Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision in global business. The dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution for global growth for more than 225 years. Each week we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs and harness the engine of capitalism, right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's 12 exchanges and 7 clearing houses around the world. And now, here's your host, Josh King, Head of Communications at Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
Welcome to the podcast. 15 years ago, data scientists, Clive Humby said, "Data is the new oil. It's valuable, but if unrefined, it can't really be used. Oil, the raw material, has to be transformed into gas, plastic chemicals, and the like to create the valuable entity that drives profitable activity." His quote rings true, but while oil may be finite, data is an endless resource. That puts growing emphasis on the refining process to parse out actionable solutions from a sea of data points. Increasingly, artificial intelligence, AI, is being turned to do the heavy lifting.
Josh King:
To paraphrase our guest today, Globant's CEO Martin Migoya, whether you feel that AI is the pathway to a better humanity or fear its ramifications, this is the next frontier of technology, and unlocking its value will define which companies succeed and which will fail.
Josh King:
It should be no surprise then that Globant's motto is, "We are ready." How Martin and his company are leveraging cutting edge technology and methods to improve everything from the London police department to your favorite video game. Right after this.
Speaker 3:
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Josh King:
Our guest today Martin Migoya is Chairman and CEO of Globant. That's NYSE ticker symbol, GLOB, which he co-founded with three friends in Argentina with a goal of creating innovative software products that appeal to global audiences. In just 15 years, the Company has grown to offer a variety of platforms and solutions to the world from its 38 offices with 7,200 employees spread across 13 countries. He's at the New York Stock Exchange today ahead of tomorrow's Converge NY Tech Summit, Globant's annual conference, which has been held here for the past two years. Welcome to the podcast, Martin.
Martin Migoya:
Thank you very much.
Josh King:
Globant organizes webinars, conferences, and educational sessions throughout the year, both in your home country in Argentina and at Globant's offices across the world. Why are information exchanges like these events so important to you and your company?
Martin Migoya:
Thank you very much for the question. I think that when you are creating these beautiful experiences that connect emotionally with people, and we connect and transform how business are doing their business, you need to put together a place where you start transmitting those concepts in a way that is efficient, that is close enough to get the message. And we decided about five years ago that having Converge was like a beautiful world to explain what we want to do here. It's a place where knowledge converges with our customers, our people, our investors, everybody converging in a single place. In that moment we transmit to them what we know, we transmit to them the latest trends, we transmit to them which are those things that makes us different and which are those things that can really make a change in the future of our business and in the future of the business of our customers.
Josh King:
How long do you work on preparing for these events?
Martin Migoya:
The communication team head by our Chief Brand Officer, Wanda Weigert. She already started preparing next year's event, and we are still delivering this, so a long time, a long time.
Josh King:
So, 15 years ago, Martin, you and your three long-time friends decided in a Buenos Aires bar to go into business together based on your success investing in Indian outsourcing companies. What did you set out to create back then, and how were you able to get Globant off the ground with only $5,000 in startup capital?
Martin Migoya:
Yeah, that was the initial amount. I think there was a very magic moment that was happening in Latin America at that time. We knew a lot about what was happening in India and all this transformation power that this industry was bringing to India. And suddenly, we look around and we said, there's no one that is doing this in Latin America, so how can this happen? And we start by with some arguments saying, okay, maybe there's not enough engineers, maybe there's not enough talent. But very soon, we discovered that it was not the case; that the talent was there. There was a market of 600 million people, and millions of them know technology, and really there was a huge opportunity in front of us.
Martin Migoya:
So, we decided that we would start by a very simple business plan. And the business plan was taking the most difficult road possible, which was, let's go first to sell in the U.S. and the U.K. And then if we are successful, then we come back to Latin America. We started with that idea, that was our master business plan. I always say that business plans, normally you think out a business plan of a 100 pages document with market analysis and things like that. At the end of the day business plans are very strategic things that you need to put in one sentence, and whenever you find that sentence, you are in the right path. That sentence took us from 4 friends into 7,200 people today, and it's really amazing how effective and how actual that phrase is.
Josh King:
But you mentioned 600 million people. That's the Latin American population.
Martin Migoya:
Yes.
Josh King:
So, if you've got that huge marketplace available to you, and you've got the benefit of language commonality around most of the continent, why do you stretch farther up into North America and other places?
Martin Migoya:
The opportunities are where they are, and the way that people is taking those opportunities and taking advantage of those opportunities, is by exporting themselves into the United States or going to work to other places. And that was the cornerstone of idea, and the concept flew really well. Very soon we started to see that limit of the language barrier was not that real. There was a lot of people that knew English, but the most amazing thing happens that when you put a person that is not fluent in an organization that everybody's speaking English all the time and five, six months later, he becomes pretty fluent at English. And that transformation that happens, not just on the language, but also on the knowledge of that person, becoming an expert on certain technologies and being exposed to the best possible brands in the planet and to the most advanced projects in the world, really makes a huge impact on that person and makes a huge impact on the community that person belongs to.
Martin Migoya:
The whole culture of the Company was crafted by the phrase, "We will sell there." And then everything started to flow. When people asked me about Globant, I say, "Look, Globant is like a Tesla, from the outside it looks like a normal car, but then when you enter into the car, you start discovering that, oh, well, no, there's no motor. Ah, and the batteries are on the floor." So at Globant we say the same, from the outside we may look like any other company on professional services out there, but on the inside, the things are totally different.
Josh King:
So, four guys from a bar. You get on a plane. Where's your first stop in the United States? Which door do you knock on first? What happens?
Martin Migoya:
It was a very interesting trip. It started in Virginia. Then we came here to New York and then we flew from New York into London. I said to my wife, "Listen, Carol, I will be on this trip because we want to sell and want to start a company." And she said, "Martin, I trust you. Just go." When I came back, she asked me, "Hey Martin, how did things went?" I said, "Extremely bad." Why? Because we didn't sell anything. We were not able to convince anybody.
Martin Migoya:
But it was very funny, but that was a Monday. And then on a Thursday, the phone rang, and I picked up and it was one of the guys that we visited in London, and said, "Martin, can you come here to London on Monday?" I said, "Are you sure?" I don't have money to go to London on Monday, but are you sure that..." "No, you need to come because there's a guy that is the CTO of lastminute.com that wants to meet you. That has an opportunity for you."
Martin Migoya:
We flew there. It was extremely terrible because when we arrived there, all our luggage was lost, so we came to the meeting without new clothes. And suddenly, we started to talk with Chip. That was the CTO. And after 15 minutes of pitch, he said, "Enough, guys, I believe you. Now we need to work on two things. We need to work on how to stabilize our site." There was a site lastminute.com, it was like the biggest online travel agency in Europe at that time, 1 billion pounds in revenue. "We need to stabilize the site, and we need to develop the first dynamic packaging, which is putting a hotel together with a car and plane, and put it in a single price." And we said, "Of course." And suddenly, we start to grow with them. And that was our first customer. It was not in the U.S., it was in the U.K. in Europe. That was the first big bomb that happened at Globant, and we started to grow very fast.
Josh King:
Was Chip aware of what the order was going to be for how big was this first contract, and what did it require you guys to go back to Argentina to assemble the amount of talent and staff you'd need to fulfill this contract?
Martin Migoya:
It was a team of 15 people approximately, and between 15 to 20. The point is that we needed to move all of them from Argentina into London, so we needed for them to have a European union passport to be able to move them there. We found them. It was amazing. We found them, and we moved the whole crew.
Martin Migoya:
There's a lot of stories inside those days. For example, the one that we forgot on the price to put the hotel for the people. So, at some point we said oh we lost money, and one of the things that really is important at Globant... We haven't lost money in a single month in 15 years.
Martin Migoya:
So, what we did was... "Okay, let's send one of the guys to see and to rent a house that has five rooms, so we can put our people inside that house." And we did it and it worked out, and we started the business, but it was a pretty large business for us.
Josh King:
Really bootstrapping it from the very beginning. But by the end of 2004, Martin, your company was already profitable, you had dozens of employees in Argentina. What allowed you to scale up from an idea in a bar to starting operation, hiring talent, and attracting this customer base beyond the first deal that you did in the U.K.?
Martin Migoya:
When you start a company, there's an entrepreneurial spirit that happens, which is the spirit of making something great. And the spirit, those days was like a transformational spirit that was giving opportunities to people that otherwise would've need to leave the country. And we crafted like a very clear vision of what we wanted to do, and that helped us to hire people that otherwise, given the money that we were able to pay, we would've not be able to hire, because we had that vision. We had that vision of becoming a powerhouse on technology from Latin America. We had that vision. Later that vision evolved to be the best brand in the planet, doing what we do, creating these amazing experiences. And for that vision, we needed to have the best financial tools, so we get listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Martin Migoya:
People wants to be part of great stories, and I think we put it together a great story for people to belong. And that's why how we started to recruit amazing talent, some of the best people in our region, that gave us the DNA to grow the Company and to take it to the next level.
Josh King:
In 2006, talking about take it to the next level, Martin, Google tapped Globant as its first outsourcer.
Martin Migoya:
That was a massive opportunity for us. I would say that was the stamp of approval for the further growth that we had.
Martin Migoya:
One day, one of the guys from Lastminute left to go to work for Google. And of course, our entrepreneurial instinct was to call him, say, "Listen, what do you have for us in Google?" And he said, "Hey, Martin, I just arrived here one week ago, so give me a break." So, I said to him, "Of course, I will give you a break."
Martin Migoya:
But then two weeks later, he called me back, and he said, "Listen, Martin, there's a couple of guys in Mountain View that are looking for the first outsourcing relationship. I don't think you're going to make it because it's too busy. I mean, there's a lot of people that want to participate on that." I said, "Okay, well, we will go anyway." So we went there, and we start developing the relationship with Google, with those guys. And suddenly, one day after three months of analyzing and understanding team members of our people and understanding how Globant was, they told me, "Hey Martin, you won." I said, "No, this must be a mistake here because we never talked about the price." "No, no, we will come to an agreement on the price, but you won and we want to work with you." Of course, we came to an agreement with the price in 15 seconds. That gave us the prestige and the credentials to be able to pitch companies like LinkedIn, like Disney later, and many others that we started to won and even Electronic Arts. So that was extremely important for us in our story.
Josh King:
As your company approached its fifth anniversary, Martin, the leadership team realized that Globant was uniquely positioned to balance engineering on the one hand, creativity on the other. Was this the first step in creating your current model as a one stop digital shop for professional service solutions?
Martin Migoya:
Traditional IT services companies are all about engineers. What was the path to create beautiful software? Okay, we hire an agency in New York, a design agency, and then we take that design and we bring it to the engineers. And then all the problems starts to happen, because the design is not fitted for the engineering purposes and the engineering is not fitted for the design purposes, and the innovation guy is just looking around saying, "What's going on?" So, what we decided to do is create from the very beginning from 2005 and until today, 13 years, creating a culture in which engineering and design and innovation has the same level within the organization. They are under the same roof. They share the same values. They share the same culture. And that's a very difficult thing to find, and we did it at very large scale. And that's why Globant is so unique on that. How we are organized inside the Company, how we are organized around everybody on the market was organized around verticals, we decided, okay, no, we will kill that.
Josh King:
Take me into Globant's offices. This mix of engineering and creativity. It must be a very different feel than you might see at any normal office, and then how does that translate into your client's customer experience? One that is more creative and emotional than one might otherwise expect.
Martin Migoya:
The idea of creating a concept and that an engineer is talking in the same platform as with the designer and the designer talking about engineering, and engineering talking about design and how to optimize that experience is extremely important.
Martin Migoya:
Just to give an example, we just launched the latest digital bank for the Santander Bank, which is called Open Bank, it's an amazing success. But if you see the applications and you see the whole experience of relating with that bank has nothing to do with relating to a normal bank. It's about seamless experiences. It's about, for example, have an open application that gives you the opportunity to connect your kids with your bank, so you can give money to your kids in a virtual way so they can spend it in whatever they want, and you can control how those spends has been done. This is much better than cash, of course.
Martin Migoya:
But I think that creating that experience, I would say, is taking a company into a digital journey that is totally different from the traditional approach of saying, okay, let's create an app, and let's create a web solution for that. Okay, let's create a concept. Let's create a journey. Let's create how we will start. Let's engage the consumer, not just at the moment that we need to interact with them or transact with them, but let's connect before and let's connect after, and let's make it a much broader connection. And let's be proactive so we can surprise a customer and create those emotional moments. And those are the things that we take into consideration when we're creating such an experience. Engineers sometimes get it right. A team of engineers, innovation, and designers, get it much better.
Josh King:
Do you think your experience as a musician, as a member of a band, as a person who sees musical compositions as many instruments playing in harmony, helps add to this experience?
Martin Migoya:
I would say that art and creativity needs to be every day more involved in every single thing that we do. And why I'm saying that is because that approach to creating music or creating art or creating anything that you want is pretty similar to what happened within the companies. Within the companies, you have an idea and you have two roots. Either you do it the way everybody do it, or you do it in a totally different and innovative manner. And I think that music is a lot about that. Music and the big musicians are those that are able to create something totally different from the rest of the world.
Josh King:
So, you can't do it all yourself or with this initial core idea. In 2008, Martin, in the midst of the financial crisis, Globant begins to make several acquisitions, sparking an aggressive M&A strategy that's continued through last year's acquisition of PointSource and Ratio. How do you balance the Company's organic growth what you initially started in Buenos Aires and transitioning acquisitions into the Globant culture?
Martin Migoya:
I think acquisitions for us has always been very strategic, very small, that we're providing us things that we did not have in any other way. The transition was quite smooth. Of course, there's always things that happen when you're trying to put together two different cultures, and we pay a lot of attention that the culture of the Company that we will acquire is similar to the culture that we have at Globant, and we have a pretty strong culture. Culture within global is extremely important. It is not just a PowerPoint. I mean, culture within global is handled by technology itself. That's a separate chapter, but I would say that in terms of acquisitions, all the acquisitions that we did were very small. Growth at Globant has always been organic.
Josh King:
Four years ago, 2014, following a decade of growing the Company and attracting local and international investors. You brought Globant public right here at the New York Stock Exchange. What were the challenges of bringing the first pure play technology company from Latin America to the U.S. capital markets? And have other entrepreneurs in Argentina reached out to you for advice to follow in your path?
Martin Migoya:
Well, the experience was really amazing. I mean, I remember when we started the roadshow, there was so much noise about Argentina and about the fault of Argentina, whatever. So, I spent almost half of my roadshow talking about that. And my investors were saying to me, "No, Martin, we need to cancel the roadshow because you will be speaking about that. I say say, "No way I'm canceling my roadshow. I will do it anyway, because I want to take my company public because it's the tool that I need to take it to the next level." And it was an amazing experience. We did like 90 meetings in 10 days. It was a process that I would say very stressful because you are playing pretty much all your luck into those marketing days that you have, but it was so rewarding.
Martin Migoya:
And I think that the discipline that the Company ends up having because of being a public company, the amount of people that understood the message that we are going to be very serious in our long-term vision with the Company really gave us a huge upside. So, many people reach me for advice. I mean, preparing a company for the IPO was not easy. I mean, it was a process of about five years. It was really amazing how to see every single decision aligned with that long term objective. And I think at the end of the day, it was a great decision. You never know where the stock price will be, but what we do know is that the long term run of your stock price is pretty similar to the long-term run of your Company. I think that it was key for this last four years for us to become a public company here in the New York Stock Exchange.
Josh King:
Your favorite memento from your IPO day. What's the thing that's on your shelf now that you like most?
Martin Migoya:
Well, the day that we are hammering the bell with the hammer, and we broke the hammer. It was so intense, the moment that we broke the hammer. So we needed to fix it and keep hammering with the broken hammer. But it was an amazing day. I mean, ringing the bell, all the media covering you, and the whole world understanding that you are taking it to the next level was very rewarding. Not just for me. I'm part of a much bigger team. My co-founders, all my executive team... They work extremely hard for this to happen, and I think that it was a beautiful moment. And we promise some things that we are delivering this weekend, if we reach certain levels.
Josh King:
We can't wait to see. The bell still tolls for Globant.
Josh King:
After of the break, Martin and I break down how Globant is leading its clients through the digital and cognitive revolution. Right after this.
Speaker 3:
We began with a vision to transform energy trading through technology, creating a modern accessible marketplace that leveled the playing field and drove transparency. Today, Intercontinental Exchange operates markets around the world. We provide data, people rely on, and connect participants to support investing, trading, hedging, and capital raising. Driving the world forward while functioning markets play a critical role in advancing economies and create opportunities for those who build them, and we innovate to ensure our markets serve the world every step of the way. When you turn on a light switch, we help ensure that energy is priced efficiently from fields to your cup each day, from farms to your table, and products that enable financial opportunity.
Speaker 3:
At Intercontinental Exchange, we build, operate and advance global financial and commodity markets. It starts here.
Josh King:
Welcome back. Before the break, Martin, the Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder of Globant and I talked about the development of the Company culminating in its 2014 IPO. Since 2003, Globant has been a disruptor across several industries from IT solutions to software to marketing. Does it get harder to stay on the cutting edge as the Company grows and matures?
Martin Migoya:
I mean, technology evolves very, very fast. And as we all know, now, it has been like a digital transformation wave that happens starting about five, six years ago, and a couple of years ago or a year and a half ago another tsunami of transformations started to happen with the artificial intelligence game and all the things that are happening right now with that. I mean, there has been so many different buzzwords from big data to internet of things to blockchain, whatever. I mean, all of those technologies promise to change the world in some way or another.
Martin Migoya:
As a summary for this, I would say technology is changing very fast. I think AI is the next big revolution in terms of technology, the next big tsunami, and goes on top of another tsunami, which is the digital transformation. That's a scenario where we move every day. So, our studios, our technical people, our designers, all the people involved in Globant are constantly challenged for being up-to-date, bringing the latest technologies to the table, analyzing how viable they are if they make sense to create a new studio with that or not. So, the way for us to keep us updated on that is creating new studios. Each time we see a new trend, and of course those studios needs to be nurtured from the people that we have in common already know that subject. And they are able to get together into a new studio to multiply our abilities. And that has been the case in the last few years.
Josh King:
You co-authored a book, Martin, the never ending digital journey, which distills what you've learned over your career and from your customers, including, for example, how Electronic Arts breaks its workforce up into studios. In the book, you outline how you discuss what Globant termed, Agile Pods. I want to take a quick listen.
Speaker 5:
Inside pods, designers and engineers work together and are encouraged to get better over time, improving their maturity record as they increase their results in velocity, quality, autonomy, and innovation. As they beat their maturity record, they become more aligned with our customer needs, delivering faster at superior quality and autonomy to create engaging digital journeys.
Josh King:
How did the pod idea come about and why is it the ideal methodology to create custom customer solutions?
Martin Migoya:
The Agile Pods is like a representation of how companies will need to create software towards the future. We came from an era in which software was really based on first sitting down and writing specifications, then a group of people that would code and then a group of people that would test. And then if we are lucky after a year of that process, we get a product out in the street. But what happened is that what we wrote a year ago is not the same or is not what you need a year later. So suddenly, the process of creating software changed into something totally different. And what's the meaning of that? Well, the meaning of that is that you need to deliver software based on very short sprints of two, three weeks, and understanding what you deliver in those three weeks to rebuild the priority list and to go for the next two or three weeks. After a year of that process, the end product will be much closer to the needs, because the change is inserted on the concept of the creation of the software.
Martin Migoya:
Now, who creates those sprints and who creates those software? Well, in our cases, our Agile Pods. The concept of Agile Pods is based on the concept of autonomy. We believe that autonomy is what gives the teams the greatest performance. We don't believe in command and control for the creation of software, so we believe that those guys that are out there creating software are the best owners of what you create. Now, how those guys evolve into something better? Well, we measure those pods with three metrics. One is speed of coding, how fast they code. Then how good they code, the quality of what they code. And then how autonomous or how, I would say, self-creation agent they are.
Martin Migoya:
And then given those three metrics, we give them a maturity level. So their mission in life is to... First, they get a constitution, a pod constitution. They sign the pledge, a pod constitution. Then they define the values. Then they define the roles. For example, who's entrepreneur within the pod, who's the professor, who's going to be the accountant, who's going to be the storyteller? That's independent on the roles that they have as programmers or designers or whatever. And then they pledge the constitution and they start with the metrics, understanding in which maturity level they are.
Martin Migoya:
That whole dynamic itself is a totally autonomous activity within the pod. And we believe in that as the main driver for quality in the development of software, and how the software is going to be created in the future.
Josh King:
So speaking of innovation, Martin, the Converge NY conference theme is the pursuit of AI transformation, ethics, real cases, and secrets to uncover the next cognitive revolution. Most of us have heard of the digital revolution, but what is the cognitive revolution?
Martin Migoya:
Well, the cognitive revolution for us is all the revolution that comes with the artificial intelligence and machine learning processes. Now, suddenly you have machines that can learn like people, if they are trained with proper data, and they can process things that before were impossible to process. So, suddenly you need to rethink all your processes in your corporation to understand how you can apply AI and how you can apply machines that learn instead of doing it in traditional ways. So you can lift up the jobs of the people and you can take them to the next level and you use people for what people are good at, instead of doing processes that can be replicated every day better by a machine.
Martin Migoya:
Just to give an example, if we have 100 peoples monitoring 20,000 cameras in the New York city, then I would say, "Okay, we can train a machine to monitor those 20,000 cameras and bring to the attention of a handful of operators in which moment there's an incident, and then react over that incident, instead of having people that are watching screens that nothing is happening. I think that's the cognitive revolution is machines cooperating with a human like never before, augmenting the intelligence of humans, making them more effective, making them more wise, I would say.
Josh King:
Earlier this year, Martin, Intercontinental Exchange announced a partnership with companies including, Starbucks, Boston Consulting Group, and Microsoft to create a digital currency platform called Backed. And it's been interesting as you keep your eye tuned to television in the United States, you can't miss these constant TV commercials with the rapper Common talking about Microsoft's use of AI. I want to listen to just a clip of it and get your response.
Common:
When you're the artist, it's the paint brush. We are living in the future we always dreamed of. We have mixed reality that changes how we see the world and AI empowering us to change the world we see. You have more power at your fingertips than entire generations that came before you. So here's the question, what will you do with it?
Josh King:
So what's Globant doing with AI?
Martin Migoya:
Very nice. I think AI is a very disruptive tool, and as leaders, we need to think how to use it. That's why global, we have our own AI manifesto of the things that we do and the things that we don't do. We want machines to cooperate with humans. We want machines augmenting humans. We want machines for those things that humans just simply cannot process, but we want humans doing human's work. And AI for us is a massive transformation tool. I think that we are in a pretty unique position when you talk about the opportunity that we have in front of us. Every single business in the planet, every single government in the planet, every institution that is not a government or a business; needs to transform, needs to adopt digital technologies, needs to adopt artificial intelligence, needs a Globant, and that's a massive opportunity we have in front of us.
Martin Migoya:
Now, on the other side, you have a company that has a scale, that has pretty deep practice on artificial intelligence that has been understanding all the artificial intelligence players out there, and that we can coordinate that offering to offer you a superior offering, so we can route you through the best possible vendor of those artificial intelligence engines that are out there from Microsoft, IBM, and so on. So, we can aim very high, and we can start thinking about how we transform the world. For me, transforming the world is transforming those experiences, transforming how people interact with government, how people interact with brands and companies, how people interact with their peers, and how people interact in general. So I think that we have a massive opportunity in front of us as technology leaders, as people in general, to change this world and to take it to the next level.
Josh King:
It sounds glorious, Martin. In the book embracing the power of AI, which you coauthored, as the follow-up to never ending digital journeys, you describe artificial intelligence as a frontier. One in which significant investment has been flowing into, but have companies come close to taming the frontier?
Martin Migoya:
I think the AI market is pretty well developed in terms of offering. Now, how companies are adopting that technology is pretty different. I mean, in terms of the deepness of that adoption. But I think the AI problem is not a AI technology problem itself, but it's a cultural problem, and it's a cultural challenge in front of us, so we need to change the perspective from saying, "Okay, yes. AI is a technology problem, let's give it to the IT department to solve it." To a perspective which is slightly different, which is okay, it's a cultural problem, so I need my organization to understand the power of AI.
Martin Migoya:
By the way, what we did is, a year and a half or two ago, I stood up in front of all my employees and all the Globers that we like to call ourselves. And we said, every employee at Globant, everyone, needs to go through a training course about the basics of artificial intelligence. I'm not pretending everyone to become an expert, but yes, I pretend that people understand what's going on and which are the things that artificial intelligence and machine learning can deliver. And that's part of a cultural transformation that needs to happen within the organizations, because then people will start to think, "How can I use this piece of machine learning to solve my problem that I do every day, and how I become a better company thinking about that?" And then my people will always be able to offer that to my customers. And those things are extremely important because I think that if you don't start by very small steps into the right direction, and if you think AI is a far off project, you don't go anywhere.
Martin Migoya:
So, you need to think this as a cultural transformation step-by-step, very small steps, finding the right use cases to make it happen. And don't pretend this as a monster. So, every time that I see a company, the first thing I try to see is how ready they are to adopt this artificial intelligence, starting by the CEO of the company, and then following by the rest of the company.
Josh King:
The book goes into the positive and negative aspects of AI, but ends with a simple declarative statement that begins, AI is a reality now, the sooner we get on board, the better. How can our listeners get on board?
Martin Migoya:
Well, AI is a reality. Out there are tools to get into that. Before that, you need to get data. I would say the first step is to be serious about getting data about what you do. Many reasons has data that are a lot of noise and pretend to be data, but it is not. So enter into a data strategy, enter into very simple projects that can solve very simple problems is the way to go. Do not think that this is a project that is a massive initiative that needs to spend millions and millions on that. That time will come, if the early efforts are successful.
Martin Migoya:
I would say, just try learn a little bit about what artificial intelligence and machine learning is about. Basically, it's about machines that learn like people, and I'm not kidding, machines that learn like people, and then start thinking on your company, where can I apply? And I say this many times when I talk to boards of companies, start thinking, where can I apply these new kind of brains into my business. So that's the simple statement I have to recommend to companies that want to start with that, and then they can call us.
Josh King:
I want to find out where can our listeners find the two books that we talked about and keep up with Globant's ongoing thought leadership.
Martin Migoya:
Well, we have a beautiful platform called Global Minds. We're going to be launching that in the next weeks. What Global Mind does is like a center where we collect all the artificial intelligence engines that are out there, and we know how to root you through the best possible algorithm that will solve your problem. And we have that ability, and we have many more things coming. Many more things that we are doing for Globant to become a better company and become an AI-ready company.
Josh King:
Well, we can't wait from the New York Stock Exchange to keep watching you both at the conference you're holding this week and in the years to come. Thanks so much for listing with us, investing your time with the New York Stock Exchange and bringing your conference here.
Martin Migoya:
Thank you very much for this. I'm very honored for you to give me the opportunity.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Martin Martin Migoya Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder of Globant. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @NYSE.
Josh King:
Our show is produced by Pete Asch and Ian Wolf, with production assistance from Ken Abel and Steven Portner. I'm Josh King your host, signing off from the Library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
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