Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach, talks with David Ly, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Iveda, about building trust, verifying global alignment, and turning human inconsistency into AI.
David Ly built Iveda into a NASDAQ-listed, AI-driven video search and smart city technology company over 23 years. I sat down with him for The Scaling Executive Podcast, and he taught me a rule I now pass on to every CEO I coach: when you scale a company across borders, you cannot trust email, messaging, or assumptions to tell you whether your team is executing correctly. You must show up in person. David Ly, founder, chairman, and CEO of Iveda, holds that this discipline, physically inspecting operations in person rather than relying on remote communication, is what let him expand Iveda’s AI-driven video and smart city technology into markets including the Philippines, Spain, Cairo, Vietnam, and Taiwan.
This episode is for CEOs scaling operations across multiple countries who need to decide whether remote communication is enough to keep a global team aligned.
Key Takeaways
- CEOs who scale across borders cannot verify execution through email or messaging alone. David Ly insists a leader must physically travel to each market to confirm the team’s actions match the message, treating every trip as a mission rather than a business trip.
- Iveda’s AI product line began as an internal fix, not a market trend. David Ly’s team taught a machine to recognize human silhouettes because untrained human monitors watching video feeds proved inconsistent, tired, and affected by life outside the job.
- The leadership skill that took David Ly the longest to develop was trusting the people he worked with rather than simply directing them, a shift required only once he stopped working for someone else and started building something of his own.
- Winning a SAFETY Act Designation from the US Department of Homeland Security in 2009 gave Iveda credibility that extended for the next decade, opening doors with foreign governments that trusted a company certified by its own government.
- Scaling communication globally requires repetition, not just clarity. David Ly holds that a message must be repeated more often, not just delivered well once, to hold up across cultural and language differences on an international team.
CEOs Build Trust by Working With Their Team, Not For Them
You already know how to solve problems if you came up through an operating role. David Ly did too. Before he founded Iveda in 2003, he worked as a B2B sales rep and an applications engineer, and his job was simple: fix what broke. He told me that the moment he became a founder, that skill was not enough. “You have to trust that whoever you work with gets it,” he said.
As an employee, no one needed to trust him, and he did not need to trust anyone else, because his job was defined for him. As a founder, he had to trust that the people around him understood the mission, not just the task in front of them. That shift, from being trusted to do a job to trusting others to own a mission, is the leadership gap David Ly says took him the longest to close.
CEOs Verify Global Alignment by Showing Up in Person
Once you are operating across countries, you will not verify anything from behind a screen. David Ly learned this by watching his own assumptions fail. “Don’t ever assume. Because you always fail when you assume,” he told me.
He does not treat international travel as a business trip. He treats it as a mission, to the Philippines, Spain, Cairo, Vietnam, and Taiwan, because a mission requires him to wake up in the market, sleep in the market, and verify what his team and his channel partners are telling customers on the ground. “If you don’t show up, you fail. Period,” he said.
Showing up is also not a one-time event. When David Ly scaled Iveda’s communication across cultures and languages, he found that clarity alone was not enough. “To scale globally, it’s also you gotta do it a lot more, more often. Quantity matters as well,” he said. A message delivered once, however well crafted, does not survive translation across a global organization. It must be repeated, in person, until you can confirm it landed.
CEOs Turn Human Inconsistency Into AI Tools That Scale Operations
Long before artificial intelligence became a category everyone claims, David Ly built Iveda’s AI practice to solve a problem inside his own operations. In the mid-2000s, Iveda employed staff he called intervention specialists, whose job was to watch live customer camera feeds and report what they saw. The technology worked. The people did not, consistently. “We’re inconsistent as humans to provide consistent work that the client is paying us for,” he told me.
Fatigue, distraction, and life outside the job all showed up in the reporting, and no amount of training fixed it. So Iveda built the fix itself. Using video data his own team had already captured and labeled by hand, David Ly’s engineers trained a machine to recognize human silhouettes and alert only when a person, not an animal or a plastic bag blowing across a parking lot, appeared in frame. “Iveda was at the beginning building AI tools to solve our own internal operation issues,” he said. That internal tool became the machine learning foundation Iveda later sold outward as a product, expanding into face and license plate recognition years before AI became the label everyone reaches for.
The Framework: What David Ly’s Approach Teaches Every Scaling CEO
| Principle | What it means in practice | Named evidence from this interview |
| Show up before you send a message | Physical presence is the only way to confirm a global team is executing what leadership communicated, not just receiving it | David Ly conducts in-person “missions” to the Philippines, Spain, Cairo, Vietnam, and Taiwan rather than relying on remote trip reports, because email and messaging could not confirm execution |
| Trust must be built, not assumed | Founders moving from employee to owner must earn trust from the people they work with, rather than simply directing them to complete tasks | David Ly names building trust as the biggest leadership gap he had to close after founding Iveda in 2003 |
| Human inconsistency is a design constraint, not a personnel problem | When a business model depends on people providing consistent output, a leader must build technology to compensate for fatigue and distraction rather than trying to manage it away | Iveda’s human video monitors proved inconsistent, which led David Ly’s team to build the machine learning tools that became Iveda’s AI product line |
Quotes from This Episode
- “If you don’t show up, you fail. Period.” — David Ly, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Iveda
- “Don’t ever assume. Because you always fail when you assume.” — David Ly, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Iveda
- “You have to trust that whoever you work with gets it.” — David Ly, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Iveda
- “We’re inconsistent as humans to provide consistent work that the client is paying us for.” — David Ly, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Iveda
- “Iveda was at the beginning building AI tools to solve our own internal operation issues.” — David Ly, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Iveda
Frequently Asked Questions
How do CEOs keep global teams aligned without relying on email?
David Ly, founder and CEO of Iveda, holds that email, messaging, and text cannot confirm whether a global team is executing a strategy correctly. He treats every international trip as a mission, not a business trip, traveling to markets including the Philippines, Spain, Cairo, Vietnam, and Taiwan to personally verify what his teams and channel partners are telling customers.
What is the biggest leadership skill founders need that employees don’t?
David Ly identifies trust as the core gap between working for someone and building something of your own. As an engineer, his job was to fix problems assigned to him. As a founder, he had to trust that the people he worked with genuinely understood the mission rather than just completing tasks.
How can a CEO turn an internal operations problem into a scalable AI product?
Iveda’s leadership found that human staff monitoring live video feeds produced inconsistent reporting because of fatigue, distraction, and emotion. Instead of trying to manage that inconsistency through training, David Ly’s team used their own recorded video data to teach a machine to recognize human silhouettes, a machine learning tool that became the foundation of Iveda’s AI product line.
Executives Work with Glenn Gow to Scale Their Companies and Careers
Glenn Gow is The Scaling Executive Coach. He coaches ambitious executives into the CEO seat and CEOs into successful exits. With 25 years as a CEO and 5 years in venture capital, Glenn helps leaders scale their companies by scaling themselves first. If this conversation was useful, you can apply for executive coaching with Glenn Gow or apply to be a guest on The Scaling Executive Podcast.
