By building Certivo into an AI-powered compliance system of record, Kunal is demonstrating how automation can eliminate routine friction, protect brand integrity, and unlock sustainable margin expansion.

� Expert Background:
CEO & Founder of Certivo, an AI-driven regulatory intelligence and supply chain compliance system of record.
3x Technology CEO, previously leading PE-backed mid-market tech firm Beckett Group and Nasdaq-listed retail tech platform Kaspien (NASDAQ: KSPN).
Former Microsoft General Manager & Amazon Retail Executive, managing global supplier networks, multimillion-dollar P&Ls, and enterprise software platforms.
Hyper-Growth & Operations Veteran, early employee through Groupon's four-year IPO run and former COO of an esports betting venture acquired by a UK strategic buyer.
Computer Scientist & Chicago Booth MBA, holding degrees from Clemson University and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

� Hosted by Gary Fowler, CEO of GSD Venture Studios — global AI entrepreneur, investor, and innovation leader spotlighting founders navigating the realities of building in the AI era.
� Perfect For:
Chief Operating Officers, supply chain executives, compliance leads, enterprise software investors, industrial leaders, and software founders looking to move beyond simple AI chatbots to deploy deep operational automation.
� Timely Topic:
As enterprise leaders face mounting pressure to deliver real return on investment from their technology spending, moving beyond basic AI hype is essential. Kunal Chopra delivers a practical, step-by-step roadmap for driving tangible business growth through operational intelligence.

Subscribe for more global founder conversations from GSD Venture Studios: https://gsdvs.com

10/07/2026

Join Gonzalo Ladreda, Co-Founder and CEO of Upfront Diagnostics, for a transparent look at the harsh realities of commercializing life-saving medical devices. Winning regulatory approval such as earning a world-first CE mark for the LVOne fingerstick stroke test is widely celebrated as the ultimate milestone for a MedTech startup. In reality, regulatory clearance is merely the starting line. In this episode, Gonzalo breaks down the invisible, multi-year "Adoption Gap" that drags out between gaining market clearance and achieving widespread clinical procurement, a delay that frequently bankrupts viable startups and denies patients access to transformative care.

� Insights You’ll Learn:
The Post-Regulatory Illusion: Why CE mark or FDA clearance only grants permission to sell, not an automatic path to hospital procurement or clinical adoption.
The 2-Year Health Economics Bottleneck: Why risk-averse hospitals demand years of real-world health economic evidence (HEOR) proving cost savings before committing budget.
The "Local Pilot" Trap: How repetitive, center-by-center hospital pilots stall national rollouts and force startups to validate the same clinical performance over and over.
The Capital vs. Runway Misalignment: Why typical 18-to-24-month venture funding cycles fail MedTech startups facing 5-to-8-year clinical procurement timelines.
Revolutionizing Acute Stroke Triage: How Upfront Diagnostics developed LVOne, a 10-minute lateral flow biomarker test measuring GFAP and D dimer to identify Large Vessel Occlusion (LVO) strokes in paramedics' hands.
Systemic Fixes for MedTech Adoption: How fast-tracked health economic pathways, shared pilot data across hospital networks, and specialized MedTech capital can accelerate patient access to life-saving innovation.

� Why This Matters:
When stroke strikes, millions of brain cells die every minute, making rapid triage between local hospitals and specialized thrombectomy centers a matter of life or death. Yet, even when a breakthrough point-of-care diagnostic like LVOne receives regulatory validation, institutional inertia and fragmented procurement hold it back from frontline ambulances for years. Gonzalo Ladreda is shedding light on this systemic flaw. By advocating for procurement reform, shared clinical data, and realistic MedTech investment timelines, Upfront Diagnostics is fighting to ensure that breakthrough diagnostics reach emergency teams when minutes matter most.

� Expert Background:
Co-Founder & CEO of Upfront Diagnostics, leading the Cambridge-based MedTech company that developed LVOne, the world's first rapid blood test for stroke triage.
9-Year MedTech Founder & Operator, leaving his marketing degree at age 23 to co-found Upfront Diagnostics and raising over $12M in public and private capital.
Pioneer in Point-of-Care Stroke Diagnostics, securing a world-first CE mark for rapid blood-based LVO stroke identification.
Recognized Science Entrepreneur, named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe (Science), runner-up at the Santander Entrepreneurship Awards, and winner at the Bright Ideas in Health Awards.

� Hosted by Gary Fowler, CEO of GSD Venture Studios global AI entrepreneur, investor, and innovation leader spotlighting founders navigating the realities of building in the AI era.
� Perfect For:
MedTech founders, clinical directors, healthcare venture capitalists, hospital procurement officers, health economists, emergency medicine leaders, and policy makers working on healthcare innovation adoption.
� Timely Topic:
As healthcare systems globally grapple with tight budgets and clinical burnout, shortening the timeline between medical approval and institutional adoption is critical. Gonzalo Ladreda provides an insider’s guide to surviving the MedTech adoption gap and accelerating patient impact.

Subscribe for more global founder conversations from GSD Venture Studios: https://gsdvs.com

10/06/2026

Join William V. Powers, Co-Founder and CEO of CMT AI (Cambridge Mobile Telematics), for a compelling discussion on how artificial intelligence is expanding far beyond digital screens, large language models, and chat interfaces into physical, real-world mobility systems. While generative AI automates text and media, physical AI leverages IoT sensor fusion, smartphone telemetry, and machine learning models to analyze tens of millions of driving miles in real time. Having raised over $900 million to scale CMT AI—including a historic $500 million investment led by SoftBank—Bill shares how real-time behavioral data is transforming auto insurance, gig platforms, and road safety worldwide, while proving that a deep-seated mission can drive massive commercial scale.

� Insights You’ll Learn:
The Physical AI Frontier: Moving AI beyond chatbots and code completion into physical mobility networks—processing real-time IMU, GPS, and sensor telemetry to predict risk and prevent crashes before they happen.
Sensor Fusion at Scale: How fusing smartphone sensors, connected vehicle data, and IoT tags allows CMT AI to detect distracted driving, harsh braking, and severe collisions in near real-time.
Building a $900M+ Mission-Driven Enterprise: How a clear purpose—making roads and drivers safer—drives hiring, shapes product architecture, and attracts strategic capital from top global investors.
Aligning Business Incentives with Life Protection: Why purpose-driven technology platforms must deliver clear financial ROI to insurers, automakers, and gig fleets to sustain societal impact at scale.
Preserving Mission Culture Through Growth: Practical methods for connecting individual engineering and operational tasks to tangible lives saved as an organization grows across international markets.
Lessons from Serial Scaling: Key sales and go-to-market leadership takeaways from building Swoop and Traffic.com through its IPO and NAVTEQ acquisition.

� Why This Matters:
Traffic accidents remain a leading cause of global mortality, resulting in over one million deaths and tens of millions of injuries annually. Traditional auto safety systems act reactively after an impact occurs. Bill Powers and the CMT AI team are shifting safety into a proactive era. By combining mobile sensor data, machine learning, and behavioral economics, CMT AI incentivizes safer driving habits, automates emergency crash responses, and builds safer transportation infrastructure—proving that mission-aligned technology can reshape global mobility.

� Expert Background:
Co-Founder & CEO of CMT AI (Cambridge Mobile Telematics), leading the world’s largest telematics and mobility AI platform powering programs for major insurers, automakers, and gig platforms globally.
Venture Scaling Leader, raising over $900M in capital, including a $500M SoftBank-led investment marking one of the largest private technology financings in Massachusetts history.
Technology & Sales Executive, former key leader at Swoop and Traffic.com, contributing to Traffic.com's public offering and acquisition by NAVTEQ.
Philanthropist & Civic Leader, President of the Luke Vincent Powers Foundation and member of the global board of directors of Best Buddies International.

� Hosted by Gary Fowler, CEO of GSD Venture Studios — global AI entrepreneur, investor, and innovation leader spotlighting founders navigating the realities of building in the AI era.
� Perfect For:
Mobility executives, enterprise AI leaders, auto insurance directors, gig economy operators, IoT engineers, climate and safety venture investors, and founders scaling mission-driven technology ventures.
� Timely Topic:
As AI applications expand into physical infrastructure and real-time risk assessment, applying telemetry models to prevent road fatalities is a high-impact frontier. Bill Powers delivers an executive blueprint for building, funding, and sustaining a mission-first global technology leader.

Subscribe for more global founder conversations from GSD Venture Studios: https://gsdvs.com

10/06/2026

Join Paul Baier, Founder and CEO of G*I Insights and Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School, for a data-driven guide on how enterprise leaders should evaluate, budget, and optimize employee AI training. As organizations deploy enterprise generative AI tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise, and Claude, many executive teams struggle with a fundamental strategic question: How much should we invest in employee AI training and capability building? Drawing on 25 years of software executive experience, his co-authored Harvard Business Review research, and advising asset managers and Fortune 500 leadership teams, Paul shares a proven framework for connecting AI training budgets directly to measurable operational ROI.

� Insights You’ll Learn:
The AI Training Investment Ratio: Why spending on AI licenses (Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT) without dedicated enablement budgets leads to massive under-utilization and abandoned seats.
Calculating the Cost of Inaction: How to quantify lost productivity when workers use generative AI tools like "glorified search engines" rather than automated workflow partners.
The Enterprise AI Maturity Curve: Moving employees from basic prompt generation ("Level 1") to task delegation, custom GPT/Artifact creation, and automated workflow integration ("Level 3").
Measuring Productivity Uplift: Practical metrics and KPIs for tracking time saved, work quality improvements, and process speed across departments (finance, legal, research, engineering).
Lessons from HBR Research & Harvard Case Studies: Key takeaways from co-authoring HBR enterprise AI research on how leading firms structure internal AI centers of excellence (CoEs).
Asset Management & Private Equity AI Playbooks: How top private equity firms and asset managers are driving AI enablement across portfolio companies to expand EBITDA margins.

� Why This Matters: Companies worldwide are allocating millions of dollars to enterprise AI software licenses, yet recent studies show that up to 80% of employees rarely use advanced capabilities due to a lack of structured training. Paul Baier is solving this ROI gap. By helping executive teams establish clear financial benchmarks, role-specific learning paths, and ROI tracking models for employee AI education, G*I Insights ensures that AI investments translate directly into bottom-line operational performance.

� Expert Background:
Founder & CEO of G*I Insights, a leading AI research and advisory firm helping asset management firms and corporations accelerate enterprise AI adoption.
Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School, co-author of three influential Harvard Business Review articles on enterprise AI implementation.
Forbes AI Columnist & Host of the Daily AI News Show, broadcasting over 650 live episodes on generative AI developments.
25-Year Enterprise Software Veteran, former VP of Products at FirstFuel Software (private equity exit) and MBA graduate from Harvard Business School.

� Hosted by Gary Fowler, CEO of GSD Venture Studios — global AI entrepreneur, investor, and innovation leader spotlighting founders navigating the realities of building in the AI era.
� Perfect For: Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Chief People Officers, enterprise AI leads, asset managers, private equity operating partners, and corporate strategy executives determining AI budgeting and enablement strategies.
� Timely Topic: As enterprise AI software budgets come under board-level ROI scrutiny, shifting from license procurement to structured workforce training is a primary enterprise priority. Paul Baier provides an authoritative roadmap for maximizing employee AI productivity.

Subscribe for more global founder conversations from GSD Venture Studios: https://gsdvs.com

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