In this exclusive interview from theCUBE's Tech Innovation CUBEd Awards, Rick Farnell, CEO of Tracer, joins host Rebecca Knight to discuss his recognition as a Luminary Award winner in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Farnell shares his vast experience in AI and digital authenticity, focusing on the mission-driven ethos of Tracer, a company that seeks to protect brands from online threats. theCUBE Research and analysts guide this insightful conversation, exploring Farnell's leadership journey, his entrepreneurial ventures, and his vision for the future of technology education.
Key takeaways from the conversation include Farnell's emphasis on practical applications of AI and his dedication to fostering a collaborative company culture, essential for innovation and growth. He highlights the importance of expert validation in AI, emphasizing a human-in-the-loop approach to ensure effective outcomes. Farnell's insights illustrate the significance of aligning technological advancements with tangible business objectives, a principle he credits for his success. Overall, this discussion offers valuable perspectives on AI's dynamic role in enhancing brand safety and the critical elements for nurturing future technology leaders. #CUBEdAwards #Tracer #AI #Cybersecurity #DigitalAuthenticity
00:00 - Intro
00:06 - Introduction to Tracer: Welcoming Rick Farnell and Exploring the Entrepreneurial Journey
03:22 - Importance of Education in AI
05:46 - Practical Learning in AI
07:49 - Fostering Innovation Through Bold Vision and Entrepreneurial Culture
11:28 - Milestones and Reflections on the Journey to Career Success
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Rick Farnell, Tracer (AI Luminaries)
In this exclusive interview from theCUBE's Tech Innovation CUBEd Awards, Rick Farnell, CEO of Tracer, joins host Rebecca Knight to discuss his recognition as a Luminary Award winner in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Farnell shares his vast experience in AI and digital authenticity, focusing on the mission-driven ethos of Tracer, a company that seeks to protect brands from online threats. theCUBE Research and analysts guide this insightful conversation, exploring Farnell's leadership journey, his entrepreneurial ventures, and his vision for the future of technology education.
Key takeaways from the conversation include Farnell's emphasis on practical applications of AI and his dedication to fostering a collaborative company culture, essential for innovation and growth. He highlights the importance of expert validation in AI, emphasizing a human-in-the-loop approach to ensure effective outcomes. Farnell's insights illustrate the significance of aligning technological advancements with tangible business objectives, a principle he credits for his success. Overall, this discussion offers valuable perspectives on AI's dynamic role in enhancing brand safety and the critical elements for nurturing future technology leaders. #CUBEdAwards #Tracer #AI #Cybersecurity #DigitalAuthenticity
00:00 - Intro
00:06 - Introduction to Tracer: Welcoming Rick Farnell and Exploring the Entrepreneurial Journey
03:22 - Importance of Education in AI
05:46 - Practical Learning in AI
07:49 - Fostering Innovation Through Bold Vision and Entrepreneurial Culture
11:28 - Milestones and Reflections on the Journey to Career Success
In this exclusive interview from theCUBE's Tech Innovation CUBEd Awards, Rick Farnell, CEO of Tracer, joins host Rebecca Knight to discuss his recognition as a Luminary Award winner in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Farnell shares his vast experience in AI and digital authenticity, focusing on the mission-driven ethos of Tracer, a company that seeks to protect brands from online threats. theCUBE Research and analysts guide this insightful conversation, exploring Farnell's leadership journey, his entrepreneurial ventures, and his vision for the future o...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
What is Tracer trying to establish and maintain for billions of consumers on the digital landscape?add
What companies have you founded and been involved with in your career as an entrepreneur and AI visionary?add
What motivates someone to educate others about AI and how have their efforts evolved over the years?add
What is the importance of expert validation and human involvement when using advanced technologies in business?add
>> Hello, I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, and welcome to theCUBE's Tech Innovation CUBEd Awards, where we are celebrating the incredible ingenuity and creativity that's taking place across the technology landscape. Today we are joined by CUBE alum, Rick Farnell. He is the CEO of Tracer and a winner of theCUBE's Luminary Awards, which honors B2B tech leaders for their influence in AI, for their ability to drive trends, spark conversations, and educate others about AI's immense potential and challenges. So, welcome to the program, Rick, and congratulations.
Rick Farnell
>> Thank you so much for having me. It is a pleasure to be here.
Rebecca Knight
>> Excellent. And you are in Park City, Utah, I should have mentioned because your background is just fabulous.
Rick Farnell
>> Yeah, Park City, Utah, 24 years and running. So originally a Boston guy, but just fell in love with the lifestyle here and having a Delta hub here in Salt Lake City, pretty easy to get to most major cities in North America and internationally.
Rebecca Knight
>> Excellent. So tell our viewers a little bit about Tracer to start with.
Rick Farnell
>> Sure. So at Tracer we are trying to establish and maintain digital authenticity for billions of consumers on the digital landscape. So our brands that we protect, we constantly search the internet, social media, page search, marketplaces, the mobile app space, in order to find bad actors that are illegitimately using their trademarks, copyrights, brands, images, logos, to try to do nefarious things to their consumers and customers. So it's a classic case for using AI for good. I know a lot of people in the industry say that term, but honestly every single day that we wake up, we are on behalf of those billions of consumers taking down the bad guys that are trying to do bad things.
Rebecca Knight
>> It's a real mission-driven company, but it's not your first company. This is not your first rodeo. You're an accomplished entrepreneur and AI visionary. Can you walk us through a little bit of your career? I know you founded Think Big Analytics and before that you were the CEO of Protegrity.
Rick Farnell
>> Yeah, I co-founded Think Big Analytics. So, along with a couple other really amazing folks, we started really that company to help organizations utilize big data and all the cloud-based platforms in order to better predict where their customers are going to be to deliver a better service, to deliver a better product, to find fraud. And so a lot of the patterns that we established as a leader in our space back in 2010, really that crown, once we built Think Big Analytics, and had a really successful outcome with a Teradata Corporation, fantastic, fantastic culture at Teradata, that was really the beginning. So a lot of the folks that worked with myself and my fellow co-founders, we went on to Protegrity to really help secure data for the use in AI applications and AI use cases, which is something that gets not enough attention out there. So everyone understands the power of encrypting data and hiding your data from people that can get it and do bad things, but you want to actually use that data as well. So we did some really visionary things at Protegrity and then kind of taking that use and that kind of mission to land at a company, so we rebranded Tracer from an 11-year-old company, so we came out as Tracer in 2022 to really use AI for good and effectively. All of the things that we've been learning and putting together since 2010, we're now putting those to play here at Tracer on behalf of all of our wonderful brands that we protect.
Rebecca Knight
>> So educating others has been really central to your career through your speaking engagements, Think Big Academy, your podcast of course, and your work with universities. What motivates you to educate other people about AI and how have your efforts evolved over the years?
Rick Farnell
>> So artificial intelligence and really technology, I think technology as a sector, that's why it's just the most incredible area of the industry to work in. There are so many things that happen at internet speed or at technology speed, and if you're not educating executives that are out there in the world all the way down to students that are coming into the workforce, we really don't have an opportunity to continue this wonderful run. So really, it's been kind of a core value of mine and all the companies that I've worked at to really do my best to help not only our own employees or our customers, but also students that I'm affiliated with and different universities throughout the country. And we've gone on to do this internationally to really help them understand what can they focus on in order to give them the best opportunity to really impact, continue to impact, the technology world.
Rebecca Knight
>> What do you think is missing though from AI education today? And how can we better prepare the next generation of AI leaders? Because as you said, they are hungry for knowledge and knowing where they can have the most impact is not always straightforward.
Rick Farnell
>> We've always taken an approach of being very practical. So learning anything, let alone technology, which is highly complex and it's moving at the speed of light, really put it in context of, "Let me learn something, but for a very specific purpose." That's really boded well for us throughout the years and we kind of continue to have that. So at Tracer, as we're training new folks out of school and out of university, or people that have been in the industry for 10 years but don't necessarily have all of the at-scale, at-production AI skills, we're kind of taking them because they probably have pretty fantastic data skills and programming skills or visual UI/UX skills, but they just need to be applied for where we're going. So I think that's a really important piece is there's a lot of education out there, but it's just education. It's like, "So what?" And hello world, and these types of things. So we really try to give purpose to why you're learning something and then have that directly translate to what we're trying to do in our business.
Rebecca Knight
>> Exactly. So really making the practical application very clear.
Rick Farnell
>> Super clear, really just everything from the instruction to the materials, to the things that we're working on together in a collaborative group and cross-functional group. When it comes together and you kind of put it all together, it should do something meaningful and you should understand it. And I like to use kind of the mom rule, if you can't explain it to your mom, who might not be very technical, now, some people have very technical moms, I don't want to have that-
Rebecca Knight
>> Don't throw the moms under the bus. No, exactly.
Rick Farnell
>> But I call it the mom rule, like when you do something highly technical, its outcome, you should be able to explain it to regular people for why you did that.
Rebecca Knight
>> Exactly. And remembering the why, because as you started this conversation at the very beginning, it's all about the mission, it's all about understanding why you're doing something.
Rick Farnell
>> Yeah, it really is.
Rebecca Knight
>> Talk a little bit about your approach and talk about some of the more unconventional approaches that you've taken that maybe at first ruffled feathers or raised eyebrows, but ultimately proved transformational in terms of how you think about things, how you provoke new discussions?
Rick Farnell
>> Well, first of all, I got my start at a very young age and I was taken under the wing of some absolutely fantastic visionaries in the technology industry where at that time they had decades worth of experience in technology. And I always hold that true moving forward, so really just because you haven't been somewhere for 5, 10, 15, 20 years doesn't mean that with the right support and the right group around you, that you can't be wildly successful. So I really try to have that be a part of our culture. And then apart from that, there's a reason why we kind of named Think Big Analytics, Think Big, it's you got to think big. So that combination of think big, make it happen, and don't get so stuck into stereotypes for years of whatnot. And I think that gets the most out of people and it creates a culture of entrepreneurs inside your company. And, let's face it, those of us that have been in the industry, yes, we work with people that have maybe been at one company for 20-plus years, but that's rare these days. So a lot of the people that we work with for the first year, five years, seven years, 10 years or whatever it is, they're going to go on to do some amazing things, and it's all about that network and that culture of people that can think big and make it happen.
Rebecca Knight
>> Workplace culture is something that we think a lot about here on theCUBE. We write a lot about, we talk to people like you about. And you mentioned the culture at Teradata, you've mentioned the culture that you're trying to foster and cultivate in your past at Think Big and also at Tracer. What are some things that you do as a leader that really do cultivate this culture of asking the right questions, being entrepreneurial, allowing people to sometimes fail and make mistakes, fostering psychological safety? What are the kinds of behaviors that you practice as a leader that helped make this culture come to life?
Rick Farnell
>> Number one, I think I have to lead with the culture that I want the organization to have. So I try to practice myself being extremely authentic, being very transparent. I try to have lots of touch points with team members in different countries and different time zones and from different areas of the organization. And I seek that out, I try to do that. We have all staffs. Once a month, we have a very, very vibrant question and answer period during that. We have sessions where I set up lunches with people every other week. So if I can't live those values, then it's impossible for the organization to have those. So that's kind of number one is just I try to lead with how I want the organization to exist. And I've been a part of some really fantastic, fantastic corporate cultures throughout my wonderful career and back to Sun Microsystems and even back in the day, Cambridge Technology Group, and Seabridge Solutions, just some wonderful, wonderful make it happen, can do, electric-type entrepreneurial cultures. So that's a really big piece of what we do here at Tracer is we are trying. Now, you can't always do that. You can't live in never-never land. Sometimes depending upon the business climate and where things are, you have to scale that back. But ultimately, we're really trying to create a culture of leaders and of entrepreneurs, whether they're here at Tracer or going on in their careers.
Rebecca Knight
>> Your work has transformed multiple sectors as we've talked about, big data, secure AI, brand protection at Tracer. What are some of the common threads that you would say tie your achievements together?
Rick Farnell
>> Well, I'm going to have to get back to being very practical. So having a sense of what we're doing, why we're doing it, if we're using modern techniques and technologies and approaches at that time, because here we are in a world of AI, we're talking about generative AI, natural language processing and computer vision and others, where back 15 years ago, it wasn't necessarily about all that. So wherever we are, it's about utilizing the right technologies, but for serving a very particular purpose. And I guess here at Tracer, we wear kind of our customers brands on our hearts and on our sleeves every single day that we wake up and that we're working for them because literally we're out there trying to maintain their digital authenticity. And not only doing that and finding bad guys, bad networks, but also taking them down. So it is a really wonderful charge. And if we can utilize these new technologies and these new approaches to either stay at par with the bad guys that also have access to these amazing technologies, then I think we're doing a good job.
Rebecca Knight
>> So now I'm going to embarrass you a little bit and quote directly from your nomination sheet, this is what someone who has worked with you in the past said about you. "What sets Rick apart is how he builds meaningful connections with customers and technology players, not just business relationships. His make-it-happen attitude drives continuous innovation, proving that cutting edge AI solutions and strong team morale can go hand in hand." We've talked a lot about how you foster morale internally, but how about those relationships that you're forming with partners, with customers? What do you think is the key to meaningful relationships, particularly at a time when business in the fast-paced AI sector can feel maybe transactional?
Rick Farnell
>> I think it goes with any relationship. You have to care, you have to be willing to put in the work, you have to be willing to do the little things in good times and in bad. And I think if we, as a culture, and again, it has to start with me, there are many of our customers who have my mobile phone. And if they need me, they hit me. Of course, we have support lines, of course, they can talk to their customer success manager and others, but if it's really a relationship that has stood the test of time, I have to invest in it, we as a culture have to invest in it, and really support them because it's not always roses and unicorns and everything. Sometimes there's some things that we have to do that aren't great, and it's in those times that you really rely on that trust and that relationship factor to kind of get through a difficult time. So, yeah, I think it starts with that. I think it really is putting in the work, doing the little things, and really caring about the relationship.
Rebecca Knight
>> Right. So you are obviously an AI evangelist, but I want to make sure that you are candid and transparent with our audience too in terms of how you think about AI's potential, but also its risks and challenges.
Rick Farnell
>> That's a great question. The approach that we've taken here at Tracer, and I think it builds up based on our now 15 years of work at scale, global scale, with a lot of global brands, it's not always about just the technology. You really do have to have that expert validation. There's a term called human in the loop, HITL, that shouldn't be taken lightly. And I think for a lot of companies that might just be starting out in their journey using some of these advanced technologies, they might think the technology can solve everything. It doesn't always. It's a force multiplier, it's unbelievable, it never sleeps, it never has to take their kids to soccer games on the weekends, it could be 24/7. So there are so many wonderful aspects of it, but at the end of the day, and especially if we're talking algorithm development, and you talk about model drift, and hallucinations, and doing the wrong thing, you really do need that expert validation to make sure that the wonderful work that you're doing with the technology is always delivering the right results. So I just say to a lot of practicality, don't forget about the experts and the humans that have to guide the software and the algorithms all the time, because that is very real, very, very real.
Rebecca Knight
>> Care and think about the humans in that loop. Exactly, exactly. So, final question, looking back on your career and your professional journey, would you say that there was a key turning point or decision that you made that helped lead to this recognition today?
Rick Farnell
>> So I was fortunate enough to start my professional career at the time when the internet was becoming real. And so circa mid-1990s. And I worked an incredible, incredible visionary and really learned a lot from him. There was a lot of folks that we worked together have gone on to really wildly successful careers. And, ultimately, a lot of what we learned there is no matter what the technology is, if you can't translate it back to a business reason, then why are you doing that new technology thing? So that stuck with me for a long, long time, and I think it comes through in a lot of the cultural aspects of some of the organizations I've tried to build throughout the years is really never losing sight of coming back to the business outcome or the business purpose. You can use the world's greatest technology and the latest things, but if it doesn't do what you're setting out to do, you're not going to have a business. You're not going to have customers, you're not going to grow your existing customers. So I just never forget that, never forget what it is you're trying to do with the technology.
Rebecca Knight
>> And those of us who lived through the 2000 dot com boom and bust can remember that and heed then that well too.
Rick Farnell
>> Yeah.
Rebecca Knight
>> Exactly. Well, Rick, congrats again. Thank you so much for coming on.
Rick Farnell
>> It is an honor, honestly. On behalf of a lot of the wonderful teams that I've had to work with, fellow co-founders, amazing board members, venture capitalists who believed in some of the things that I wanted to do, I thank theCUBE and SiliconANGLE for this award. It's a real, real pleasure and honor. Thank you.
Rebecca Knight
>> Well, I have to say throughout this interview, you have been very gracious and humble, and doing a lot of shout-outs to your co-founders and your colleagues throughout the years at various companies.
Rick Farnell
>> It's a team and a we approach. It's not an I approach. It is not. There's a lot of people, wonderful customers, partners. Yeah. So thank you, thank you for giving me the opportunity to shout out to some of them. It really means a lot.
Rebecca Knight
>> Thank you. And thank you for tuning into this special segment on theCUBE's Tech Innovation CUBEd Awards. I'm Rebecca Knight. Stay tuned for more.
Rebecca Knight