Two Toyota dealers 20 minutes apart buy the same car from Toyota at the same price, then fight each other for your business. Todd Katcher, CPO of Zoney Digital Signage, explains how that works and why a dealership's waiting room TV can quietly cost it the sale.

Todd's sister company, Digital Dealership System, runs signs and sales leaderboards in more than 1,000 dealerships. He walks through the back-end incentives, customer satisfaction bonuses and floor plan financing that decide which car a salesperson pushes. Then the conversation turns to building software with AI: why project managers may matter more than pure coders, why AI writes good code but generic design, and why big features need several passes and real testing.

In this episode:

- Why every dealer buys the car at the same price but nets a different number

- How customer satisfaction scores can pay more than raw volume

- A competitor's tire ad in the lounge and other ways live TV hurts dealers

- Corporate, regional and store-level content on one sign network

- Building tools for yourself vs. for thousands of unknown users

- Splitting AI coding work into small waves so features come back complete

- A first step into digital signage, from a USB slideshow to remote updates

Learn more about Todd's work at https://zoney.com and https://digitaldealershipsystem.com.

I'm Armando J. Perez-Carreno. I help businesses find where AI actually fits and build the tools that make it work. Learn more at https://perezcarreno.com. If this one was useful, subscribe so you catch the next conversation.

#digitalsignage #cardealership #ai #softwaredevelopment #retail

In 2018 Mark Kreitzman's phone went dead in the Arizona desert. Someone at a phone store had moved his number to another device, and in 61 minutes the attackers reset passwords on his bank, email, cloud and crypto accounts. That SIM swap is why he helped build Efani, a mobile carrier designed to stop it from happening.

Mark has worked in telecom and cybersecurity since starting at AT&T in the late 90s, including at Global Crossing and two security startups bought by Microsoft and Cisco. He explains why a SIM swap bypasses every app and password on your phone, and why the carriers accept a certain amount of this fraud as a cost of business.

In this episode:

- How a text message reaches the right phone anywhere in the world

- What happened in the 61 minutes his number was hijacked

- Why a strong password doesn't help when attackers control your SMS codes

- Scanning 1,000 company domains in 4.2 seconds on a $7 a month server

- API keys and staging sites left exposed by AI-built apps

- "Data poisoning" as a way to make data brokers less sure about you

- Email spoofing protections (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) that take minutes to set up

- How Efani locks down accounts with human verification and SIM swap insurance

Find Mark and Efani at https://efani.com. Mark mentioned a discount for listeners at https://efani.com/promo. His security research is on Medium and LinkedIn under Mark Kreitzman.

I'm Armando J. Perez-Carreno. I help businesses find where AI actually fits and build the tools that make it work. Learn more at https://perezcarreno.com. If this one was useful, subscribe so you catch the next conversation.

#cybersecurity #simswap #mobilesecurity #privacy #ai

Getting into companies like SpaceX or OpenAI before they go public has usually taken at least $100,000, accredited investor status and months of paperwork. Chan Ahn spent almost 20 years in investment banking before founding Tessera, which puts exposure to those private companies on the blockchain so anyone with a crypto wallet can trade it from $1.

Chan explains why private markets have been closed to most people (slow settlement and thin disclosure), and how blockchain settles a trade in a split second without a broker in the middle. He lived through the Lehman Brothers collapse, and he ties it back to the same problem: a financial system that runs on trust between middlemen.

In this episode:

- Why buying a private company takes 2-3 months and up to 10% in fees

- Blockchain explained for people who have never used a wallet

- Bitcoin vs Ethereum vs Solana, and why the difference will matter less over time

- Why Chan, coming from crypto, argues for more regulation

- How Tessera uses Cayman SPVs and Chainlink so buyers can verify the assets exist

- His advice to newcomers: explore, but be cautious

This episode is for education only and is not financial advice. Talk to your own financial advisor.

Find Chan and Tessera at https://tessera.pe and on X.

I'm Armando J. Perez-Carreno. I help businesses find where AI actually fits and build the tools that make it work. Learn more at https://perezcarreno.com. If this one was useful, subscribe so you catch the next conversation.

#blockchain #tokenization #privateequity #fintech #solana