Cory Hymel

Crowdbotics

* Leadership role designed to synthesize the ambitions across all areas of Crowdbotics
* Bridge between the technical, product, and marketing teams
* Create research program from the ground up with leading universities 
* Author whitepapers with industry partners
* Public speaking events to share where the future of software development is going with AI

VP Product & Research

The Human Cloud

• Advising the implementation of a competitive intelligence terminal leaders can use to access hyper relevant freelance economy insights in seconds. 
• Advising ways to leverage emerging technologies such as AI, ML, and blockchain into freelance marketplaces.
• Providing thought leadership and strategy on leveraging technology to enable the human cloud.

Strategic Advisor

Gigster

*Managing 4 departments: Platform, NetOps, Product, and MetrX (acquisition)
*Direct report to CEO
*Main goal is creating company strategy and paths to revenue

VP of Product & Research

Helping lead research with Stanford and Berkeley into how distributed teams work at scale.

Head of Academic Partnerships

Leading all things blockchain. NFT's, crypto, enterprise, etc.

Director of Blockchain

Creating teams and process to build software via distributed employees. 

I also manage academic partnerships to help further research in distributed work. 

Personal areas of interest and specialization:
- blockchain                (incentive models and distributed systems architecture)
- IoT                             (sys architecture, deployment, etc.)
- embedded systems (bluetooth low energy (cypress semiconductor))
- finTech                      (international banking infrastructure, AML/KYC)

Senior Solutions Architect

Enventys Partners

....continuing to pioneer the Internet of Things.

Director of Connected Technologies

Enventys

Simble Co.

Launching iBeacons in real estate, conferences, and a consumer app.

Co Founder

Prime Notion Technologies, Inc.

Building custom enterprise mobile applications for Fortune 500 clients.

Co Founder & CEO

Pull Communications

Built platform that would allow museum curators to build self guided tours of exhibits.

Senior Developer

Resolute Games

Building 2D and 3D games for iOS and Android.

Senior Programmer / Developer

Fedex Institue of Technology

Was a member of the Dynamic Obstacle Handling Research team. Researching and building self driving tugs for FedEx.

Center for Advanced Robotics Research

VP of Product & Research @ Gigster | Innovating on the Future of Work

//--In my own words
Washed software engineer that was better at telling stories and painting visions that writing code. I usually find myself working in research or innovation teams due to attention deficient and boredom with solvable problems. I very much enjoy speaking, teaching, and sharing things I've learned with others. 


//--In my PR teams words
The root of Cory’s passion for the connected nature of tech enhancing the future of work began in the early 2000s in robotics research initiatives for the FedEx Institute of Technology. He went on to pioneer mobile helping enterprises develop strategies to mobilize staff workflows and collaboration in the pre-enterprise project management app era of “BYOD to work” in the mid-2010s. Seeing the promise of physical and digital integration, Cory brought physical products to life leading the Connected Technologies division at a hardware development firm. Beginning in 2018 Cory began researching and leading the Future of Work at Gigster as VP of Product and Research advocating for leveling outdated hierarchical structures within organizations. Cory is a futurist with the goal to continuously question the status quo. His research answers the questions that will define how the innovations of today will impact the work of tomorrow.

It was truly an honor to be invited by Hayden Brown and the Upwork team to come speak at their investor day on how AI is shaping the future of work. 

A couple key points: 

***
1. Code is no longer a defensive moat:
Operate under the hypothesis that the cost to generate code is going to $0. 

Capex to write code used to be a valid, defensible moat but with the insane progress AI code gen is making that's quickly going away. We're already seeing companies come out of Y Combinator with 2 founders and fleshed out platforms that in the past would have taken $Xm in funding to build. 

Example: 
We've been able to completely re-write a legacy java app using Cognition's Devin tool in about a day. 

***
2. The best ideas will (finally) win
Research led companies will win. Full stop. 

This doesn't mean go hire a bunch of PhD's. 
What I mean by this is companies that foster internal experimentation and validate ideas with data can now quickly accelerate on those to gain market share....and it's literally never been easier to do this. 

Example: 
We had a hypothesis that injecting business context into GitHub Copilot would improve it. So, in 6 weeks we ran a study using 300 flex talent resources from Upwork and proved it. Then we doubled down and brought that to market. 

We had a whitepaper, empirical evidence, and usage data that gave us an edge. The code was the easy part. 
https://lnkd.in/eyeZyQaE

***
***
Thank you again to everyone on Upwork team Sheri Baker, Peter Sanborn, Frisco C. and everyone else that helped prep and put on the session. 

Also, huge shoutout to my fellow panelist Gabriel Richman and Philip Rasori you guys were incredible!

VP Product & Research @ CoreStory | HCI research on AI’s impact to the SDLC

taplio