The Irish Tech News Podcast

In this week’s One Vision Podcast, Theodora Lau hosts Kathryn Outlaw, Co-Founder and COO of Spheros, a B2B SaaS platform that aims to unify client data into a single source of truth, enabling accurate, consented data sharing and supporting reliable AI agents. Kathryn talks about her entrepreneurial journey, the inspiration behind the startup, and the goal of making Spheros as essential as DocuSign for on-boarding.

💬Hot take:  ”Banks don't have a data scarcity problem. They have a data comprehension problem.” 

🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Keywords: Fintech, Financial Services, Data, Banking Industry 

Timestamp:
00:00 Welcome And Guest Intro
01:27 From Banking To Startup
04:06 Why Spheros Exists
07:58 Agents And Data Consent
10:30 Open Banking Pathways
15:31 Founder Lessons Learned
17:01 Defining Success Ahead

More about our guest 
🌐Kathryn Outlaw on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathrynoutlaw/ 

More about our host and One Vision Podcast 
🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 
🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 
🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 
🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision

Here at Irish Tech News we love meeting and introducing new Irish startups to our readers and podcast listeners. One such startup is SelenaVoice AI  that builds custom AI phone receptionists for Irish service businesses. I recently caught up with Jack Power the founder of SelenaVoice AI.
Jack talks about his background, what SelenaVoice AI does, coming up with SelenaVoice AI, guardrails, future plans, and more.
More about Jack Power:
Jack Power is a 20 year old entrepreneur from Co. Meath, currently studying Digital Business and Innovation at DCU while building SelenaVoice AI. After a business partnership collapsed and cost him every client he’d built, Jack started again from scratch under his own name. 
SelenaVoice AI builds custom AI phone receptionists for Irish service businesses, helping eliminate interruptions and stop them losing money to missed calls. Available and answering 24/7, so no lead is ever lost. Jack documents the journey daily on TikTok and Instagram.

🎙️ "Delight is a deposit strategy."
In this episode of One Vision Podcast, Angela Scott, Sales Enablement leader at Zions, joins host Theodora Lau, to discuss her idea that “delight is a deposit strategy,” arguing banks can win deposits by creating intuitive, responsive, and even enjoyable experiences that make money movement easy, especially when digital experiences are constrained by shared core and app vendors. 
They get into: 
Why delight isn’t fluff

Why the best deposit strategy makes money easy to move in and out

The chick-and-egg trap of building on the same handful of core and app providers

Financial literacy, and why communities shouldn’t bear the burden

Why we need to make banking more legible

Angela stresses balancing efficiency and humanity through employee, digital, and brand experience to build trust. 

💬 “If you want deposits, you have to bring the right environment to set them free.”
🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Keywords: Fintech, FinancialServices, Banking Industry, Financial Inclusion, Financial Literacy 

00:00 Welcome and Introductions
01:05 Delight as Deposit Strategy
04:43 Banking UX and Vendor Limits
07:16 Neobank Story and Micro Delights
11:46 Angela’s Origin Story
17:22 Inclusion and Literacy Work
25:29 Digital Efficiency vs Human Touch
33:02 Brand Experience and Differentiation
36:56 Takeaways and Goodbye

More about our guest 
🌐Angela Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-scott-a2348827/ 

More about our host and One Vision Podcast 
🌐Theodora Lau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theodoralau/ 
🌐Banking on (Artificial) Intelligence (book): https://www.bankingonaibook.com/ 
🌐Unconventional Ventures (company): https://www.unconventionalventures.com/ 
🌐Listen to all One Vision Podcast episodes by visiting: https://shows.acast.com/one-vision 
**

The EU AI compliance deadline arrived on August 2nd and it’s important that companies have been preparing for it. According to AI expert Cathal McCarthy of Kore.ai, companies that establish robust AI governance frameworks today will be better positioned to deploy AI faster in a highly regulated industry.
To help leaders assess their preparedness, Cathal has developed a six-question diagnostic that evaluates the maturity of an organisation's AI governance program. The framework is designed to quickly identify whether key governance structures, accountability mechanisms, and oversight processes are in place, or where gaps still remain.  
I caught up with Cathal to find out more about the EU AI compliance and how businesses should prepare for it. Cathal talks about his background, AI compliance, AI adaptability, the ability to learn, AI transparency and more.
More about Cathal McCarthy:
Cathal is Chief Strategy Officer at Kore.ai, an enterprise AI and agentic AI platform serving Fortune 500 and PE-backed customers globally.
He has twenty-five years scaling enterprise technology businesses and has held leadership roles at Apple during its growth from $8B to over $200B in revenue, and at eBay leading initiatives across 163 million users. He also brings P&L instinct, GTM design experience, and credibility in the boardroom on AI transformation.

Here at Irish Tech News we love meeting and introducing new Irish startups to our readers and podcast listeners. One such startup is Montro that helps companies with their AI and SaaS governance. Earlier this year at Dublin Tech Summit my colleague Billy Linehan brought Montro onto out radar and I recently caught up with Ankur Arora one of Montro’s Co-Founders to find out more about Montro.
Ankur talks about his background, compliance, what Montro does, shadow AI, EU regulations and more.
More about Montro:
Montro is a Dublin-based AI governance and SaaS intelligence platform that discovers unmanaged software and automates European regulatory compliance.  Discover every tool, classify against EU AI Act, DORA, NIS2, and GDPR before auditors do.