Particle Accelerator: A Particle41 Podcast
Welcome to the Particle Accelerator Podcast, presented by Particle41. Hosted by Ben Johnson, a serial entrepreneur who has founded, built, and sold multiple businesses, this podcast delves into conversations with future-thinking business leaders about how to accelerate their business and grow their teams.
Each episode features in-depth discussions that reveal strategies for accelerating business growth, cultivating high-performing teams, and uncovering new technological advancements across various industries.
Catered for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and forward-thinking professionals alike, the podcast provides valuable insights to help you discover emerging technologies and stay ahead in the competitive tech landscape. It's highly relevant for those seeking to expand their horizons and make impactful connections in the technology world.
Tune in to stay ahead of the curve and gain a deeper understanding of the forces driving the evolution of technology and business. The Particle Accelerator Podcast—where innovation meets acceleration.
#ParticleAcceleratorPodcast #Particle41 #Entrepreneurship #BusinessGrowth #Innovation #Leadership #BusinessStrategies #TechnologyLeadership #EmergingTechnologies #TechEntrepreneurs #Business #TechnologyInsights #HighPerformingTeams #CompetitiveAdvantage #ForwardThinking #IndustryInnovators #TechIndustry #GrowthMindset #SuccessStrategies #FutureOfBusiness
Learn more about Ben @ Particle41.com
Particle Accelerator: A Particle41 Podcast
The gap between demo and reliable ROI | Pratik Verma
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Your AI agent nailed the demo. But two weeks after going live, you're staring at support tickets you can't reproduce, cloud bills you can't explain, and behavior nobody predicted.
In this episode of Particle Accelerator, our host Benjamin Johnson sits down with Pratik Verma, Founder and CEO of Okahu AI, to unpack exactly why AI agents break in production and what it takes to actually build reliable, observable agentic systems. Pratik has spent years at Microsoft and leading his own AI infrastructure companies. His open-source Monocle library and Okahu platform are purpose-built for the era of non-deterministic, LLM-powered agents, filling the gap that Datadog, New Relic, and traditional APM tools simply weren't designed for.
In this conversation, Benjamin and Pratik get into:
The most common root cause of agent failure (hint: it's not the model)
Why the orchestration layer is where everything breaks
Real-world example, how an Epson QA team cut triage from 30 hrs to 2 hrs with agents
The structural difference between tracing a microservice vs. tracing an agent
Evals vs. observability, what they are, why you need both, and how they connect
How to instrument for token cost waste from day one
MCP observability, what happens when you can't see inside the calling agent
The self-healing agent loop, observability, coding agent, fix and repeat
What software engineering looks like in 3 years
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro & Guest Welcome
01:05 - Why agents fail: lab vs. production reality
02:28 - The orchestration layer: where flexibility becomes fragility
04:00 - The noun confusion failure mode (real-world example)
04:51 - The failure mode engineering leaders never see coming
06:29 - Why Datadog doesn't work for AI agents
11:22 - Instrumenting for cost: token budgets, session tracking & alerts
14:22 - Evals vs. observability: drawing the line
17:21 - From deterministic to non-deterministic systems
18:24 - Real-world case study: Epson QA agents
22:51 - Call center AI & observability signals in practice
30:07 - MCP observability and institutional knowledge loops
35:10 - The emerging agent economy and skill repositories
46:26 - What the next 3 years of AI looks like
Pratik Verma, Founder & CEO, Okahu AI
Connect with him: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pratikrverma/
Learn more at: https://www.okahu.ai/
Benjamin Johnson, Host, Particle Accelerator & CEO, Particle41
Connect with Benjamin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminrjohnson/
Learn more about Particle41: https://particle41.com/
#AIAgents #MLOps #AIObservability #ProductionAI #EngineeringLeadership #TheParticleAccelerator #Particle41
