Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 53 | Page 71

Marcos Monteiro , Co-Founder and CEO , Veezoo
On the lighter side of things , we ask the industry experts what makes them tick . . . .

. . . GET TO KNOW . . .

Marcos Monteiro , Co-Founder and CEO , Veezoo

wWhat would you describe as your most encourage memorable achievement ?

Without a doubt it was winning the Hackathon back in 2015 . It turned out to be truly life changing . This was when we built the first prototype of Veezoo . It took us only 24 hours to create a mock-up of the idea , but it was enough to see how enthusiastic people got with its potential and capabilities . That ’ s when we first realised we had struck something special . Then we started to think about the potential of such a platform and how we could build something of value and substance . This led me to scrapping my plan to do a PhD in data science and instead set up Veezoo with a goal to bring it to market .
What first made you think of a career in technology ?
Ever since I was a kid I liked building things , especially electronic things . I remember I had a robot-making kit that I thought was amazing . When I was 12 , this interest evolved from fun to practical and I programmed a software for my mum to manage the contact information of the clients from her clinic . My fascination with Artificial Intelligence and robots grew , and I wanted to pursue that further as my career path . For me the most interesting part of the robot was its intelligence and I soon realised that this was all purely mathematics . This was at the core of intelligence and I understood that if I wanted to build something , I had to master mathematics to do so . I was still studying when Veezoo was created so the career in technology happened before I had even planned it .
What style of management philosophy do you employ with your current position ?
We have four cornerstones that form the culture and management philosophy of Veezoo . The first is to
our team to ask the right questions . For us , questions are the basis for innovation and transparency . They are our company ’ s driving force , they are at the core of our product . It ’ s our number one value .
The second is about focusing on the essential . Not only is it critical for us to work efficiently , but also to get us thinking about what is really essential . Third , is about making decisions based on facts and reasonable assumptions , using data to build solid and palpable arguments . Data is deep at the heart of our company . Fourth is about doing the impossible beautifully . We push ourselves to do what most people think is impossible and we strive to accomplish them with beauty . It should feel like art .
What do you think is the current hot technology talking point ?
Natural language processing will be one of the hottest topics in information technology for the next 15 to 20 years . If you think about how much information has changed humanity over the past 100 years it ’ s staggering . Even just in the past 10 years the power of information has made drastic changes to our lives . But with great amounts of information , comes great challenges in accessing the relevant information .
They require disruptive solutions . Take search engines , they were a big leap on how to find the right website among billions of pages online . However , the data collected by companies is still not easily accessible to the employees . The tools are still too complex for nontechnical people . However , if you think about it , the easiest way to request information is actually by simply asking for it . That ’ s what we believe at Veezoo and what we have been working for , we want to make it easy for everyone to understand what is happening , giving them eyes to see what is in the data .
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