Sonero

Jeff Wald, of Bento Engine and Sonero.ai, on the future of work, AI, and why startups die

Kevin Lee interviews Jeff Wald, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Bento Engine and Sonero.ai. Jeff Wald is a serial entrepreneur, investor, board member and author who's written a number of books, including The End of Jobs: Rise of On-Demand Workers and Agile Corporations. Kevin and Jeff discuss the current state of the job market, including the mass layoffs that are currently happening in the tech sector, and turn to the macroeconomic environment and the possible recession ahead in 2023. They trade notes on the specific problems faced by B2B companies which may need to adjust their sales operations to lengthened sales cycles that typically occur during macroeconomic retractions, and chat about how startups might fare in this environment. They then turn to an extended discussion of LinkedIn. Kevin and Jeff agree that the platform has great strengths but also a set of fundamental weaknesses -- most notoriously, the proliferation of fake profiles -- undermining its utility.