Fresh out of the studio, Borko Kovacevic, Co-founder of Poddster and Podyx, joins us to explore how he is building the world's largest podcast studio network and the operating system behind it. He shares his career journey from nearly 17 years at Microsoft across Central Europe and Asia Pacific, to making the entrepreneurial leap and launching Poddster's first flagship studio in Dubai, followed by Singapore. Borko explains how Poddster scaled by treating operations like software — standardizing over the operational framework to run studios from UAE and Singapore to now globally across the world while building a flywheel connecting corporate brands with authentic content creators. He unpacks how Podyx, the software spinoff, hit 24 markets with zero churn on day one. Closing the conversation, Borko shares why frequency and consistency in content creation — not polish — is the single most underestimated edge in the AI era, and what great looks like for Poddster and Podyx as a global studio network and platform.

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Borko Kovacevic [01:00] Introduction: Borko Kovacevic [03:17] The danger of corporate complacency & achieving success too early[07:00] The leap: why he finally decided to leave Microsoft and build something[10:13] The origin story of Poddster — not planned, born from a co-founder complaint[13:00] Building a mini studio prototype inside Microsoft; discovering the market gap[16:33] Modelling Poddster like McDonald's: 90% of operations standardized and repeatable[18:23] Building the flywheel: connecting corporates with content creators at scale[23:00] The global studio partner network — a community of 150+ studio owners globally[26:12] The roadmap: New York by September, then Los Angeles and London[32:10] How Podyx was born — a prototype to solve Poddster' own booking chaos[33:47] Why existing booking tools (Calendly, Acuity) didn't fit the podcasting workflow[36:55] Podyx metrics: $6M+ in transactions, 160 paying studios across 24 markets, zero churn[37:15] Stripe named Podyx fastest-growing vertical SaaS startup from Singapore[38:34] Founder-led sales: Borko personally onboarded the first 50+ studios on calls[42:23] Making a services business operate like software — what can actually be productized[44:48] The test for every new process: can you repeat it 10 more times across locations?[49:48] The one thing most people don't know about podcasting: frequency beats polish[50:42] LLMs and agents will train on your content — why posting consistently is the real SEO[54:14] Creators vs. corporates: fundamentally different problems.[56:00] Corporates discovering long-form: the end of scripted media interviews[58:22] The AWS-Cisco example: executive dialogue that earns trust without selling[01:03:13] What great looks like for Poddster and Podyx in the next few years

Profile: Borko Kovacevic, co-founder of Poddster and Podyx

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/borko-kovacevic/

Poddster Website: https://poddster.com

Podyx Website: https://podyx.com

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format. This episode is recorded in Poddster Singapore and full disclosure: Bernard is an investor to Podyx.

Fresh out of the studio, Ken Exner, Chief Product Officer at Elastic, joins us to explore how Elastic evolved from the world's most popular open-source search engine into the context layer powering modern AI applications and agent systems. He shares his career journey from database programming to over 16 years at Amazon building AWS resilience practices, and now leading product strategy where search, observability, and security converge into a unified AI platform. Ken explains why context engineering is the defining discipline of the AI age, where developers become managers of agents, and how Elastic's 15-year enterprise head start positions it as the foundational retrieval layer between enterprise data and LLMs.

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Ken Exner from Elastic
[00:51] Ken's origin story: database programmer to Amazon
[02:07] What attracted Ken to Elastic
[02:51] Lessons from building resilient systems at AWS
[04:34] How Elastic evolved from search to AI infrastructure
[07:06] Elastic today: context engineering, observability, security
[09:42] Why observability will be fundamentally transformed by AI
[10:48] How early vector search prepared Elastic for GenAI
[12:53] Context engineering: ingestion, retrieval, evaluation
[15:39] The 10-year head start over purpose-built competitors
[20:57] A developer's day is now all context engineering
[24:16] Elastic as the bridge between enterprise data and LLMs
[26:13] Agent Builder capabilities for customers
[28:09] Data, tools, and context in the Elastic framework
[29:39] Elastic on battleships and a Mars rover
[31:00] The disorienting acceleration of AI coding models
[32:07] Developers will be managers of agents
[34:00] Authentication and identity for autonomous agents
[35:30] Great in five years: the foundational AI layer
[36:14] Disrupting observability and security from within
[36:36] Closing

Profile: Ken Exner, Chief Product Officer, Elastic

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-exner-b914542/

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format.

Fresh out of the studio, Nir Eyal, best-selling author of "Hooked," "Indistractable," and the forthcoming "Beyond Belief," joined us in a conversation to explore how deeply held beliefs quietly shape our attention, decisions, and success. Nir shared his personal origin story of childhood obesity that revealed how we escape uncomfortable feelings through habitual behaviors, and progressed through the Hook Model that democratized Silicon Valley's habit-formation secrets for building products like Duolingo and Fitbod. He unpacks the critical insight that the opposite of distraction isn't focus—it's traction—and introduces the Motivation Triangle framework explaining why knowing what to do isn't enough without belief. Throughout the conversation, Nir demonstrates how 90% of our distractions stem from internal triggers rather than technology itself, and challenges the moral panic around AI by drawing parallels to historical fears from the written word to social media. Last but not least, he argues that beliefs are tools, not truths, revealing how our hidden convictions fundamentally alter what we see, feel, and do—and provides a science-backed path for transforming limiting beliefs into liberating ones that unlock previously impossible performance.

Episode Highlights
[00:00] Quote of the Day by Nir Eyal
[01:02] Introduction: Nir Eyal
[04:45] Hook model democratizes habit-forming product secrets
[06:42] Startups sell painkillers not vitamins
[08:59] Traction versus distraction defines intentional living
[10:24] Distraction is behavior not medical addiction
[11:28] AI triggers predictable moral panic cycle
[14:21] First generation without mass starvation faces excess
[16:58] Hook model: trigger action reward investment
[23:26] Persuasion helps people achieve their goals
[29:39] Internal triggers cause ninety percent of distractions
[32:36] Indistractable readers didn't implement the steps
[34:46] Motivation triangle requires behavior benefit belief
[36:19] Steve Jobs willed reality through liberating beliefs
[43:43] Facts beliefs faith require intellectual humility
[45:41] Beliefs are tools not truths
[48:32] Beliefs reshape attention anticipation agency
[51:30] Closing

Profile: Nir Eyal, author of "Beyond Belief", "Indistractable" and "Hooked"

Main Site: https://www.nirandfar.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nireyal/

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format.