We caught up with Robert Sugar, Founder of Urban Hawk. He's a trained Physicist and veteran of the data and gaming industries. His company specialises in 3D mapping and the application of street level data.
Hi Robert! Can you tell us a bit more about Urban Hawke and your vision as a company?
We spent serious time with brainstorming a name that people might remember. We came up with Urban Hawk, that is short, memorable, and nicely summarises what we do, which is observing infrastructure operations and their management that we optimise to peak efficiency in a fully data driven way. So, Urban Hawk. Where Urban hints on us focusing on urban areas such as cities and downtown, where one expects to find a busy environment. The Hawk brings one to the observational part of the story with sharp long range vision in mind. Nonetheless a hawk has strong claws that enable it to grab and deliver something somewhere. In parallel with us grabbing data, captured in dense urban areas, and delivering it to our users.
In your opinion, what’s the biggest challenge business owners are facing right now?
The ever faster changing world due to the constant disruption caused by technology. That makes entreprenours to re-evaluate and often totally replan their strategy, product offerings, whatnot, because any of that can go obsolete in a 5 to 15 years cycle. Especially in tech, a new arising market can saturate in 5 years or less. Crazy. If you have a good idea, you need to scale it quickly. Tech is everywhere, accessible, and fast moving. R&D versus business as isolated models don't work anymore. The two belong together and have to be developed the same time.
Yes, we are living in rapidly changing times. Even the definition of generation doesn't just apply on the human lifecycle. Instead it's expanding to skills and experience. A tech developer or entrepreneur started recently sees things differently (more creative, aware of the possible) than the ones who started 20 years ago. They are already two different generations, and without the elder doing constant re-traing and catching up, for the younger communication and collaboration may feel like explaining cyber security to parents or grandparents.
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever been given?
Never underestimate human stupidity. Sounds like a bad joke, but it isn't. I actually learnt this from a good business friend of mine. As long as we humans are part of any decision making process, our emotional and irrational nature will always impact. No matter how smart and focused we are. I mean it.
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