There were two main themes throughout the dinner conversation with Nandan Amladi, Vice President of US Equity Research on Cloud Computing and Software at Deutche Bank. The first was the incredible speed at which computing is changing and the repercussions of that evolution within the tech and finance industry. The second was that for students who are interested in careers in business, having some degree of technical literacy is essential.
Mr. Amladi explained the factors he examines when evaluating a software company and deciding whether to recommend buying stock in the company or not. Although the criteria themselves are fundamental business concepts such as cash flow, product differentiation, etc., there has been significant change in the technology itself and the business models by which technology companies operate. For example, cloud companies such as Oracle, Amazon (A.W.S), and Microsoft (Azure) have changed what layers of the stack they control from the hardware at the bottom to the software on top.
Presently, to understand the complex business models one must also understand the technology offerings, how they operate, and how they fit together. In the second main theme of the discussion, Mr. Amladi stressed the importance of having technical literacy. He himself switched from the purely technical side to the business side of things by getting an M.B.A. but emphasized that several of his colleagues at Deutche bank have formal degrees in business and learned the technology aspects on the job. To illustrate the interconnectedness of technology and business, we talked about an anecdote in which a start-up founder needed to hire a CTO but didn’t know what questions to ask in the interview to determine whether the candidate was qualified.
What was most interesting to me was the strong parallels between Mr. Amladi’s perspective and Michael Belkin’s, a Rose House guest two weeks ago. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Mr. Belkin got an undergraduate degree in business and then an MBA but as he started his technology start-up, he realized that he also needed technical skills and couldn’t just rely on others to execute his vision. He took programming classes and ended up developing a passion for computer science. So while Mr. Amladi and Mr. Belkin have had quite different career paths, their similar advice attests to the validity of each other’s perspective on today’s interweaving technology and business climate.